The Bowers Museum showcases the work of Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher in 'Passages.'

Photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have devoted 30 years and 12 books to the traditions, culture and people of Africa -- a faraway land that they have brought closer to home by teaming with the Bowers Museum for the exhibit "Passages," currently on display.

Keith Haring works from their Miami collection furnish a Palm Springs Art Museum exhibition.

"The advantage of not being able to produce art is that you can spend all your energy looking at art," said Don Rubell, whose family of self-confessed contemporary art fanatics is perpetually in search of the next addition to its 5,000-piece collection. Pleased to have uttered a complete sentence without being interrupted by Mera, his wife and collecting partner of nearly 45 years, he eased into a knowing smile as she jumped in to explain how their collecting obsession works.

How the director worked on the movie 'The Reader' while readying 'Billy Elliot: The Musical' for Broadway.

The giant-sized, multicolored dancing dresses that play a central role in "Billy Elliot: The Musical" make up the kind of dream sequence that could very quickly fill your nightmares.

Many regard El Sistema, or the System, as a model for music instruction and for helping the young develop into productive citizens.

The Don Bosco Communal Center looks much like any other social services agency building in any hardscrabble barrio anywhere in Latin America.

A financially healthy Museum of Contemporary Art is indispensable to Los Angeles, its peers say.

Amid news that the Museum of Contemporary Art is facing a financial disaster -- and unconfirmed reports that MOCA trustees are pursuing a merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art -- leaders of other Southern California cultural institutions have reacted with dismay.

Even a last-minute program change can't dampen these sumptuous strings. Next up: UCLA.

Were it a car, the Guarneri String Quartet would be a 1964 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III. Only so luxurious a touring vehicle can serve as an analogy to an ensemble with an ultra-plush, million-dollar tone. It has to be a tasteful Rolls, moreover, not some cream-colored, two-toned number, and one in perfect condition and utterly reliable even after 45 years on the road.

After overseeing the art museum's financial meltdown, its trustees should write checks.

To: MOCA trustees

The soprano is extraordinary in György Kurtág's brilliant 'Kafka Fragments.'

May we please stop obsessing over the hypoallergenic first puppy and change the subject to something deep, spiritual, life-changing? Like detergent.

The museum has burned through $20 million in unrestricted funds and borrowed $7.5 million from other accounts. Cash from donors is being sought. A merger has not been ruled out.

Los Angeles' prestigious but chronically underfunded Museum of Contemporary Art has fallen into crisis. Museum Director Jeremy Strick said MOCA is seeking large cash infusions from donors, and this week he did not rule out the possibility of merging with another institution or sharing its collection of almost 6,000 artworks.

In a daylong gambit, the collective stages performances and artworks to encourage a fresh look at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

A girl, tarred and feathered, and strangled by a bullwhip, was found in the corner of a quiet garden. Nearby, at the top of a two-story glass-brick facade, was a speed-metal guitarist pounding out Ted Nugent-like jams before a gothic archway -- complete with smoke machine and colored lights. Not far from that was a man covered from head to toe in a costume made entirely out of vintage black pepper canisters, which creaked and squealed as he moved.

A collection of illuminated manuscripts by three gifted young brothers represents a high point in late-medieval painting.

It takes piles of money and power to commission projects destined to become pinnacles of art history. Sometimes it also takes a bit of royal boredom. ¶ Just listen to Timothy B. Husband, curator of the Cloisters Collection of medieval art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He's providing some background on “The Belles Heures of the Duke of Berry,” an exhibition opening Tuesday at the J. Paul Getty Museum. ¶ "Jean de France, duc de Berry, was son, brother and uncle of successive kings of France. As prince of the realm, he was in a position to commission almost anything he wanted," Husband says of an extravagantly ambitious art patron who lived from 1340 to 1416. "He began by collecting palaces and chateaux, building chapels and that sort of thing. After he had gone through about 17 of those, he moved on to other works of art." ¶ As ruler of Auvergne and Berry, a historical area in central France, the duke controlled a huge portion of the country during the middle period of the Hundred Years' War. With exacting tastes, he hired the finest artists and made sure they had the best materials to create tapestries, sculptures and gemstone-studded gold objects that Husband calls "lavish displays of excessive consumption." But he is probably better known for the passion that seized him at about 40 years of age: luxury manuscripts -- particularly illuminated personal prayer books known as Books of Hours.

The Tony Award winner for 'The Little Dog Laughed' reprises her role as a smooth and seductive Hollywood agent.

Julie White isn't exaggerating when she describes as a "huge roller-coaster ride" the interlude between her final performance of Douglas Carter Beane's "The Little Dog Laughed" on Broadway and her reprise as the Hollywood agent from hell in the comedy's West Coast premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.