ANCILLARY ACTIVITIES AT MOCA

The Museum of Contemporary Art’s inaugural year amounts to more than one big show of “Individuals.” Ancillary activities include a series of lectures and symposia boasting participation by leading art historians and critics as well as a 14-part radio series produced in association with KUSC.

An international panel opens the 13-part lecture and symposia series with a discussion, “On the Artist and Society,” Saturday, 1-4 p.m., at UCLA’s Humanities Conference Hall in Royce Hall. The event is jointly sponsored by MOCA and UCLA’s College of Fine Arts. Panelists Germano Celant, Hal Foster, Donald Kuspit, Thomas Lawson, Kate Linker, Achille Bonito-Oliva, Ronald J. Onorato and John Welchman will discuss critical approaches to post-World War II art. All eight speakers have contributed essays to the catalogue for MOCA’s exhibition, “Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art, 1945-1986.”

A lecture will be given by Peter Sellars, director of the American National Theater in Washington, on Jan. 29 at MOCA. During subsequent months, Hilton Kramer, Clement Greenberg, T.J. Clark, Susan Sontag and Robert Hughes will lecture at UCLA.

General admission to the symposia and each lecture is $5; UCLA faculty, staff, students, museum members and senior citizens, $3. Tickets may be obtained through the UCLA ticket office, 650 Westwood Plaza, (213) 825-9261; at the museum box office, (213) 626- 6828; through Ticketron and Ticketmaster agencies, and at the door. Parking for Royce Hall costs $3.

Information: UCLA’s College of Fine Arts, (213) 206-6465, or MOCA’s Communications Office, (213) 621-2766.

The radio program, “The Territory of Art II,” which begins airing nationally in January, features commissioned performances of contemporary music, poetry, audio art, comedy theater and radio portraiture.

Organized by MOCA’s media and performing arts curator Julie Lazar, the series ranges from traditional storytelling to a radio movie featuring contemporary artists. The host is Eric Bogosian who wrote and starred in his Broadway hit “Drinking in America.”

Among other MOCA radio programs is “Zangezi,” directed by Sellars, who also directs the stage version of the Russian Constructivist play Thursday, in MOCA’s new Ahmanson Auditorium. The radio version of excerpts from “Zangezi” will be performed by actor David Warrilow and produced by Alex Van Oss of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

Lee Breuer and Robert Telson, who collaborated on “The Gospel at Colonus,” will produce “The Ant Concludes,” the denouement of Breuer’s epic poem about a samurai ant.

The morality of art and censorship are explored in another forthcoming program, “Blood on the Canvas,” produced and directed by musician/composer Frank Zappa.

Beginning Jan. 5, broadcasts of the series in the Los Angeles area can be heard on KUSC-FM 91.5 (Los Angeles), KCPB-FM 91.1 (Thousand Oaks), and KSCA-FM, 88.7 (Santa Barbara) on consecutive Monday evenings at 10 p.m.

The inaugural exhibition of the new Los Angeles BlumHelman Gallery, consists of new works by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella, accompanied by Donald Sultan’s drawings. The show opens Thursday, at 916 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (213) 451-0955.

Next door at 912 Colorado Ave., the new HoffmanBormanGallery presents “Richard Serra: Major Sculpture,” starting Tuesday through Jan. 21.

Opening Tuesday evening 6 to 9 p.m., at the Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park, is the 10th annual “Magical Mystery Tour,” which celebrates the holiday season with a group show focusing on fantasy.

This year (through Jan. 18), site-specific installations by artists Rod Baer, Slater Barron, Gilbert Lujan, Blaine Mitchell, Nancy Mooslin, Ihnsoon Nam, Connie Ransom, Karyl Sisson, Neal Taylor and Katharine White are shown in concert with drawings by Susan Wilder and photographs by Nancy Webber.

The gallery of the adjoining Junior Arts Center in Barnsdall Park presents puppets and marionettes from the private collection of puppet historian Alan Cook. Titled “Some Strings Attached,” the exhibition, according to Cook, focuses on “puppet characters invented by famous American puppeteers who got their start and worked on Olvera Street during the 1930s.”

The Long Beach Museum of Art’s “Open Channels: 1986” has been selected to premiere at the National Video Festival at the American Film Institute, Friday at 10 a.m. The program introduces five recently completed videoworks by California artists Ed Jones, Jeane Finley, John Arvanites, Tony Labat and David Stout, commissioned by the museum in its annual Television Production Grant Program. Information: (213) 439-2119 or (213) 856-7787.

More than 20 downtown galleries will be open Saturday and next Sunday, in celebration of the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the inauguration of the Robert O. Anderson Building at the County Museum of Art and the International Art Fair at the Convention Center.

A map will be available at participating galleries, including Cirrus, L.A Contemporary Exhibitions, L.A. Artcore, Double Rocking G., Thinking Eye Gallery, USC’s Fisher Art Gallery, Security Pacific Gallery and the Japanese American Cultural Center.