Nora Ephron's extraordinary legacy obviously includes such films as “Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail,” and “Julie & Julia.” But she also wrote for the stage. Ephron made her Broadway debut  with the 2002 flop “Imaginary Friends” and had an off-Broadway hit, "Love, Loss, and What I Wore,"  co-written with sister Delia Ephron, which she wryly described as “‘The Vagina Monologues’ without the vaginas.”

Ephron always yearned for a Broadway hit. After all, the biggest success of her parents, the playwrights Henry and Phoebe Ephron, was 1961’s “Take Her, She’s Mine,” a comedy about a young woman who is fleeing the clutches of her overprotective father.  Elizabeth Ashley won the Tony Award playing Mollie Michaelson, whom the Ephrons based on their then-20-year-old daughter, Nora. Ephron may yet have a posthumous hit with “Lucky Guy,”  about the New York Daily News columnist Mike McAlary who, like Ephron, died from cancer. It was revealed earlier this year in the New York Post that the play will debut next season, with George C. Wolfe directing and Tom Hanks starring. McAlary won a Pulitzer Prize for his aggressive reporting on the notorious Abner Louima police brutality scandal  in 1997, but had earlier recklessly disparaged in print the accusations of a woman in a rape case. He and the paper were sued for $12 million. Hugh Jackman participated in a reading of the play last year. After some re-writing, Hanks reportedly signed on to make his Broadway debut as the brash and hard-drinking reporter.

In the summer of  2002, just prior to her Broadway debut with “Imaginary Friends,”  I joined Ephron and Dick Cavett for a lunch at Rowdy Hall in East Hampton for a magazine story. Her play explored the tempestuous rivalry between writer Mary McCarthy (“The Group”)  and playwright Lillian Hellman (“The Little Foxes”). While appearing on Cavett’s popular PBS talk show in 1980, McCarthy launched a vicious attack against Hellman. “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the,’” McCarthy told Cavett in response to the host's question, "What writers do you think are overrated?" Hellman immediately brought a $2.5 million libel suit, hounding her adversary with it until she died in 1984.

At the lunch, Ephron was at her sly and engaging best. Discussing the moment on "The Dick Cavett Show" when McCarthy makes her accusation, Ephron said, “One of the things that I think is so delicious is the smile that comes over her face when she says it. It was not a Julia Roberts smile. It was the smile on the face of the crocodile after having ingested several of the guests for dinner.” At the time of our meeting, Martha Stewart was embroiled in her stock trading scandal. While the style guru was getting crucified in the press, Ephron rushed to her defense. “Oh, I like her,” she said. “I like her as a person. I cook from her magazine, use her magazine and I drink out of glasses I bought in her catalog. I swear by her!"

Read more theater coverage in Play by Play

If Sauvignon Blanc has become your thirst quenching, go-to daytime patio quaffing wine — maybe even the foundation for Saturday afternoon’s sangria — we don’t blame you. There is plenty of fresh, young, affordable SB out there perfectly suited for summer...

Do not go gently, or otherwise, into the rain-slicked, neon-lit streets of Manhattan ...

The great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died of pneumonia in St. Vincent’s hospital at the age of 39 in 1953, will feature as a private eye’s quarry in the upcoming film noir “A Visit to America.”According to Screen Daily, the British production company Western Edge has acquired the rights to a screenplay written by Owen Sheers, Thomas’s countryman and a fellow poet, playwright, and screenwriter.

Sheers has previously had two screenplays filmed: “Resistance,” adapted from his novel, speculated what would have happened had the Nazis invaded Wales during World War II; “The Gospel of Us” (2012) is a contemporary Passsion Play. Sheers has also written journalism, presented arts programs on television and radio, and he has played the World War I poet Wilfred Owen on stage.

“A Visit to America” will be filmed in New York next year and released in 2014 to coincide with the Thomas centenary. It follows the detective, who’s “having a personal and professional crisis,” writes Screen’s Wendy Mitchell, as he trails Thomas during the McCarthy witchhunts.

His interest in Thomas presumably derives from the poet’s Marxist leanings. "Society to adjust itself has to break itself; society... has grown up rotten with its capitalist child, and only revolutionary socialism can clean it up,” he wrote in a letter in 1934. The same year, he observed: “I take my stand with any revolutionary body that asserts it to be the right of all men to share, equally and impartially, every production of man … from the sources of production at man’s disposal.”

Although Thomas once avowed he “could go to Russia with a Welsh Communist organization,” it is not known if he was a card-carrying member of the Party. An abridged 2003 Socialism Today article by Victor Paananen on Thomas’s beliefs and the socialist vision in his work can be read here.

