LONDON – Hollywood actors including Helen Mirren, Hugh Grant and Damian Lewis descended on The Savoy hotel in London on Sunday for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, which recognize actors, directors and playwrights working in the West End.

Homeland star Damian Lewis described the last 12 months as a “remarkable year for theatre.” The awards looked at all performances and productions that opened in London in the 12 months between this and last year's final judges meetings.

Mirren was named best actress for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in “The Audience”, while the best actor award was split between Rory Kinnear and Adrian Lester as the leads in “Othello”. Mirren, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in Steven Frears's movie “The Queen”, said she feels such awards are being given to the queen as much as to her.

The award for best play on the London stage went to Lucy Kirkwood for “Chimerica”, an exploration of the relationship between the United States and China as seen through the eyes of an American photojournalist trying to track down a young protester who faced down a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

A revival of Stephen Sondheim's “Merrily We Roll Along”, a flop on Broadway in 1981, was named best musical while Richard Eyre won best director for a revival of Ibsen's “Ghosts”. Homeland star Damian Lewis presented the awards, which he said were a testament to the strongest stage acting anywhere.

The awards have been presented annually since 1955 and past winners include Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Michael Gambon, Vanessa Redgrave, Gwyneth Paaltrow and Patrick Stewart. 

The recent drama over the choice of a new director for Paris's Musée national d'art moderne, the main museum of the Pompidou Center, has given way to surprise. Last week, the rumor mill had the job going to Max Hollein, director of a collective organization of three Frankfurt museums, even as two other front-runners, Catherine Grenier (deputy director of the Pompidou Center) and Laurent Le Bon (director of the Pompidou Center outpost in Metz) were announcing their joint candidacy, arguing the benefits of a "collective approach," according to Le Monde. But on Friday Pompidou Center president Alain Seban and culture minister Aurélie Fillipetti announced that the post would go instead to Bernard Blistène, director of the Pompidou Center's department of cultural development. According to an article in Libération, which describes the selection process as a comedy of errors, Blistène was only considered at the last minute, after an emergency committee was put together. He will succeed Alfred Pacquement, who has led the museum since 2000.

While his name had not come up in media speculation, Blistène, known as a chaismatic and elegant figure in the French art world, is not an outsider by any means. Born in 1955, he joined the Pompidou Center in 1983 as a curator after studies at the Ecole du Louvre, and went on on to hold various positions at the museum.

In 1990, he became head of the Musées de Marseille, where he created that city's first contemporary art museum. Six years later, he returned to the Pompidou Center as deputy director. In 2002, he was named inspector general of artistic creation in the visual arts delegation of the culture ministry, with the specific task of developing the vacant spaces of the Palais de Tokyo, which was directed at the time by Jérôme Sans and Nicolas Bourriaud. 

His accomplishments as curator include "The Museum That Didn't Exist" (2002), a solo show of Daniel Buren's work, which was co-curated by Alison Gingeras and Laurent Le Bon and shown at the contemporary art exhibition "La Force de l'Art" at the Grand Palais in 2006, and the 2007 show "A Theater Without Theater" with Yann Chateigné at Barcelona's contemporary art museum, where he explored the relationship between theater and visual arts.

Blistène also taught contemporary art  from 1985 to 2005 at the Ecole du Louvre, where he was known for moving back and forth between visual arts and cinema. His father, Marcel Blistène, directed Edith Piaf and Simone Signoret on the screen before moving to television. Bernard Blistène frequently invoked Michelangelo Antonioni and has always been interested in dance, music, and theater.

In 2009, he created the first edition of the Nouveau Festival at the Pompidou Center, which brought new energy to the museum. Every year, for three weeks, the area in front of the museum and its interior spaces are the sites of temporary performances linked to a thematic exhibition. In addition to its multidisciplinary nature, the festival harkens back to the original intention of the Pompidou Center, which was conceived as an active and inventive location. 

In what is turning out to be a very bad year for the Bolshoi Ballet, Russia’s famed classical dance company, the New York Times is reporting that Joy Womack, the first American ballerina to join the Bolshoi, is quitting under tumultuous circumstances. According to reports, the dancer is “alleging that she was denied opportunities to perform and ultimately told she would have to pay a bribe of $10,000 to get a solo role.”

Womack moved to Moscow at the age of 15 to attend the Bolshoi school, and her accusations of misconduct and bribery are the latest blow to the famous ballet company, which seems to be crumbling before our eyes.

