Monster Mash: Jeffrey Deitch on MOCA’s mural controversy, an improved Leaning Tower of Pisa

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Controversial: Jeffrey Deitch responds to criticism over a public mural that was commissioned by Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art and that was painted over before completion. (Los Angeles Times)

Standing taller: The Leaning Tower of Pisa has undergone a restoration process in which it was cleaned and partially straightened. (The Telegraph)

Ultimatum: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts vows to pull funding from the Smithsonian Institution if a censored piece of art isn’t restored. The Smithsonian shows no signs of reversing its decision. (Los Angeles Times and New York Times)

Award winner: Robert A.M. Stern was honored Monday as the recipient of the 2011 Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. (The Wall Street Journal)

Mega-production: A look into the economics behind Broadway’s ‘Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.’ (New York Times)

Windfall: Philadelphia collector, artist and philanthropist Linda Lee Alter has donated about 400 works from her collection to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Honored: Filmmaker and artist Guy Maddin has received this year’s $10,000 Bell Award for video art from the Canada Council for the Arts. (Winnipeg Free Press)

Holiday gloom: The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has canceled more performances as its musicians’ strike drags on. (Detroit Free Press)

Also in the L.A. Times: Theater critic Charles McNulty reviews a revival of Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ starring Helen Hunt, at the Kirk Douglas Theatre; architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne on the collapse of the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

-- David Ng