Monster Mash: Breaking arts news and headlines

• A European billionaire is planning to build a museum in Las Vegas that would house his contemporary art collection. The proposed  23,000-square-foot Las Vegas Museum of Contemporary Art is competing for a 40-year-old brick building in the city's downtown area.

• An artwork portraying a commuter falling in front of a train has been rejected by U.K. railway officials as inappropriate for display at a prominent London station.

• The U.K. art  market is nervously eyeing the global credit crisis as Frieze, London's largest art fair, kicks off this week. Meanwhile, German management consultant Roland Berger predicts wealthy buyers from Russia, India and China will help save the art market from the current financial turmoil.

• The Stirling Prize for architecture was awarded over the weekend to the Accordia housing project in Cambridge, England, beating out designs by prominent architects such as Zaha Hadid. The surprise winner is a series of low-rise houses built by three architecture and design firms: Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Alison Brooks Architects and Macreanor Lavington. 

• Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is implementing a series of cost-cutting measures that it hopes will add up to large savings.

• Echoing warnings by concerned mothers around the world, a European Union study has found that portable music devices can threaten permanent hearing loss in moderate to avid users.

• The Denver Center for the Performing Arts has slashed $1 million in spending for the current fiscal year in response to the weakening global financial market. The cuts will come from energy-efficiency initiatives as well as cuts in infrastructure and advertising.

— David Ng

Photo credit: Jacob Kepler / Bloomberg News