The crime novelist Kinky Friedman, in his parallel career as a musician, sometimes performs with an act called the Texas Jewboys. Friedman plays it for laughs, but a pair of current museum exhibits take a more serious look at the subject of Jews across America. Jewish Life in the American West: Generation to Generation will be at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, in Los Angeles ( www.autry-museum.org ), from June 21 through January 30, 2003, before traveling to other parts of the country. The exhibit traces the role of Jews in exploring, settling, and developing the West from the earliest Spanish expeditions to the end of unrestricted immigration in the 1920s. ”… A Portion of the People”: Three Hundred Years of Jewish Life in South Carolina includes such notables as Francis Salvador, the first Jew to die in the Revolution, and the financier/statesman/philanthropist Bernard Baruch, along with many other aspects of the journey from ghetto to Palmetto. After finishing its run at the McKissick Museum in Columbia, South Carolina, in May, it will open at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, in September and then travel to New York City and Charlotte, North Carolina. For information see www.cla.sc.edu/mcks .