Art museums don’t typically do NPR-style membership drives… until now. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has launched a campaign to add 10,000 new members in 10 weeks. The museum has created a snazzy website and it’s offering prizes, a sweepstakes and a tell-a-friend-via-Twitter-and-Facebook campaign. It’s promoting gift membership with special prizes. The campaign even features horror-flick director Wes Craven (left) asking, “Where else can you feed both body and soul in one place?” (Actually, I prefer the food at the Getty, but…)

The campaign is LACMA’s attempt to build on a strength: According to the 2009 Association of Art Museum Directors survey, LACMA had about 62,000 members, good for seventh among American art museums. (Ahead of LACMA, in order: The Met, MoMA, FAMSF, AIC, MFAB and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.) If the campaign is successful, it will raise a minimum of $500,000 in Year One, more if people give above the lowest possible level.

• Speaking of LACMA, here’s a neat Unframed post about the different stuff on which painters paint. I’ve always had a soft spot for Dutch paintings on copper, such as these paired Gerard ter Borch portraits at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
• The second-most popular artist at the Louvre is… really?!
• Greg Allen chronicles all of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountains — and takes a(nother) swing at Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik.
• MoMA looks at its own signs.
• Finally, MAN has a new RSS feed. Subscribe!