Rainn Wilson wants to tell you all the reasons why he hates the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And the museum is happy to help him do it.

Wilson, who plays Dwight on NBC's "The Office," gave Culture Monster a preview of what he's thinking: "LACMA's a very valuable piece of property that really should be developed. I'm thinking condos immediately. I know it's by the Grove but I think another mall might be a good idea as well. My mission is to destroy the remaining art institutions in L.A. and look at the value of the real estate beneath them."

The actor will share such ideas in a "hostile" takeover of LACMA's Twitter feed on Friday and Saturday as part of "Cell Phone Stories," a summer-long project in which guest artists are using mobile-phone technology and social media to create "episodes" designed to re-imagine the museum experience.

In seriousness, Wilson says, he's a LACMA member and has been going to the museum for years. He and his father collect art. He loves LACMA's collections and  said he is a fan of "the Broad wing, which I think is one of the greatest buildings in Los Angeles."

Wilson also is a Twitter master -- he estimates he has about 2 million followers -- so it's easy to see why he was recruited for this episode (which is succinctly named "I Hate LACMA"). "They want to show that you can poke fun at the museum and that a museum can have a sense of humor," Wilson says. He's eager to oblige. "I'm gonna take 'em down."

"Cell Phone Stories," which was launched in May and ends Sept. 6, was conceived by artist Steve Fagin at the request of LACMA director Michael Govan. Subscribers receive weekly texts alerting them to offerings on the museum's Twitter and Facebook accounts.

It's time for that rite of summer: The Los Angeles Philharmonic -- anticipating the opening of a new season -- is changing the giant banner that hangs outside the entrance to its administrative offices at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

On Thursday, the orchestra will take down the bold fuchsia sign that for the past year has proclaimed "PASION" and "GUSTAVO" in honor of the 2009-10 debut of maestro Dudamel, its young Venezuelan music director.

In its place will rise 2010-11's golden-hued "LA PHIL. Share the Passion." Both the old and new designs show Dudamel in action. The new one also depicts members of the orchestra.

"Last season's banner introduced Gustavo to the community," says a Phil spokeswoman. "His name was featured prominently and the Spanish word for 'passion' described Gustavo and his energy and his Latino heritage."

This season, now that Dudamel is one of the city's most familiar figures, the Philharmonic "wanted to focus on Gustavo and his connection with the orchestra and the energy they have together and also his connection with the community."

Images of either Dudamel or his predecessor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, have graced Disney Hall since the building opened in 2003, appearing on reinforced-vinyl rectangles made by AmGraph of Ontario. Traditionally, a vertical Philharmonic building banner faces Grand Avenue while a horizontal banner looks out on Hope Street. Last season's horizontal creation --which offers three views of Dudamel conducting the Phil -- will continue to be displayed.

What's up, maestro?

Bugs Bunny will be returning to the podium this week to help the Hollywood Bowl celebrate Warner Bros.' cartoon classics and the history of movie music.

The Bowl has made a tradition of showcasing soundtracks through programs including singalongs and concerts at which the audience can watch scenes on the big screen while listening to the Los Angeles Philharmonic or the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

Since it opened in 1922, the hillside venue also has shown up in many films, providing a setting for everyone from star-crossed lovers (Janet Gaynor and Fredric March in the 1937 "A Star Is Born") to sailors on shore leave (Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in the 1945 "Anchors Aweigh.")

One memorable Bowl appearance -- and example of movie-music magic -- occurs in Chuck Jones' 1949 "Long-Haired Hare," in which Bugs Bunny wages war against opera star Giovanni Jones. Their battles culminate in a faceoff at a Bowl concert (on the video above, about 2 1/2 minutes in), where the white-wigged wabbit takes command of the stage by impersonating Leopold Stokowski. Watch as Bugs ends up trouncing Jones and wreaking havoc on the amphitheater shell.

When Christopher Dimond and Michael Kooman began to work on their first musical, "Dani Girl," four years ago, they knew the show would face a lot of challenges. Most new shows do. But this one also had what Dimond describes as "a touchy subject" a 9-year-old's struggle with leukemia.

“We were initially very nervous about how people would respond to it,” Dimond tells Culture Monster. “It’s not what you usually see in a musical.”

Dimond wrote “Dani Girl” after his younger cousin Danny's battle with cancer. "I wanted to tackle exactly what was going on in this character -- who I changed to a girl -- in this girl's mind.” He also wanted to offer a look at the world of "Danny and a lot of the kids he became close to in the hospital, kids who live more than I ever would."

