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The first train to roll out of Sacramento after the strike derailed on the sabotaged Yolo Causeway, killing two railroad employees and three soldiers.

Mary Amanda Lewis might have seen the federal troop tents from her home, or maybe she walked toward the Capitol, easel and oil paints in tow, to document history as it lay before her.

In the summer of 1894, the Pullman strike boiled over in Sacramento because this was, and still is, an important railroad town.

"That was a nationwide strike and, really, Sacramento was one of its true ground-zero locations. It was messy here," says Paul Hammond, museum director for California State Parks' Sacramento History and Railroad sector.

Things got so bad that President Grover Cleveland sent in the National Guard, putting the city under martial law for the only time in its history.

After the local hotels filled up with soldiers, a few hundred camped out on the Capitol's grounds, and that's the scene Lewis recorded in "The Encampment." It shows white tents on the broad lawn, soldiers marching in formation, and a woman and child taking it all in, with the Capitol in the background.

Today, "The Encampment" hangs in the Sacramento Room at Sacramento Central Library downtown, alongside a painting of the Sacramento River Delta by Wayne Thiebaud, one of California's most celebrated artists.

"People notice it and want to know about the occasion for the troops," says Sacramento Room librarian Clare Ellis. "I like to give a little background on Mary Amanda Lewis and talk a little about the Pullman strike."

The strike, which lasted from June 27 to July 20, 1894, disrupted train traffic across the country.

Sacramento saw more strike- related violence than any community outside the Chicago area, where the Pullman Co. manufactured luxurious sleeping cars for train travel, says former city historian Jim Henley.

At one point, military leaders considered sending a warship up the Sacramento River to shell the city, and a cavalry unit charged Front Street with sabers lowered, says Henley, who's writing a book about the strike.

Lewis was 21 that summer and lived with her parents at 1409 Ninth St., near the Capitol. She was an artist and musician, as was her father, Franklin Jay Lewis.

"She was better known than her dad. There are not so many early Sacramento artists, so that's why she's pretty interesting," says Scott Shields, chief curator at the Crocker Art Museum.

Mary Amanda studied art with William F. Jackson, the Crocker's first curator and, in 1914, attended a prestigious summer art class in Carmel taught by landscape painter William Merritt Chase. The Crocker owns her oil painting "Sketching," which depicts Chase's outdoor classroom at Carmel.

The museum also owns "The Encampment During Pullman Strike in Sacramento," an unsigned oil painting believed to be the work of Franklin Jay Lewis.

"I've seen it, but it hasn't been up lately," says Shields. "It's a nice historical painting, maybe not the best painting we have, but the subject matter is great. "

It's almost identical to Mary Amanda's "The Encampment."

"I would love to put the paintings next to each other," says Ellis. "You could look at the brush strokes and tell if two different people painted them. It seems logical that Mary Amanda would have painted both, but maybe her father painted the unsigned one, and she copied it."

The mystery won't be soon solved, because the Crocker has its painting in storage, awaiting next year's completion of the museum's building expansion.

Regardless, says Hammond, "The paintings are significant because there aren't a lot of photographs or, for that matter, art records from that rather important time period."

Pullman Palace Car Co. workers in Illinois went out on strike after their wages were cut, sparking one of the most turbulent labor disputes in U.S. history.

On June 26, 1894, the American Railway Union called for a boycott of all companies using Pullman equipment. Strikers soon halted most of the nation's rail traffic.

Sacramento was one of California's main railroad centers, as the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad, completed a quarter-century earlier, and home of the bustling Southern Pacific Railroad shops.

"The railroad was far and away the largest single employer in town in 1894," says California State Railroad Museum curator Kyle Wyatt, "so in Sacramento there was a fair amount of popular support for the strike. Not only were the operating crews on strike, but a number of shop workers honored the picket line, as well."

California Gov. Henry Markham ordered the state militia to Sacramento to control uprisings, but many soldiers were sympathetic to the strikers and refused to fire on them. President Cleveland then sent in federal troops from the Presidio in San Francisco. They came by ship up the Sacramento River with a pair of Gatling guns and a Hotchkiss cannon. Each man carried 200 rounds of ammunition.

If strikers resisted, The Bee reported at the time, "the probability that there will be a slaughter at Sacramento is great."

The city remained under martial law for two weeks, "which was about one week longer than any place else in the country," says Wyatt.

Strikers had seized Sacramento's Southern Pacific Railroad passenger station in late June and finally, on July 11, allowed trains to depart again.

The first one to leave didn't get far.

In an act of sabotage, strikers had removed bolts from the rails over the Yolo Causeway between Sacramento and Davis, causing the train to plunge into the water. Three soldiers and two railroad employees were killed.

The violence wasn't over. Soldiers wounded two civilians at the foot of K Street a couple of days later. An angry crowd refused a U.S. marshal's order to disperse.

So, The Bee reported, " squads of artillerymen and marines charged with fixed bayonets down K, J and I streets, into Second, and scattered the crowds, pricking the dilatory citizens with the bayonet to make them accelerate their gait."

Away from the bloodshed, life continued more or less as usual, although having so many soldiers in town made things decidedly more interesting for Mary Amanda Lewis and the town's other single women.

By July 6, 300 U.S. soldiers were being housed in local hotels and the armory, and another 650 were camped "among the palms and flowers" of Capitol Park, according to The Bee.

An unnamed Bee reporter with a bit of a romantic streak wrote:

"Out of a moonless sky, the twinkling stars shone last night upon the rows of white tents among the trees, and among the pretty girls in white lawn dresses who came to see the soldiers and chat with the susceptible and too-willing sentries. The girls swung on the iron chains dividing the sidewalk from the grass, which the state's troops were ruthlessly trampling underfoot, and talked sweet nonsense with the soldier boys without the formality of an introduction."

Whether Mary Amanda's interest was flirtatious or purely artistic is a mystery. She would never marry.

Franklin Jay Lewis died in 1910, and the following year she organized a weeklong retrospective of their art at the Hotel Sacramento. Their almost twin depictions of the troop encampment may have hung in that show.

Mary Amanda was a talented artist but was better known as a musician.

She played cello with East Coast symphonies, toured Europe and for five years performed at Monterey's Del Monte Hotel. She also gave music lessons in her Oak Park home, where she lived for the last 30 years of her life. She died in 1953, at age 81.

The 1894 Pullman strike, which she witnessed as a young woman, would have a lasting effect on Sacramento.

"The strike was not only the most important labor dispute Sacramento has probably experienced, it divided the community for many years," Henley says. "Families were split, with some joining the strikers and others as members of the National Guard. A poor performance by Guard members resulted in one of the largest court-martials in U.S. military history.

"As fallout," he says, "the railroad created blacklists that marked any member of the American Railway Union as not to be hired. This information would be shared with other railroads as far away as Denver."

Call The Bee's Dixie Reid, (916) 321-1134.

"The Encampment" by Mary Amanda Lewis illustrates the occupation of Sacramento by federal troops during the Pullman strike of 1894.

ALL WEEKEND

Music and theater

'Stomp'

What: Little did you know your hubcaps can multitask. Stomp's eight-member troupe concocts beautiful percussion rhythms with the most unconventional of instruments – from brooms to garbage cans to Zippo lighters. This sexy, visually compelling stage show has the whole nation making noise. Through Jan. 4.

When: 8 p.m. today and Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m. Sunday

Where: Sacramento Community Center Theater, 1301 L St., Sacramento

Cost: $20-$55

Information: (916) 808-5181 or www.calmt.com

ALL WEEKEND

Visual arts

'Other Heavenly Bodies'

What: Blue Moon Gallery in Sacramento presents this mixed-media holiday show, featuring painters Dorothy Champion and Patricia Williams, plus sculptures by Sharon Zachary and Chris Taylor.

When: Noon-4 p.m. today, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Where: Blue Moon Gallery, Inc. 2353 Albatross Way, Sacramento

Cost: Free admission

Information:

(916) 920-2444 or www.bluemoongallery sacto.com

TODAY

Film screening

'The Trial'

What: Feel as if the world is plotting against you sometimes? Come wallow in your existential angst tonight at Movies on a Big Screen, a weekly West Sacramento film festival. This week, they're presenting Orson Welles' 1962 adaptation of Franz Kafka's acclaimed crime novel "The Trial."

When: 7 p.m.

Where: 600 Fourth St., West Sacramento

Cost: $5

Information: www.shiny-object.com/screenings

SATURDAY

Live music

The Snobs

What: "Debonair punk rock" – sound like an oxymoron? The Snobs, one of Sacramento's most promising live acts, is living the dream Saturday night at Blue Lamp. For $5, enjoy musical "champagne" on a beer drinker's budget.

When: 9 p.m.

Where: Blue Lamp, 1400 Alhambra Blvd., Sacramento

Cost: $5

Information:

(916) 455-3400 or www.bluelamp.com

SUNDAY

Live music

Jim Martinez

What: Internationally known pianist Jim Martinez celebrates the release of his new CD, "Music for Your Soul," a collection of church hymns reworked in the style of jazz. Martinez has featured such musical guests as Lionel Hampton and Carla Cook on previous albums.

When: 4-6:30 p.m.

Where: Sherman Clay Roseville, 771 Pleasant Grove Blvd., Roseville

Cost: Free admission

Information:

(916) 771-0808 or www.shermanclay. com/roseville

SUNDAY

Fashion show

Nostos Algos Winter Fashion Showcase

What: Church of Satin presents this alternative fashion show, featuring local bands Sister Crayon and Dusty Brown. You won't catch sight of traditional fashion-show staples (e.g., a runway), but you can check out threads from some truly innovative local designers, including Velvet Leaf, Ingrid Fur and Sapphire Cordial.

When: 7:30 p.m.

