Monster Mash: Revised ‘Spider-Man’ meets first Broadway audience; Elizabeth Taylor portrait sells

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Back in business: The revised “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” resumed preview performances Thursday with some minor glitches. (Wall Street Journal)

Sold: A portrait of actress Elizabeth Taylor by Andy Warhol brought in nearly $27 million at an auction on Thursday. (CNN)

Hardliner: A senior Chinese diplomat has defended his government’s imprisonment of artist Ai Weiwei. (Reuters)

Frivolous?: A Republican congressman has questioned the National Endowment for the Arts over grants to mimes and an accordion festival. (Washington Post)

Musical hit: Many of the songs in Broadway’s “The Book of Mormon” are too racy to perform on network television during the Tony Awards. Meanwhile, producers of the show said the national tour will start in December 2012 in Denver. (New York Post and Broadway.com)

Settlement: The Leopold Museum in Austria has agreed to pay $5 million to the descendant of a Jewish silk-factory owner to keep in its collection a painting by Egon Schiele that was stolen by the Nazis. (Bloomberg)

Dropping out: Two singers have withdrawn from the Metropolitan Opera’s summer tour in Japan. (New York Times)

Growing up: The Los Angeles Ballet celebrates its fifth anniversary with “Giselle.” (Los Angeles Times)

Moving in: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will display contemporary works in a location it recently acquired from the Whitney Museum of Art. (NY1)

Also in the L.A. Times: UCLA Live, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Dance at the Music Center have announced lineups for their new seasons.

-- David Ng