ART hotline - brief notes

PARIS

* French businessman Francois Pinault, holder of Christie's auction house, is planning to build a gallery for his contemporary and fresh art on the Ile Seguin in the middle of the Seine River. The Foundation Pinault will keep one-third of the 27-acre site and be entirely financed through Pinault. The foundation will be part of a larger rehabilitation throw with public and private housing, a 10-acre park, a university research center and possibly a gallery for the Renault collection of recent and contemporary art.

* Rival business emperor of japan Bernard Arnault is said to be talking with representatives of Sotheby's board of directors about buying the entire company, not just the chunk of stock controll by dint of ousted Sotheby's Chairman Alfred Taubman. Shares in the auction house lately shot up nearly 23 percent since Sotheby's landmark arrangement to close the door upon civil suits from the auction house's price-fixing fiasco. Arnault had approached Taubman late last year about buying his stake, on the contrary Taubman rebuffed him.

sees ANGELES

* Following the opening of the $1 billion J Paul Getty Center here in 1997 the museum manifold enjoyed an even better-than-expected first year, pulling in 18 million visitors. on the contrary as the Getty ends its third year, that roseate picture is changing. With attendance estimates for 2000 down 500000 from that first year, officials are now actively cultivating their local audience. As a start, they are loosening the notorious parking reservation requirements and bolstering community relations throw outs by offering special programs in local libraries and community center aiming particularly at sum of two units groups--families with children and young adults in their early 20s

GRAND RAPIDS, MICH.

* The Frederick Meijer Gardens and statuary Park, opened five years ago, is more than doubling its indoor space with a 65,000-square-foot expansion. With the opening this fall of the two-story addition, the 118-acre botanical garden and plastic art park will be complemented through three indoor sculpture galleries, an 850-seat discourse hall, a garden shop and a cafe. The fresh sculpture complex opened with "Richard Hunt: American Visionary," exhibiting work through the Chicago artist who has created a 25-foot-tall winged rounded pillar for the Meijer's permanent collection. This includes Nina Akamu's 24-foot-high "Leonardo da Vinci's Horse", the duplicate of her statuary based on Leonardo's plans that was donated to Milan last year.

WASHINGTON, DC

* representative Treasury Secretary Stuart E. Eizenstat has announced that the U and Russia have reached extensive agreement upon opening archives to help find peculiarity looted by the Nazis. He declined to give details before addressing a conversation in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Holocaust restitution. Nazi pillage totaled about 220,000 artworks, according to estimates by means of the State Department. To date, approximately 60000 works have been recovered

OKLAHOMA CITY

* A major gift has transformed the University of Oklahoma into a repository of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. Clara Weitzenhoffer, an art collector and longtime arts supporter who died last summer bequeathed her collection of 33 works, including 22 paintings and 11 works upon paper by Van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin and Monet It is the largest collection of French Impressionist art at any time given to a public American university. The collection will eventually be upon display in a new $10 million addition to the university's Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma.

SYDNEY

* In conjunction with the swarm of visitors to Australia for the Olympic Games, an attempt is being made to young ox tourists away from fake Aboriginal art. Muck of the fake work is mass-produced in southeast Asia through a non-profit group representing indigenous Australian artists. The National Indigenous Arts Advocacy Association has been placing labels of authenticity upon individual souvenir items with Aboriginal designs and also upon the windows of approved stores and galleries. The Association reliances the program will also boost indigenous artists' shares of an industry that generates more that $120 million a year.

PROVIDENCE, R.I.

* A six-foot Mr Potato Head statue, upon display in Rhode Island for the past six month as part of a tourist campaign, will be remov because of complaints that it is racist. The figure called "Tourist Tater" was painted dark brown to appear suntanned and wore a Hawaiian shirt, glasses and a straw hat. It was upon display outside Warwick, R.I., City Hall since last spring, on the other hand no one had complained until its photo appeared in a newspaper. East Providence affirmative-action officer Onna Moniz-John said "Tourist Tater" gazes like antique figurines that portray blacks in a negative way, of the like kind as Little Black Sambo. on the contrary artist Kathy Szarko, who designed "Tourist Tater," said she meant no disrespect. "He's a potato. That's wherefore he's brown."

BEIJING

* In addition to all its disturbs in the contemporary world, China is facing a crisis in its great cultural past. Bacterial mold is menacing China's 2,200-year-old army of terra cotta warriors. The China Daily reported that 1400 of the 8,000-life-size statues discovered in the early 1970 in the tomb of China's first emperor, Quin Shihuang, have been attacked thus far. A contract has been signed with a Belgian pharmaceutical company to combat the problem