RODIN WORKS AT MET WING

The Metropolitan Museum has opened the first section of its new $26-million wing for 20th Century art with a major exhibition of the works of French sculptor Auguste Rodin that will run through June 15.

The 70 Rodin works include most of the 31 sculptures presented to the museum by B. Gerald Cantor, an investment banker of New York and Los Angeles, and his wife Iris in 1983. The sculptures are exhibited in a 10,000-square foot gallery for special exhibitions given by the Cantors and permanently named for them.

The Cantors gave $5 million to the museum for construction and endowment of the exhibition hall. They have collected Rodin drawings, sculptures in plaster and marble, and examples of most of the sculptures in bronze. They also have commissioned new castings in bronze by the French foundry who worked with Rodin.

Among the sculptures, many larger than life, is a new casting of “The Burghers of Calais” in its final state, which is shown with many preparatory studies and models in plaster and bronze.

Also exhibited is a large model for “Gates of Hell,” unfinished at the sculptor’s death in 1917 at the age of 77, the “Monument to Balzac” along with studies and variations, a model of the monument to painter Claude Lorrain, and a number of smaller sculptures including fragmentary torsos and dance figures, and portrait busts.

Experts will be on hand at the California Afro-American Museum on Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., to give free appraisals.

The museum asks that people bring only items that relate to Afro-American experience, such as books, black newspapers and magazines published before the 1960s, crafts created by Afro-Americans (including slave crafts), slave documents, baptismal papers (pre-1940), plantation documents (pre-1900), deeds, land grants, military records, family Bibles, toys, games, clothing, quilts, scrapbooks, unusual antiques, stereotypical artifacts, posters and broadsides, buttons (pre-1970), photographs, Civil War memorabilia and military hats, swords and medals.

Information: 744-7432.

In recognition of Mother’s Day, VideoLACE presents Mako Idemitsu’s “Great Mother Series” from 11 to 5 p.m. today at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

Mako’s hourlong trilogy (which will continue through May 27) provides insights into the changing role of women in Japanese society. According to Mako, Japanese mass media contend that women’s liberation is the primary cause of the disintegration of the traditional family structure.

LACE also announces the beginning of “LACE On-Line,” a service making unbooked time at commercial post-production houses available to video artists at half the usual rates.

Special effects, off-line preparation, on-line editing, film-to-tape transfers, multitrack audio, Dubner graphic/animation and duplication are some of the services offered. LACE is developing a referral service for production, distribution and less sophisticated editing needs.

“The arrangement provides artists with access to professional facilities and benefits the post-production studios with the additional revenues of fully booked facilities as well as giving their staff access to new ideas and interaction with creative individuals,” LACE director Joy Silverman said in a telephone interview.

Participating post-production companies include Varitel Video, Intercut, Video Transitions, Q.P.T., Altavideo and the Swamp. LACE is sponsoring the program with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

For information, call Anne Bray at LACE, 624-5650, or write to LACE, 1804 Industrial St., Los Angeles 90021. Students and commercial producers are not eligible.

Among other activities, LACE has scheduled its Open Studio Tours from noon to 5 p.m., Saturday and next Sunday. The tours offer public access to 75 artists’ living and/or working spaces in the downtown area.

An itinerary includes more than 35 open studios each day. Saturday visits will concentrate on spaces east of Alameda; Sunday will feature those west of Alameda. Tickets and self-guiding maps (at $5 a person, $3 for LACE members) are available only at LACE and only on tour days.

Los Angeles artists out of town: Lee Mullican’s recent paintings and sculpture are in “Moderns in Mind” at Artists’ Space in New York through May 10; the exhibition, which also includes the works of California artist Gordon Onslow-Ford, received funding from the Mark Rothko Foundation to honor pioneers of abstract painting and sculpture.

Sculptor Gary Martin is participating in “Engaging Objects: The Participatory Art of Mirrors, Mechanisms and Shelters,” at the Clocktower in New York, through June 15. Among the 19 artists featured are Vito Acconci, Nam Jun Paik and Robert Smithson.

The first group of five artists to receive the Francis J. Greenburger Foundation Award were selected by five prominent art world figures. California painter John Register was selected by Eloise Spaeth, honorary chairperson, the Archives of American Art. Also, critic Clement Greenberg chose painter Darby Bannard, art dealer Andre Emmerich picked sculptor Willard Boepple, artist Robert Motherwell selected painter Anthony Terenzio, and painter Rosemary Koczy was singled out by Thomas Messer, director of the Guggenheim Museum.

An exhibition of works by the winning artists will be held June 25 to July 12 at Ruth Siegel Limited in New York, 24 West 57th St. Greenburger is a real estate entrepreneur and collector who established the foundation several months ago, to “garner and facilitate recognition for artists and fine arts . . . (and) acknowledge artists of extraordinary merit who have not yet achieved wide public recognition.”

Three members of CalArts’ art faculty received Guggenheim Fellowships for 1986: John Baldessari, John Divola and Allan Sekula. CalArts alumnus David Salle was similarly honored. The four artists are among this year’s 272 winners selected from 3,717 applicants for awards totaling $5.8 million.

Sculptor Boyd Wright, 43, died April 23 of a heart attack in Ojai, where he had lived and worked for the past few years.

Wright grew up in Montana in a ranch environment, an experience that later showed in the themes and materials of his finely crafted sculpture. He received a master’s degree from the University of Idaho and taught art at Boise State College from 1970 to 1977. He was a visiting professor at Washington State University from 1977 to 1979 and then sculptor-in-residence at the Visual Arts Center of Alaska until 1981.

He showed his work widely and was granted an Individual Artist Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982-83.