Where: California Stage, 2509 R St., Sacramento

Cost: $10 advance, $12 at the door

Information: www.myspace.com/ bathedinreflection

SUNDAY

Live Music

Ricky Berger, Justin Farren and Adrian Bourgeois

What: Come see three accomplished Sacramento musicians at True Love Coffeehouse, where virtually all great local bands have some roots planted. This "in-the-round"- style concert allows for the audience to encircle the stage.

When: 7 p.m.

Where: True Love Coffeehouse, 2315 K St., Sacramento

Cost: $5

Information:

(916) 448-5683 or www.adrianbourgeois.com

"Ladder for Booker T. Washington" is about perspective, artist Martin Puryear has said.

"I want to make objects that somehow have their own history and their own reason for being and their own sense of themselves. … It's equally crucial that there exist in the work a recognition of the maker, of who I am," wrote Martin Puryear in 1978, when his career was just taking off.

Now at the peak of his powers, it is still instructive to ask who he is and what is revealed in his work about its maker.

An African American artist who deals with issues of racial identity only tangentially if at all, he was called "America's Best Artist" in 2001 by Time magazine critic Robert Hughes. In that same year a show of 12 of his sculptures organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, which traveled to the Berkeley Art Museum, was declared the best Bay Area art event of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Having seen that show, which was one of the best exhibitions by an American artist I have ever seen, I looked with anticipation to viewing his current exhibition of 47 sculptures at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I was not disappointed.

Including several of the works from the Berkeley show, it offers a survey of his career in depth that affirms Hughes' assertion and tells us more about who Puryear is without destroying the wonderful sense of mystery conveyed by his singular and stunningly beautiful work.

When I call his work beautiful, I am not talking about any superficial quality of prettiness but something deeper and purer and truly compelling, a beauty that stems more from essences than appearances.

When you look at his work, words fail as you try to identify his forms with things you have seen before. Though they are allusive and suggestive of known forms – his "Old Mole" for example might be the head of a bird, a hooded falcon, as easily as the probing snout of a blind mole – they escape easy definition.

As John Elderfield, chief curator of painting and sculpture at New York's Museum of Modern Art points out in the exhibition catalog, Puryear "produces unfamiliar objects that encourage but frustrate a wish to identify them, offering streams of resemblances but no definitive representations."

As we search for equivalents, we fix on analogous forms but discard them, leaving, as Elderfield writes, "memories or feelings of things." It is this quality that makes Puryear's work so emotionally moving and so difficult to approximate with words.

"Brunhilde," for example, a blond, basketlike wood form enclosing space does not resemble a Wagnerian soprano so much as suggest the breath- inflated chest cavity of a Valkyrie.

Similarly "In Sheep's Clothing" looks more like a piece of streamlined Danish Modern furniture (though one of uncertain function) than a fluffy sheep, yet in every aspect – color, sheen, shape, line – it suggests an ovine creature, and its hidden interior space plays with the notion of something mischievous and unknowable inside (a wolf in sheep's clothing). Thus its beauty and mildness hide something menacing and dark.

The exhibition is full of such surprising ambiguities, which are the mark of great art. In the museum's lobby-atrium, which opens up to the light-filled fifth floor, "Ad Astra" is a cartlike form on wagon wheels from which extends a more than 60-foot slender sapling high overhead, nearly disappearing in the light of the atrium. It suggests an animal with a long neck, like a dinosaur skeleton at the Museum of Natural History, reaching up to the stars.

Nearby, "Ladder for Booker T. Washington," one of only a few works that refer directly to the African American experience, rises up, narrowing to a perspectival pinpoint in the high distance, suggesting the difficulty and length of the climb. Puryear has stated that he didn't start out to make a work about Booker T. Washington.

"Perspective is really what the work is about. And later, the idea of Booker T. Washington, the resonance of his life, and his struggle. And the notion that his idea of progress for the race was a long slow progression of, as he said, putting your buckets down where you are and working with what you've got," suggested the title for the work, which is more literary than most of Puryear's sculptures.

On the fifth floor of the museum, where the exhibition is installed, you step out of the elevators to see a series of carved and constructed wooden forms called "Some Tales," which draw on the craft of traditional woodcarving and tool making he studied in Sierra Leone while in the Peace Corps in 1964-66. These blends of the primitive and modern, folkloric yet supremely sophisticated, usher you into a large room with dividers filled with works that range from the witty "Le Prix," a snail shell from which extends a chain seemingly held up in the air by magic, to the self- contained exploration of interiority titled "Self," sheathed with a burnished skin of stained and painted red cedar and mahogany.

Similar humped forms made of wood covered with a thin skin of wire mesh and tar create multiple layers of mystery, appearing heavy at first, then light and filigreed up close. "Dowager" might be a wave of black sea, the lacy mantilla of a duenna, or a seated figure veiled in mourning, as well, of course, as a dowager's hump. "Dumb Luck," which resembles a padlock, conveys a more antic air suggesting both shelter and containment, transparency and revelation.

A pair of more recent works signal another leap forward in Puryear's metaphoric approach. "A Distant Place" seems almost a reference to Islam (and perhaps the Iraq War) with its mosquelike structure and minaret resembling a narwal's tusk or a unicorn's horn emerging from a massive maplewood burl to pierce the sky. "C.F.A.O.," which stands for the Compagnie Francaise de L'Afrique Occidentale, a 19th century trading company that sailed between France and West Africa, takes the form of an inverted African mask seated on an old wheelbarrow and surmounted by a dense thicket of pine scaffolding. The piece makes reference to African tribal art, the slave trade and colonialism.

The majesty and mystery of these works, as well as quixotic "decoys" and elegant "levers" with maritime overtones, is echoed in linear form in a series of "ring" pieces that again reference tools of a simple sort as well as bangles or bonds. They culminate in the sublime "Cerulean," a perfect circle of heavenly blue. These are offset by a grouping of smaller works that range from the powerful "Reliquary" of gessoed wood to "For Beckwourth," a primitive yet elegant hutlike structure whose title refers to a 19th century frontiersman of mixed race.

While substantial and substantive, the show is not overly large, giving the viewer the opportunity to interact with the works and give them the sustained attention they deserve.

If you are looking for a holiday gift to yourself or a loved one, nothing could be better than a trip to this show.

"C.F.A.O." by Martin Puryear is one of many of the artist's works on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

CRAIG MCCLAINE "Primary Belief" by Jack Nielsen is at the Sacramento County Primary Care Center, 4600 Broadway.

Sacramento has long championed public art, something Shelly Willis calls "works placed in the path of everyday life."

The city's very first piece, Gerald Walburg's "Indo Arch" – a sculpture some folks didn't like when it was installed near the downtown Macy's in 1977 – still stands. It has since become a local landmark, joined by 750 murals, mosaics, fountains, paintings and sculptures in the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission's Art in Public Places collection, which Willis manages.

The public art scene fairly exploded after a 1979 city ordinance, later adopted by Sacramento County, required developers to spend 2 percent of construction costs on art. Sacramento International Airport's expansion will add $8 million in public art to the landscape.

Public art can be found almost anywhere, from lobbies to street corners and road medians. Some is publicly funded, some is paid for by developers. To the general public, it's all just art.

This morning, with SMAC executive director Rhyena Halpern and a reporter in tow, Willis visits some of her favorite public art in downtown Sacramento, including the bronze woman that can bring her to tears.

As she drives by Fifth and J streets, she points out Deborah Butterfield's untitled recycled-aluminum horse, at the corner since 1983.

"She's become internationally known, so it's very valuable," Willis says. "There is this tendency in our culture with art to want it to be realistic, and she captures the essence of a horse in a few shapes and lines."

Someone (the reporter) raves about another horse, Sean Guerrero's muscular, chrome car-bumper sculpture at the Safeway, 19th and S streets. Willis and Halpern laugh out loud.

"Not a lot of artists like it," says Willis. "It's very flashy, very Las Vegas-y."

Federal courthouse, 501 I St.

New York artist Tom Otterness' series of small "Gold Rush" sculptures decorate the plaza. Two of the pieces, a bonneted woman driving an ox-drawn covered wagon and a camera-wielding tourist, are very literally in the path of everyday life, where unwary passers-by might stumble over them.

"I think about that all the time: How did they get this done?" says Willis. "I think it's because it's a protected plaza, not a park. You're coming here to do business."

Otterness' vignette seems playful until you look closely, says Willis.

"There is always a little edge to his work, which I love. See Indian with the fish, and the bear sadly looking on and thinking, 'That's my food'? What does that say about the environment and justice?"

"Public art blends social commentary with whimsy and does it better than almost any other medium," says Halpern.

In the courthouse rotunda is Larry Kirkland's ambitious "The Decisions," which consists of 12 marble "jury" chairs inscribed with words by former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove and a suspended gold-plated scales of justice.

"I love these chairs," says Halpern. "You can sit in them and be a part of art."

U.S. Bank Tower, 621 Capitol Mall

"I think this is my favorite sculpture in Sacramento," Willis says of Robert Brady's untitled bronze female in the plaza. "I love this piece, I love it. I start to cry when I see this, and that's very rare for me.

"Art is different for everybody. It's like if you go to the top of a hill and look down, and you're just moved. It's hard to articulate. It's a way of expressing yourself that's beyond words."

A decided contrast to Brady's primitive bronze are Michael Hayden's glitzy LED sculptures, "Rapids" in the lobby and "Lumetric River" on the roof.

Ellen Warner, vice president of design and construction for developer David S. Taylor, says that even before the building was completed, she would find people waiting at dusk to see the Hayden pieces illuminated.

"I connected with David, because I love what he loves," says Warner, "being able to do these things in an urban environment where you can help shape the experience people have. He and I feel the art brings that to another level, to create public spaces that make a really strong impression on people that they experience in their own personal way."

980 Ninth St.

Outside the no-name office building near the Sacramento Central Library, tourists are photographing each other with Gwynn Murrill's lounging bronze cougars.