Pavel V. Dmitrichenko, a former principal dancer at the Bolshoi, is currently on trial for his alleged attack of Sergei Filin, the company’s artistic director, back in January. Dmitrichenko allegedly hired two men to throw acid in Filin’s face as he was entering his home, reportedly because Dmitrichenko’s girlfriend, another Bolshoi dancer, did not receive a prized role in an upcoming production.

Last week, a witness to the attack testified that the police pressured him into giving a false statement, which would corroborate certain rumors that the trial is an elaborate cover up. At the same time, Filin’s assistant denied many of the rumors Dmitrichenko has spread about the victim, including his many affairs with top dancers, at her testimony last week.

Womack refuses to name the Bolshoi employee who bribed her. But according to her, the misconduct was not a surprise. “The way everything went down at this theater was not very professional,” she told the New York Times in an interview. “It was kind of shady.”

Meryl Streep is the latest actress to be linked to the proposed biopic of the Scottish singer Susan Boyle. According to the Guilty Pleasures section of the British tabloid Metro, Boyle announced the news herself.

“I wouldn’t like to be in the film myself,” she told the newspaper. “I’d like someone to play me. Probably Meryl Streep — I understand she has been approached.”

It is difficult to know how credible this report is. Although Streep’s virtuosity is unquestioned — she could probably play Danny Boyle— at 64 she is 12 years older than the singer, who became an overnight phenomenon after her audition on Simon Cowell’s “Britain’s Got Talent” on April 11, 2009. (It wouldn’t be a record — Norma Shearer had just turned 34 when MGM’s “Romeo and Juliet” was released, though, to be fair, no one was pretending her Juliet was 13.)

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Glenn Close had previously been linked to the project, though there was apparently no substance in the rumors. The soundest suggestion so far has been that Imelda Staunton should play Boyle. Joanna Scanlan, exceptional as the humiliated wife of Charles Dickens in “The Invisible Woman,” must be another contender.

Deadline reported a year ago that Fox Searchlight’s Lucas Webb acquired Boyle’s life rights and the rights to the British jukebox musical “I Dreamed a Dream,” which follows the singer from infancy through the onset of fame. Webb told Nancy Tartaglione that the plan was to make “a sensitive and honest biopic infused with music.”

The musical, based on Boyle’s autobiography, was produced by Michael Harrison. The book was co-written by Alan McHugh and the Scottish actress and comedienne Elaine C. Smith, who played Boyle in the 2012 production that toured the UK and Ireland.

“Sensitive” will be the way to go, as Webb suggests. Briefly deprived of oxygen during birth, Boyle suffered minor brain damage and had learning disabilities as a child. She was also bullied at school. Fragile and socially awkward, she was ill-equipped to deal with celebrity and was hospitalized after losing in the June 2009 finals of “Britain’s Got Talent.” She still lives in the modest West Lothian house where she was raised.

The mezzo-soprano’s overcoming of her personal obstacles to become a top recording artist (19 million album sales worldwide) was remarkable. It also challenged the expectation that women singers seeking a breakthrough must be young, slender, and conventionally beautiful. From the first, Boyle’s struggle to have her talent taken seriously elicited reactions that veered from the patronizing to the skeptical. The film will hopefully address this ugly standard. 

Angelina Jolie may have been the star with the hottest tabloid profile, but Steve Martin and Angela Lansbury stole the show Saturday night as they received Honorary Oscars at the Academy’s Governors Awards in Los Angeles, a night of emotion that doubles as a key stop on the awards circuit.

Jolie, who received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her efforts on behalf of refugees and others, flew in from the Australia set of the movie she’s directing, “Unbroken,” and came to the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland with star hubby Brad Pitt and their son Maddox.

And while her tribute led to the night’s first two standing ovations – one for Jolie and one for World War II vet Louis Zamperini, the subject of her new film – the emotion of that segment was overshadowed by the mixture of biting humor and heartfelt sentiment in the presentation to Martin, and by the outpouring of emotion for Lansbury.

As usual, the Governors Awards were far friendlier and less tense than the Oscars themselves – the winners, who also included costume designer Piero Tosi, already know they’ve won, and the rest of the room is there to help celebrate them.

Of course, much of the rest of the room is there for another reason, too. The Governors Awards began in 2009 as a collegial event that allowed the Academy to simultaneously streamline the Oscar show by moving the honorary awards off the air, give each honoree a more extensive tribute than would have been possible on the big show, and bestow more awards – three or four every year since then, as opposed to the one or two that would have been given out under the more restrictive, older rules.