Thomas has been portrayed in three previous movies and a 1978 British television drama, “Dylan,” starring Ronald Lacey, which depicted his chaotic, alcohol-steeped last days in New York, where he had come to give readings of his work. In John Maybury’s 2008 “The Edge of Love,” Matthew Rhys played him, opposite Sienna Miller as Thomas’s rambunctious wife Caitlin and Keira Knightley as his teenage sweetheart Vera Phillips. Its lack of success can be accounted for by Thomas being portrayed as an egocentric monster, catnip for the women though he is.

Excerpt from an "Arena" documentary on Dylan Thomas:

Every year, an exclusive selection of the art world's wealthiest, best connected, and most attractive make the pilgrimage to Hydra, a bucolic island where megacollector Dakis Joannou invites artists to stage elaborate performances for his 300 closest acquaintances. This year, however, Hydra will see no such event: Joannou and his art foundation, DESTE, which sponsors the weekend, decided to call it off after realizing the dates coincided with the Greek elections on June 17.

The party-filled weekend usually begins in Athens with the opening of a new exhibition at DESTE. This year's planned exhibition, of American artists Urs Fischer and Josh Smith, will now be postponed for the summer of 2013. "If we'd just postponed for a week, we would have lost everybody," Joannou told ARTINFO when reached by phone. "They all have their own summer plans." In the place of the more elaborate Fischer and Smith show, DESTE is staging a smaller drawing exhibition in its project space titled "Animal Spirits." The show, comprised of works from Joannou’s collection, include pieces by Paul Chan, Kelley Walker, and Sam Durant, among others.

Some involved or invited to the event said the current catastrophic economic situation in Greece also contributed the decision to cancel the flashy Hydra weekend. Indeed, it's not hard to imagine some of the more extravagant occurrences staged by Joannou coming across as distasteful in today's climate: Previous hijinks at Hydra include Matthew Barney serving a dinner of shark meat; fisherman retrieving a vitrine containing an Elizabeth Peyton drawing from a dark cove; and Doug Aitken screening a film starring Chloe Sevigny on a barge floating in the Aegean sea.

But Joannou maintains it was simply bad timing, not bad taste, that caused the delay. "It's an opening of an art show," he said. "I don't think it would have been inappropriate if it weren't on the same day as the elections." 

If pressed to find a word that bounces enough to sum up the spring 2013 menswear collections at Milan this week, we’d go with this: “jardigan.”

Yes, it is what it sounds like — a jacket meets a cardigan made to wear in a garden. It’s a casual and easy combo that, if you picture it in pink, tells you all you need to know about what’s happening in Italy.

Suzy Menkes didn’t make up “jardigan,” but she did use the term to describe an item in the Brioni collection, which was shown on the lawn of a mansion where people were playing pétanque. The scents and colors of the outside world were anything but incidental, as the clothes in many of the collections seem to be made for men who travel off toward the horizon in search of exotic locales. The hues are as vibrant as an exploding sunset.

The Ferragamo collection was packed with pants the color of cartoon tangerines and parkas the electric blue of a Slurpee. Prada played it a tad safer but still brought out rich sweaters dyed in aquamarines and blood maroon. And Burberry broke out the magenta metallic shirts, which crumple like the petals of a frozen flower.

Some designers had the London Summer Games on their minds, as men seemingly from Mount Olympus walked the runways of Versace and Emporio Armani, strutting as if the sun still never set on the the British Empire. At Versace, heavyweight championship belts latched around satin robes that didn’t cover much of each model’s pecs, and at Armani it was ties and swim trunks or chunky Bermuda shorts. All this makes sense, because Giorgio Armani designed the uniforms for Italy’s Olympic swim team.

But not everyone can be a high-caliber athlete or — in the case of the men in the Brioni presentation — a member of the leisure class snacking on charcuterie at a picnic. Not everyone can risk wearing blinding colors to the grey office. Or perhaps there are no jobs at all, as is the case for many Europeans due to the debt crisis. It could seem like these collections go just beyond aspirational and become, instead, delusional.

As it turned out, this wasn’t exactly the case. The more absurd moments were presented knowingly, and the fierce reds and yellows celebrate the way people, all people, can wear clothes well and confidently. Take the Dolce & Gabbana show. In it, 70 average Sicilians, plucked from the streets, walked down the runway in bold stripes. It was all their first time in a fashion show. Everyone looked great. Maybe anyone can be a model, jardigan or not. 

Click on the slide show to see images from Milan Men’s Fashion Week.