The result is neither weepy melodrama nor bleak tragedy. “It's about a girl’s fantastical quest to get her hair back when she loses it to chemotherapy, to cancer. It’s about a girl who, through her imagination tries to cope with the reality of a  serious situation. As kids often do, she does so in unexpected ways.”

Kooman, who composed the music, and Dimond, who wrote the lyrics and book, have tried to tell Dani’s story in unexpected ways as well. “When you are writing a musical about pediatric leukemia, if it’s what people expect it to be it would be a really awful experience to sit through,” Dimond says.

So they set out to create a piece that is surprising, and surprisingly funny, with a score that has “an upbeat pop-y feel. This play deals with very dark themes and ideas but there is a lot of levity and joy in it.”

That combination of darkness and light intrigued Marcia Seligson, co-founder of the Festival of New American Musicals, which is committed to supporting new works and building new (younger) audiences. This year's three-month festival, which ends in August, involves dozens of shows around Southern California.  

Charles Phoenix has learned a lot from Disneyland.

“I’m not Disney-obsessed, but I never discount the effect it had on me as a child,” says the pop-culture humorist and author, best known for blending comedy and commentary in shows based on other people’s family and vacation slides. “It helped make me a visual person in terms of recognizing motifs and themes. I like to say I studied at the Disneyland School of Style.”

It’s no surprise, then, that the Magic Kingdom is one of Phoenix’s favorite subjects. The park often pops up in his pieces and has starred in a program of its own. “Wherever I go, it’s an easy sell because it’s an interesting place, has an interesting story and has touched so many of our lives.”

To celebrate the 55th anniversary of the Happiest Place on Earth, Phoenix will present “Charles Phoenix’s Retro Disneyland Slide Show” at 10 a.m. Saturday the 17th at the Crowne Plaza Anaheim Resort in Garden Grove.

“We start and end in the new Tomorrowland of 1967,” says Phoenix. “We start in Tomorrowland but then we quickly leave because I say, ‘In order to appreciate the future we must experience the past’ and ‘click’ we’re on Main Street U.S.A.”

The slides — many of which come from thrift stores, flea markets and estate sales — depict a bygone Disneyland of attractions including the Phantom Boats and House of the Future (“the remarkable thing is that it’s still futuristic-looking”) and moments such as kids fishing off Tom Sawyer Island.

Because the images were taken by tourists and not professionals, says Phoenix, “we really get the experience of being there. We tour the park but we also get to know the people” — whose hairdos, sailor suits and grinning poses with costumed characters offer glimpses of midcentury American life.

While growing up in Ontario in the ’60s and ’70s, Phoenix came to appreciate the retro world while visiting Disneyland three or four times a year and hanging out in thrift shops and at his father’s used-car lots. After moving to Los Angeles in 1982, he became a fashion designer. He found his first cache of Kodachrome in 1992 and put on his first slide-show performance six years later. Since then he has traveled around the country providing vintage views of holiday traditions, road trips and '50s and '60s fads and fashions. (He is presenting a “3-D retro slide show” at 3 p.m. Sunday the 12th at the Downtown Independent theater.)

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens is announcing Monday that it has raised an estimated $243 million – surpassing its target of $175 million – during a six-year campaign that was the most comprehensive in its history.

Money from For Generations to Come – The Campaign for the Huntington goes toward annual operating and capital expenses and endowments to support collections and programs.

In addition, the San Marino institution says it has received more than $100 million worth of donations of other types, including works of art and rare books – what President Steven S. Koblik calls "more gifts to our collections than in any period since the death of our founder, Mr. Huntington."

Koblik says the campaign, which began in July 2004 and ends Wednesday, demonstrates how the Huntington, once known as a bastion of old-school arts and letters, is repositioning itself as a collections-based research and education institution. "We've made great progress toward addressing our financial concerns, but this is not just about raising money. It's about creating a culture."

Officials credit much of the campaign's success to strategic-planning sessions and outreach that increased awareness of the Huntington's need to broaden its mission and deal with longstanding practical problems.

The Huntington, which was founded in 1919, often is seen as having deep pockets, says Koblik. However, when Henry E. Huntington died in 1927, he had invested so heavily in his collections that he had set aside $8.5 million for an endowment, about a third of what advisors had recommended.

Just in time for summer -- not to mention the launch of Apple's iPhone 4 -- the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. is introducing a phone application designed to help you make the most of visits to the Hollywood Bowl.