But the first year’s event was so successful that studios and Oscar campaigners quickly woke up to the fact that the awards puts a roomful of Oscar voters in a good mood – and it might not be a bad idea to drop some Academy Awards contenders in their midst to do a little glad-handing.

From 6:00 p.m. until the presentation began around 8:30, contenders worked the room and dropped tidbits of information. Russell said he’d locked the picture on “American Hustle” and is currently doing the final sound mix; McConaughey said he’d come from working on Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic “Interstellar,” which is due to wrap in mid-December and is currently ahead of schedule, despite a big budget and five-and-a-half month shooting schedule.

Director and AMPAS governor Kathryn Bigelow chatted with producer Megan Ellison, with whom she’d made “Zero Dark Thirty,” and admitted that the two had been discussing a new movie. And “August: Osage County” actress Margo Martindale, a strong Best Supporting Actress contender, said she was used to television awards events, but not film ones.

Getty Images

As for the real purpose of the Governors Awards – the honoring, not the campaigning – that went off smoothly and emotionally. Produced by Paula Wagner, this year’s show was more streamlined and less ragged than some of its predecessors, for the most part doing away with toasts from the audience or long, rambling speeches.

The tribute to Jolie led off the program with thank-yous from four actors from her Bosnian drama“In the Land of Blood and Honey,” then a film summarizing both her career and her humanitarian efforts.

It was, it’s safe to say, the first Hersholt presentation to include clips from a movie based on a video game (“Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”) and another based on a comic-book miniseries (“Wanted”).

Gena Rowlands toasted Jolie, and asked, “How does she have the time to do all this? She acts and directs, she has a large family … and she has to keep that smile on Brad’s face.”

George Lucas presented the award to Jolie, who promised her son she wouldn’t cry. The most emotional part of her speech was a long thank-you to her late mother, who, she said, told her, “nothing would mean anything if I didn’t live a life of use to others.”

Italian costume designer Piero Tosiwas the only below-the-line honoree, and the only one who was not present. (He is in his 80s, and in fact has never been to the United States.) He was honored by a number of other costume designers, who were still elated at the Academy’s creation of a separate branch for them earlier this year.

But legendary actress Claudia Cardinale took the stage to accept the award on Tosi’s behalf – a task that fell to her, she said, because Tosi believes “his work as a costume design is to make the actress,” and because he felt bad for “making me suffer a lot” with his costumes.

If the first two presentations had moments of humor, Steve Martin's turned into a full-fledged roast. “Tonight is one of those magical nights when the one-percenters get together to honor one of our own,” said Martin Short, whose speech made fun of the Governors Awards, dropped in some political humor (“President Obama said if you like your Oscar, you can keep it”) and mostly skewered the honoree.

“I think it’s safe to say that Steve Martin is a genius,” said Short. “Not necessarily true, but safe.”

Tom Hanks added that Martin “has altered the state of comedy for the last four decades,” before Martin himself took the stage.

“It has been a longtime dream of mine that one day I would receive an honorary Oscar,” he began. “Tonight, I feel I am one step closer to that dream.”

As befits a man who hosted the Oscars with considerable grace and wit twice (and soldiered through an awkward co-hosting gig with Alec Baldwin one other time), Martin was a sharp, classy honoree – but the smooth façade slipped when he thanked his wife Anne Stringfield, “who is as beautiful as she is smart.”

Matt Petit/AMPAS

With that, Martin choked up, and then admitted, “I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it through this speech. I read it to my dog this morning and wept.”

He broke down again at the end of his speech, when he delivered a lovely homage to the movie business, which he said is truly his home. “It is where I found friends – fascinating, funny and lifelong,” he said. “So thank you movies, and thank you Academy for this award, a reminder of the true benefits that I have received.”

With that, Martin became the first and only honoree to receive a full standing ovation when he took the stage, and another when he left it. But Angela Lansbury, who received the final award of the night in a presentation by Emma Thompson, Geoffrey Rush and Robert Osborne, followed by receiving the biggest ovation of the ceremony.

Lansbury had received two Oscar nominations by the age of 20, one for “Gaslight” and one for “The Portrait of Dorian Gray,” but her work in film has long been overshadowed by her appearances on Broadway and particularly in the long-running television series “Murder She Wrote.”

That show, she said, “has given me more worldwide attention than anything I’ve ever done in movies or onstage.” Looking at the Oscar, she added, “I feel really undeserving of this gorgeous chap.”

The audience clearly didn’t agree.

When the ceremony ended, the assembled governors posed for a class photo as guests lingered, mingled or headed for the exits.

