Promo for the special exhibition Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples, on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through October 4, 2009

Through April 10th, 2011, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is displaying a collection of Kuba textiles in the Ahmanson Building. These textiles from the Democratic Republic of the Congo were created by men and women of the Kuba culture. They are embellished with a dazzling array of geometric patterns. Modern artists including Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Gustav Klimt were inspired by African art and by Kuba textiles in particular. For more information, visit lacma.org. Video production: Jun Tiangco

Analysis and presentation of objects of African art. The exhibition features Luba masterworks from the Democratic Republic of the Congo on loan from the Royal Museum for Central Africa and rarely seen outside of Belgium. Figurative thrones, elegant scepters, and ancestral figures actively contributed to the formation and expansion of a highly influential Luba state from the 18th to early 20th centuries. Shaping Power presents the richness and complexity of Luba arts, and lends insight into a world renowned African aesthetic and cultural legacy.

Open doors at LACMA

The exhibition Children of the Plumed Serpent: the Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico, on view at LACMA through July 1, 2012, follows the life and epic stories of the culture-hero and deity, Quetzalcoatl. The exhibition examines late pre-Columbian and early colonial societies across Mexico to explore Quetzalcoatl's role as founder and benefactor of the Nahua-, Mixtec-, and Zapotec-dominated kingdoms of southern Mexico. These socially and culturally complex communities successfully resisted both Aztec and Spanish subjugation.

David Slade talks about his fascination and inspiration he found in Stanley Kubrick's work.

Julian Sands talks about a Thomas Pitts epergne, on display at LACMA. The epergne is part of the Gilbert Collection of gold and silver.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor Matt Ritter visited the exhibition Robert Adams: The Place We Live, on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through June 3rd, 2012. Here, Matt talks about a shared love of trees, and what he sees in Adams's work. Find out more about the exhibition: http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/robert-adams-place-we-live

Furniture designer John Kapel talks about his life and work at home in Woodside, California. Kapel's work is included in the exhibition, California Design, 1930-1945: 'Living in a Modern Way', on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through spring, 2012. For more information, visit lacma.org.

Unfolding the Aryan Papers is an artistic consideration of Kubrick's process and, in particular, Kubrick&'s unfinished project, The Aryan Papers. On site at the Kubrick archive the Wilson sisters gravitated to the history of Kubrick&';s film, which was to be based on a World War II novel Wartime Lies, by Louis Begley, set in the Warsaw ghetto.

Artist Sandow Birk presents Caravaggio's painting and talk about Caravaggio&'s influence on his work in conjunction with the exhibition Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and His Legacy open now at LACMA until February 10, 2013.

Discover how paintings by an Italian monk inspired two sisters from Southern California to create a line of silk gowns, and how one designer's childhood visits to museums influenced her whimsical patterns. Writer, Director, Co-Producer: Marni Gittleman; Co-Writer, Co-Director: Julianna Ostrovsky; Researcher: Tamara Katoni; Camera: Eddy Colloton; Editor: Alexa Oona Schulz

Clothes tell story. LACMA curators playfully reveal how fun and easy it is to make connections between what you'd find in a typical middle-school student&'s wardrobe and the museum&';s collection of costume and textiles.

Lou Danziger, whose work is included in the exhibition California Design, 1930-1965: 'Living in a Modern Way' at LACMA, talks about his life and work, including the midcentury design scene in Los Angeles.

The Aztec cache known as Ofrenda 7 (Offering 7) is on view in the exhibition Contested Visions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through January 29th, 2012. Offering 7 is one of some 130 offerings discovered within the Aztec Templo Mayor in recent years. To install Offering 7, Museo del Templo Mayor archaeologist Fernando Carrizosa Montort and chief conservator Maria Barajas Rocha spent several days at LACMA. Here, Mr. Carrizosa Montfort explains the complex meanings of this remarkable piece during installation at LACMA.

Jean Claude Wouters, a dancer and artist, once took part in a ballet in Brussels in which he wore a crinoline very much like those that give structure to some of the garments in the exhibition, Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail at LACMA. Exhibition curators Sharon Takeda and Kaye Spilker invited Wouters to revisit the crinoline and its relationship to the body in a series of exploratory movements documented here.

Conservator John Hirx talks about a stunning pair of 18th century gates by Ukrainian artist Alexis Timothy Ischenko on view at LACMA.

A look back at LA artist Medusa's performance at the second installment of Through The Mic: LACMA x Hip Hop on June 21, 2012. The next concert is taking place on Thursday, July 19, 2012, 7PM with performances by People Under The Stairs, Skeme, and VerbS, followed by an after-hours viewing of Chris Burden&'s 'Metropolis II'. Tickets and more information available at http://www.lacma.org/peopleunderthestairs. About Through The Mic: LACMA x Hip Hop: Co-curated and hosted by LACMA and Murs, Through The Mic: LACMA x Hip Hop is the first museum hip hop concert series of its kind, that will explore contemporary Los Angeles hip hop music from May through October 2012. Concerts will take place on the third Thursday of every month, and will feature emerging and experimental L.A.-based hip hop artists. After each concert, select contemporary galleries are open late for concert-goers only. In collaboration with Cashmere Agency and Guerilla Union. For more information about the concert series, check out: http://www.lacma.org/peopleunderthestairs 'Like' us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LACMA http://www.facebook.com/ThroughTheMic Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/lacma Official Hashtag: #ThroughTheMic Video production: Alexa Oona Schulz

On view at LACMA from May 22, 2011--August 14, 2011, Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768) is widely acknowledged as the most important Zen Buddhist master of the past 500 years. He was also the most influential Zen artist of Edo-period (1615-1868) Japan, but unlike the highly studied monk painters of earlier centuries, he received no formal artistic training beyond the basic skills in handling brush, ink, and paper that were required for everyday writing.

Designer Bernard Kester is one of the artists included in the exhibition California Design, 1930--1965: 'Living in a Modern Way' on view at LACMA October 1--March 25, 2012. Kester's textile design graces the main wall of Ray&'s restaurant at LACMA. Here he talks about midcentury California design, his long career in Los Angeles, and his work designing exhibitions at LACMA.

On view at LACMA from April 3, 2011--July 24, 2011 the first major thematic exhibition devoted to the work of David Smith (1906-65). Throughout his career, what Smith called 'basic geometric form' was a powerful touchstone. Cubes and Anarchy offers a fresh interpretation of Smith, revealing geometric abstraction as a leitmotif deeply connected to the artist's self-definition as a workingman and his need to reconcile that, through his interest in constructivism, with his identity as a modern artist.