"One of the important things about public art is that it brings you to a place, it becomes a destination," says Willis, as she steps inside to see Richard Piccolo's oil-on-canvas triptychs, which depict earth, fire, water and air in telling Sacramento's story.

"Public art is an interesting way to talk about who we are and where we've come from," she says. "It's not enough to have things that represent our past. I want things to represent who I am and how I lived and what was happening when I was alive, so that 100 years from now people will have a sense of who we are. That's why this program is so important."

Sacramento City Hall, 915 I St.

In 2005, Art in America magazine named Archie Held's bronze fountain "Burden Basket" one of the 20 best examples of public art in the country.

"It's a really important piece," says Halpern. "When they excavated this space, there were all those Native American artifacts found, so this is a tribute to Native Americans and their contributions to this region."

"I always think of the burden …" says Willis.

"That indigenous people have borne, and right here," says Halpern, finishing her sentence.

Willis wants to see Anthony Padilla's "Seasons of Sacramento," in the historic City Hall's council chambers. It gives a tumbledown view of the city and its icons, from a gold miner to an oddly gold Tower Bridge.

"It's a little bit disconcerting, a surreal composition," says Willis. "Everything is not in scale and a little off. I like this mural. It's one of my favorites."

In the new City Hall annex, Kurt Steger's laminated wood-and-stone sculpture "Reflection" offers a gracious place to do just that in the lobby.

"It feels like art and not design, and that's a real challenge," says Willis.

1400 J St.

Drivers can easily miss Bryan Tedrick's "Tree of Life," a bronze gate treatment east of the Sacramento Convention Center. It's worth slowing down for a look.

California Department of Health Services, 1501 Capitol Ave.

In the lobby stands Alison Saar's barefoot washerwoman "Califia," a copper-clad figure balancing laundry buckets on her head.

"This and the (Brady) piece at 621 Capitol are tied as my favorite sculptures," says Willis. "The myth is that Califia was this isolated island run by powerful black women. This piece is also about the importance of the working woman in the Gold Rush. I love this. Isn't it beautiful?"

It turns out that some public art isn't as "public" as others. Unless you work in this building, you will need a badge from the security desk to walk down the hallway to see Michael Stevens' "Kit and Caboodle," a series of cutouts – children, animals, trees – decoupaged with snippets of old paintings.

"I think of them as puzzle pieces," Willis says. "We have this idea of landscape paintings as something beautiful we put on our walls, but he's flipped them around in a really interesting way by cutting them up, pasting them together and putting them on these childlike figures."

The tour comes to an end. Willis and Halpern ponder the notion of what makes for good public art.

"When you see people walk past public art and not notice it at all – people for whom it doesn't communicate anything – then it's a static force," Halpern says. "There is a lot to be said for quality and artistic vision and execution and, last but not least, the enduring factor."

"If it sustains your interest over time, that's huge," Willis says. "People live with public art daily. It's not like an exhibition in a museum where you see the work and then you leave. It's much more like living near the Metropolitan Museum of Art and visiting your favorite painting every day because you love it so much, because you get something back from it. Those qualities to sustain you can be anything from the story the work is telling, to the form, the function of it, and those can be incredibly variable."

While new acquisitions continue to enrich Sacramento's artistic landscape, little funding is designated to maintain and repair APP's aging collection. Sacramento art consultant Susan Willoughby is concerned about the fate of the 1977 Fred Ball mural "The Way Home," at the 600 K St. city parking garage, near Macy's.

"We are so on that piece," says Willis. "It's very special and an important work of art on many levels. It's one of the largest murals of that type, fabricated in that way, in the country. It's a beautiful piece. People love it."

This year, SMAC did rudimentary repairs to secure the enameled copper tiles and, in three years, Willis hopes to have funding to replace the 60-foot-long mural's deteriorating plywood backing.

"The No. 1 concern nationally in public art is conservation," Halpern says, "and it's been inadequately addressed."

Call The Bee's Dixie Reid, (916) 321-1134.

Where to find public art
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MICHAEL ALLEN JONES mjones@sacbee.com Gwynn Murrill's bronze cougars
Sean Guerrero's horse sculpture, in front of the Safeway store at 19th and S streets, may not be a favorite of artists, but others like it. MICHAEL ALLEN JONES mjones@ sacbee.com
"Burden Basket," above, by Archie Held is at Sacramento City Hall. It is based on American Indian basket designs.
Artist Deborah Butterfield's untitled sculpture of recycled aluminum, left, grazes at Fifth and J streets in Sacramento.
Robert Brady's untitled bronze female sculpture
"Califia," right, by Alison Saar, stands in the lobby of the California Department of Health Services, 1501 Capitol Ave., Sacramento.

CHRISTOPHER BAKES
Puppets help the All Hallows production of "Amahl and the Night Visitors" make the most of a small stage.

In Peter Nowlen's mind, no actor possesses a greater ability to captivate an audience than a puppet.

That's why, as conductor and artistic director of the Academy at All Hallows Orchestra and Chorus, Nowlen couldn't resist fleshing out the wonderment of Gian Carlo Menotti's opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" with puppetry.

"Puppets do not carry their own personality into the theater," said Nowlen. "So it's easier for the audience to identify with them … because a puppet can be truly timeless."

Nowlen is teaming up with master puppeteer Art Grueneberger and his Puppet Art Theater for this story, about a boy named Amahl who lives with his mother and works as a shepherd. One day, three kings arrive at their home on a search for a holy child.

A professional puppeteer since 1993, Grueneberger graduated from UC Davis with a master of fine arts degree in its acting program. This will be his third performance as a puppeteer in "Amahl." All of those have been with the All Hallows Music series.

Grueneberger's puppet designs were inspired by the 1,000-year-old Chinese rod style. Five puppeteers will work below the puppets and control them with long rods on the bodies and hands.

Grueneberger designed the puppets, then sent his patterns off to Kristen Phillips of Michigan. The heads are constructed of latex and the bodies made of foam and fabric. The five Amahl puppets typically cost $3,000.

For the design of the three Magi, Amahl and Mother, Grueneberger was inspired by a series of puppets he saw in a book that were used by London's Little Angel Theater.

"This Amahl puppet had really big, innocent eyes," Grueneberger said. "The larger the eye, the more likely an audience will identify with that character.

"With this opera, you want the audience to really get attached to the Amahl character, you want them to fall in love with it, and that will bring the audience into the story. That attachment is difficult to get unless the design is just right."

For the Mother and the Amahl puppets, special dish mechanisms are built into the rods that, when rotated, allow the heads to swivel and nod. This makes for an increasingly lifelike appearance, Grueneberger said.

But for this reason, "Amahl" poses special challenges for the puppeteer.

"I'm used to working with rod puppets that are around 18 inches to 2 feet tall. The Amahl puppets are about 4 feet tall, and they can be tricky to balance as they're top-heavy," Grueneberger said.

And the challenges are musical, too.

"The puppeteers aren't voicing for the puppets, as it is hard to find opera-singing puppeteers," Grueneberger explained.

In the production, opera singers will be next to the puppet stage. Drew Stassen of Vacaville and Ryan Nelson of Mill Valley will split the role of Amahl.

In the Sacramento performances, Teressa Baldwin and Ellen Bachmann will share the role of the Mother, with Julie Anne Miller singing it in Grass Valley. Academy scholars and CSUS students Jon Hansen, Brandon Anderson and David Paterson will sing the Magi roles.

The great challenge for the puppeteers is how to be in complete sync with the singers so the combination of vocalist and puppet are seamless. This will be especially tricky because the roles of Mother and Amahl are shared by multiple singers.

Menotti's 45-minute opera, now a perennial favorite, will be performed at Grass Valley's Peace Lutheran Church on Friday and Sacramento's All Hallow's Church on Saturday.

The idea of doing "Amahl" as a puppet show originated when Nowlen worked with Grueneberger in a 2004 puppet production of "Man of La Mancha" at UC Davis.

Nowlen took direction of the All Hallows Orchestra that year and decided to perform Amahl then and in two successive years. The conductor has also collaborated with the capital region's other notable puppeteer, Richard Bay, on other productions.

Using puppets, Nowlen said, solved the dilemma of putting on such a show in the small confines of the All Hallows Church.

The puppets, which are half the size of a human, tap into a long tradition in opera. Puppetry has been used in several forms, from Peking Opera to the recent work of Philip Glass.

While not a big opera fan, Grueneberger said that working on "Amahl" has brought him one step closer to embracing the art form.

"Using puppetry makes opera a bit more accessible," he said, "and it will make the art form a bit more enjoyable to audiences who don't usually see opera."

Puppets depicting Amahl, above, and other characters take the stage while singers offstage perform the vocal roles in "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Puppet Art Theater

CRAIG MCCLAINE "Primary Belief" by Jack Nielsen is at the Sacramento County Primary Care Center, 4600 Broadway.

Sacramento has long championed public art, something Shelly Willis calls "works placed in the path of everyday life."

The city's very first piece, Gerald Walburg's "Indo Arch" – a sculpture some folks didn't like when it was installed near the downtown Macy's in 1977 – still stands. It has since become a local landmark, joined by 750 murals, mosaics, fountains, paintings and sculptures in the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission's Art in Public Places collection, which Willis manages.

The public art scene fairly exploded after a 1979 city ordinance, later adopted by Sacramento County, required developers to spend 2 percent of construction costs on art. Sacramento International Airport's expansion will add $8 million in public art to the landscape.

Public art can be found almost anywhere, from lobbies to street corners and road medians. Some is publicly funded, some is paid for by developers. To the general public, it's all just art.

This morning, with SMAC executive director Rhyena Halpern and a reporter in tow, Willis visits some of her favorite public art in downtown Sacramento, including the bronze woman that can bring her to tears.

As she drives by Fifth and J streets, she points out Deborah Butterfield's untitled recycled-aluminum horse, at the corner since 1983.

"She's become internationally known, so it's very valuable," Willis says. "There is this tendency in our culture with art to want it to be realistic, and she captures the essence of a horse in a few shapes and lines."

