Monster Mash: Whitney Museum plans a new home; Tony presenters named; more troubles at Cincinnati Opera

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--Room to grow: The board of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has approved a plan to build a six-story Renzo Piano-designed building downtown. The Whitney also says it is in talks to lease its current home on the Upper East Side to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Wall Street Journal)

--Name-dropping: The presenters at the 64th annual Tony Awards will include Broadway and Hollywood stars such as Antonio Banderas, Cate Blanchett, Michael Douglas, Kelsey Grammer, Scarlett Johansson, Lea Michele, Helen Mirren, Matthew Morrison, Bernadette Peters, David Hyde Pierce, Liev Schreiber, Denzel Washington and Raquel Welch. (Playbill)

--Bluegrass visit: Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in what may seem an unlikely locale -- Kentucky horse country -- as part of the Fortnight Festival that accompanies the World Equestrian Games in September. (Lexington Herald-Leader)

--Departures: Three more singers have left Cincinnati Opera’s June production of Wagner’s ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.’ The centerpiece of the company’s 90th-anniversary season already has lost conductor James Levine and two of its stars. (Cincinnati Enquirer)

--Riding the wave: The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2010 Next Wave Festival will include the American premiere of Laurie Anderson’s ‘Delusion,’ a New Orleans tribute from ‘Treme’s’ Trombone Shorty and a song-cycle from ‘Passing Strange’s’ Stew and his band, the Negro Problem. (Village Voice)

--Stories to tell: Stage and screen director Baz Luhrmann has opened a multimedia installation in Hong Kong that he says explores the narrative potential of paintings. (Associated Press)

--Cutbacks: The Art Institute of Chicago has laid off about 65 people, the second round of staff reductions since June 2009, when 22 employees were let go. (Chicago Tribune)

--World Cup singer dies: South African tenor Siphiwo Ntshebe, who had been chosen by Nelson Mandela to perform at the World Cup opening ceremony in Johannesburg in June, has died of meningitis. He was 34. (BBC News)

--German soprano: Opera singer Anneliese Rothenberger, who sang at La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, has died at 83 in Switzerland. (AFP)

--And in the Los Angeles Times: After reading reviews of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s national tour, media columnist James Rainey wonders if some Gustavo Dudamel naysayers are showing their East Coast bias; an exhibition at the California African American Museum pays tribute to the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

-- Karen Wada