A Guide to the Best of Southern California : DESIGN : 20th-Century Close-Out

Now, with the door about to slam on the 20th Century, you can take in the phantasmagoric collision of aesthetic styles and values brought forth by the period that gave us a Great Depression, two world wars and one long cold one.

Up for sale by 75 international dealers at the L.A. Moderism Show, May 25-27, will be the grand sweep of this century’s fine art, decorative art, applied art and furniture and jewelry from the Arts and Crafts Movement to the present. Those coming to buy can spend as little as $50 for a piece of early costume jewelry, $1,400 for a 1950s Fredrick Weinberg wall sculpture or drop a cool $300,000 for an Alexander Calder painting.

But browsers take heart, the greatest pleasure to be had just may be wandering through thousands of finely wrought objects as wonderful and varied as the human imagination. Admission is $10.

The fourth annual L.A. Modernism Show, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Main Street and Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica; (213) 455-2886.