Because of Keith Haring's fervent belief that artwork should be accessible to everyone, kids these days have their pick of Haring-adorned playthings: Radiant Baby rocking horses, Dancing Man tops, and Graffiti Heart yo-yos. While those are all fantastic ways to introduce fine art to the little tykes, Tokyo-based company Tenga is coming out with some toys decidedly better suited for grown-ups.

But what are they? At first glance, they appear to be an egg and a stick of deodorant covered in familiar Haring icons, but after careful inspection, you realize they're male sex toys — what Tenga refers to as "the future of masturbation." How do they work? Rather than tell you, we've opted to provide the diagram to the left to help you better understand their functions. (If you're still in the dark, please refer to the graphic available on the company's Web site, which reveals the location of the "secret lotion keeper.")

We can assume that Haring would be all for the collaboration. Despite criticisms he deflected in life for the unabashed commercialism of his SoHo Pop Shop, product branding was his method of disseminating his art democratically. Not only was he far from bashful about his sexuality (evidenced in a lot of ways, including his NSFW mural at Greenwich Village LGBT Center), but the Keith Haring Foundation was established in 1989 to support AIDS-related and children's charities.

Last year, the foundation even collaborated with Dasha Zhukova's Moscow art juggernaut the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture to celebrate the magazine's sex issue, allowing the depiction of Haring's work to be used on condom wrappers passed out in each copy — albeit with the frustrating disclaimer, "This condom is a piece of art. This condom is not meant for use." Shucks. At least with Tenga, you have a sure-fire back-up plan. Solo sex, after all, is the safest kind there is. 

It's back! We know readers have been dying to know what's going on in the strange legal battle between Todd White — the former SpongeBob SquarePants character designer, Ren & Stimpy animator, and sometimes fine artist — and his 62-year-old Orange County dealer, Margaret Howell. This week, venerated cultural rag Vanity Fair dug into the case, publishing a long exposé getting to the heart of what really happened on that August 2011 evening when Howell accuses White of hiring three "martial arts experts" to attack her and steal $1 million in inventory from the gallery she owns, Gallery HB. White, on the other hand, maintains that the "ninja attack" incident was really nothing more sinister than a sit-down with Howell that ended in a tearful confession that she had printed extra copies of his glicées and forged edition numbers, as well as his signature.

The truth is murky. Who, finally, to believe in this crazy he said/she said case at the weird outer fringes of the art world? It's hard to say — but it is fairly easy to pick out plenty of zany details. Here, ARTINFO breaks out the five craziest new tidbits uncovered by VF's David Kushner — who, by the way, refers obliquely to our previous coverage when he says "one blogger" called the original incident the "weirdest art case ever" (get caught up here and here if you need a primer on the story's background):

"A SPARTACUS FIGURE"

The VF story gives new insight into the characters at the center of this story, who take on almost mythical dimensions. White originally broke into the fine art realm, we are told, because of his undeniable "swagger." Cleveland-based gallerist Kevin O'Donnell, who also represents White, goes so far as to say, "he’s a genuine charismatic character, not unlike Warhol." His U.K. publisher, Rod Lacey, calls him "John Lennon with a paintbrush." Later in the story, Lacey  goes on to claim that White's "been taken on as almost a Spartacus figure for the art world," referring to his attempt to start a guild to help his fellow artists navigate the gallery business (Wait — what?) However, after the lawsuit ordeal, White has reportedly been so depressed he couldn't even bring himself to follow his normal routine: painting late into the night while listening to Howard Stern.

THE WEDDING CRASHER

Howell, for her part, is presented as a pretty slick character. White told VF that she once sold artwork to a bride in the bathroom before her wedding — the benefit of having a gallery in a hotel, ARTINFO presumes. As for her crimes against the SpongeBob artist, in addition to selling a forged print to a private investigator White hired, she also admitted to using a substance called "Goo Be Gone" to remove markings from one of his prints, relabeling it so as to make it seem more rare and expensive. 

ENTER SYLVESTER STALLONE...

White, we are told, is apparently the "poster boy" for glicée prints — digital photos printed to look like they have been painted. He's achieved quite a following, scoring deals with Coca-Cola and the Emmys, and his work is now sold at "major retail operations like Bed Bath & Beyond." As for collectors, Sylvester Stallone owns one of White's prints, for which he supposedly paid $280,000 (there's a new one for ARTINFO to list of celebrity collectors)!

A NEW FOE

According to White, the stunt he had his friends pull — which was either ninja attack or just a business meeting, depending on whom you believe — was a result of not wanting to "contaminate his hard-earned market" by reporting Howell's fraud to the police. It's not clear that his market move was successful, however.  Today, ARTINFO found several Web sites selling his prints for around $1,000, a far cry from the six figures that Sly Stallone forked out for a White original (full disclosure: we have no idea if they are genuine or not, since it's the Internet).

