Courtesy of the artist and Santa Monica Museum of Art

Joyce Pensato's Batman (2012)

This week, one artist turns pop icons into haunting, dripping messes and another visits a burning volcano again and again.

5. Do architects believe in truth?
"I've been told to tell you that the slides are out of focus intentionally," said architect Tom Mayne in 1976, introducing a lecture by his colleague Coy Howard. After Howard got up in front of the audience at SCI-Arc, he began by addressing Pico Boulevard: "You consist of asphalt, cement and largely cheapish small buildings. ... You jerk through the city, stoplight to stoplight, like a blunt knife through an unfeeling body." Then a woman interrupted, telling Howard to raise his right hand and swear to tell nothing but the whole truth before he went on to talk about his fellow architects, whom he said probably didn't really believe in truth. Mayne, who won the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 2005, and Howard will give the keynote lecture at SCI-Arc's symposium on architecture's past and future this weekend. 960 E. Third St., dwntwn.; Fri., June 14, 3-9 p.m., and Sat., June 15, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. (213) 613-2200, sciarc.edu.

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Film by David Finster.

Still from The Florida Room by Asher Hartman.

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This week, a man becomes a god in a play set in a midcentury landmark and an artist builds an adults-only dollhouse.

5. Sculpting the president
Sculptor Robert Merrell Gage announces, "We know what Lincoln looked like," early on in the 1955 documentary The Face of Lincoln, then proceeds to describe the different curves in the 16th president's face. As the film continues, Gage talks about Lincoln's life while sculpting a portrait of him. The film screens at the Fischer Museum at USC, where Gage taught when the film was made. 823 Exposition Blvd.; Sat., June 8, 1 p.m.; $15. (213) 740-4561, fisher.usc.edu.

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Photo by Fredrik Nilsen, Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery and Fredericks & Freiser

John Wesley's painting Untitled (Woman with Glasses) (2004)

This week, an artist turns two galleries and a storage unit into pseudo-sets for a remake of a Western, and 29 L.A. painters show in a former downtown bank.

5. Finally finished
"Little Ellie, what have I told you about self-expression? ... It goes nowhere," Stalin tells artist Eleanor Antin in Antin's new memoir, Conversations With Stalin. She has routine, imaginary encounters with the dictator throughout this book about growing up in New York, the child of Jewish communists. Antin began giving wry, colorful readings from the book a few years before she finished it. And why not? Refining and rehashing have been part of her art for decades (in the '70s, she aggressively dieted for 36 days to sculpt herself into an ideal figure, and in the '80s she periodically appeared in the guise of struggling African-American ballerina Eleanora Antinova). Now the book is finally done and she will read from it again at LACMA before signing copies. 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; Sun., June 2, 1 p.m.; free. (323) 857-6010, lacma.org.

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Photo by David Wing

Jef Raskin with building blocks he designed, on view at the MAK Center

This week, footage about a high-energy collaboration between artists, architects and Pepsi plays at the MAK Center, one artist leads people on a hunt for truth and other intangibles at the Getty and another turns cough syrup into something of a tribute.

5. Art, lies and hashtags
A green vinyl sign above the security desk at the Getty Center asks, "Is a museum for everyone?" Another sign affixed to the floor in the rotunda at the top of the main stairs asks, "Is a museum fun?" These and other questions are part of L.A. artist Sam Durant's #isamuseum project. The idea is that visitors will answer, either on Twitter on their phones, later on the website or by going up to the info desk. You see the question "Is a museum truthful?" while winding down the stairs from the painting galleries, and one visitor answered no because "Truth has nothing to do with art." 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood; through July. (310) 440-7300, gettycenter.org.

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Courtesy Michael Benevento

A still from Wu Tsang and Alexandro Segade's Mishima in Mexico (2012)

This week, an artist makes deadpan jokes in vintage photographs, whistlers convene in Glendale and a Japanese novelist's tragedy of frustrated love is re-staged in Mexico.

5. Crowd of copycats
It's not yet certain how many people will participate in artist Sara Roberts' Clump and Whistle, a group performance at Glendale's Civic Center, but it shouldn't be more than 100, the number Roberts chose as her cut-off point. Clump and Whistle will work in the way the wave works at a football game, only with whistles. One person blows out a quick tune on one of the multitone whistles Roberts has provided, then the person next to him or her mimics the tune and so on until this tune has spread -- like a wave -- through the crowd. Two rehearsals precede this weekend's event, which means the effect will be at least slightly honed. Glendale Civic Center Plaza, Broadway and Glendale Boulevard; Sun., May 19, 1 p.m.; RSVP requested. machineproject.org.

