Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

--The Weinstein Co. acquires the film rights to Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play, "August: Osage County."

--The Nederlands Dans Theater I cancels its planned performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, another victim of economic woes.

--An artistic director's contribution to Proposition 8 leads artists, including "Hairspray's" Marc Shaiman, to call for a boycott of Sacramento's California Musical Theatre.

--Golly, Beav, who knew that the actor who played Wally on "Leave It to Beaver" was an artist?  One of Tony Dow's abstract sculptures will be on display at the Louvre.

--Debate emerges in San Francisco over architect Cesar Pelli's plan for greenest commercial building on the West Coast.

--Whoops! Curators of the Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern in London have displayed two of the artist's most famous works on their side.

--The city of Milwaukee is sued for closing down a production of the revue show "Naked Boys Singing."

--After $3-million restoration, Emperor Qianlong's retirement studio in China may open to the public.

--Artist Tracey Emin delivers a petition signed by Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley, David Hockney and 37 other artists to 10 Downing Street, urging the prime minister to raise money to keep two Titian paintings in Britain.

--"Loot," Sharon Waxman's book about museums and stolen antiquities, spends a thousand words charting torrid affairs among Getty Museum staffers that, she writes, "were not directly tied to the problems the Getty would later face over stolen antiquities."

--Cooper Union has removed a giant banner with a reproduction of a Picasso rendering of Joseph Stalin, part of an art show. The artist promptly closed the show.

--Lisa Fung

Photo: "August: Osage County."  Credit: Ari Mintz / Newsday

Comments

[Eric]

Sorry to rain on Tony Dow's parade, but he's not up there with Leonardo quite yet. His sculpture is in fact part of a commercial exhibition that will be held not at the Louvre, but at the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall adjacent to the Louvre that also houses a Virgin Megastore, a branch of Sephora and a Tie Rack. There are often such exhibitions there, as well as fashion shows, bridal shows and the like. By the way, why doesn't the AP -- or the LAT -- ever check stories like this before they run them??