Some were going back to work: Jonas Cuaron, for instance, said he was in pre-production on “Desierto,” which he expects to begin shooting in February with Gael Garcia Bernal. Asked if promoting “Gravity” was taking away time he needed to ready his own film, he shrugged. “It’s not so bad doing things now,” he said. “It’s not like this is March or anything.”

Yeah, but isn’t there another big Academy event on March 2, in the theater that sits right next door to where the Governors Awards are held? And won’t that event (the Oscars) likely demand his participation?

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I hope you’re right.”

After 10 years of relentless growth, the trend for Miami’s annual art week is now pretty clear: Art Basel Miami Beach, the main fair, will remain the blue-chip stronghold where the art and artists are recognizable and high-priced, while the satellite fairs offer the real opportunities to find—and buy—work by fresher new artists at prices that don’t approach the cost of a suburban family home.

At the same time, the number of VIP cocktail receptions and parties, not to mention artists’ commissions by Absolut Vodka and other luxury brands, is exploding. It is easy to be cynical about corporate sponsorship, but it may represent a new form of patronage for artists looking to realize ambitious interactive, frequently free, public installations. And who can argue with that?

The move beyond the big top of Art Basel Miami Beach has been happening for some time now, though its full implications are rarely signposted in the media. Nada, Design/Miami, Art Miami, Pulse, Scope, and newcomer Untitled are fairs of genuine significance and substance and, frankly, provide a more leisurely and relaxed experience away from the crush of visitors at Art Basel. The dealers there tend to have more time to chat about art and artists and make private recommendations on what to see.

I want to support that trend because diversity is what provides real engagement in the art world. The big fairs pull in the prominent collectors who make the multimillion-dollar deals, but the art world is more than that. It is textured, nuanced, layered in ways that are on abundant display— if fairgoers are willing to pay close attention.

Indeed, part of the evolution and success of the satellite fairs in Miami, and probably elsewhere, has been a widespread desire for the different: The bland uniformity of art, artists, and galleries at the big, branded fairs can be deadening. When everything looks the same, nothing really stands out.

The reality is that galleries showing in the satellite fairs often do so because they are priced out of the main event. As sales determine a fair’s success in the eyes of its stakeholders, that may never shift. But art world diversity spreads more than a patina of opportunities. These new, smaller fairs bring fresh air and energy to the sometimes lackluster establishment experience.

This Editor's Letter appears in the December 2013 issue of Art+Auction.

Forget the shot heard ’round the world — on Sunday, the beep heard ’round Mexico City was a mobile message alert: “I Survived Jumex.” The reference was not to a natural disaster or factory explosion involving the juice company Jumex, one of the country’s largest corporate empires, but to the weekend-long opening ceremonies of Mexico’s first truly world-class art museum, Museo Jumex. The museum, conceived eight years ago by Jumex heir and longtime collector Eugenio López as a home for his foundation’s art holdings, officially opened on Saturday in a David Chipperfield-designed travertine palace in the city’s Polanco district.

The Museo features traveling exhibitions, a dedicated research department with a publishing wing and a top-notch, 2,700-piece permanent collection that mixes international stars like Damien Hirst, Maurizio Cattelan, and Donald Judd with strong holdings of Latin Americans like Damien Ortega, Teresa Margolles, and, naturally, Gabriel Orozco. (Orozco and López came up together as the great contemporary Mexican artist and patron.) As anyone you spoke with at the weekend’s ceremonies agreed — and nearly everyone from the Mexican and international art worlds seemed to be there — it’s an institution without rivals in its own country.           

Not surprisingly, the weekend’s events were as bombastic and glamorous as the new museum itself. López hosted more than 2,000 of his closest friends over two nights of soirees, including collectors, curators, artists and journalists trekking in from New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, São Paolo, Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, Beirut, Chile, Cuba, New Zealand, China, and the Middle East — as well as Monterrey, Guadalajara, and the Districto Federal. On Friday evening 650 guests gathered at Casa de la Bola, a storied mansion of Haversham-esque proportions, including Eva Longoria, Will Ferrell, Staffan Ahrenberg, Nathalie de Gunzburg, Jeffrey Deitch, Anne Pasternak, Adam McEwen, Michael Chow, Vita Schnabel, Simon de Pury and countless others.

