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.

Contemporary Art, Human Nature, LACMA, museum, art

The Maya Mobile, a 48-foot truck designed as an archeological site, travels to schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District, teaching students about trade and cultural development of the Maya, Aztec and Inka as well as China, the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Italy. It is designed to integrate with the seventh-grade curriculum and the state standards for history/social science. The program works with seventh-grade students for approximately three weeks at each school and included free bus transportation for tours of LACMA's collections of medieval and renaissance art.

Leading LA-based photographers on the influence of 'New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape,' an exhibition first seen in 1975 at the George Eastman House of Rochester, New York, and currently restaged at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (October 25, 2009-January 3, 2010).

Having once created illusionary spaces in a freeway wall, conceptual artist Ruben Ochoa follows up by creating an illusionary freeway wall in an exhibition space. See Ochoa's 'Remnants of a Freeway Wall Extraction,' on view at LACMA through September 1 as part of 'Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement.'

A look back at LA artists Dumbfoundead and Medusa, as they perform 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.

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.

Over the course of nearly a year, we followed the construction of Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass at LACMA. The finished work is composed of a 456-foot-long slot constructed on LACMA&'s campus, over which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. Find out more: http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/levitated-mass

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.

On February 28th, 2012, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art began transport of a 340-ton granite megalith from a quarry in Riverside County to the museum's campus for the making of Levitated Mass, a sculpture by artist Michael Heizer. On Day 7 of the journey, the transporter paused in Bixby Knolls, where local officials hosted a street party to welcome it to town. Our thanks to the people of Bixby Knolls, and those at every stop along the route, which passes through four counties (Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and Los Angeles) and twenty-two cities.