But, at the end of the day, it all might be water under the bridge. Vanity Fair reports that the parties recently reached a confidential out-of-court settlement. 

LONDON — The art market received a big shot of adrenaline tonight at Christie’s rousing Postwar and Contemporary art sale, delivering £132,819,400 ($207,331,083), the highest total of its kind ever achieved in Europe. That compared to the £102-139 million pre-sale estimate, though calculated without the added-on buyer’s premium.

Sixty of the 69 lots offered sold for a slim buy-in rate of 13 percent by lot and two percent by value. Five artist records were set, four lots exceeded ten million pounds, six hit over five million pounds, and 21 made over one million pounds. Converted to dollars, 30 lots made over a million, two went over 20 million, and nine exceeded five million dollars. For comparison sake, the evening throttled the £78.8 million ($125.8 million) result a year ago when 53 out of 65 lots sold.

More importantly, or so it seems, Christie’s evening crushed arch-rival Sotheby’s £69.3-million ($108-million) tally by a huge margin. Simply put, Christie’s had significantly better blue chip, market-desirable material.

That became evident early on as Marcel Broodthaers’s conceptually challenging “Surface de moules (avec sac) (Surface of mussels, with bag)” (1966-1974), comprised, just as the title describes, of mussels and resin on panel and plastic bag filled with mussels. It made a record £433,250 ($676,303) (est. £180-220,000).

“Untitled,” a beautiful Cy Twombly scrafitto drawing in gouache and wax crayon on card from 1970, sold to Bona Montagu of London’s Simon Dickinson Gallery for £713,250 ($1,113,383) (est. £350-550,000), and a juicy, 24-by-28-inch Gerhard Richter “Abstraktes Bild (829-3)” from 1995 in oil on canvas sold to another telephone bidder for £1,161,250 ($1,812,711) (est. £600-800,000).

Montagu later bid for but trailed the huge price made for Mark Grotjahn’s “Untitled Butterfly (Black + cream-cicle) #681” (2007), a work in colored pencil on paper and set in the artist’s frame, which made £836,450 ($1,305,698) (est. £200-300,000). “It was a ten,” said Montagu, referring to the quality.

But the fireworks, as it were, really started with the first of the financially guaranteed lots, Yves Klein’s extraordinary and other-worldly sponge composition, “Le Rose du bleu (RE 22)” (1960), which sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for a record £23,561, 250 ($36,779,111) (unpublished est. on request in the region of £18 million).

Zurich dealer Doris Ammann was the stubborn underbidder who dropped out at £20.5 million. “It’s a beautiful, exquisite work,” said the disappointed dealer as she exited the salesroom, “but I just thought the bidding would go on and on.” Asked if she expected to win the Klein, the seasoned Ammann said, “you always hope.”

The epic, cover lot sponge relief nosed past the previous mark set at Christie’s New York in May when “FC1 (Fire Color 1)” (1962) sold for $36,482,500. Another Klein sponge relief, smaller in scale and saturated in the artist’s patented IKB blue, “Relief eponge blue (RE 51)” (1959), sold to New York’s William Acquavella for £7,657,250 ($11,952,967) (est. £6-9 million).

While the Klein set a record and posted the highest result for any art work this week — virtually tying the mark set during last week’s Impressionist & Modern sales when Joan Miro’s “Peinture (Etoile Bleue)” (1927) made a record price at Sotheby’s — the big battle of the evening was for a Francis Bacon.

The 60-by-55-inch picture has a gritty history. At Christie's back in November 2008 Bacon’s “Study for self-portrait” (1964) was tagged with an unpublished estimate in the region of $40 million, but failed to sell in a blood bath of an auction following the global financial collapse that September. A lawsuit by the consignor ensued claiming Christie's had guarenteed the painting, and an out-of court settlement was eventually made, with the auction house retaining some degree of ownership on the painting, as evidenced by a symbol in the catalogue.

Further research into the origins of the painting by Christie’s London head Francis Outred, based on rediscovered black-and-white photos by John Deakin, a close associate of Bacon, revealed that the portrait was actually a combined one of Lucian Freud’s body with Francis Bacon’s head, all of it convulsed in Bacon’s exquisitely expressionist style. This time it was an unpublished estimate on request in the region of £15-20 million and was also backed by a third-party financial guarantee.

