Science, art, history -- and all of it at no charge

Masks and marionettes, textiles and ceramics from Africa, Asia and the Pacific at the UCLA Fowler Museum. Yosemite, through the eyes of Native American weavers, landscape artists and photographers at the Autry National Center’s Museum of the American West. A legacy of ancient embroidery techniques as a visual narrative of Palestinian history at the Craft and Folk Art Museum.

Sunday’s second annual “Museums Free-for-All,” presented by the Los Angeles-based Museum Marketing Roundtable, invites the public to explore, at no charge, the far-reaching cultural diversity at museums across L.A. and in Orange County.

Twenty museums offering exhibitions of art, cultural heritage, natural history and science are participating; those that usually charge admission will waive their fees on Sunday.

“We’re just flinging open our doors and saying, ‘Come and see what we’ve got, explore,’ ” said Alison Rowe, a Roundtable spokeswoman. “From the California Science Center and the Museum of Television & Radio to MOCA [Museum of Contemporary Art], the California Heritage Museum and the Autry, you can find something that is of interest to you on that day no matter what your interests are, because there’s such a range of cultural riches here.”

Other participants are the Armory Center for the Arts, Getty Center, Hammer Museum, Japanese American National Museum, Laguna Art Museum, Long Beach Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Tolerance, Norton Simon Museum, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Pacific Asia Museum, Skirball Cultural Center and Southwest Museum of the American Indian.

More information is available at www.museumsla.org.

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-- Lynne Heffley