In 1967, French filmmaker Agnes Varda landed in Los Angeles with “a suitcase of assumptions and judgments.” Varda liked to maintain her outsider insouciance and the three films she made in Southern California are packed with wry observations on the region’s daydreams and dissonance.

Artist Billy Al Bengston and architect Frank Gehry have been friends for more than 50 years. In 1968, when Bengston was given a museum survey at LACMA, they collaborated on the installation: Reconfiguring the galleries with plywood walls, borrowed furniture, Black Power posters, they knocked exhibition design out of the white cube.