ART hotline

sees ANGELES

* upon the drawing board at MGM is a production to star Michael Douglas playing Brit John Drewe, a brilliant consider minutely man who during the Reagan years enticed a talented forger, John Myatt, to crank without fakes in the styles of Impressionists and present Masters. Drewe was a master himself in creating provenances for the newly minted works, which he then sold to members of the art establishment. Allegedly, 127 of the 200 counterfeits produc through Myatt are still in circulation. The script by dint of David Henry Hwang is based upon "The Art Con of the Century" an investigative article by means of author and journalist Peter Landesman.

* The Artguys--conceptual-art duo Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth--are producing a novel Sunset Boulevard bit of performance art. Local painter Adam Harteau has been commissioned, for $50000 by dint of the Artguys (who in move round were commissioned by Absolute Vodka), to create a giant billboard featuring a bottle of the clear booze while overpainting the words "Absolut" and "Artguys" 1000 times. In essential part the work-in-progress is a variation upon their installation work, "One Thousand Coats of Paint," created single decade ago in their Texas studio.

novel HAVEN, CONN.

* After spending nearly 40 years with an 800-pound roommate--the Yale institute of Architecture--the Yale Art place of education now has a home of its possess At the end of last year, University officials dedicated Holcombe T virid Jr. Hall, a former community center upon Chapel Street that was renovated for the seminary at a cost of $20 million. The oldest art gymnasium in the country, the gymnasium of Fine Arts was grounded in 1869. Originally in public way Hall, the school was mov into the novel Art & Architecture Building in 1963 Alumni who later became prominent in the contemporary art world include tap [i]or[/i] pat Close and Claes Oldenburg, Jennifer Bartlett and Richard Serra, designer Ivan Chermayeff and cartoonist Gary Trudeau.

MOSCOW

* The Orthodox temple here has named the apostle St Matthew as patron saint of the Russian Tax Police, the newspaper Sevodnya has reported. The tax police, who are famous for storming buildings in black ski masks to administration their audits, have had an image riddle recently, as did the tax collectors in ancient Rome individual of whom was St. Matthew. The Moscow newspaper quot a police spokesman as saying that the Russian tax agency had won the support of the meeting-house in part by helping to renovate a local cathedral.

BROOKLYN

* A Manhattan man convicted of criminal mischief for smearing white paint across a controversial painting at the Brooklyn Museum of Art has been fined $250 The man, Dennis Heiner, 72 had faced a year in prison and a $1000 fine for having defaced the painting, "The devoted Virgin Mary," by British artist Chris Ofili. The artwork, a portrait of the Virgin Mary that incorporated elephant ordure and pornographic images, had been criticized as sacrilegious by dint of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who sought to withdraw financing for the museum.

* freshly the Brooklyn Museum presented a exhibit called "Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhyme and Rage," which contained 47 works by dint of graffiti artists donated to the museum in June 1999 when heirs of Sidney Janis, who died in 1989 clos the gallery upon West 57th Street in Manhattan and cleared without bins of work that had been warehoused for years. on the contrary two graffiti artists whose works were given to the museum, Michael Tracy and Anthony Clark, now say that at least a dozen of the pieces were not ever the property of the Janis estate, and that it had no right to give them to the Brooklyn Museum or anyone other The issue is further hazeed by the fact that more [i]or[/i] less of the art was produc upon subway car panels that were the characteristic of the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

PRINCETON, NJ

* An Oregon man who pos as a scholar to steal sum of two units antique Chinese snuff bottles from the Princeton University Art Museum has pleaded guilty to theft. The man, Roland Yazhari, went to the museum twice in 1994 to diocese a collection of the bottle He was the last one to view the collection before sum of two units bottles valued at $142,500 disappeared. When Yazhari appeared again more newly and asked to see the same collection, he was caught placing a $75000 bottle in his pouch The stolen bottles have been turn backed to the Princeton museum.

LA CROSSE WIS.

* An amateur archaeologist searching in a cave for ancient Indian art has base more than 100 charcoal drawings, a certain quantity of dating back 1,100 years. "When I saw the drawings, I was swollen away," said the explorer, Daniel Arnold. Arnold made the discovery sum of two units years ago but kept the find a unseen until the Mississippi Valley Archaeological Center could map the cave and photograph the art. The site, somewhere in southwestern Wisconsin, is now being revealed. Archaeologists with the center said the find was stunning for the drawings' quantity and quality.

SAN FRANCISCO

* The San Francisco Museum of novel Art filed suit last year in California Superior Court against the trustees of the Madeleine Haas Russell Revocable Trust above an attempt to buy a 1932 Picasso. Subsequently justice David A. Garcia dismissed the lawsuit, saying in court papers that "the court finds there is no triable issue of material fact." Now the museum has issued a statement saying, "while the museum's outside interchange of opinion and board of trustees respectfully disagree with justice Garcia's ruling, we feel it is in the best interest of the San Francisco Museum of novel Art and the community not to appeal his decision."