The Friday party raged until midnight, which was tame in comparison to the next night’s festivities, where the three checkpoints and hour-long drop-off queue said it all. The fete’s location — the Deportivo Estado Mayor Presidencial, the Mexican army’s horse-training grounds — was kept secret until a few hours before. A large tent erected there was decorated with Aztecan motifs — four temple staircases in gold leaf, a dance floor illuminated with calendar symbols, and an orchestra outfitted in “Day of the Dead” regalia playing symphonic renditions of Mexico’s national songs. Tequila and Jumex juice (as well as champagne) fueled the evening, with guests dancing wedding-style to the tunes of Mark Ronson and Le Baron’s Greg Boust. Among the 2,000 partiers were David Chipperfield, Isabel Alonso and Don Eugenio López Sr. (Eugenio’s parents), Gabriel Orozco, Stavros Niarchos, Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld, Jose Parla, Alex Logsdail, Tony Shafrazi, Amanda Sharp, Dominique Levy, Klaus Biesenbach, Dakis Joannou, Diana Widmaier-Picasso and even Maria Baibakova.  The evening didn’t even end until 6 a.m. — though apparently the swirling lights continued to flash until 7. When Lopez descended to the dance floor, around 3 a.m., he was swarmed like a celebrity, with hands reaching out from every angle to touch the juice king who’d brought together the international art community. Perhaps it was he who started the texting thread?

For his latest exhibition, renowned fashion photographer Mario Testinowent home — to Peru.

Trekking repeatedly over five years to Cusco City, once the capital of the Inca Empire, Lima-born Testino discovered, while on assignment for British Vogue, a vast trove of costumes from the region so rich in color and heritage that he found himself delving deeper and deeper into a desire to document them.

Coupled with inspiration from Martin Chambi (one of the first indigenous Latin American photographers) and Javier Silva (who has documented festivals in Peru), Testino captured a series of richly-saturated images showcasing traditional and festival clothing for his latest exhibition, Alta Moda, opening at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York on November 20.

Alta Moda is a play on words on several levels. It literally means ‘high fashion’ in Spanish, but is also a nod to Testino’s work in fashion magazines, and alludes to the fact that Cusco, one of Peru's highest mountains, has an elevation of about 10,800 feet.

Speaking to Blouin Artinfo, London-based Testino acknowledged these 27 works were a departure from the celebrity portraits he is perhaps best known for — chief among them being the ones of Princess Diana taken just months before her death in 1997 — but said they took him on a journey that was both fascinating and educational.

“The magic of Peru is that even though the country has developed at great speed, they are hanging on to a lot of their traditions. Despite living in England — probably a country that hangs on to the most to its traditions — it’s quite interesting to find this in my own country,” said Testino, adding he would like to trigger exhibition-goers’ curiosity about the indigenous cultures too.

“I realized many years ago that the biggest gift I can give, because I get unlimited access to palaces, schools, theaters, and collections, is sharing what I see,” he explained. “What I try to do with my work is trigger something. I would love for people to come [to this exhibition] and discover something they didn’t know existed. And then maybe they can give me back even more information.”

Here, he sounds off on the difference between photographing famous and unknown faces; the blankness of new, young models; and of course, his muses.

You mentioned trying to fit as much time and history into each of these frames. What is it you’re trying to tell?
Most of the dresses, through their design, define what family you come from, what area you come from, what your profession is, your marital status. And costumes for festivities represent characters in folk tales that they tell through their dances. Every outfit corresponds to a different dance and attitude. I was so blown away by the variety of the costumes that I thought it would be a good idea to document them, because these are things that you don’t know how long will last. I find it really beautiful, all these different layers of things that they wear under their neck, and the way they make these hats is so complicated. I guess I can’t help being a fashion photographer at the end of the day.

Were these all new discoveries to you?
Yes. There’s a certain “taken for granted” attitude in our country about our indigenous people, the Incans, which was our culture before the Spanish came. We see these people dress when we visit the mountains and we think, “oh, how cute” or “how pretty,” but we don’t notice the differences between the variety of costumes — and this is just one out of 23 regions!

What was it like working with people or models so different from those you’re accustomed to?
In fashion photography, the model or person you’re photographing [is often treated] as a mannequin that you’ve imagined to be something in your head; where you only register how they are interpreting the role you’ve given them. The way I like to work, however, is to bring out the persona of the person and make the clothes serve the model, rather than the model serve the clothes, so I work the fashion around the woman. For example, I’d rather photograph Kate Moss, than make Kate Moss become Brigitte Bardot. But in this case it’s different because these images are really about the clothes. The persons wearing them assume an attitude and play a role when they put on these clothes. So in a funny way I’m taking the other route of fashion photography with this project.