Bidding opened at £13 million and zoomed skyward, quickly coming down to a shooting match between New York dealers William Acquavella and Christophe van de Weghe. Van de Weghe made the winning bid of £19.2 million, before the added on buyer’s premium. “That’s the highest price I’ve ever bid at auction,” said van de Weghe moments after the marathon evening, “and this time my client really wanted it. We think it’s a very good painting and it’s exactly what he wanted.”

The dealer wouldn’t identify the ‘he’ other than “he works in finance and spends a lot of time in his private jet.”

As for underbidder William Acquavella, who dropped out at £19.1 million, he was philosophical: “You win some and lose some and that was a good picture.”

Another big price was achieved for Jean-Michel Basquiat's ferocious figurative work, “Untitled” (1981), another work with an unpublished estimate, this one in the region of £11 million and carrying a third-party financial guarantee. The brawny, 78-½-by-72-inch acrylic, oil stick, and spray paint on canvas, featuring a male figure with outstretched arms, sold for a record £12, 921,250 ($20,170,071).

Montreal collector Francois Odermatt was the underbidder to the anonymous telephone. “I love that Basquiat,” said Odermatt after the auction, “but you have to stop [bidding] at a certain moment. It would have been my first Basquiat and it’s the most amazing one I’ve seen.” The painting last sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 2007 for a then-record $14.6 million and tonight’s $20-million price beat “Untitled” (1981) that sold for $16.3 million at Phillips de Pury in New York in May (2012).

Odermatt felt better winning fellow Canadian’s David Altmejd’s giant figure, “The New North” (2007) in wood, foam, resin, paint, magic-sculpt, epoxy, glue, mirror, quartz crystal, horse hair, and other stuff for a record £217,250 ($339,127). It last sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2009 for a then record $254,500.

Returning to blue chip territory, Gerhard Richter’s majesterial “Struktur (2),” a huge squeegeed canvas from 1989, rich in white and gun metal gray shades, sold to anonymous telephone bidder for £12,696,250 ($19,820,407) (est. £9-12 million).  

Figurative painting remains in strong demand, especially if executed by the late British master Lucian Freud, as evidenced by “Naked Portrait II” (ca. 1974), a reclining female nude from 1974 that sold for £4,297,250 ($6,708,007) (est. £3.8-4.5 million) (it also carried a third-party guarentee), and the earlier and remarkable portrait, “Head of Greek Man” (1946), when Freud was all of 24 years old, which sold for £3,401,250 ($5,309,351) (est. £1.5-2 million). The portrait hailed from the estate of fellow artist and one-time close Freud friend, John Craxton, who acquired it in 1947.

Though Christie’s big evening was dominated by painting, sculpture made some noise as Alexander Calder’s “Rouge triumphant (Triumphant Red)” (1959-63), a huge mobile that hung menacingly over the center of the packed salesroom on King Street, sold for £6,201,250 ($9,680,151) (est. £6-8 million). Like the big Richter, it also carried a too-big-to-fail third-party guarantee.

Less impressive was the result for Jeff Koons’s frothy “Baroque Egg with Bow (Blue /TUrqoise)” (1994-2008), one of five versions, each uniquely colored, that sold to London dealer Ivor Braka for £2,617,250 ($4,085,527) (est. £2.5-3.5 million). Caught on the way out of the salesroom, Braka said, “I’ve been buying Koons for many years and I was expecting to pay substantially more tonight.”

The evening action plays the finale at Phillips de Pury on Thursday.

To see some of the highlights of Christie's Postwar and Contemporary sale, click on the slide show.

The stakes in U.S. Supreme Court's decision today about the Affordable Care Act were high — not least for practicing artists. Even if they’re industrious and well-educated, artists occupy a particularly precarious sector of the workforce where stable income and benefits can be hard to come by.

Thus, arts advocacy groups have been a big backer of health care reform. Narric Rome, a senior director at Americans for the Arts, takes credit for pushing the 2008 campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to include healthcare for artists in their respective issue briefs for the arts. “We had an issue brief calling for members of Congress who were working on healthcare reform to recognize the importance of the independent worker,” he told ARTINFO, “including artists and those working in the creative industry.” Today, Rome described the implementations upheld by the Supreme Court as “a very welcome solution” for those working in the creative fields.