The free app offers a detailed look at the season's shows and performers and allows users to buy tickets and add concerts to a favorites list in order to receive reminders and special announcements.

The "Hollywood Bowl" application also explains how to get to the venue by car or shuttle and what to do once there. On phones with GPS the app will offer driving directions and pinpoint seat locations as well as the nearest restrooms, concessions and picnic areas. App users also can view Bowl-related videos and a fan photo gallery to which they can submit their own pictures.

An L.A. Philharmonic spokeswoman says the application, which was developed by Santa Monica-based MeemleLabs, is available for all Android phones and iPhones and is compatible with iOS 4 -- Apple's new mobile operating system. It will be available for BlackBerrys and the mobile web starting in July.

The Phil says it's always trying to improve mobile service for all users on its 110-acre grounds. For this season, it has been working with AT&T, the spokeswoman says, "so you can enjoy using the 'Hollywood Bowl' app at the Bowl and beyond."

Last fall, the Philharmonic Assn. celebrated the arrival of music director Gustavo Dudamel by launching its first iPhone app and online game, "Bravo Gustavo,"  in which users can "conduct" the Phil in excerpts from Berlioz and Mahler.

-- Karen Wada

Photo: The Hollywood Bowl opened its 2010 summer season with fireworks on June 18. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

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For too long, music director Grant Gershon says, the Los Angeles Master Chorale has been "one of L.A.'s best-kept secrets -- people here know how good we are, but we want to spread the word far and wide."

This month, the Chorale has taken a big step in that direction by recording its first CD at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of a new partnership with Decca Music Group.

"A Good Understanding," which will come out on the Decca Classics label, will feature six works by American composer Nico Muhly.

"Nico's music is a fantastic fit with the Master Chorale," Gershon says, "and Decca not only has wonderful resources and an international reputation, but shares many similar interests with us."

The Chorale has made a half-dozen other recordings, two with Nonesuch and the rest with RCM, notably a 1998 Grammy-nominated CD of Morten Lauridsen pieces under then-music director Paul Salamunovich.

Executive director Terry Knowles says discussions with a smaller label were underway last year when an attorney she brought in to help with the talks heard Gershon and his singers perform and mentioned them to a friend who was head of Universal Music Group, Decca's parent.

"From there," Gershon says, "one thing led to another." The Chorale already had Muhly in its repertoire, he adds, "so it seemed like a logical starting point. Besides, Nico's music is exciting, honest and sophisticated. He's shockingly eclectic, commissioned by august pillars like the Metropolitan Opera and yet has relationships with Bjork and Grizzly Bear."

Robert Singer can still remember how he felt when he first laid eyes on the Haniwa Horse in a Kyoto gallery two years ago.

"The size. The elegance. I had never seen anything like it," says Singer, the curator of Japanese art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "It was a no-brainer. I told them, 'Ship him over and we'll fund-raise for him.'"

True to his word, Singer and the museum secured the necessary financing. On Thursday, the 6th century terra cotta horse will make its public debut at LACMA, where it is expected to become a signature piece of the Japanese art collection.

Haniwa -- which means "circle of clay" -- are hollow, unglazed sculptures that adorned the surfaces of the mounded tombs of the rich and powerful in 4th through 7th century Japan. Most are shaped like cylinders or in the form of houses, people, animals and military, ceremonial and household objects.

Singer has seen a number of haniwa horses, notably one on display at Tokyo National Museum, the country's oldest and largest museum. None, he says, is as big as LACMA's new acquisition, which is 4 feet tall and 4 feet long. (The Tokyo figure is less than 3 feet high.)

No one seems to know why this horse is larger than the others, says Singer as he stands next to the clay creature in the Pavilion for Japanese Art. "But everyone who sees it reacts to its size -- and its charisma. Look at this face. He just draws you in."

Long Beach Opera is ending its 2010 season with a double splash. The company, which is staging Ricky Ian Gordon's swimming pool-based "Orpheus and Euridice" this weekend, is also finishing in the black -- with a 35% increase in subscribers.

Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek attributes LBO's financial health to ticket sales, "dedicated donors" and "the fact we can make opera happen using a lot of imagination instead of a lot of money. We still need support, but we're in a good place to grow."

The company, which specializes in presenting rarely seen works in unconventional ways, had a $1.1 million operating budget for 2010 and expects to have a $1.2 million budget for 2011.

Attendance has been rising in recent years, hitting 5,400 this season. Mitisek says the jump in subscriptions -- now at about 660 -- results from offering introductory discounts as well as "good programming -- people realize we give them more of the unexpected."