Monster Mash: Meryl Streep among arts honorees; new Geffen season includes LaBute, Letts

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-- Academy’s awards: Actress Meryl Streep and conductor James Levine have been elected honorary members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Those inducted into the main body include composers Tania Leon and Fred Lerdahl, architect Thom Mayne, painters Thomas Nozkowski and Peter Saul and authors Marilynne Robinson, Francine Prose, Thomas McGuane and Richard Powers. (Associated Press)

-- Marquee names: The Geffen Playhouse’s 2010-11 season will feature works by Jane Anderson, Neil LaBute, Tracy Letts and Lynn Nottage. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Family fight: A handful of longtime board members of New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, including its biggest benefactor, is opposing a plan to expand the museum to a second building. (New York Times)

-- Height of elegance: A new exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London showcases Grace Kelly the actress, bride, princess and, notably, style icon. (Daily Telegraph)

-- Fresh start: After two years of renovations, the Oakland Museum of California will reopen as an interactive art-history center whose curators aren’t afraid to mix it up a little. (San Francisco Chronicle)

-- Answers, please: Several of the United Kingdom’s leading theater organizations have devised a new way to measure how well a production works. (Hint: Think audience questionnaire.) (Guardian)

-- Designing woman: Dixie Carter was best known as TV’s feisty Julia Sugarbaker, but the actress-singer, who has died at age 70, also was a veteran of New York and regional theater. (Broadway.com)

-- Final farewell: A crowd of about 1,500, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, attended a memorial service for Wolfgang Wagner, the grandson of Richard Wagner and longtime director of the Bayreuth opera festival dedicated to his grandfather’s works. (Associated Press)

Also in the L.A. Times: ‘Glee’ heartthrob Matthew Morrison has a decade of Broadway experience under his belt; music critic Mark Swed reviews Franz Schreker’s ‘The Stigmatized’ at Los Angeles Opera; many comic-book superheroes trace their roots to Wagner’s ‘Ring.’

-- Karen Wada