Because they’re not famous faces?
Well, in fashion sometimes we are excited by new girls, but they bring nothing more than beauty or a look — there’s no life or personality because they are usually very young, about 16 or 17 years old. It’s not that these people had no personality — on the other hand, they were wonderful characters — but it’s just that I wanted to show more than anything how these dresses are made  — they're all woven by hand — because to me the magic is in the amount of information that you can get out of them, and that is used to recognize each other walking in the mountains. They haven’t really let go of this tradition; it’s what they hang on to.

Do you have muses?
Many. Kate Moss is one of my most active muses. Gisele Bundchen is another one. But there are also people like Anna Wintour— people who have influenced my life through their style, their taste, their own lives.

Do you like being exhibited versus being published?
To me they’re all exercises of applying imagery. When you do one picture, there is only one way that you work. When you’re doing 20 pictures you must have variety — of locations, dresses, movements, attitudes. When you do exhibitions it’s no longer about just an image, but an image in space. How do you keep somebody interested in a space? How do you communicate through that space? I quite like it because at the end of the day ‘photography’ means ‘writing with light,’ no? And in everything we do we are trying to write a story, so being exhibited is writing a story through space with light and imagery.

To see highlights of the exhibition, click on the slideshow.

Alta Moda, Queen Sofia Spanish Institute, New York, November 20 to March 29, 2014

Tate Britain is reconnecting with its past with a stunning-yet-sympathetic overhaul, which openned to the public Tuesday. For this £45m project, architects Caruso St John have radically re-thought the circulation in and around the building’s grand entrance on Millbank, adding a spectacular black and white staircase between the lobby and the basement spaces. These now host a new archive gallery, café and restaurant, as well as state-of-the art education facilities. Upstairs the rotunda’s domed atrium, which had been closed to the public since the 1920s, has been re-opened and made into a members’ room. Inspired by Tate’s original features, these additions and transformations are spliced so seamlessly into Sidney RJ Smith’s 1892 design that visitors are likely to soon forget Tate Britain was ever any different.

The inauguration follows the launch of Tate Britain’s ten new galleries last May, completing a project seven years in the making. Artists have also been put to work: Nicole Wermers designed a double-headed spoon for the café (Manners, 2013), Alan Johnston, a subtle pencil drawing for the vaults (Tactile Geometry, 2013) and Richard Wright, a new window for the Millbank Foyer.

Before taking a tour, ARTINFO UK’s Coline Milliard talked to director Penelope Curtis, architect Peter St John, and artist Paul Noble, who curated an exhibition inspired by Tate’s location on a site that was once a swamp, and later, a prison.

– Ai Weiwei and Eliasson Launch Digital Moon: Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has teamed up with Danish-Icelandic artist and designer Olafur Eliasson to create "Moon," an online social media artwork in which users can create digital drawings on the surface of a virtual moon. "Celebrate with us the gathering of creative powers from around the globe to mark the passage from nothing to something and from thinking into doing," the artists write on the project's site. "Savor this moment of transformation. Leave your fingerprint and see the shared moon grow as others reach out too." [Moon]

– Marcos Secretary Found Guilty: Imelda Marcos’s former longtime personal secretary, Vilma Bautista, has been convicted of conspiracy and tax fraud for selling Impressionist masterpieces, including two by Claude Monet, that went missing in the 1980s.The paintings were purchased with public money when Ferdinand Marcos was president of the Philippines and hung on the walls of Imelda’s Upper East Side townhouse until 1995, when they came into Bautista’s posession. Bautista, 75, waited more than 25 years before attempting to sell the works; she was not present in court to hear her sentence due to the flare up of a heart ailment. [NYT]

– DIA VP Blasts Emergency Manager’s Demands: Detroit Institute of Arts executive vice president and COO Annmarie Erickson recently attended a meeting with Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr and she remains skeptical of his demand that the museum somehow generate $500 million for the city. "And how is the DIA to come up with a half-billion dollars? Rent art. Ask your donors. Sell some art. The DIA has carefully explored those suggestions, and none will satisfy the city’s hunger for cash without dismantling the museum," Erickson writes. [Detroit Free Press]

– U.K.'s Holey Cultural Safety Net: Britain's so-called "cultural safety net," a 60-year-old program of export bans and fundraising campaigns overseen by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, is no longer so effective; in the last two years fewer than one third of the works banned from export have ended up staying in the U.K. [Independent]

– China Boosts Cultural Spending: According to an audit by its Ministry of Finance, China's government has spent some 4.8 billion yuan ($783.03) on culture in 2013, a 41 percent increase from 2012. [China.org]

