‘EIGHT MILLION STORIES’

“Eight Million Stories in the Naked City,” an exhibition of narrative works, christens the new year at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Jan. 9 to Feb. 8. The exhibition focuses on photography by Lisa Bloomfield, Douglas Huebler and Barbara Kruger, drawings by Anetta Kapon and an installation by Linda Nishio. Curator Elaine Wintman selected the artists.

Meanwhile, LACE’s show of experimental video works, titled “Video and Language: Video as Language,” continues. Organized by artist Scott Rankin, the exhibition features works by American and European artists.

Program II (1 hour, 33 minutes), on view today through Wednesday, features tapes by Gary Hill, Joelle de la Casiniere, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Anette Barbier and William Wegman.

Program III (1 hour, 58 minutes), running Friday through Jan. 14, includes tapes by Skip Arnold, Baldessari, David Bunn, Juan Downey, Jacques Nyst, Peter Rose, Ken Feingold, Pier Marton, Caterina Borelli, Carole Ann Klonarides and Michael Owen. A wide variety of styles is represented in the exhibition, from conceptual video to high-tech, quick-cut contemporary montage. Information: Ann Bray, (213) 624-5650.

LECTURES: Henry Geldzahler, former curator of 20th-Century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and commissioner for cultural affairs for the City of New York, will give a talk on private and public patronage of the arts on Jan. 6, 7:30 p.m. at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. Admission is free, but seating reservations must be made before Wednesday by calling (213) 277-5321. Tickets will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis. Geldzahler’s talk is the second in a series of free lectures presented by the Frederick R. Weisman Collection and organized by Nora Halpern, curator of the collection. UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery is co-sponsor.

John Szarkowski, director of the department of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, will speak on “Edward Weston’s Later Work” at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Jan. 8, 8 p.m. Reservations: (213) 458-2003, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily.

Tom Boles, who is producing a documentary film on painter Helen Lundeberg, requests help in finding a photograph or other documentary image of the Stanley Rose Bookstore, which in the early ‘30s was at 1625 N. Vine Street, between Selma Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. Lundeberg’s first solo exhibition was held there in 1933. This book shop evidently had a section where several prominent writers, among them Sherwood Anderson, William Saroyan and Thomas Wolfe, would gather. In addition, the owner arranged exhibitions on the premises. The Stanley Rose Bookstore is not the same establishment as the Stanley Rose Gallery, later located on Hollywood Boulevard.

The R.C. Erpf Gallery in New York presents an exhibition of 1950s hard-edge paintings by Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley and John McLaughlin. Title of the show is “Four Abstract Classicists,” same as that of the original exhibition organized by art critic Jules Langsner for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1959. Langsner coined the term hard-edge to describe geometric abstraction as an alternative to Abstract Expressionist work, then the overwhelming focus of New York painters.

The current “Abstract Classicists” includes paintings exhibited in the original show and marks their first New York appearance. Organized by Lawrence Markey, the show (through Saturday) is timed to coincide with recent critical interest in geometric abstract art and its most important historical precedents.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art celebrates completion of a two-year project with the publication of a book and an exhibition on “Photography: A Facet of Modernism.”

In a prepared statement, Van Deren Coke, director of SFMOMA’s department of photography, describes the book as a revisionist reading of the history of 20th-Century photography.

The exhibition, which closely follows the format of the book, presents 66 key works by as many artists, acquired by the museum since 1979. The photographs were chosen to illustrate links between photography and modern art.

More than half the photographs were made by artists trained as painters, sculptors or designers. The works are arranged according to four primary aesthetic concerns: Formalism, Surrealism, Expressionism and Pluralism. The exhibition continues through March 15.