Museums

Reviews by Christopher Knight (C.K.), Holly Myers (H.M.), David Pagel (D.P.) and Leah Ollman (L.O.). Compiled by Grace Krilanovich.

Critics’ Choices

Divine Demons: Wrathful Deities in Buddhist Art When one thinks of Buddhist art, one tends to conjure up images of tranquillity and bliss. This show presents a different picture, conjuring up a panoply of teeth-baring, arm-waving, serpent-stomping creatures that are there to step in when celestial composure is not enough (H.M.). Norton Simon Museum of Art, 411 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Mon., Wed.-Thu., Sat.-Sun., noon-6 p.m.; Fri., noon-9 p.m.; closed Tue.; ends March 8. (626) 449-6840.

Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years This is not just a promotional treasure-house show of about 500 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos and installations by more than 200 international artists in MOCA’s remarkable permanent collection. Installed chronologically, it also tells a story -- although one that’s rarely heard. The postwar rise of American art is paired with the simultaneous rise of Los Angeles, from shallow backwater to cultural powerhouse. At the Grand Avenue building, which spans 1939 to 1979, the distinctive emergence of a mature L.A. art is embedded within the larger postwar prominence of the United States, artistically dominated by New York. At the Geffen -- the story picks up in the year MOCA was born. Tying the Geffen start-date to MOCA’s own arrival on the scene audaciously asserts the museum’s instrumental role in the city’s art-life. The two-for-one double-header amply testifies why MOCA matters (C.K.). Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), 250 S. Grand Ave., LA; and Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N. Central Ave., L.A. Mon. and Fri., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Thu., 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; closed Tue.-Wed.; ends May 3. (213) 626-6222.

After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy The show includes recent and newly commissioned works from six emerging artists born in or after 1968, the internationally disruptive year that in the U.S. witnessed the brutal assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the hairbreadth election of Richard M. Nixon on a “Southern strategy” of racial divisiveness, and more. The artists, rather than having been direct participants in the civil rights era, are inheritors of a legacy of conflict. The stand-out is Nadine Robinson’s “Coronation Theme: Organon”-- 28 powerhouse audio speakers stacked high against a wall, the volume turned low so that a churning mix of choral music, vocal invocation and rhythmic electronic chants ebbs and flows. It’s a great, rumbling wall of potential power, a majestic ode to past blood, sweat and tears and a firm promise of future might (C.K.). California African American Museum, 600 State Drive, L.A. Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; ends next Sun. (213) 744-7432.

Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth African ceremonial costumes are a self-evident starting point for Cave’s 35 outfits. So is the wild playfulness and showy elaboration of Mardi Gras and carnival, not to mention glittery Haitian flags, chunky Southeast Asian embroidery and a high-fashion runway. The shapes usually do two things: make the figure larger than life while simultaneously obliterating the wearer’s face. Individual personality is erased, replaced by the unique formal qualities of the costumes’ scavenged materials. His work underscores the transforming possibility inherent in society’s most easily overlooked rejects (C.K.). Fowler Museum at UCLA, Sunset Boulevard and Westwood Plaza, Westwood. Wed, Fri.-Sun., noon-5 p.m.; Thu., noon-8 p.m.; closed Mon.-Tue.; ends May 30. (310) 825-4361.

A Record of Emotion: The Photographs of Frederick H. Evans Evans (1853-1943) had an impeccable instinct for form. His platinum prints -- whether portraits, landscapes or his most acclaimed studies of medieval cathedrals -- are pristine, tonally rich and consistently beautiful. He did favor respectful distance over raw intimacy, but when he ventured into personal terrain, that of pure encounter with place, person or the spiritual self, he produced some of the most profoundly moving photographs in the history of the medium (L.O.). Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. Tue.-Fri. and Sun., 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; closed Mon.; ends June 6. (310) 440-7300.

Continuing

Rachel Whiteread Drawings As a sculptor Whiteread, 46, has pretty much taken a single, elegant idea and turned it around and around in innumerable ways, both expected and not. Using plaster, resin, concrete and other materials, she mostly makes casts of domestic objects or, more provocatively, casts of the empty space around them. Her drawings are not studies for the sculptures. Nor do they seem like fully resolved, independent works of art. Instead, they follow a ruminating mind moving parallel to the finished sculptures for which Whiteread is now so well known. The exhibition’s sole weakness is its size. With more than 120 drawings, it would have gained focused power with judicious editing (C.K.). Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. Tue.-Wed., Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Thu., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed Mon.; ends April 25. (310) 443-7000.

Diana Thater: Between Science and Magic Making a movie about movie magic is not the same as making some of that magic. This exhibition goes so far out of its way to extinguish the magic that you can’t help but wonder why it was brought up in the first place. The answer is that Thater’s brand of art is opposed to all forms of entertainment, which it sets itself apart from. Over the last 20 years, the relationship between art and entertainment has become increasingly cozy. This has forced fourth- and fifth-generation Conceptual artists like Thater to shore up the fiction that their own work is not a form of entertainment by evoking the pleasures of such amusements and simultaneously distancing themselves from them. Dreary seriousness is regularly served up as proof that art’s job is to pursue truth and that nothing as silly as entertainment is to get in the way. Pleasure, surprise and insight are pushed out of the picture, never mind fun or comfort (D.P.). Santa Monica Museum of Art, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Building G1, Santa Monica. Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; closed Sun.-Mon.; ends April 17. (310) 586-6488.