Late-Night LACMA Crowd Shakes Up Support for Art

The music was rockin’ so hard at the L.A. County Museum of Art on Saturday night, it’s a wonder the paintings didn’t fall off the walls. The occasion was “Late Night at LACMA,” a party thrown four times a year by Muse, the museum’s group of 20- and 30-something members.

Not everyone was pleased with the band, Tsar, which jammed in the museum’s center court.

“It’s really horrible and loud,” said a pashmina-wrapped party-goer before storming out.

But the evening wasn’t about music; it was about art. Inside the galleries, guests inspected Ed Ruscha’s stain prints made with such wacky materials as Pepto-Bismol and caviar, and his series of photographs taken in the 1970s, which document the length of the Sunset Strip, block by block.

They gathered to watch design gurus Charles and Ray Eames’ mesmerizing film, “Powers of Ten,” which zooms from the outer reaches of the cosmos to the inside of an atom with the camera moving 10 times closer in each consecutive shot. Overheard in the Eames exhibit: “All these chairs and no place to sit down!”

One of several celebrity hosts, Leelee Sobieski, 18 (“Joan of Arc,” “Here on Earth”), was dressed in a short, black leather Vivienne Westwood dress with enough folds and pleats to make the starlet resemble a piece of origami. She said she’s busy filming “Glass House,” “a film similar to ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ except with no baby, no devil and no Rosemary.” (What’s left?)

Sobieski said she came out to support Flaunt magazine, a co-sponsor of the event.

“The magazine is very strong visually,” she said. “They’re fun and smart. . . . And they were my first cover.”

Stylist Jessica Paster was decked out in of-the-moment gold slides, carrying a disco-esque clutch purse, while Delia Seaman and Nevena Borisova, owners of chic boutique Curve on Robertson Boulevard, teetered on strappy stilettos.

Brad Rowe, 30 (“Body Shots,” NBC’s “The 70s”), who was taking in the scene with friends, said he’d just wrapped, “Nailed” with Harvey Keitel. He plays a character who gets a woman he barely knows pregnant.

I asked him if he’s a father in real life.

“No,” he said, shooting his wife, Lisa, a glance. She joked, “Well, that’s a relief!”

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In the trendy handbag race. . . . The mini Louis Vuitton LV logo purse is still making a strong showing at the Southland’s swankiest events, but ‘80s redux Chanel quilted bags with gold-chain handles are gaining.

Ladies, get ‘em before they’re hot.

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Millions of teens will sleep better tonight knowing that pop princess Britney Spears, 18, and her boyfriend, singer Justin Timberlake, 18, of ‘N Sync, are not engaged to be married, according to a faxed statement from Spears’ record label, Jive Records: “The story, which began in the British tabloid News of the World, is, not surprisingly, completely without merit.”

Now go back to Harry Potter.

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For the Record: In an item in Monday’s column about Outfest’s opening gala, I misidentified the network that gave away freebie fans at the event. It was Showtime.

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Booth Moore can be reached at booth.moore@latimes.com.