Someone (the reporter) raves about another horse, Sean Guerrero's muscular, chrome car-bumper sculpture at the Safeway, 19th and S streets. Willis and Halpern laugh out loud.

"Not a lot of artists like it," says Willis. "It's very flashy, very Las Vegas-y."

Federal courthouse, 501 I St.

New York artist Tom Otterness' series of small "Gold Rush" sculptures decorate the plaza. Two of the pieces, a bonneted woman driving an ox-drawn covered wagon and a camera-wielding tourist, are very literally in the path of everyday life, where unwary passers-by might stumble over them.

"I think about that all the time: How did they get this done?" says Willis. "I think it's because it's a protected plaza, not a park. You're coming here to do business."

Otterness' vignette seems playful until you look closely, says Willis.

"There is always a little edge to his work, which I love. See Indian with the fish, and the bear sadly looking on and thinking, 'That's my food'? What does that say about the environment and justice?"

"Public art blends social commentary with whimsy and does it better than almost any other medium," says Halpern.

In the courthouse rotunda is Larry Kirkland's ambitious "The Decisions," which consists of 12 marble "jury" chairs inscribed with words by former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove and a suspended gold-plated scales of justice.

"I love these chairs," says Halpern. "You can sit in them and be a part of art."

U.S. Bank Tower, 621 Capitol Mall

"I think this is my favorite sculpture in Sacramento," Willis says of Robert Brady's untitled bronze female in the plaza. "I love this piece, I love it. I start to cry when I see this, and that's very rare for me.

"Art is different for everybody. It's like if you go to the top of a hill and look down, and you're just moved. It's hard to articulate. It's a way of expressing yourself that's beyond words."

A decided contrast to Brady's primitive bronze are Michael Hayden's glitzy LED sculptures, "Rapids" in the lobby and "Lumetric River" on the roof.

Ellen Warner, vice president of design and construction for developer David S. Taylor, says that even before the building was completed, she would find people waiting at dusk to see the Hayden pieces illuminated.

"I connected with David, because I love what he loves," says Warner, "being able to do these things in an urban environment where you can help shape the experience people have. He and I feel the art brings that to another level, to create public spaces that make a really strong impression on people that they experience in their own personal way."

980 Ninth St.

Outside the no-name office building near the Sacramento Central Library, tourists are photographing each other with Gwynn Murrill's lounging bronze cougars.

"One of the important things about public art is that it brings you to a place, it becomes a destination," says Willis, as she steps inside to see Richard Piccolo's oil-on-canvas triptychs, which depict earth, fire, water and air in telling Sacramento's story.

"Public art is an interesting way to talk about who we are and where we've come from," she says. "It's not enough to have things that represent our past. I want things to represent who I am and how I lived and what was happening when I was alive, so that 100 years from now people will have a sense of who we are. That's why this program is so important."

Sacramento City Hall, 915 I St.

In 2005, Art in America magazine named Archie Held's bronze fountain "Burden Basket" one of the 20 best examples of public art in the country.

"It's a really important piece," says Halpern. "When they excavated this space, there were all those Native American artifacts found, so this is a tribute to Native Americans and their contributions to this region."

"I always think of the burden …" says Willis.

"That indigenous people have borne, and right here," says Halpern, finishing her sentence.

Willis wants to see Anthony Padilla's "Seasons of Sacramento," in the historic City Hall's council chambers. It gives a tumbledown view of the city and its icons, from a gold miner to an oddly gold Tower Bridge.

"It's a little bit disconcerting, a surreal composition," says Willis. "Everything is not in scale and a little off. I like this mural. It's one of my favorites."

In the new City Hall annex, Kurt Steger's laminated wood-and-stone sculpture "Reflection" offers a gracious place to do just that in the lobby.

"It feels like art and not design, and that's a real challenge," says Willis.

1400 J St.

Drivers can easily miss Bryan Tedrick's "Tree of Life," a bronze gate treatment east of the Sacramento Convention Center. It's worth slowing down for a look.

California Department of Health Services, 1501 Capitol Ave.

In the lobby stands Alison Saar's barefoot washerwoman "Califia," a copper-clad figure balancing laundry buckets on her head.

"This and the (Brady) piece at 621 Capitol are tied as my favorite sculptures," says Willis. "The myth is that Califia was this isolated island run by powerful black women. This piece is also about the importance of the working woman in the Gold Rush. I love this. Isn't it beautiful?"

It turns out that some public art isn't as "public" as others. Unless you work in this building, you will need a badge from the security desk to walk down the hallway to see Michael Stevens' "Kit and Caboodle," a series of cutouts – children, animals, trees – decoupaged with snippets of old paintings.

"I think of them as puzzle pieces," Willis says. "We have this idea of landscape paintings as something beautiful we put on our walls, but he's flipped them around in a really interesting way by cutting them up, pasting them together and putting them on these childlike figures."

The tour comes to an end. Willis and Halpern ponder the notion of what makes for good public art.

"When you see people walk past public art and not notice it at all – people for whom it doesn't communicate anything – then it's a static force," Halpern says. "There is a lot to be said for quality and artistic vision and execution and, last but not least, the enduring factor."

"If it sustains your interest over time, that's huge," Willis says. "People live with public art daily. It's not like an exhibition in a museum where you see the work and then you leave. It's much more like living near the Metropolitan Museum of Art and visiting your favorite painting every day because you love it so much, because you get something back from it. Those qualities to sustain you can be anything from the story the work is telling, to the form, the function of it, and those can be incredibly variable."

While new acquisitions continue to enrich Sacramento's artistic landscape, little funding is designated to maintain and repair APP's aging collection. Sacramento art consultant Susan Willoughby is concerned about the fate of the 1977 Fred Ball mural "The Way Home," at the 600 K St. city parking garage, near Macy's.

"We are so on that piece," says Willis. "It's very special and an important work of art on many levels. It's one of the largest murals of that type, fabricated in that way, in the country. It's a beautiful piece. People love it."

This year, SMAC did rudimentary repairs to secure the enameled copper tiles and, in three years, Willis hopes to have funding to replace the 60-foot-long mural's deteriorating plywood backing.

"The No. 1 concern nationally in public art is conservation," Halpern says, "and it's been inadequately addressed."

Call The Bee's Dixie Reid, (916) 321-1134.

Where to find public art
View Larger Map

MICHAEL ALLEN JONES mjones@sacbee.com Gwynn Murrill's bronze cougars
Sean Guerrero's horse sculpture, in front of the Safeway store at 19th and S streets, may not be a favorite of artists, but others like it. MICHAEL ALLEN JONES mjones@ sacbee.com
"Burden Basket," above, by Archie Held is at Sacramento City Hall. It is based on American Indian basket designs.
Artist Deborah Butterfield's untitled sculpture of recycled aluminum, left, grazes at Fifth and J streets in Sacramento.
Robert Brady's untitled bronze female sculpture
"Califia," right, by Alison Saar, stands in the lobby of the California Department of Health Services, 1501 Capitol Ave., Sacramento.

CHRISTOPHER BAKES
Puppets help the All Hallows production of "Amahl and the Night Visitors" make the most of a small stage.

In Peter Nowlen's mind, no actor possesses a greater ability to captivate an audience than a puppet.

That's why, as conductor and artistic director of the Academy at All Hallows Orchestra and Chorus, Nowlen couldn't resist fleshing out the wonderment of Gian Carlo Menotti's opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors" with puppetry.

"Puppets do not carry their own personality into the theater," said Nowlen. "So it's easier for the audience to identify with them … because a puppet can be truly timeless."

Nowlen is teaming up with master puppeteer Art Grueneberger and his Puppet Art Theater for this story, about a boy named Amahl who lives with his mother and works as a shepherd. One day, three kings arrive at their home on a search for a holy child.

A professional puppeteer since 1993, Grueneberger graduated from UC Davis with a master of fine arts degree in its acting program. This will be his third performance as a puppeteer in "Amahl." All of those have been with the All Hallows Music series.

Grueneberger's puppet designs were inspired by the 1,000-year-old Chinese rod style. Five puppeteers will work below the puppets and control them with long rods on the bodies and hands.

Grueneberger designed the puppets, then sent his patterns off to Kristen Phillips of Michigan. The heads are constructed of latex and the bodies made of foam and fabric. The five Amahl puppets typically cost $3,000.

For the design of the three Magi, Amahl and Mother, Grueneberger was inspired by a series of puppets he saw in a book that were used by London's Little Angel Theater.

"This Amahl puppet had really big, innocent eyes," Grueneberger said. "The larger the eye, the more likely an audience will identify with that character.

"With this opera, you want the audience to really get attached to the Amahl character, you want them to fall in love with it, and that will bring the audience into the story. That attachment is difficult to get unless the design is just right."

For the Mother and the Amahl puppets, special dish mechanisms are built into the rods that, when rotated, allow the heads to swivel and nod. This makes for an increasingly lifelike appearance, Grueneberger said.

But for this reason, "Amahl" poses special challenges for the puppeteer.

"I'm used to working with rod puppets that are around 18 inches to 2 feet tall. The Amahl puppets are about 4 feet tall, and they can be tricky to balance as they're top-heavy," Grueneberger said.

And the challenges are musical, too.

"The puppeteers aren't voicing for the puppets, as it is hard to find opera-singing puppeteers," Grueneberger explained.

In the production, opera singers will be next to the puppet stage. Drew Stassen of Vacaville and Ryan Nelson of Mill Valley will split the role of Amahl.

In the Sacramento performances, Teressa Baldwin and Ellen Bachmann will share the role of the Mother, with Julie Anne Miller singing it in Grass Valley. Academy scholars and CSUS students Jon Hansen, Brandon Anderson and David Paterson will sing the Magi roles.

The great challenge for the puppeteers is how to be in complete sync with the singers so the combination of vocalist and puppet are seamless. This will be especially tricky because the roles of Mother and Amahl are shared by multiple singers.

