BEST BETS Sunday 8/27

noon

Museums

The role of Indian cradles in reinforcing ethnic identity and women’s artistic expression is explored in the traveling exhibition “Gifts of Pride and Love: The Cultural Significance of Kiowa and Comanche Lattice Cradles,” opening at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History. The exhibition will feature 38 Kiowa and Comanche historical lattice cradles and two new cradles created especially for the exhibition. The artistic and utilitarian lattice cradle is made of a hide, canvas or wool cover placed over rawhide supports and laced to two narrow pointed boards and two narrower crosspieces. Kiowa covers are normally heavily embroidered with glass beads, while Comanche cradles are undecorated on the cover but with paint decoration on the boards. The exhibit will be paired with “Keep Me Warm, Keep Me Safe: Cradling Baby Around the World,” a collection of cradling devices.

* “Gifts of Pride and Love: The Cultural Significance of Kiowa and Comanche Lattice Cradles” and “Keep Me Warm, Keep Me Safe: Cradling Baby Around the World,” Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. Ends Jan. 14. Wednesday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m.; Thursday, noon-8 p.m. $5; seniors and students, $3; UCLA students, $1; visitors 17 and under free. (310) 825-4361.

2pm

Music

Sundays at Two, an admission-free recital series at the Beverly Hills Library, begins with an appearance by the emerging young soprano Lisa Christine Abel, performing songs by Handel, Richard Strauss, Poulenc and arias from “Faust,” “The Tender Land” and Victor Herbert’s “The Enchantress.”

* Lisa Christine Abel opens the Sundays at Two series at the Beverly Hills Library, 444 N. Rexford Drive, Beverly Hills. 2 p.m. Free. (310) 288-2205.

7:30pm

Humor

Returning to the Hollywood Bowl, raconteur-author Garrison Keillor offers “Tall Tales From the Bowl” with his musical accomplice, conductor Philip Brunelle, leading the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

* Garrison Keillor, conductor Philip Brunelle and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra appear at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. 7:30 p.m. $3 to $75. (323) 850-2000.

7:45pm

Pop Music

Mary J. Blige was here in June, but it’s hard to get enough of the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. This time she’s joined by R&B; hit-makers Jagged Edge and Avant.

* Mary J. Blige, with Jagged Edge and Avant, at the Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City. 7:45 p.m. $39 to $59. (818) 622-4440.

8pm

Pop Music

Individually, they’ve written songs for the likes of Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand, as well as establishing successful singing careers of their own. Sunday night, Amanda McBroom and Ann Hampton Callaway share the stage of the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre as part of the Summer Nights at the Ford series. McBroom wrote the Midler hit “The Rose” as well as the musical “Heartbeats,” which she has performed across the country. Callaway wrote music and/or lyrics for such Streisand songs as “At the Same Time” and “I’ve Dreamed of You” and, as a singer-actress, was nominated for a Tony Award this year for “Swing!” Expect them to perform “The Diva Duet,” which they wrote together.

* Amanda McBroom and Ann Hampton Callaway at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E., Hollywood. 8 p.m. $30. (323) 461-3673.

8:30pm

Theater

In “Boys’ Nite Out,” four gay male performance artists tell their varied stories. Ricardo Peralta performs an excerpt from “My Blue Angel,” encounters with a guardian angel told through dance, music and visual art. LeVan D. Hawkins explores a close-knit African American family in “Uncle Butch Continues to Sing.” Ian MacKinnon’s “Ian Takes a Bath” is about the life and loss of his father. And Aaron Hartzler’s segment explores the convergence of the physical and the divine in the gay soul.

* “Boys’ Nite Out,” Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. 8:30 p.m. $12. (310) 315-1459.

FREEBIES

Ukulele player and music historian Ian Whitcomb offers a program based on his new songbook and CD, “Ukulele Heaven: Songs From the Golden Age of the Ukulele,” in Friends Hall at the Huntington Library, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. 2:30 p.m. (626) 405-2100.

Musicians with acoustic instruments are invited to the annual Songmakers hootenanny and picnic at Rancho Park, Pico Boulevard at Motor Avenue, West Los Angeles. Noon-5 p.m. (310) 392-1760.