Skirball Cultural Center

MUSIC Local avant-garde rock trio Autolux provides the soundtrack to "Into the Night: Music and Magic," which includes performances from Superhumanoids and KCRW-FM DJ Anthony Valadez. The evening's entertainment features strolling magicians, a screening of the Harry Houdini serial "Master Mystery" (1920) and access to the galleries. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Fri. $15. (310) 440-4500. http://www.skirball.org.

"What's the difference between Jewish and Chinese mah jong?" the protagonist of Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" asks her mother about the quintessential Chinese game. Her mother replies, "Entirely different kind of playing.... Jewish mah jong, they watch only for their own tile, play only with their eyes. " "Project Mah Jongg," a colorful exhibition opening Thursday (through Sept. 2) at the Skirball Cultural Center, tells the Jewish side of the story. With vintage photographs, souvenirs, playing guides and other ephemera, and of course examples of the tiles themselves, the exhibition traces how the game was enthusiastically adopted and integrated into the social life of Jewish women in the 20th century.

MUSIC The seven-woman-strong percussion ensemble Adaawe blends African beats and gospel harmonies with pop and R&B for a new musical twist on an ancient Ghanaian tradition. Expect an energetic fusion of voice and drum. The group's soon-to-be released album is "Passages. " Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fri. $20. (310) 440-4500. http://www.skirball.org

MUSIC The seven-woman-strong percussion ensemble Adaawe blends African beats and gospel harmonies with pop and R&B for a new musical twist on an ancient Ghanaian tradition. Expect an energetic fusion of voice and drum. The group's soon-to-be released album is "Passages. " Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fri. $20. (310) 440-4500. http://www.skirball.org

The Jewish New Year began at sundown Monday. It is called Rosh Hashana, which literally means "head of the year." Jewish tradition teaches that on this day God created the world. On each Rosh Hashana, Jews share a special meal with family and friends, go to synagogue, and hear the sounding of the shofar, or ram's horn. Rosh Hashana is also the time for Jews to think about how they have behaved during the past year, and how they can improve their actions during the coming year.

EXHIBITIONS The original exhibition "Women Hold Up Half the Sky" addresses the worldwide oppression of women and girls as the human rights cause of our time. Inspired by the critically acclaimed book "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the exhibition documents stories from around the world through photographs and other visual art, sound installations and interactive gallery experiences of women who have changed their lives and started businesses with $2 loans.

MUSIC Local avant-garde rock trio Autolux provides the soundtrack to "Into the Night: Music and Magic," which includes performances from Superhumanoids and KCRW-FM DJ Anthony Valadez. The evening's entertainment features strolling magicians, a screening of the Harry Houdini serial "Master Mystery" (1920) and access to the galleries. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Fri. $15. (310) 440-4500. http://www.skirball.org.

Ehrich Weiss, the Budapest-born son of an immigrant family, ran away from home at 12 to join the circus. Not the least bit interested in becoming a rabbi like his father, he wanted to be an entertainer. Although Weiss was already an accomplished trapeze artist in a neighborhood circus, he soon turned around and headed back home. But it was only a matter of time before the whole world knew who he was. Reinventing himself as Harry Houdini, the rabbi's son became a celebrity as an escape artist, and, by the time of his death in 1926 — on Halloween — a legend.

The first major museum survey of the 30-year career of New Yorker cartoonist Maira Kalman opened last week at the Skirball Cultural Center. "Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (Of a Crazy World)," which runs through Feb. 13, includes images she created for children's books, newspapers and magazines as well as examples of her lesser-known embroidery, performance, textiles photography and design. The mother of two lives in Greenwich Village. Your most famous work is the New Yorkistan cover you created for the New Yorker with Rick Meyerowitz, which was a map of New York divided into regions like Hiphopabad in Queens, Botoxia in Manhattan and Fattushis in Brooklyn.

A very hungry caterpillar. A very repulsive ogre. Some wonderfully Wild Things. There's nothing like curling up with a good book — a picture book, that is. A bedtime adventure rendered in a few words and lots of images can whet the imagination and help kids read, reason and figure out right from wrong. "These books are a magnet for learning," says cultural critic Ilan Stavans. "A mother or father can show what is happening on the page while the child recognizes a comforting voice and feels the human touch.

Special free-admission days at museums around the country have become a popular and apparently successful marketing tool, but some institutions are becoming more particular about which events they participate in. On the eve of a nationwide free museum day Saturday sponsored by Smithsonian Magazine -- which many local museums are not participating in -- and the "Museums Free-for-All" Oct. 3 and 4 at various Los Angeles and Orange county institutions, museum...

Holy zombies, Batman! The Skirball Cultural Center is closing its "ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950" exhibition Sunday with a screening of the 1943 "Batman" serial. The 260-minute, 15-chapter serial finds Batman and Robin attempting to rid Gotham City of a World War II Japanese spy ring. With each thrilling chapter, they encounter -- and foil -- zombies, alligators and even radium guns. That's the good news. The bad news is that the "Batman" serial is racist.

Anne Frank put a human face on the horrors of the Holocaust, thanks to the gift of an autograph book she received for her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942. It was just a month before her Jewish family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms in her father Otto Frank's office building. Until they were betrayed to the Nazis, arrested and sent to concentration camps in 1944, Anne Frank skillfully wrote, in the red-and-green-plaid cloth book with a small lock, about her life in the attic.