Menotti's 45-minute opera, now a perennial favorite, will be performed at Grass Valley's Peace Lutheran Church on Friday and Sacramento's All Hallow's Church on Saturday.

The idea of doing "Amahl" as a puppet show originated when Nowlen worked with Grueneberger in a 2004 puppet production of "Man of La Mancha" at UC Davis.

Nowlen took direction of the All Hallows Orchestra that year and decided to perform Amahl then and in two successive years. The conductor has also collaborated with the capital region's other notable puppeteer, Richard Bay, on other productions.

Using puppets, Nowlen said, solved the dilemma of putting on such a show in the small confines of the All Hallows Church.

The puppets, which are half the size of a human, tap into a long tradition in opera. Puppetry has been used in several forms, from Peking Opera to the recent work of Philip Glass.

While not a big opera fan, Grueneberger said that working on "Amahl" has brought him one step closer to embracing the art form.

"Using puppetry makes opera a bit more accessible," he said, "and it will make the art form a bit more enjoyable to audiences who don't usually see opera."

Puppets depicting Amahl, above, and other characters take the stage while singers offstage perform the vocal roles in "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Puppet Art Theater

Second Saturday is a phenomenon in Sacramento -- a combination of art galleries, music, dining and street life that has the whole city talking. Here is a guide to this month's Second Saturday. For the best view, click on the "larger map" link, then pick the gallery you'd like to explore.

View Larger Map

Artist Jim Adams, "While the Clock is Ticking".

"When I saw this beautiful space, I had to put something in it," said Tony Natsoulas at the Blue Line Gallery in Roseville.

"Eccentric Imagery," a show of works by nearly 30 artists from across the United States, is the result of his desire, and it fills the large gallery beautifully. In size, scope and quality, it rivals museum shows at the Crocker and illustrates the strength of bringing a true artist's eye to the task of curating a show.

Natsoulas, a nationally prominent Sacramento ceramic artist, has works by many of the artists included in the show in his personal collection, and the show reflects the eccentric humor his own work is known for. But humor is a large category and comes in a variety of forms, from whimsical and silly to satiric and dark-edged. The variety of responses makes for a lively viewing experience that never becomes static.

The title of the show comes from an exhibition that was held at the Michael Himovitz Gallery in the 1980s, and the work Natsoulas has selected is very much of that era in Sacramento. Ranging from fun and funky pieces such as Patrick Amiot and Bridget Laurent's jolly jalopy made of junk to Dan Snyder's macabre "Mask of the Stockbroker Tasting Bull," the show is typical of the humor so many associate with Sacramento-Davis art. But the presence of such outlanders as Oregonian Jim Adams and East Coast artist Ed Bisese shows that the "Sacramento style" of the 1980s has traveled to other parts of the country and is still viable today.

Where did it come from? One can trace its beginnings to the Funk art of UC Davis professors Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest and William Wiley, as well as an infusion of Chicago Imagism, which came to the area via Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson, who taught at CSUS in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Arneson's raunchy ceramics, DeForest's whimsical animal paintings, Wiley's wry parables and Nutt and Nilsson's "nut art" formed a nexus of subject and style that many burgeoning Sacramento area artists, Natsoulas among them, found irresistible.

While there were holdouts, particularly the Central Valley landscape painters who rose to ascendency in the 1990s, the Funk spirit lives on as is apparent in the many strong works in the show by Sacramento artists from Suzanne Adan and Mike Stevens to Mick Sheldon and James Piskoti.

Piskoti's "Awake," a kinetic, light- and sound-emitting painting, is the star of the show. Piskoti's work, beginning with his prints of urban subjects and continuing into his recent elaborate paintings, has always been strong when seen in State Fair and Crocker-Kingsley exhibits and it continues to grow in interesting directions. "Awake" is an elaborate moral tale of the dark side of a peaceful neighborhood centered around a young boy carrying a gun and wearing a soldier's uniform.

Sheldon also fabricates moral fables with a lunatic twist in his paintings and new light-box prints, such as "We Sneak the Dogs Into Burning Man" and "BooBoo Watches the Peppers While I Take a Bite out of the Face of Jesus Taco."

I once compared Sheldon's works to the surreal satires of Pieter Breughel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch, and I am tempted to do the same with Jim Adams' mordant watercolor and graphite drawings of macabre figures, which also at times remind one of darker versions of works by Nilsson.

The Nutt factor enters in Ed Bisese's "SupaMonsta," a primitivist painting of Superman against the silhouette of a crude and menacing male head, and, of course, the obsessive, fetishistic fables of Adan and Stevens. Another strain centered around junk sculpture and tramp art informs the works of Paul di Pasqua and Clayton Bailey, whose robots made of teapots and other thrift-store castoffs exert a charming presence. Betty Bailey, meanwhile, gives us a pair of beguiling naive watercolors of events in the lives of Arneson and DeForest.

Natsoulas himself is the creator of one of the most elaborate and impressive works in the show, a large, multifaceted ceramic sculpture that illustrates a Japanese folk tale about a wicked creature called a Tanuki who tricks a peasant into eating his own wife for dinner and in turn is tricked by the peasant and his friend the hare into going fishing in a boat made of mud that dissolves, leaving the Tanuki to drown. It's a wonderfully imaginative and suitably chaotic piece.

Second Saturday is a phenomenon in Sacramento -- a combination of art galleries, music, dining and street life that has the whole city talking. Here is a guide to this month's Second Saturday. For the best view, click on the "larger map" link, then pick the gallery you'd like to explore.

View Larger Map

Artist Jim Adams, "While the Clock is Ticking".

"When I saw this beautiful space, I had to put something in it," said Tony Natsoulas at the Blue Line Gallery in Roseville.

"Eccentric Imagery," a show of works by nearly 30 artists from across the United States, is the result of his desire, and it fills the large gallery beautifully. In size, scope and quality, it rivals museum shows at the Crocker and illustrates the strength of bringing a true artist's eye to the task of curating a show.

Natsoulas, a nationally prominent Sacramento ceramic artist, has works by many of the artists included in the show in his personal collection, and the show reflects the eccentric humor his own work is known for. But humor is a large category and comes in a variety of forms, from whimsical and silly to satiric and dark-edged. The variety of responses makes for a lively viewing experience that never becomes static.

The title of the show comes from an exhibition that was held at the Michael Himovitz Gallery in the 1980s, and the work Natsoulas has selected is very much of that era in Sacramento. Ranging from fun and funky pieces such as Patrick Amiot and Bridget Laurent's jolly jalopy made of junk to Dan Snyder's macabre "Mask of the Stockbroker Tasting Bull," the show is typical of the humor so many associate with Sacramento-Davis art. But the presence of such outlanders as Oregonian Jim Adams and East Coast artist Ed Bisese shows that the "Sacramento style" of the 1980s has traveled to other parts of the country and is still viable today.

Where did it come from? One can trace its beginnings to the Funk art of UC Davis professors Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest and William Wiley, as well as an infusion of Chicago Imagism, which came to the area via Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson, who taught at CSUS in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Arneson's raunchy ceramics, DeForest's whimsical animal paintings, Wiley's wry parables and Nutt and Nilsson's "nut art" formed a nexus of subject and style that many burgeoning Sacramento area artists, Natsoulas among them, found irresistible.

While there were holdouts, particularly the Central Valley landscape painters who rose to ascendency in the 1990s, the Funk spirit lives on as is apparent in the many strong works in the show by Sacramento artists from Suzanne Adan and Mike Stevens to Mick Sheldon and James Piskoti.

Piskoti's "Awake," a kinetic, light- and sound-emitting painting, is the star of the show. Piskoti's work, beginning with his prints of urban subjects and continuing into his recent elaborate paintings, has always been strong when seen in State Fair and Crocker-Kingsley exhibits and it continues to grow in interesting directions. "Awake" is an elaborate moral tale of the dark side of a peaceful neighborhood centered around a young boy carrying a gun and wearing a soldier's uniform.

Sheldon also fabricates moral fables with a lunatic twist in his paintings and new light-box prints, such as "We Sneak the Dogs Into Burning Man" and "BooBoo Watches the Peppers While I Take a Bite out of the Face of Jesus Taco."

I once compared Sheldon's works to the surreal satires of Pieter Breughel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch, and I am tempted to do the same with Jim Adams' mordant watercolor and graphite drawings of macabre figures, which also at times remind one of darker versions of works by Nilsson.

The Nutt factor enters in Ed Bisese's "SupaMonsta," a primitivist painting of Superman against the silhouette of a crude and menacing male head, and, of course, the obsessive, fetishistic fables of Adan and Stevens. Another strain centered around junk sculpture and tramp art informs the works of Paul di Pasqua and Clayton Bailey, whose robots made of teapots and other thrift-store castoffs exert a charming presence. Betty Bailey, meanwhile, gives us a pair of beguiling naive watercolors of events in the lives of Arneson and DeForest.

Natsoulas himself is the creator of one of the most elaborate and impressive works in the show, a large, multifaceted ceramic sculpture that illustrates a Japanese folk tale about a wicked creature called a Tanuki who tricks a peasant into eating his own wife for dinner and in turn is tricked by the peasant and his friend the hare into going fishing in a boat made of mud that dissolves, leaving the Tanuki to drown. It's a wonderfully imaginative and suitably chaotic piece.

David Archuleta, runner-up in this year's "American Idol" vote, headlines the Jingle Ball, coming to Arco Arena on Wednesday. JASON DECROW Associated Press

Today

Hip-hop show

Del tha Funkee Homosapien and DJ Q-Bert

WHAT: Native Oakland rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien brings his whimsical blend of smart and quirky hip-hop to the Empire. DJ Q-Bert, originally of San Francisco's Invisibl Skratch Piklz, shows off his master turntablist skills.

WHEN: 7 p.m.

