Dudamel, globe-trotting arts collectors, a look at Africa and more ...

We've got Gustavo Dudamel, the Venezuelan who will take over the Los Angeles Philharmonic next year, bringing youth and experience, exuberance and gravitas, along with an affinity for pop culture. It's just a few of the highlights in today's Arts & Books section of the Sunday Los Angeles Times. Here are some others:

• Miami is home to the globe-trotting Rubells, who are on ARTnews magazine's international list of the top 200 collectors. "Here" is Palm Springs, where they traveled for a special occasion — the launching of a relationship between the Florida-based collection and the Palm Springs Art Museum with the recently opened exhibition, “Against All Odds: Keith Haring in the Rubell Family Collection.”
• If anyone has seen way too much of these choreographed mega-costumes, it would be Stephen Daldry, the British director behind both the popular movie and the hit musical that's finally made its way to Broadway: "Billy Eliott: The Musical."
• Photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have devoted 30 years and 12 books to the traditions, culture and people of Africa — a faraway land that they have brought closer to home by teaming with the Bowers Museum for the exhibit "Passages," currently on display.
• In the poor Venezuelan hillside neighborhood of Chapellín and at nearly 250 other locales in that country, thousands of young Venezuelans are learning to play classical music and to make art a permanent cornerstone of their lives. They're the latest recruits of El Sistema, or the System, a 34-year-old program that many regard as a model not only for music instruction but for helping children develop into productive, responsible citizens. Without a doubt, El Sistema's most illustrious graduate is Dudamel, the 27-year-old conductor who next September will take over as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Check out the video and photo gallery.

— Rene Lynch

Photo credit: Bebeto Matthews / Associated Press