Arts News Headlines

HOUSTON (AP) — A man accused of vandalizing a 1929 Pablo Picasso painting in a Houston museum — an act that was caught on cellphone video — agreed Tuesday to a two-year prison term as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Muppets are getting a new home in a Queens museum with a permanent exhibit the city hopes will persuade more tourists to venture beyond Manhattan.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Muppets may have taken Manhattan, but they're getting a spiffy new home in Queens.

NEW YORK (AP) — In one photo, a woman is on all fours, presumably picking something up, her posterior pressed against a glass window. Another photo shows a couple in bathrobes, their feet touching beneath a table. And there is one of a man, in jeans and a T-shirt, lying on his side as he takes a nap.

BOSTON (AP) — Andris (AHN'-driss) Nelsons has been named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

By Chris Michaud NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 1968 oil painting by German artist Gerhard Richter sold for some $37 million at Sotheby's contemporary art auction on Tuesday, a new record for a work by a living artist. The sale took in $293,587,000, at the low end of the pre-sale estimate of $284 million to $383 million, with 83 …

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romanian artist Vasile Muresan, known as Murivale, thinks art belongs on the street. The white-bearded painter can often be seen sitting on the colorful canvases that he displays in the street, while he is followed by the street dogs who are his companions and also inspire his work.

By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - For most people, the relationship between contemporary art and the Vatican - home of some of the world's greatest old masterpieces - is like oil and water - they just don't mix. The Vatican's "culture minister," Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, wants to change that perception and so …

NEW YORK (AP) — Fashion takes a back seat to nothing — not even seriously chilly weather — at New York's fanciest dance gala.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An associate choreographer who worked on Michael Jackson's planned comeback concerts testified Monday that she didn't see any signs that the pop superstar was ill or might die in the final days of his life.

NEW YORK (AP) — The revival of Robert Lepage's staging of Wagner's Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera ended with another hitch.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Michael Jackson's longtime makeup artist testified Thursday that she overhead an executive for concert promoter AEG Live insist that the singer rehearse despite signs of Jackson's declining health.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Michael Jackson's longtime makeup artist tearfully described to jurors on Thursday the singer's struggles with back pain and insomnia after suffering injuries during his career.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A makeup artist who worked with Michael Jackson for nearly 30 years says the singer struggled with sleep and required a doctor's care to deal with pain while touring.

By Michelle Martin BERLIN (Reuters) - A Nazi-themed staging of a Wagner opera in Germany that caused some members of the audience to become sick with its scenes of murder and a gas chamber has been withdrawn, the opera company said on its website. After failing to get the director to agree to changes, the Deutsche Oper …

NEW YORK (AP) — There's been plenty of chatter on Broadway these days about how the revival of the musical "Pippin" has brilliantly combined circus elements. At New York City Center, it's nice to be reminded that such mashups aren't all that new.

Neil Patrick Harris to return as Tony Award host for fourth time        

BERLIN (AP) — A modern version of Richard Wagner's "Tannhauser" has been canceled in Germany after the opening-night audience complained about new scenes showing Jews being executed and dying in the gas chambers.

BERLIN (AP) — A modern production of Richard Wagner's opera "Tannhauser" is causing a stir in Germany because of Nazi-themed scenes showing people dying in gas chambers and members of a family having their heads shaved before being executed.

By Patricia Reaney NEW YORK (Reuters) - With their black leather, studded jackets, ripped jeans, bondage trousers and messages of rebellion and anarchy, punks from the 1970s probably never envisioned that a major museum would be celebrating their influence on fashion 40 years later. But the Costume Institute of The Metropolitan …

STOCKHOLM (AP) — ABBA wants to be remembered for more than just catchy hits.

One of the most harrowing final scenes in all of opera is the ending of Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites," when the nuns condemned by the French Revolution walk one by one to the scaffold, singing a gradually thinning chorus punctuated by the slashing sounds of a guillotine.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has said she wants to be called just "Sonia from the Bronx."