Celebration of Mexican Culture Set : Art: Two formerly feuding festivals will feature a vast array of events from September through December.

Los Angeles will become a stage for all things Mexican this fall during a citywide celebration of Mexican culture. Plans for about 400 events--organized in two concurrent festivals--were revealed on Tuesday at a press conference at Union Station. Art exhibitions, dance and music performances, film festivals, cooking demonstrations and shopping opportunities are among the vast array of events to be offered in the massive spectacle, scheduled from September through December.

The celebration has been planned to complement “Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries,” a landmark traveling exhibition, opening on Oct. 6 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The 400-piece show, gathered from public and private collections around the world, surveys Mexican art from 1000 BC to 1950. Monumental pre-Columbian sculptures, Colonial paintings and politically charged modern pieces will sprawl across three buildings at the museum and occupy about 25,000 square feet of floor space, according to LACMA curator Thomas Lentz.

The public is likely to experience the exhibition and related events as one big Mexican extravaganza, but the festival programs are organized under two separate banners. Mexico: A Work of Art, a festival sponsored by the Mexican government to promote tourism and trade, will feature cultural and business-oriented programs imported from Mexico as well as arts exhibitions and performances organized by Southern California institutions.

Artes de Mexico, a locally organized festival partially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, will concentrate on the arts in programs that emphasize Los Angeles’ Mexican roots. “We are providing a local component so that Mexican art is not seen just as something from the other side of the border,” said Armando Duron, president of the Artes de Mexico festival committee. “It’s something that’s alive, something that’s present, something that’s here, something that’s now . . . In this festival we hope to present a new vision, a new view of what it is to be Mexican in this city.”

A rift developed between the two festival organizers developed during early planning stages, but differences appeared to have been smoothed over at the joint press conference. Although the two organizations never merged into one entity with a single name, logo and program, Artes de Mexico and Mexico: A Work of Art list many of the same events in their current schedules. A bilingual hot line, (213) 688-ARTS, will provide information about both festivals’ events beginning Sunday.

Among art exhibitions in the festivals are “Three Decades of Mexican Painting” at the Armand Hammer Museum (Oct. 2-Nov. 11), “Aspects of Contemporary Mexican Painting” at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (Nov. 7-Dec. 29), a retrospective of Oaxacan artist Francisco Toledo’s painting at Latin American Masters Gallery (Oct. 6-Nov. 3) and “Women in Mexican Art” at the Iturralde Gallery (Dec. 6-31).

Nearly 60 concerts of Mexican music will be presented at the County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater and at university and civic auditoriums around town. The festival’s star dance attraction, Ballet Folklorico, will perform at the Shrine Auditorium (Sept. 26-29). Mexican film series are scheduled at LACMA, UCLA and the Directors Guild.

In addition, Mexican cooking classes with Diana Kennedy are planned in dozens of shops and restaurants. Other attractions include a Mexican book fair at UCLA (Nov. 3-6) and a temporary retail outlet, Mexico: A Work of Art Store, in Del Amo Plaza (Oct. 1-Jan. 15).

Mexican art inspired the festivals and the arts dominate their programs, but most speakers at the press conference indicated that the celebration has a social agenda. Mayor Tom Bradley and other government and festival officials expressed hopes that the upcoming extravaganza will improve Mexico’s image and promote international understanding and good will. “You can’t love someone you don’t know,” said actor Ricardo Montalban, who has filmed public service announcements for the Artes de Mexico festival and serves as its honorary president.

Mexico: A Work of Art “will show the real face of the Mexican people,” said Jose Angel Pescador, Consul General of Mexico. “This is a time of new pages in history of our two countries being written . . . We will try to write the pages together.”

Adolfo Nodal, general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, said he hopes the celebration will emulate the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, when “culture was something everyone was focused on” in Los Angeles.