– Schjeldahl Slams Munich Trove: "Every journalistic account of Gurlitt’s inventory reflexively bandies the word 'masterpieces' or, for variety, 'masterworks' and cites a speculated market value of a billion dollars," New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl writes in his appraisal of works seized from Cornelius Gurlitt's Munich apartment. "From what I’ve seen of the photographic evidence, phooey. Aside from a lovely Matisse, there appear to be only minor works, mostly by middling German Expressionist and Neue Sachlichkeit painters, of a grade that museums might want but would usually keep in storage." [New Yorker]

– Twenty musicians laid on their backs and played their instruments in what appeared to be a flash mob performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but really the band, Alarm Will Sound, is having a year-long residency at the museum. [HuffPost]

– Bloomberg news is scaling back its arts coverage, discontinuing its Muse brand, and refocusing on luxury coverage. [LAT]

– The U.S. has returned more than 6,600 looted artifacts in the past 6 years. [TAN]

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Check our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

At the Los Angeles premiere for “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” Jennifer Lawrence is joined on the red carpet by co-stars Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Banks and more. 

The actors made their appearance at the Nokia Theater in L.A. on Monday for their sixth stop to promote their new film. Before L.A. the cast attended premieres in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Rome.

Lawrence arrived wearing a sheer purple Dior Couture gown with a black belt around her waist; a different style from her dark chic look in Paris. As fans cheered and photographers called out her name, she walked down the red carpet signing autographs.

The Lionsgate sequel, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, will be released in the U.S. Friday. 

As the guest of honor at Paris’s Festival d’Automne, 72-year-old Robert Wilson is back on stage at the Théâtre de la Ville with his latest work, “The Old Woman.” Performances of the show will continue through November 23, but the American director is not stopping there. The Louvre is also giving him an exhibition and a series of events, which kicked off last week with Wilson’s theatrical adaptation of John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing.”

The audience at the French premiere of “The Old Woman” on November 6 applauded with great enthusiasm when

Wilson was greeted with enthusiastic applause at the French premiere of “The Old Woman” on November 6. But this kind of attention is nothing new for the director, who received the same response a few days later following his performance of “Lecture on Nothing” in the Louvre’s auditorium. The spectators listened attentively as the pajama-wearing Wilson interpreted Cage’s original score in almost total silence — the text itself is constructed like a true musical score with its own rhythmic structure. “Doing nothing is a difficult exercise,” said Wilson of this work, which has touched him personally. The director met Cage shortly after arriving in Brooklyn in the 1960s and the two became fast friends. The relationship, Wilson told ARTINFO last month, influenced not only the director’s work but his entire way of thinking and living. His respect for and faithfulness to Cage’s work have informed his adaptation of “Lecture on Nothing,” which was originally commissioned by the Ruhr Triennial to commemorate the centennial of Cage’s birth. Following Cage’s advice that “if someone is tired, let him go to bed” to the letter, Wilson stretched out on stage during the performance, and the audience was floored.

“The Old Woman,” with Willem Dafoe and Mikhail Baryshnikov, is based on a text by absurdist poet Daniil Kharms. Kharms was first accused of anti-Sovietism in 1931, for which he was arrested several times and finally sent to a psychiatric ward at Leningrad Prison No. 1, where he died at age 36 in 1942. The play retains only a few fragments from the original story, which was written in 1939 in Saint Petersburg. Dressed in black suits with bow ties and white make-up on their faces, two mischievous clowns or diabolical mimes play all the characters. The result is an explosion of the narrative structure — one of the characteristics of Wilson’s theater — and the presence of death haunting the stage while lighting casts eccentric pieces of furniture in an anthropomorphic light. Dafoe and Baryshnikov borrow the gestures of burlesque, vaudeville, Noh theater, and silent movies, maintaining these registers perfectly without one ever dominating the other. The strength of the play lies in the actors’ vague movements, their way of turning in circles and going backwards, and of never finishing anything — either in their gestures or in the story (which is aimless, with no beginning or end). This doesn’t prevent “The Old Woman” from suffering from excessive formalism — a virtuoso orchestration distances us from its content, which are both impenetrable and existential. What could have been a splendid danse macabre— in tragicomic tradition of the genre — or a political phantasmagoria on the dangers of socialism, ultimately leaves us with only the style of the spectacular.