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Copyright Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

Nan Goldin's paired photographs, called Chimera (2013)

This week, an alien-inspired concert/party happens at an iconic bowling alley, and two artists make intricate renderings of mystery plants.

5. The art star with the bloody head
In Happy Song for You, the short film made by artists Stanya Kahn and Llyn Foulkes in 2011, Foulkes appears with blood dripping down his face and a bandage over his eyes, like the gory figures in the paintings he made in the 1970s and '80s. The camera also lingers over craggy rocks, dirt and funny toys, all things that might appear in a Foulkes artwork. This will screen along with other films, such as a 1959 short starring Foulkes as a deranged, eccentric artist, when the Hammer continues its months-long series of Foulkes programming with a "Starring Llyn" night. 10899 Wilshire Blvd.; Tues., May 14, 7:30 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

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Photo by Robert Wedemeyer, courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

Shana Lutker's sculpture A very tiny evening (2013) at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

This week, an Yves Saint Laurent suit hangs in an elementary school, Marilyn Monroe sings in a Century City bathroom, and a group of writers revises a 1980s tome on looking your best.

5. OK, kids, get ready for fancy dresses!
Artist Shinique Smith traveled from New York to Los Angeles a few times this winter and spring to meet with students at Charles White Elementary School, to talk to them about her work and to invite them to help her make one of her hanging sculptures: fabrics mashed together, then suspended to look like unwieldy creatures. LACMA's education department spearheaded this effort, called "Firsthand," and the best thing about it is that work Smith picked out from LACMA's collection -- a bold, red and pink women's suit by Yves Saint Laurent, a ruffle-top evening dress by Bill Blass -- has been on view at the elementary school's gallery along with collages by students there since February. 2401 Wilshire Blvd.; through July 19. (213) 487-9172, lacma.org.

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Courtesy Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)

One of Liz Craft's "hairy guys" in West Hollywood Park

This week, two artists dance with hula-hoops, another uses graffiti to obscure paintings of high-heeled, made-up models and a third installs hairy bronze statues in WeHo.

5. Just say no
In 1962, Judson Dance Theater started at the Judson Church in Greenwich Village. Programming was informal; writers and artists contributed as much as dancers and choreographers did. Trisha Brown worked at Judson, as did Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, who developed her No Manifesto there. ("No to spectacle. No to virtuosity," it started, then continued to list all the tropes of performance Rainer wished to reject.) Rainer and Forti will be at the Hammer this weekend, along with a number of other artists, dancers, theorists and historians, talking about where the dance world and art world meet. 10899 Wilshire Blvd.; Fri., April 26, 5-9 p.m.; Sat., April 27, 10-2 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

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Courtesy the artist

A still from Kelly Sears's film Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise (2011)

This week, haunting films about cold-war America play for 15 hours straight on Alvarado and an artist sells cellphone holders that make your phone as unwieldy as one from landline days.

5. Holes in the walls
Urs Fischer, the Swiss artist who stuck a fake tongue out of a hole in the New Museum's wall five years ago, does iconoclastic things in an almost-too-smooth way. He will cut into the Geffen Contemporary's walls for his new show at MOCA and display rough clay sculptures made onsite with the help of about 1,000 local volunteers. The show's opening day will be a multipart affair. Curator Jessica Morgan will speak about working with Fischer, KCHUNG radio will broadcast live and artist Morrisa Maltz, a kind of smooth iconoclast herself, will invite people to have "Mofone Emotional Moments." She'll let them call family or friends using her "Mofones," smartphone holders that look like old-school rotary phone handsets, seashells or tree trunks. 152 N. Central Ave.; Sunday, April 21, noon-5 p.m. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

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Courtesy Richard Telles Fine Art

Dan Finsel's E-thay Inward-Yay Ourney-Jay

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This week, a panel of architects and a performance at a science fiction conference imagine a high-tech future L.A. and an artist uses Pig Latin to title the work in his half-biographical, half-fantastical show.

5. Home for a wayward shopping cart
The lot on Traction between Third and Fourth Street, in Little Tokyo, used to be a gas station. Recently, it has become a pop-up art spot for street artists. Right now, there's a reshaped shopping cart angling up off a concrete slab at the center of the triangle and an eagle at the top of a found-object totem pole along the outskirts. Traction Avenue, between Third and Fourth streets.

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