THE ARTS

Coming Soon: UCLA’s new $22-million Fowler Museum of Cultural History, in the planning and construction stages since 1983, is scheduled to open Sept. 30. The inaugural exhibitions will focus on the role of the elephant in African art, Mayan dress of the 1960s, ancient Peruvian ceramics and the Fowler collection of English, European and American silver. The museum’s permanent collection contains more than 750,000 artifacts and is considered one of the nation’s leading collections of African, Oceanic and American Indian art and cultural material. The three-story museum, just west of Royce Hall, includes 20,000 square feet of exhibition space in four galleries, as well as an amphitheater, 326-seat auditorium, central courtyard, museum store, conservation laboratory and library.