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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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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Urban Air's Kickstarter page, showing a mockup of the billboards Stephen Glassman intends to make

The helicopter hangs in the air over downtown L.A. for what seems like a very long time, its whirring blades adding the slight chill of potential alarm over the otherwise quiet Sunday night streets. The airship hovers at around a hundred fifty feet, it's powerful bluish spotlight illuminating the roof of a building near the intersection of 7th and Broadway.

Bystanders below might think a fugitive is up on the roof, or perhaps criminal activity is going on inside one of the top floor windows. Closer inspection -- gained by an elevator ride up to the penthouse level thirteen floors up and then a walk up a grand, modern staircase -- reveals a crowd of well over a hundred on the roof, mesmerized by the floating copter, as well as an ethereal woman dancer, clothed in a gauzy white dress, who does a slow, mysterious movement piece on a blue-illuminated rooftop structure, opposite acclaimed guitarist Nels Cline, who accompanies her with abstract, interpretive musical accompaniment.

The helicopter's stillness in the air is impressive, its spotlight casting down an eerily powerful, modulating light that falls on the dancer and quite a bit of the roof and crowd, nearly turning night into day.

The smartly dressed crowd is a mix of creative cognoscenti from around L.A., and a smattering of tall, model-thin women in their best dresses. The Haas Building -- the setting of this event -- is equally impressive. The party rental space in the penthouse level is all sleek, modern, stylish grandiosity, with high-ceilinged, wide-open spaces and large windows giving fantastic views of the L.A. skyline. This party feels like it could be celebrating a hot indie film or edgy Internet startup. In fact, it marks the successful $100,000 Kickstarter campaign of L.A. artist Stephen Glassman for his project Urban Air, a quest to create small "urban forests" of bamboo trees on billboards in Los Angeles and other cities.

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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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Making ideals reality can take a frustratingly long time, especially for organizations in need of funding. Grant-writing and paperwork often come first, followed by waiting. That's part of what's exciting about My LA2050, the $1 million challenge that the Goldhirsh Foundation, a philanthropic outfit with a young, energetic vibe, launched last month. It's fast.

Organizations had until March 28 to submit their "dream of the most innovative...ways to tackle" L.A. problems. These dreams, which had to be feasible, could belong to one of eight "indicators": arts & cultural vitality, education, environmental quality, health, housing, income & employment, public safety and social connectedness.

By April 2, all of the legit proposals were live on the My LA2050 website and public voting continues through noon on Wed., April 17. The organization with the most votes in each indicator will receive $100,000, all of which must be spent by December of this year. The foundation will also choose two additional projects to grant $100,000. The money comes from the Goldhirsh's endowment and the idea for the challenge resulted from the LA2050 report the foundation commissioned last year, which found, among other things, that L.A. had more arts organizations per capita than other major cities, but less funding.

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YouTube/HarajukuMonae

A performance at Burn Club

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying

The L.A. fire artist known as Tedward saw police lights flashing out of the corner of his eye just before filling his mouth with fuel. Police cruise Culver City Park after dark sometimes and flash their lights to make their presence known, so he didn't think much of it. But then he heard voices warning him not to move. He turned to see two cops with guns drawn — rookies whose superiors had neglected to tell them to expect fire on the park's basketball courts.

Tedward had a full mouth, fuel in one hand and a torch in the other. He couldn't speak, so he stood staring for a drawn-out moment. Bystanders tried to explain, but the cops didn't understand. So Tedward made an executive decision: He turned around and breathed out a rush of flames.

"Do it again!" one rookie exclaimed.

When Tedward tells this story, he's quick to point out it happened a long time ago and that it's not indicative of a strained relationship between Burn Club, the group he started in 2004 for fire practice, and Culver City law enforcement. They're on good terms, actually, and Tedward meets with L.A. fire marshals routinely.

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Courtesy of LACMA

View into the second gallery of "Ends and Exits"

This week, it's all about looking back: One artist revisits 1993 L.A., another borrows the palette of teen pop from 20-some years ago and a museum show features graphically bold, grittily political art of the '80s.

5. What art even is
When the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston changed its name from Institute of Modern Art in 1948, controversy erupted. One publication said the name change signaled the institute's rejection of the "cult of bewilderment" that abstract modernism represented. A group of artists, the iconic Jackson Pollock among them, went to New York to protest the institute soon after. Art historian Richard Meyer tells this story and others about the birth of "contemporary art," a designation no less bewildering than "modern art" ever was, in his new book What Was Contemporary Art? He'll talk about the book and that question with MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch in the museum's Ahmanson Auditorium. 250 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; Sat., March 30, 3 p.m.; free. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

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Carol Cheh

Olga Koumoundouros' "Possessed by Glint and Dreams," now on view at Susanne Vielmetter Projects.

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*10 L.A. Art Spaces That Change Our Idea of What an Art Space Is
*10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying

Back in October, we told you about artist Olga Koumoundouros' A Notorious Possession project, in which she took over a foreclosed home across the street from where she lived and filled it with art that paid tribute to its former residents and meditated on the changing nature of home ownership. The intervention, which touched a populist nerve, went viral. The abandoned house instantly became a hub for art, performance and community organizing around the housing crisis. Although excitement was building, however, everyone involved knew that the project's future was uncertain, given that the artist had no legal ties to the property, whose status was unknown at that time.

Two weeks ago, Koumoundouros opened a new solo show at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in Culver City. Titled "Possessed by Glint and Dreams," the show is composed of the artwork that Koumoundouros made in and around the foreclosed home in Glassell Park, along with some new additions and embellishments.

The show loosely recreates the site and continues the narratives that the artist found there. It also represents the culmination of this particular project, which did not come without a bit of a struggle.

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Courtesy OCMA

Richard Jackson's Blue Room (2011)

This week, one artist makes paintings that smear and explode while another makes an ancient monument look lively and a third installs a Dutch living room in a storefront.

5. The better to hear you with
Elana Mann, who has spent the last few years thinking about how to make listening and hearing more active than passive, built three outdoor acoustic sculptures that look loosely like horns. They will be part of "Listening as (a) Movement," on view for the next two months at Sidestreet Projects, an art space run out of a bus that's typically parked in a vacant Pasadena lot. This week, composer Allison Johnson uses Mann's sculpture to perform Decay/Decode, an ensemble piece that also involves Morse code and sign language. It sounds strange and a little elusive, but it probably won't feel that way. Mann's good at making big ideas welcoming. 730 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena; Fri., March 8, 6-10 p.m. (323) 225-0911, sidestreet.org.

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