What, exactly, can be expected now that the ACA is moving forward? Data from a report by the group Leveraging Investments in Creativity specifically lays  out how artists could be affected by the President's new health care law, based on data about creative workers and their situation. Since the Supreme Court has officially upheld the law, ARTINFO broke out a few parts that are most likely to affect the arts community:

GROUP EXCHANGES

One of the reasons that healthcare is prohibitively expensive for artists and other self-employed people is that they are not part of a larger network, which allows insurance companies to better spread out risk and costs. Even small companies sometimes don’t qualify for group plans. Some 52 percent of artists described themselves as either completely uninsured or inadequately insured in the face of high premiums, high deductibles, and annual limits on care. With the effects of the recession in the background, 31 percent of artists have described themselves as “very worried” about losing their coverage, while 19 perecent described themselves as “somewhat worried.” Unlike most other fields, artists' situation does not seem to improve with age: whereas 42 percent of artists aged 25 to 34 are inadequately insured, a similar 38 percent are inadequately insured between ages 36 and 65.

Under the ACA, states will set up group exchanges by 2014, which will organize the insurance market and allow individuals and small businesses to band together to form groups, just like if they were part of a large corporation. The exchanges will not be able to consider pre-existing conditions when creating groups — currently one of the biggest reasons why individuals or small businesses have a hard time getting affordable insurance.

Many states have put off setting up these exchanges until now, in hopes that the bill would be struck down by the Supreme Court. New York, however, is not one of those states. Governor Cuomo created an exchange by executive order in April. It should be fully operational by January 2014, and will begin accepting applications in October 2013. (See where all states stand on this issue here.)

AID FOR THE STARVING ARTIST

The ACA also expanded Medicaid coverage, which insures the poor. But it’s not just those eligible for Medicaid that will be affected by this bill. Even those who make up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level (currently $43,320 for an individual) will be able to take advantage of federal subsidies. Help from the government will come either in the form of a premium subsidy (which limits the percentage of your income you pay for insurance), or a cost-sharing subsidy (which helps with the out-of-pocket things). According to the LIC report, some two-thirds of artists in the United States would meet this income requirement.

AID FOR THE SMALL ARTS BUSINESS

Not all artists work individually. The act provides subsidies for businesses with fewer than 25 full-time (or 50 part-time) employees who make less than $50,000 per year on average to purchase healthcare, which may otherwise be prohibitively expensive because the pool of people purchasing is not large enough. This would apply to the bulk of the small businesses that make up the creative industries, such as galleries, artists’ studios, and performing arts companies — and may help those those working part time at a gallery or studio with healthcare costs. The subsidies went into effect in 2010, and will increase in 2014.

[Correction: An earlier version of this article listed the senior director of federal ffairs and arts education at Americans for the Arts as Nerric Rome.]

Paul Schimmel, one of the most well-respected curators in the country, has left his position as chief curator at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, according to multiple reports. He served in that capacity since 1990, joining the museum after five years as curator at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now the Orange County Museum of Art). The firing was made by the museum's board of trustees, which includes collectors Steve Cohen and Maria Bell, and is effective immediately, according to the Los Angeles Times. MOCA board co-chair David G. Johnson confirms Schimmel's departure, but denies he was fired. "Paul Schimmel is stepping down as MOCA's chief curator," he said in a statement. "It is amicable and there will be a press release tomorrow."

Schimmel will complete his work on MOCA's fall exhibition "Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962" on a contract basis, according to the Times, but it is unclear whether he will finish organizing the museum's planned Richard Hamilton retrospective, which was to travel to Philadelphia, Madrid, and the Tate Modern in London.

Reports of financial trouble and rumors of tension between MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch and Schimmel have long plagued the museum. In March, the LAT reported that the institution had lost three key finance figures in as many months, "a turnover that begins to look like turmoil," according to former MOCA chief executive Charles E. Young. Meanwhile, some say that efforts to build the endowment or even tap promised matching funds from philanthropist Eli Broad have languished. L.A. blogger Mat Gleason, who first reported Schimmel's dismissal, has said that the curator's departure was accompanied by layoffs in other parts of the museum following an end-of-fiscal-year budget meeting on Tuesday. That has yet to be confirmed by museum officials. 

Deitch and Schimmel have reportedly butted heads since the former gallerist's arrival at the museum in 2010. According to blogger Paul Klein, Deitch planned a solo exhibition of Theaster Gates last year merely to "demonstrate his authority" because "Schimmel...and Deitch hate each other."

In his 22 years at the museum, Schimmel mounted some of its most rigorous and ambitious exhibitions. Though born and raised in New York, the Syracuse University alumnus is a self-professed L.A.-ophile, and has spent much of his career examining the artists who defined the city. Most famously, his 1992 show "Helter Skelter" surveyed the work of 16 visual artists and 10 writers working in Los Angeles art in the 1990s. Schimmel's 2007 survey of Takashi Murakami, which later traveled to the Brooklyn Museum, saw its fair share of controversy amidst accusations of pandering and commercialism: Schimmel famously allowed Murakami to install a Louis Vuitton boutique inside the exhibition.

