Willie Middlebrook

Compared with the giddy cacophony of laughter, shrieking, yelling, banging and pounding that issues from "Seeing," an exhibition on view in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Boone Children's Gallery, the more refined language of art appreciation seems strangely inadequate.

The New Beverly Cinema will screen two 1954 films that feature some of Marlon Brando's best work: "On the Waterfront," Elia Kazan's masterpiece about union corruption on the docks, and "The Wild One," in which Brando plays one of the great '50s rebel icons, a surly, self-absorbed leather-jacketed biker. * Marlon Brando double bill, New Beverly Cinema, 7165 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. "On the Waterfront," Sunday, 3:45 and 7:30 p.m.; April 26-27, 7:30 p.m.

This year's exhibition of artworks by the winners of the city of Los Angeles' $10,000 Individual Artist Fellowships is better than ever. The sculptures, videos, photographs and one whopper of a painting by nine artists deliver a satisfying mixture of ambition and accomplishment. In nearly all the pieces, these qualities play off each other in ways that make for lively exchanges and leave plenty of room for viewer participation.

It's August and the group exhibitions are proliferating at area galleries. At George's, a nine-artist show called "Daydreaming" is among the more refreshing. Organized by artist Leonard Bravo, the otherwise modest assembly manages to persuasively assert the value of imagination over knowledge. Most of the work begins with mediated experience, ranging from television and advertising to fairy tales and comic books, then attempts to revivify it in an imaginative way.

Among the diverse genres of contemporary artistic practice, installation art has been running at high gear for several years. No let-up is in sight. Barbara Bloom, David Bunn, Daniel Buren, Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Mario Merz, Bruce Nauman, Charles Ray, Jeffrey Vallance, Meg Webster--the list is long. Since the 1970s, artists of different generations, widely divergent sensibilities and a broad range of accomplishment have worked in the installation genre.

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?"

His name may not be familiar, but there's something about this 67-year-old man, sitting on the porch of his startling white and purple home on South Ogden Drive, dressed in faded African-print pantaloons, cloaked in sweat and cigarette smoke and the air of imperturbable dignity. Something that demands attention. He's Cecil Fergerson, a pit bull among L.A.s' cultural nationalists, a former janitor who rose through the ranks of the L.A.

The jury said not guilty. The sky filled with smoke, the looters hit the streets, and neither justice nor peace seemed immediately available. So Noni Olabisi sketched. Lula Washington danced. Seth Kaufman collected charred wood and screws. And now, 10 years after the riots of 1992, it's clear that plenty of other Angelenos were doing likewise.