LOS ANGELES—Museums find unique ways to entice the public into their halls. Every summer, the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California, tries to lure them outside.

Only for the night, that is, for its "Murals Under the Stars" series of public multimedia lectures hosted by the museum in its parking lot, the Los Angeles Times reports today. Using three projectors, the works of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and David Alfaro Siqueiros will each be beamed onto the museum's wall this month.

"On a balmy summer night, the event feels more like a relaxed festival than a stuffy art talk, the parking lot turned into an impromptu auditorium with 600 folding chairs," writes Augustin Garza in the Times.

"Before the presentation, visitors sip wine or coffee and stroll through the museum's gift shop and galleries. When darkness falls, the show starts, like a drive-in movie. It can be seen from homes along the perimeter of the property, where children are heard playing in the background," he notes.

The museum's director, Gregorio Luke, said the idea came from his time as a cultural attache at the Mexican Embassy in Washington DC. After a show of Robert Mapplethorpe's work at the Corcoran Gallery was canceled because it was controversial, protestors projected images on the museum's façade in retaliation, Garza writes.

"It's very important to reintroduce art into everyday life," Luke said. "I would very much like to bring lectures like these to the broadest public possible. People are moved emotionally with these works."