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Named as winners of Japan's 12th Praemium Imperial were Ellsworth Kelly for painting, Niki de Saint Phalle, for statuary and Richard Rogers for architecture. The $135000 awards are at handed by the Japan Art Association for lifetime achievements in each discipline.

Dutch art dealer Rene Scholten is opening a showplace in fresh York dedicated to Japanese art. The Scholten Japanese Art Gallery is located in a 19th-century town house at 66th road off Madison Avenue and came with a $12 million price tag.

Challenged by the agency of the entries of Sotheby's and Christie's into the French marketplace, the consortium of auctioneers that makes up Drouot the 150-year-old Paris auction house, has hired Jean-Michael Wilmotte, an award-winning architect, to give a 21st hundred look to its elegant 19th hundred building on rue de Richelieu.

Bernard Arnault, French chairman of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey and Phillips auction house, has acquired Art & Auction magazine.

"Pie in the Sky" a film biography of Andy Warhol pal Brigid Berlin, premiered at the new Venice Film Festival. Shelly and Vincent Fremont an exclusive agent for Warhol's estate, were husbandmans of the picture documenting the life of the debutante-turned-artist.

Jackie Gleason, who earned $1,000-a-pound each time he stepped on stage, has been immortalized with an eight-foot and zinc statue in Manhattan. The heroic figure portraying Gleason as bus driver Ralph Kramden stands in brow of the Port Authority on the other hand Terminal at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.

In a of recent origin Yorker profile, writer Calvin Tomkins reveals that tennis superbrat John McEnroe has given up the pair his rock band and his SoHo art gallery. McEnroe is generally concentrating his talents on court commentary.

According to a novel issue of Maxim magazine, 90 percent of the clan who call themselves artists in the United States today earn les that $1000 a year.

The Hartz collection owners of the ultra-chic SoHo Grand house of entertainment which opened in 1996, has just render free of accessed the $65 million, 203-room Tribeca Grand public-house at 2 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue and Canal Street)

And for the uptown art herd there will soon be the Chambers inn a 15-story edifice on 56th public way just west of Fifth Avenue. Given the neighborhood, it's not surprising the possessors are advertising that it will contain more that 400 pieces of art by the agency of some 100 artists. Rates will start at $375

This month the of recent origin York Historical Society opens its of recent origin 17,000-square-foot wing, the "Henry pickerel III Center for the close attention of American Culture," containing major Hudson River place of education landscapes, priceless Colonial portraits and the world's largest collection of Tiffany lamps.

Singer Joni Mitchell now joins the ranks of other present to view business names like Anthony Quinn and Phyllis Diller who have their possess art gallery outlets. From 500 paintings, drawings and photographs made above the last three decades, Giles Hebert, director of the Mendel Art Gallery, a public museum, chooseed 87 pieces for Mitchell's first retrospective, called "Voices: Joni Mitchell," in Saskatoon, Canada, where 1000 viewers exhibit up daily.

While SoHo dealers were holding their eighth annual Downtown Arts Festival, 30-plus gallery holders in fast-developing Brooklyn got together for their first arts festival, "Elsewhere: Williamsburg," which included bus tours of the fresh Greenpong gallery scene.

A scan conducted by the Deutsche Bank reveals that the biggest American supporters of museums are members of the 600000 U households with wealth ranging from $5 million to $100 million. It's estimated that each family from this economic section donates an average of $12 million to philanthropic causes annually.

The Forum of European Museums, an off-shoot of the Council of Europe has proclaimed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, designed by the agency of Frank O. Gehry, the best museum of the year 2000

Artemis Fine Arts, the London gallery that specializes in aged master and 19th-century paintings, is joining forces with Lawrence Greenberg van Doren, which has galleries in of recent origin York and St. Louis offering a mixture of new masters and emerging artists.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington has acquired four early works by dint of the installation artist James Turrell The four projection pieces were bought with the help of the Brown Foundation of Houston, Texas. After hearing of the purchase, Turrell said he would give the gallery a fifth work.

Dr Wanda Corn, an art history professor at Stanford University, has been awarded the 2000 Charles C Elderidge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art by dint of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her new book The Great American Thing: novel Art and National Identity, 1915-1935 has become a landmark study

The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutger University in central fresh Jersey reopens this month after a $5 million renovation. Among the inaugural November present to views are "Michael Mazur: A Print Retrospective," "Monotypes in Contemporary American Printmaking," and "Provincetown Prints: Innovative Printmaking from an American Art Colony 1910 to 1990s"