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.

Inspiration can come from anywhere. Even a cardboard box company. In 1950, the Container Corp. of America launched an advertising campaign called "Great Ideas of Western Man. " The series, which ran for three decades, paired quotes from leaders in philosophy, science and politics with artwork from modern artists. A new exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center uses the same technique but focuses on Jewish artists and phrases. "Voices & Visions" features 18 posters inspired by quotations from Jewish authors and scholars.

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

Founder of the long-running comic smorgasbord Uncabaret, Beth Lapides curates a night of post-election storytelling called "Say the Word: The New America. " Writers and comic minds including Dana Gould, Taylor Negron, Moshe Kasher and more will perform as a part of the Skirball's lineup of political-oriented exhibitions under the heading "Democracy Matters. " Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 North Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Thu. $10, (877) SCC-4TIX, http://www.skirball.org.

The most interesting question posed by "Revealing and Concealing: Portraits and Identity" gets lost in the group show's unwitting embrace of groupthink. The well-intentioned exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center begins by inviting viewers to wonder: "What happened to portraiture in 20th century art?" (As well as, "Why aren't very many of the best contemporary artists drawn to this genre?" and "What does this mean about us as a people?"

It's peaceful up at the top of Sepulveda Pass. Crickets. Shrubbery. Vagrant breezes. The only clues that you're in L.A. are the distant growl of the 405 Freeway and a lot of modern architecture by Moshe Safdie. That would be the Skirball Cultural Center, a rambling suite of strikingly designed buildings where the theater and other facilities bear familiar L.A. culture-maven names such as Ahmanson and Taper. More or less the same goes for the center's restaurant.

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.

Rabbi Uri D. Herscher, president and chief executive officer of the Hebrew Union College Skirball Cultural Center, believes that Utopia is possible. And, if he has anything to say about it, you'll be able to get there from the San Diego Freeway.

First a team of workers rolled up to the Skirball Cultural Center and dumped 220 bags of rice. Then the provocative British theater troupe turned up, scoops in hand, sums in mind. Now the Skirball's galleries are crowded with golden rice piles on crisp squares of white paper -- 5.5 tons of unrealized risotto, or potential paella, if you prefer.

Although surpassed in popularity by social media, campaign posters continue to serve as a fundamental, democratic form of expression used by grass-roots organizers and artists to convey a message for social change. "Decades of Dissent," a collection of 28 silk-screen protest posters from 1960 to 1980 on view at the Skirball Cultural Center, offers a historical perspective of one of the most volatile periods of California politics illustrated through this graphic art form. Topics featured in the posters include women's issues, gay rights, immigration reform, union empowerment and disillusionment with an unpopular war - issues that have hardly disappeared this election season.

"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

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.

Debt-FREE and growing like crazy, the Skirball Cultural Center must be doing something right. Since opening seven years ago in a steel, glass and stone complex in the Sepulveda Pass, it has attracted more than 3 million people to its multicultural program of performing and visual arts, literary events, lectures, conferences and classes.

Museum treasures: An article Dec. 9 about treasures in local museums said that Karen Koblitz's "Hanukkah Still Life" will be displayed indefinitely at the Skirball Cultural Center. The display will be dismantled Dec. 30.

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.