Itinerary: Persia

After the 1978 revolution in Iran, thousands of emigres landed in Los Angeles, and now the city has the largest concentration of Iranians in the United States. The area of West Los Angeles is sometimes called Little Tehran, but smaller communities exist throughout Los Angeles County.

Thursday

The first performance in the Skirball Cultural Center’s World Mosaic concert series is by Axiom of Choice, an L.A.-based quintet that blends traditional Persian vocals and melodies with Eastern and Western music. Their sound is built around a quarter-tone guitar, played by Loga Ramin Torkian, and native percussion instruments played by Ando Harutyunyan.

Reviewed in The Times last year, singer Mamak Khadem was called “one of the wonders of world trance music” by reviewer Don Heckman.

The concert is at 8 p.m. at Cotsen Auditorium at the Skirball (2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. $15-$21. [323] 655-8587).

Friday

In his show “Grape & Olive Tree” at Louis Stern Fine Arts (9002 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, [310] 276-0147), Iranian-born artist Farhad Ostovani captures the grape arbors and olive groves of Iran in paintings and drawings. The show runs Tuesdays to Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through June 2.

Saturday

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has been one of the darlings of world cinema for the last 10 years, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., [323] 857-6000; tickets: [877] 522-6225) has been featuring his work of in the series “Seeing With Borrowed Eyes.”

One of his most famous films, “Through the Olive Trees,” screens Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The movie, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1994, concerns a director and his cast of locals, particularly an illiterate bricklayer who is cast as married to a literate, independent woman. In reality, the bricklayer has wanted to marry that woman, but she won’t acknowledge him off camera. The final scene of the couple walking through the olive trees is one of Kiarostami’s most famous shots.

Friday at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., the museum is screening Kiarostami’s “Close-Up” (1990) and “A Moment of Innocence” (1996) by another Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

Since buying movie tickets ($7, $5 for members) also gives you admission to the museum, go early and check out LACMA’s permanent collection of Islamic art, one of the best in the nation. The galleries at LACMA are open until 9 p.m. on Friday and 8 p.m. on Saturday.

The Islamic art is housed in the Ahmanson building, and includes more than 1,000 works from all countries that came under Islamic rule, including Iran.

Among the items: a seated baboon carved of Gypsum from about 2500 BC from the Elamite states, which is now southern Iran; a mysterious bronze finial from between 1000 and 650 BC discovered in a grave mound in Western Iran; and a page from the Diwan of Sultan Husain Mirza, a magnificent example of Arabic calligraphy.

Sunday

Afterward, visit the granddaddy of Persian restaurants, Shahrezad (1422 Westwood Blvd., Westwood. [310] 470-9131), which has been open almost 20 years.

The restaurant, which is open 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., has almost any kind of shish kebab you can imagine: boneless chicken, ground beef, filet mignon, Cornish hen, and, of course, lamb. Add, of course, some saffron rice and some of their famous bread baked in clay oven.