"Some curatorial work should be speculative," he once told the L.A. Weekly. "Curators should be able to say that they believe in something, they think it’s important, and they’re going to show it without waiting for a consensus."

Insofar as museum curators are celebrities in the art world, Schimmel could be considered among the ranks of Klaus Biesenbach (though less fashionable and media-friendly), Massimiliano Gioni (though with less of an international profile), and Paola Antonelli. That he is so well-known despite working outside of the museum publicity cyclone of the East Coast is a testament to Schimmel's influence. 

Schimmel's most recent expansive endeavor, "Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981," staged in conjunction with the Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative, was in many ways a prequel to "Helter Skelter": It examined political art during the tumultuous period beginning with Richard Nixon's resignation and ending with Ronald Reagan's inauguration. 

A friend and active supporter of the late artist Mike Kelley, Schimmel serves as one of three co-directors of the artist's foundation, which was established shortly after his death earlier this year and, once it begins receiving funds from the estate, aims to make grants to institutions in line with Kelley's wishes and established practice.

A representative from the office of board member Eli Broad did not respond to a message seeking comment, and a rep from the museum declined to comment beyond its prepared statement. 

An indefatigable film preservationist and advocate of shooting on film, Martin Scorsese is likely to deploy the digital format on his future movies. Having shot the 3D “Hugo” digitally – the exquisite mix of cool and mellow tones won Robert Richardson the Best Cinematography Oscar – Scorsese has elected to do the same on his next picture, “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

This was confirmed by his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker in an interview with Empire’s Damon Wise following a panel on film restoration at the current Edinburgh International Film Festival. Inevitably, the decision to abandon film was made with regret. “It would appear that we’ve lost the battle,” Schoonmaker said. “I think Marty just feels it’s unfortunately over, and there’s been no bigger champion of film than him.”

“It’s a very bittersweet thing to be watching films with him now that are on film,” she continued. “We’re cherishing every moment of it. The number of prints that are now being made for release has just gone down, and it would appear that the theaters have converted so quickly to digital.”

Scorsese’s opting for digital, then, would appear to be less of an aesthetic choice than one prompted by the realities of exhibition. Many would argue that digital cinematography still can’t capture the range of hues and iridescence common to 35mm (or even 16mm) cinematography.

“The Wolf of Wall Street,” which will be shot in 2D since it’s an adult drama, begins production in August. It has been adapted by Terence Winter (“The Sopranos,” “Boardwalk Empire”) from the former stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s memoir of his criminal rampage through Wall Street in the 1990s.

Belfort founded the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, which functioned as a boiler room that was involved in stock issues amounting to more than $1 billion, including an equity raising for Steve Madden’s footwear company. In 1998, Belfort was indicted for securities fraud and money laundering. He served 22 months in prison for a microcap stock fraud scam resulting in investor losses of some $200 million. Ben Younger’s independent movie “Boiler Room” (2000), about a young broker (Giovanni Ribisi) working at a chop shop brokerage running a “pump and dump,” was inspired by the case.

Now 49 and a fully signed-up soccer dad, Belfort – who lived an excessive prostitutes-and-quaaludes lifestyle at the height of his wealth – currently works as writer and ethically-oriented motivational speaker and speaks repentantly of his crimes.

Given Leonard DiCaprio’s casting as Belfort, “The Wolf of Wall Street” sounds analogous, at least as a large-canvas cautionary fable, to Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic “The Aviator.” The cast of the new movie also includes Cristin Miliati as Belfort’s first wife Denise, an Italian-American hairdresser, and Margot Robbie as his second wife Nadine, a British-born Miller Lite beer model, after whom he named the 50-meter yacht he sank in the Mediterranean. There are key parts, too, for Jean Dudardin, Jonah Hill, and Rob Reiner.

It’s coming to a digitally equipped theater near you in 2013. 

The playful, fantastical feel of Delfina Delettrez’s jewelry transports its wearers into another universe. Now, thanks to an exhibition in Florence’s Galleria Antonella Villanov, visitors can experience the designer’s alternate world.

The show, “Delphinarium,” displays pieces from Delettrez’s 10 jewelry collections, including: Anatomik, My World,  Roll-in-Stones, Love is in the Hair, and Metalphysics. The works are set against complimentary environments created specifically for the installation. A gold honeycomb necklace embellished with tiny bees sits atop a glass case filled with live ones flying about. Colorful rainforest frog rings cling to branches in a globe-shaped case. In another section, thick chokers accented with studs sit around busts covered with hair and outrageous wigs. A fourth area evokes a distinctly Surrealist feel with baubles of jeweled lips and wide eyes with pearl-tipped eyelashes.