WHERE: Empire Events Center, 1417 R St.

COST: $18

INFORMATION: www.groovetickets.com

– Rachel Leibrock

Today-Dec. 14

Theater

Snow White: A British Panto

WHAT: City Theatre at Sacramento City College presents an original adaptation by Christine Nicholson of a classic fairy tale called "Snow White: A British Panto." The production directed by Luther Hanson and starring Doug Lawson will be told in the English holiday panto style with lots of music, comedy, audience involvement and cross dressing. The show is recommended for children six and over.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays. Also Dec. 13 at 2 p.m. Through Dec. 14.

WHERE: The Art Court Theatre at Sacramento City College, 3835 Freeport Blvd., Sacramento. Parking is available next to the theater on 12th Avenue.

COST: $15-$10.

INFORMATION: (916) 558-2228 or citytheatre.net.

Monday-Dec. 23

Free event

'Holiday Music at the Capitol'

WHAT: The California State Capitol Museum presents its annual noontime musical respite in the grand building's decorated rotunda.

WHEN: Noon-1 p.m. daily (except Dec. 9)

WHERE: State Capitol, 1303 10th St.

COST: Free

INFORMATION: (916) 324-0333, www.capitolmuseum.ca.gov

– Dixie Reid

Wednesday

Pop concert

Jingle Ball

WHAT: It's time for 107.9 The End's annual pop stocking-stuffer. This year's show is headlined by "American Idol" runner-up David Archuleta with Jesse McCartney, Katy Perry, Boys Like Girls and Shontelle.

WHEN: 6:45 p.m.

Where: Arco Arena, 1 Sports Parkway, Sacramento

COST: $29 and $39

INFORMATION: (916) 649-8947 or www.ticketmaster.com.

– Rachel Leibrock

Saturday and Dec. 13

Living history

'Christmas Memories'

WHAT: With period decor and costumed docents, the former home to 13 California governors and their families relives its glory holidays.

When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Where: Governor's Mansion State Historic Park, H and 16th streets

Cost: $5 general, $3 ages 6-17

Information: (916) 323-3047, www.parks.ca.gov/governorsmansion

– Dixie Reid

Saturday

Calistoga

'Lighted Tractor Parade'

WHAT: The Napa County town and its Chamber of Commerce host the 13th annual holiday event, with 50 vintage tractors, trucks and construction equipment on parade through downtown Calistoga.

WHEN: 6-8 p.m.

WHERE: Lincoln Avenue at Cedar Street, Calistoga

COST: Free

INFORMATION: (707) 942-6333, www.calistogavisitors.com

– Dixie Reid

Tracy Kidder has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and written books that have touched, changed, even saved countless lives.

But he admits he started writing in college not to change the world but to meet and impress girls.

"It sounds ridiculous when you think about it, but when you were 18, what was more important than that?"

In an interview from his home in western Massachusetts, Kidder recalled the creative writing class he took at Harvard "just for fun ... some of the stories were kind of lively and the teacher liked them, and so did some of the young women in the class."

This ploy to land a girlfriend "was a complete failure," he quips, then allows that ultimately "it may have helped."

Kidder, 63, comes to the Mondavi Center at the University of California, Davis, at 8 p.m. Monday to discuss "Mountains Beyond Mountains – The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World" (Random House, $15.95, 336 pages).

The book – which has sold about 750,000 copies – is the epic saga of how Farmer and others gave up comfort and security to battle HIV and tuberculosis in Haiti, Peru, Cuba and Russia.

It was chosen for the UC Davis Campus Community Book Project this year to inspire students "who are often discouraged from active service in the world," said Gary Sue Goodman, assistant director of the university writing program. "We really felt it was a fantastic example of how one dedicated, perseverant, intelligent, stubborn human being can take an enormous problem and make a difference in thousands of peoples' lives."

Kidder said Farmer's organization, Partners In Health, raises $30 million annually though private donations.

"They're quite confident they've got AIDS completely under control in the whole central plateau of Haiti," he said.

They've also taken the fight from a little AIDS project in Boston to Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Russia and Africa, Kidder said. "They have a very large project in Rwanda and fledging projects in Lesotho, Malawi and Burundi."

His next book, "Strength In What Remains," to be published in August, is "a story about escape from civil war and genocide" in Burundi and Rwanda, Kidder said. "It's also a story about recovery, finding one's way in the world. It's really a story about courage."

At the Mondavi, Kidder will speak on "The Problem of Goodness: The Story of Paul Farmer" and provide a list of student organizations that have formed around Partners In Health, "some of them quite remarkable."

He doesn't expect every student to try to become the next Paul Farmer, "who was already very well known in three disciplines – infectious diseases, epidemiology and medical anthropology – before I got there."

"It's a matter of doing what you can do," he said, "a matter of facing the grim realities of the world and not pretending they aren't there, which is so easy to do in many parts of the country, or it used to be."

Kidder didn't find instant writing success. After finishing Harvard he went to Vietnam in June 1968, which inspired his 2005 memoir, "My Detachment." He returned from Vietnam with a Bronze Star in 1969, studied writing at the University of Iowa and "wrote a lousy book about the Juan Corona case."

But he didn't quit.

"I have a wife who was able to keep us fed for a number of years while I was writing for Atlantic Monthly," he said. "I met her at a party in Boston – I was telling everybody I was a writer before I was."

Frances, his wife of 37 years, is a painter who "was teaching then. She has a habit of falling asleep when I read to her."

As the written word on paper gives way to cyberspace, "it's really hard to make it as a writer, but it's not impossible," Kidder said. "The first thing you have to do as a young writer is try to imagine the editor's problem at the magazine.

"What does the editor want from you, what does a magazine need and how can you persuade another person to make a bet on you?

"It's not charity, and it's going to take a while for people to recognize your genius."

It all starts with an idea. You have to find a subject that really interests you, Kidder said, "then you have to find time to do the story on 'spec'," which means write it first and try to sell it later.

And you "need to be really lucky," Kidder said. "I had enormous good luck in my 30s with 'The Soul of the New Machine.' It got a lot of attention, it won prizes, and it made money for the publisher, too."

Kidder said he also caught a break with the reviewer picked by the New York Times who "got the review on the cover" of the book review section.

Journalism is no longer the natural path to successful long-form nonfiction.

"This whole world of print journalism is in trouble – it irritates the hell out of me because there are still a large number of people who want to read things in print, millions and millions," he said. "It all seems driven by these idiots on Wall Street, and now we all know what idiots they have been.

"I dread such a society – the loss of paper," said Kidder, noting that many of the best magazines are propped up by wealthy individuals or foundations because they don't make money.

Young people still write to each other, even if it's text- messaging, he notes.

"There's not much care that goes into that sort of writing," he said. "I'm too old for most of the Internet. … I find myself getting utterly bored and peeved when I look at most stuff on the 'Net."

It's probably tougher to make it as a writer "than it has been in years and years," Kidder said. But writing courses "have a certain value, whether you're a writer or not. It's important to learn how to write because writing is a form of thinking, and people in power will always need someone to tell them what they think."

True writers of the future will have to overcome discouragement, he said.

"On the other hand, when you're in your early 20s you've got the luxury of some time and you can make some mistakes."

Call The Bee's Stephen Magagnini, (916) 321-1072.

David Archuleta, runner-up in this year's "American Idol" vote, headlines the Jingle Ball, coming to Arco Arena on Wednesday. JASON DECROW Associated Press

Today

Hip-hop show

Del tha Funkee Homosapien and DJ Q-Bert

WHAT: Native Oakland rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien brings his whimsical blend of smart and quirky hip-hop to the Empire. DJ Q-Bert, originally of San Francisco's Invisibl Skratch Piklz, shows off his master turntablist skills.

WHEN: 7 p.m.

WHERE: Empire Events Center, 1417 R St.

COST: $18

INFORMATION: www.groovetickets.com

– Rachel Leibrock

Today-Dec. 14

Theater

Snow White: A British Panto

WHAT: City Theatre at Sacramento City College presents an original adaptation by Christine Nicholson of a classic fairy tale called "Snow White: A British Panto." The production directed by Luther Hanson and starring Doug Lawson will be told in the English holiday panto style with lots of music, comedy, audience involvement and cross dressing. The show is recommended for children six and over.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays. Also Dec. 13 at 2 p.m. Through Dec. 14.

WHERE: The Art Court Theatre at Sacramento City College, 3835 Freeport Blvd., Sacramento. Parking is available next to the theater on 12th Avenue.

COST: $15-$10.

INFORMATION: (916) 558-2228 or citytheatre.net.

Monday-Dec. 23

Free event

'Holiday Music at the Capitol'

WHAT: The California State Capitol Museum presents its annual noontime musical respite in the grand building's decorated rotunda.

WHEN: Noon-1 p.m. daily (except Dec. 9)

WHERE: State Capitol, 1303 10th St.

COST: Free

INFORMATION: (916) 324-0333, www.capitolmuseum.ca.gov

– Dixie Reid

Wednesday

Pop concert

Jingle Ball

WHAT: It's time for 107.9 The End's annual pop stocking-stuffer. This year's show is headlined by "American Idol" runner-up David Archuleta with Jesse McCartney, Katy Perry, Boys Like Girls and Shontelle.

WHEN: 6:45 p.m.

Where: Arco Arena, 1 Sports Parkway, Sacramento

COST: $29 and $39

INFORMATION: (916) 649-8947 or www.ticketmaster.com.

– Rachel Leibrock

Saturday and Dec. 13

Living history

'Christmas Memories'

WHAT: With period decor and costumed docents, the former home to 13 California governors and their families relives its glory holidays.

When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Where: Governor's Mansion State Historic Park, H and 16th streets

Cost: $5 general, $3 ages 6-17

Information: (916) 323-3047, www.parks.ca.gov/governorsmansion

– Dixie Reid

Saturday

Calistoga

'Lighted Tractor Parade'

WHAT: The Napa County town and its Chamber of Commerce host the 13th annual holiday event, with 50 vintage tractors, trucks and construction equipment on parade through downtown Calistoga.

