Weekend Monster Mash: Breaking arts news and headlines

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-- A Basque investigation of museum records has found that former Guggenheim Foundation chief Thomas Krens overpaid for artwork for the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

-- Mary L. Levkoff, curator of European sculpture and classical antiquities at LACMA, has been named curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., effective February 2009.

-- Female playwrights in New York plan to gather Monday to discuss inequities in play production. The glass ceiling is an issue in the L.A. area too.

--A ‘lost’ Louis Sullivan-designed, cast-iron storefront, complete with the architect’s renowned nature-inspired ornament, is found in Chicago.

--A controversial new documentary about Cindy Sherman is slated to screen at this year’s Ojai Film Festival.

--Director Steven Soderbergh wants to make a 3-D rock musical about Cleopatra that he hopes will star Catherine Zeta-Jones and Hugh Jackman.

--’Atonement’ author Ian McEwan’s first opera, ‘For You,’ which he has co-written with composer Michael Berkeley, opens Tuesday at the Royal Opera House in London.

--With box-office grosses of about $1 billion in the U.S. for ‘Wicked,’ producers are boldly claiming that the 5-year-old blockbuster musical is one of Universal’s most profitible properties.

--Peter Sellars has revealed wild plans for his staging of Stravinsky’s ‘Oedipus Rex’ for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in April 2009.

--’Soul of Shaolin,’ featuring martial arts, dance and acrobatics, will play a limited engagement on Broadway in January, marking the first time a production from the People’s Republic of China has appeared on the Great White Way.

--Lisa Fung