Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

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-- Christopher Knight reports that the Museum of Contemporary Art board is prepared to formally approach the Los Angeles County Museum of Art about a merger, which will effectively mean a transfer of MOCA’s collection to the county’s art complex.

-- Philanthropist Eli Broad reveals details of a planned new Broad Art Foundation headquarters in Beverly Hills that would be about half as large as the $56 million Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

-- New York theater and dance critic Clive Barnes died Wednesday at age 81. Marquees at Broadway theaters will be dimmed for one minute at 8 p.m. tonight in his honor.

-- Another loss to the arts: it has been disclosed that Marion Scott, choreographer, dancer and teacher who served as resident choreographer of of UCLA’s dance company, died in October at age 86.

-- ‘America’ (above), a mural by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, was sold Tuesday for $6.8 million at an auction of Latin American art.

-- The revival of David Mamet’s ‘American Buffalo,’ which opened Monday on Broadway at the Belasco theater, is likely to close Nov. 23 if the box office does not drastically improve. Another Mamet revival, ‘Speed-the-Plow,’ is currently playing at the Barrymore Theatre. Read our theater critic Charles McNulty’s reviews of both.

-- The National Book Award nominees were announced this morning in Chicago. A full report can be found on our book news blog, Jacket Copy.

-- Katharina Wagner, co-director of the Bayreuth Festival and great-granddaughter of composer Richard Wagner, was uninjured in a car accident on the German autobahn that occurred when the driver died of a heart attack at the wheel.

-- Excavations near Jerusalem support the view that the site is the mausoleum of King Herod the Great, says the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

-- The Eugene Symphony of Oregon has appointed 38-year-old-Bulgarian Danail Rachev to succeed Giancarlo Guerrero as music director. And in other conductor news, Jane M. Gullong, former executive director of New York City Opera, has been appointed president of the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

-- Washington, D.C.’s, National Museum of American History reopens tomorrow after an $85 million overhaul.

-- Diane Haithman