WHEN: 6-8 p.m.

WHERE: Lincoln Avenue at Cedar Street, Calistoga

COST: Free

INFORMATION: (707) 942-6333, www.calistogavisitors.com

– Dixie Reid

Tracy Kidder has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and written books that have touched, changed, even saved countless lives.

But he admits he started writing in college not to change the world but to meet and impress girls.

"It sounds ridiculous when you think about it, but when you were 18, what was more important than that?"

In an interview from his home in western Massachusetts, Kidder recalled the creative writing class he took at Harvard "just for fun ... some of the stories were kind of lively and the teacher liked them, and so did some of the young women in the class."

This ploy to land a girlfriend "was a complete failure," he quips, then allows that ultimately "it may have helped."

Kidder, 63, comes to the Mondavi Center at the University of California, Davis, at 8 p.m. Monday to discuss "Mountains Beyond Mountains – The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World" (Random House, $15.95, 336 pages).

The book – which has sold about 750,000 copies – is the epic saga of how Farmer and others gave up comfort and security to battle HIV and tuberculosis in Haiti, Peru, Cuba and Russia.

It was chosen for the UC Davis Campus Community Book Project this year to inspire students "who are often discouraged from active service in the world," said Gary Sue Goodman, assistant director of the university writing program. "We really felt it was a fantastic example of how one dedicated, perseverant, intelligent, stubborn human being can take an enormous problem and make a difference in thousands of peoples' lives."

Kidder said Farmer's organization, Partners In Health, raises $30 million annually though private donations.

"They're quite confident they've got AIDS completely under control in the whole central plateau of Haiti," he said.

They've also taken the fight from a little AIDS project in Boston to Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Russia and Africa, Kidder said. "They have a very large project in Rwanda and fledging projects in Lesotho, Malawi and Burundi."

His next book, "Strength In What Remains," to be published in August, is "a story about escape from civil war and genocide" in Burundi and Rwanda, Kidder said. "It's also a story about recovery, finding one's way in the world. It's really a story about courage."

At the Mondavi, Kidder will speak on "The Problem of Goodness: The Story of Paul Farmer" and provide a list of student organizations that have formed around Partners In Health, "some of them quite remarkable."

He doesn't expect every student to try to become the next Paul Farmer, "who was already very well known in three disciplines – infectious diseases, epidemiology and medical anthropology – before I got there."

"It's a matter of doing what you can do," he said, "a matter of facing the grim realities of the world and not pretending they aren't there, which is so easy to do in many parts of the country, or it used to be."

Kidder didn't find instant writing success. After finishing Harvard he went to Vietnam in June 1968, which inspired his 2005 memoir, "My Detachment." He returned from Vietnam with a Bronze Star in 1969, studied writing at the University of Iowa and "wrote a lousy book about the Juan Corona case."

But he didn't quit.

"I have a wife who was able to keep us fed for a number of years while I was writing for Atlantic Monthly," he said. "I met her at a party in Boston – I was telling everybody I was a writer before I was."

Frances, his wife of 37 years, is a painter who "was teaching then. She has a habit of falling asleep when I read to her."

As the written word on paper gives way to cyberspace, "it's really hard to make it as a writer, but it's not impossible," Kidder said. "The first thing you have to do as a young writer is try to imagine the editor's problem at the magazine.

"What does the editor want from you, what does a magazine need and how can you persuade another person to make a bet on you?

"It's not charity, and it's going to take a while for people to recognize your genius."

It all starts with an idea. You have to find a subject that really interests you, Kidder said, "then you have to find time to do the story on 'spec'," which means write it first and try to sell it later.

And you "need to be really lucky," Kidder said. "I had enormous good luck in my 30s with 'The Soul of the New Machine.' It got a lot of attention, it won prizes, and it made money for the publisher, too."

Kidder said he also caught a break with the reviewer picked by the New York Times who "got the review on the cover" of the book review section.

Journalism is no longer the natural path to successful long-form nonfiction.

"This whole world of print journalism is in trouble – it irritates the hell out of me because there are still a large number of people who want to read things in print, millions and millions," he said. "It all seems driven by these idiots on Wall Street, and now we all know what idiots they have been.

"I dread such a society – the loss of paper," said Kidder, noting that many of the best magazines are propped up by wealthy individuals or foundations because they don't make money.

Young people still write to each other, even if it's text- messaging, he notes.

"There's not much care that goes into that sort of writing," he said. "I'm too old for most of the Internet. … I find myself getting utterly bored and peeved when I look at most stuff on the 'Net."

It's probably tougher to make it as a writer "than it has been in years and years," Kidder said. But writing courses "have a certain value, whether you're a writer or not. It's important to learn how to write because writing is a form of thinking, and people in power will always need someone to tell them what they think."

True writers of the future will have to overcome discouragement, he said.

"On the other hand, when you're in your early 20s you've got the luxury of some time and you can make some mistakes."

Call The Bee's Stephen Magagnini, (916) 321-1072.

"The Virgin With the Sleeping Child" by Andrea Mantegna is part of the Legion of Honor show from the State Museums of Berlin.

San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum has a deal for you: two spectacular shows for the price of one. Each show offers the virtues of rarity and historical importance, and each includes objects of great beauty.

The first show – "The State Museums of Berlin and the Legacy of James Simon" – tells the story of a philanthropist and collector who gave magnificent objects, such as a bust of ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti and a 15th century painting of a Madonna and child by Andrea Mantegna, to nine German museums in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The second – "Leonardo da Vinci Drawings From the Biblioteca Reale in Turin" – presents one of the most sublime drawings of the human face done by the Renaissance master, as well as figure studies, equine images, drawings of insects and Leonardo's "Codex on the Flight of Birds."

The Berlin show features about 150 works, ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to 19th century France; the Leonardo, 11 drawings (but what drawings!) and the codex. While the shows are radically different in size, they are both of the highest quality, and they complement each other in that they offer archetypal images of feminine beauty.

While the famous painted bust of Nefertiti is too fragile to travel, a model from the studio of Tuthmosis gives us a glimpse of the queen's exquisite profile. A small silver point drawing of a woman's face that served as a model for the angel in Leonardo's extraordinary painting "The Madonna of the Rocks" is incomparable in its perfection.

There's an interesting back story to the Berlin show. In 2006, Bay Area residents Tim and Ann Simon visited Berlin on a family trip. Tim Simon introduced himself to the directors of the Berlin museums as a descendant of Eduard and James Simon, who were wealthy businessmen in late 19th century Berlin.

Eduard and James, who made their fortunes as cotton purveyors, gave one-third of their sizable annual income to charity, supporting both social causes and the museums of their city. In all, they gave about 20,000 objects to the State Museums of Berlin, among them important ancient artifacts from excavations that James supported in Egypt and Babylon.

Thanks to James Simon, the Berlin Egyptian museum has one of the world's richest collections of ancient Egyptian art from Tell el Amarna, and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin has a world-famous reconstruction of the Babylonian Ishtar Gate and its processional way. In addition to the model for the bust of Nefertiti, the Legion of Honor show includes clay brick fragments assembled into the form of lions that led the way to the Ishtar gate.

Other rare ancient objects on view include a cuneiform tablet with passages from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and delicate wood, stone and bronze figures from Egypt and Mesopotamia, among them an image of Queen Tiye, the mother of Akhnaton, and the head of a bull from Ur.

James Simon also supported excavations in Central Asia that recovered rare items from the northern part of the Silk Road, the subject of the Asian Art Museum's current show of treasures from Afghanistan. Here you will find a holy stupa of red sandstone and a wooden statue of an 11-headed Bodhisattva of Compassion. The Central Asian works give way to a series of Ukiyo-e Japanese prints from Simon's Far Eastern collection, most of which was lost in World War II.

The Mantegna "Virgin With Sleeping Child" is the highlight of the old-master works in the show, although Luca Giordan's "Saint Michael Slaying the Devil" and Bernardo Strozzi's "Salome With the Head of Saint John the Baptist" are flashier pieces from the baroque period. An interesting sidelight of the exhibit is a group of European folk-art objects and a model of a Frisian farmhouse of a type that has all but disappeared.

The most recent objects in the show are the least interesting, including a not-so-hot Renoir painting of a young lady and a Courbet landscape, both 19th century French. More interesting is a small and typically romantic night scene by German artist Caspar David Friedrich.

James Simon, who was a patriotic German as well as a Jew, died in 1932, a year before Adolf Hitler came to power. But his legacy lives on in the remarkable pieces he gave to Berlin before the Nazis came to power.

Think Leonardo

The Leonardo exhibition may be small, but the works in it are exceedingly rare and invite sustained contemplation. They ask you to be as attentive as Leonardo was to the human physiognomy, the workings of the body, and the miracles of animal, avian and insect nature. Installed in a small gallery on the main floor of the museum in dramatic low lighting, they draw you in with their intimate scale, and the delicacy and refinement of Leonardo's distinctive left-handed hatching.

In addition to the exquisite "Study of a Young Woman's Face (Angel for the Virgin of the Rocks)," the exhibition includes wonderful studies of a bearded man (perhaps Cesare Borgia) and the profile of a man crowned with laurel. A series of drawings of human and horse anatomy demonstrate Leonardo's scientific curiosity, as do a drawing examining the proportions of the head and small drawings of a beetle and a dragonfly.

The "Codex on the Flight of Birds" is amazing not only for the depth and breadth of Leonardo's investigations into the possibility of human flight but for its elegant mirror writing, so tiny that the small book contains myriad mysteries. Also fascinating are the way images of a face and eye appear subliminally on a drawing of screw mechanisms and the face of the angel materializes ghostlike on a drawing of a knot. These two-sided drawings offer double the pleasure, as they are mounted in such a way that you can see both sides.