The retrospective, on view through September 10, is the first for the 24-year-old Fendi heiress, who began designing jewelry five years ago.

Click on the slide show to view images from “Delphinarium”

Today, the fashion Web site Refinery29 launched R29 Shops, a bid to enter the ever-burgeoning juggernaut of content-based commerce sites. The hundreds of chic looks that flood the site each day, often in neatly assembled slideshows of a specific place’s street style, can now go from the computer to the closet.

The site’s co-founder, Phillipe von Borries, has a bon mot to describe the new approach for Refinery: “shoppable entertainment.”

“We’ve seen a significant appetite for direct product sales and with this new iteration of commerce we have a much bigger platform to blow out these rich narrative experiences,” he told WWD.

In other words: follow the dollar, and the dollar is in online shopping.

Refinery29's old business model was based on the notion that 20 percent of profits would be generated through commerce — from the early practice of having sales on, say, Valentine’s Day — and 80 percent through the ads that take up space on the edges of the site. Von Borries and his team hope that by changing that ratio, they’ll up the profits.

R29 will be featuring collaborations with such designers as Norma Kamali, Steven Alan, and Rebecca Minkoff, available at reduced prices. There will also be recurring features: Editor’s Closet, where the Refinery29 brass show off their wardrobes and then put items up for sale, and Designer Deets, where a fashion industry vet lets buyers in on her personal tips.

The combination of copy and commerce has flourished when approached in the right way. Gilt Groupe has proven to be a success in the five years since its inception. Net-a-Porter just opened its first headquarters in New York. And things are even stronger when it comes to menswear. The Gilt brother site Park & Bond has a mutually beneficial service with GQ where editors direct readers to items for sale on the site. Esquire countered by partnering with J.C. Penny to launch CLAD, the online retailer on the magazine’s Web site.

But more on the level of R29 Shops is LifeStyle Mirror, the new venture from Emanuele Della Valle. It’s a fashion news Web site and iPad app that the founder — son of Tod’s president, Diego Della Valle — calls “a mix between a concept store and a mega-mall.” There’s a banner headline across the top of the site, bolded and capped, that screams “Shop It Now.”

Della Valle’s site made a big splash when it launched last February to reviews lauding its swift integration of social networks. Not only can you buy any item featured in one of the great-looking photographs, you can mention the purchase on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. 

But what about that other form of social networking, the older one, the one where people get together in person and actaully talk? Lifestyle Mirror made that happen just last night at a party in the company’s headquarters in Chelsea. There were enough fabulous outfits in the room to support conversation about what to buy. As guests made it to a lounge area, servers walked around with jeroboams of Ruinart Champagne, and platters of sliders and truffle-soaked grilled cheese bites. In the glossy pictures on the walls, models vacuumed hotel suites in couture or frolicked in a hailstorm of popcorn in a movie theater lobby. And, at one point, Anne Hathaway swung by, her hair still buzzed from her role in “Les Miserables.”

But what was it all for? We were at the offices of an e-commerce magazine, but we weren’t sure what they were selling.

“Oh, it’s for the event space,” a LifeStyle Mirror staffer told us, gesturing at the leather chairs and wooden sidings. “It just opened.”

We wondered aloud about what it would be like to have a bar in the office.

“It’s not a real bar, you can’t buy anything here,” he said. “It’s not even stocked.”

His glum outlook on life aside, it’s not a bad time to be time to be Louis C.K. The comedian, who in April was named one of Time’s Most Influential People, recently made $4.5 million bypassing Ticketmaster and selling tickets directly to his fans, and tonight marks the return of his critically acclaimed FX series “Louie.” Yesterday, C.K. — the show’s sole writer, director and editor — had a conference call with reporters to talk about what viewers can expect from the third season of the sometimes plotless but always enjoyable series.

As previously reported, Jerry Seinfeld will guest star on an episode this season. C.K. told reporters that Seinfeld’s “acting was both phenomenal and something that fans wouldn’t normally expect.” The other big reveal was a little more controversial. Louie’s often referenced, but rarely seen, ex-wife character will actually appear on the show this season — and she’s played by Susan Kelechi Watson, who is black. (Louie’s fictional daughters are white.) C.K. had this to say: “To me, the racial thing is like — when people probably first see her, their brains do a little bit of DNA map and go ‘I’m not sure I get how that would happen,’ and then I think with my show, most people, they go ‘Oh, all right, just go ahead.’”