The State Museums of Berlin and the Legacy of James Simon

WHEN: Through Jan. 18.

Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings From the Biblioteca Reale in Turin

WHEN: Through Jan. 4.

WHERE: Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, 34th Avenue and Clement Street, San Francisco.

HOURS: 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Tuesday - Sunday; closed Monday.

ADMISSION: $20 general, $17 seniors, $16 ages 13-17 and students with college ID, free for members and ages 12 and under. Prices include a $10 special exhibition surcharge; admission for the permanent collection only is $10. General admission is free the first Tuesday of every month (the $10 surcharge still applies for entry to special exhibitions).

INFORMATION: (415) 750-3600, www.legionofhonor.org

Among the Leonardo da Vinci works in the Legion of Honor show is this drawing of a young woman's face, a study for the painting "Virgin of the Rocks."
A model for the bust of Nefertiti from the studio of Tuthmosis is included in the "State Museums of Berlin" exhibit.

"The Virgin With the Sleeping Child" by Andrea Mantegna is part of the Legion of Honor show from the State Museums of Berlin.

San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum has a deal for you: two spectacular shows for the price of one. Each show offers the virtues of rarity and historical importance, and each includes objects of great beauty.

The first show – "The State Museums of Berlin and the Legacy of James Simon" – tells the story of a philanthropist and collector who gave magnificent objects, such as a bust of ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti and a 15th century painting of a Madonna and child by Andrea Mantegna, to nine German museums in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The second – "Leonardo da Vinci Drawings From the Biblioteca Reale in Turin" – presents one of the most sublime drawings of the human face done by the Renaissance master, as well as figure studies, equine images, drawings of insects and Leonardo's "Codex on the Flight of Birds."

The Berlin show features about 150 works, ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to 19th century France; the Leonardo, 11 drawings (but what drawings!) and the codex. While the shows are radically different in size, they are both of the highest quality, and they complement each other in that they offer archetypal images of feminine beauty.

While the famous painted bust of Nefertiti is too fragile to travel, a model from the studio of Tuthmosis gives us a glimpse of the queen's exquisite profile. A small silver point drawing of a woman's face that served as a model for the angel in Leonardo's extraordinary painting "The Madonna of the Rocks" is incomparable in its perfection.

There's an interesting back story to the Berlin show. In 2006, Bay Area residents Tim and Ann Simon visited Berlin on a family trip. Tim Simon introduced himself to the directors of the Berlin museums as a descendant of Eduard and James Simon, who were wealthy businessmen in late 19th century Berlin.

Eduard and James, who made their fortunes as cotton purveyors, gave one-third of their sizable annual income to charity, supporting both social causes and the museums of their city. In all, they gave about 20,000 objects to the State Museums of Berlin, among them important ancient artifacts from excavations that James supported in Egypt and Babylon.

Thanks to James Simon, the Berlin Egyptian museum has one of the world's richest collections of ancient Egyptian art from Tell el Amarna, and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin has a world-famous reconstruction of the Babylonian Ishtar Gate and its processional way. In addition to the model for the bust of Nefertiti, the Legion of Honor show includes clay brick fragments assembled into the form of lions that led the way to the Ishtar gate.

Other rare ancient objects on view include a cuneiform tablet with passages from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and delicate wood, stone and bronze figures from Egypt and Mesopotamia, among them an image of Queen Tiye, the mother of Akhnaton, and the head of a bull from Ur.

James Simon also supported excavations in Central Asia that recovered rare items from the northern part of the Silk Road, the subject of the Asian Art Museum's current show of treasures from Afghanistan. Here you will find a holy stupa of red sandstone and a wooden statue of an 11-headed Bodhisattva of Compassion. The Central Asian works give way to a series of Ukiyo-e Japanese prints from Simon's Far Eastern collection, most of which was lost in World War II.

The Mantegna "Virgin With Sleeping Child" is the highlight of the old-master works in the show, although Luca Giordan's "Saint Michael Slaying the Devil" and Bernardo Strozzi's "Salome With the Head of Saint John the Baptist" are flashier pieces from the baroque period. An interesting sidelight of the exhibit is a group of European folk-art objects and a model of a Frisian farmhouse of a type that has all but disappeared.

The most recent objects in the show are the least interesting, including a not-so-hot Renoir painting of a young lady and a Courbet landscape, both 19th century French. More interesting is a small and typically romantic night scene by German artist Caspar David Friedrich.

James Simon, who was a patriotic German as well as a Jew, died in 1932, a year before Adolf Hitler came to power. But his legacy lives on in the remarkable pieces he gave to Berlin before the Nazis came to power.

Think Leonardo

The Leonardo exhibition may be small, but the works in it are exceedingly rare and invite sustained contemplation. They ask you to be as attentive as Leonardo was to the human physiognomy, the workings of the body, and the miracles of animal, avian and insect nature. Installed in a small gallery on the main floor of the museum in dramatic low lighting, they draw you in with their intimate scale, and the delicacy and refinement of Leonardo's distinctive left-handed hatching.

In addition to the exquisite "Study of a Young Woman's Face (Angel for the Virgin of the Rocks)," the exhibition includes wonderful studies of a bearded man (perhaps Cesare Borgia) and the profile of a man crowned with laurel. A series of drawings of human and horse anatomy demonstrate Leonardo's scientific curiosity, as do a drawing examining the proportions of the head and small drawings of a beetle and a dragonfly.

The "Codex on the Flight of Birds" is amazing not only for the depth and breadth of Leonardo's investigations into the possibility of human flight but for its elegant mirror writing, so tiny that the small book contains myriad mysteries. Also fascinating are the way images of a face and eye appear subliminally on a drawing of screw mechanisms and the face of the angel materializes ghostlike on a drawing of a knot. These two-sided drawings offer double the pleasure, as they are mounted in such a way that you can see both sides.

The State Museums of Berlin and the Legacy of James Simon

WHEN: Through Jan. 18.

Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings From the Biblioteca Reale in Turin

WHEN: Through Jan. 4.

WHERE: Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, 34th Avenue and Clement Street, San Francisco.

HOURS: 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Tuesday - Sunday; closed Monday.

ADMISSION: $20 general, $17 seniors, $16 ages 13-17 and students with college ID, free for members and ages 12 and under. Prices include a $10 special exhibition surcharge; admission for the permanent collection only is $10. General admission is free the first Tuesday of every month (the $10 surcharge still applies for entry to special exhibitions).

INFORMATION: (415) 750-3600, www.legionofhonor.org

Among the Leonardo da Vinci works in the Legion of Honor show is this drawing of a young woman's face, a study for the painting "Virgin of the Rocks."
A model for the bust of Nefertiti from the studio of Tuthmosis is included in the "State Museums of Berlin" exhibit.

A crowd gathers on a rainy Wednesday in front of the construction site for the Crocker Art Museum expansion project in downtown Sacramento. The 125,000-square foot project will triple the size of the museum and is expected to be finished in 2010.

More than a year of construction and fundraising remain, but the crowd cheered Wednesday as a giant crane placed a beam on the exoskeleton of the Crocker Art Museum's 125,000-square-foot expansion. Signed by city officials, construction workers and donors, the long white steel beam completes the framing for the new building. The project is on track for completion in 2010.

Mike Dunlavey, left, a member of the Crocker Art Museum board, celebrates Wednesday with Mort and Marcy Friedman, major donors for the museum expansion project.

A crowd gathers on a rainy Wednesday in front of the construction site for the Crocker Art Museum expansion project in downtown Sacramento. The 125,000-square foot project will triple the size of the museum and is expected to be finished in 2010.

More than a year of construction and fundraising remain, but the crowd cheered Wednesday as a giant crane placed a beam on the exoskeleton of the Crocker Art Museum's 125,000-square-foot expansion. Signed by city officials, construction workers and donors, the long white steel beam completes the framing for the new building. The project is on track for completion in 2010.

Mike Dunlavey, left, a member of the Crocker Art Museum board, celebrates Wednesday with Mort and Marcy Friedman, major donors for the museum expansion project.

Steel work is hoisted onto the expansion of the Crocker Art Museum, November 26, 2008. The expansion is due to be completed in 2010.

There are still 14 months of construction and fundraising ahead, but the crowd cheered as a giant crane placed a beam on the exoskeleton of the the Crocker Art Museum's new 125,000-square-foot building.

It was, of course, no ordinary beam.

Signed by hundreds of city officials, construction workers and museum members and donors, the placement of the long white piece of heavy steel marks the completion of the building's frame and signals that the project is on track for its scheduled 2010 finish.

"This is a milestone," said museum director Lial Jones. "The superstructure is up, and I'm very excited."

There's still a long road ahead, however. Before completion, the Crocker needs to raise at least $10 million to reach its $100 million goal. The Crocker has raised $90 million from four public entities and 260 individuals and foundations.

Today's ceremony, Jones said, also marks the launching of a new citywide campaign to solicit donations big and small.

"This is a civic building, and we want as much civic participation as possible -- this is everyone's museum," Jones said.

The addition triples Crocker's existing space. The building will house a cafe and auditorium, make space for bigger exhibitions and give the museum the opportunity to display up to 20 percent of its permanent collection -- up from the current 4 percent.

Judy Payne is ready to do her part. The Rancho Murieta resident braved rain to come out and add her name to the beam -- as well as the names of her children.

Payne said she is not sure how much she'll donate but is happy to become a part of the city's future.

"This is a step that says Sacramento is here on the map," Payne said.

"This is the last big key to (Sacramento) becoming a major city."

For Roger Berry, the simple beam represented the near-culmination of a dream. Berry, former president of the Crocker Art Museum Association, helped direct the museum's ongoing expansion plans until he left the museum in 2003.

"This has exceeded my vision," he said. "For Sacramento, this means (the Crocker) is finally being recognized as a treasure."

The museum remains open during construction and currently is hosting "The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons" through Jan. 18.

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