Wilson’s unusual project “Living Rooms,” which opened November 14 in the Louvre’s chapel room, brings the artist’s creative universe into the museum. Objects from his personal collection, including statuettes, masks, and drawings, are on view, and all are said to be sources of inspiration for his work. As the title suggests, we’re in Wilson’s home, reconstructed for the occasion. As often happens in his plays, objects levitate above the floor, hanging from up high. It’s a small personal museum and it recalls the studio of André Breton through its eclecticism and wild mixing of genres and periods. Pumps that belonged to Marlene Dietrich appear alongside chairs, which Wilson collects. An exclusive video series, “Gaga Portraits,” which was just produced, stages scenes with the pop singer. She plays the subjects of famous paintings, Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière by Ingres, Marat by David, and John the Baptist by Solario. “Lady Gaga is a very visual person… she is able to change her nature with disturbing speed,” Wilson told Le Figaro.

Wilson returns to Théâtre de la Ville to direct “Peter Pan,” running December 12 through 20.

A 1941 custom Cadillac limousine designed for Britain’s Duke and Duchess of Windsor is expected to fetch as much as $800,000 when it is sold in New York, according to RM Auctions and Sotheby’s.

The luxury car, one of the most famous Cadillacs ever made, was known as “The Duchess.” It was used to transport the Duke and his wife, Wallis Simpson, while they stayed in New York, where they spent much of their time in a suite at the Waldorf Towers on Park Avenue.

The car, which the couple used for 11 years and was thought to have been destroyed, has not been seen in public since 1952. It will be sold in the Art of the Automobile auction on November 21.

“This Cadillac is an exceptionally important part of both automotive and social history,” said Alain Squindo, vice president, RM Auctions. “From front to back and throughout the entire interior, it is a design statement unlike any other to come from Detroit in those years.”

The duke, formerly King Edward VIII, abdicated in December 1936 after less than a year on the throne to marry Simpson, a divorced American. The decision triggered a constitutional crisis in Britain and remains one of the most enduring love stories of the 20th century.

The couple traveled extensively throughout their marriage, and the duke served as governor of the Bahamas from 1940-45.

The car, which appeared in newsreels and photos of the famous couple, includes hand-crafted doors and fenders, walnut finishes in the interior, custom-dyed woolen carpet, power windows, satin privacy curtains and four stainless-steel, velvet lined cases to hold the duchess’s jewels. The Windsor “W.E.” monogram and crown are featured on the door.

Records show the Duke of Windsor paid $14,000 for the art deco design limousine, which was an extravagant price in 1941.

“It is emblematic not only of the grace and elegance that characterized the couple, but it is a truly bespoke piece, befitting its regal owners,” Leslie Keno, senior international specialist from Sotheby's, said in a statement. 

Everyone knows that the best way to stimulate the market is to maintain confidence no matter what. So it’s not surprising to see Paris Photo conclude its 17th edition Sunday with an extremely positive recap. “Gallerists, photographers, publishers, and collectors all recognized the immense quality of the fair and emphasized that it’s an unmissable event,” the event’s press release proclaimed.

If we look at the numbers, the fair saw increased attendance again this year, with 55,239 visitors compared to 54,000 in 2012. This increase was also seen with groups of collectors and museum donors, which rose from 58 to 65 and also became more international. “The first edition of Paris Photo Los Angeles [April 26-28, 2013] greatly encouraged the American public’s interest in the original Paris Photo,” the press release stated. There was also a greater Italian presence with the participation of the National Museum of 21st Century Arts (MAXXI).

The dealers, however, remain typically reticent regarding the details of their transactions, with a few exceptions. For the Gagosian Gallery, the 2013 edition of the fair was the “most successful” since 2010. Dealers manning the booths of New York’s Cheim and Read (who participated in the fair for the first time), France’s Xippas, and Germany’s Klaus Kleinschmidt all praised the attendees for their sophistication and knowledge. Many gallerists echoed the conclusions of Paris Photo regarding the increased presence of American collectors.

More generous with information, Les Filles du Calvaire confirmed the “crazy” success of photos by Gilbert Garcin, while Galerie Toluca, which specializes in Latin American and Japanese art, said that it sold a piece to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At Nathalie Obadia’s booth, three works by Valérie Belin sold for €30,000 ($40,500) each to private collectors, and a polyptych by Egyptian artist Youssef Nabil was snapped up by a French foundation. The only gallery from India at the fair this year, Tasveer, was pleased with the €18,000 ($24,300) sale of a recent work by Karen Knorr (“A Place Like Amravati, Sarus Crane,” 2012) and also sold three out of four vintage prints by Indian photographer Jyoti Bhatt, whose work was shown for the first time in France. French gallery Lumière des Roses, which was celebrating its 10-year anniversary, sold two-thirds of its booth, while Bernard Bouche sold 40 percent. Galerie Particulière, which featured photos by David Hilliardand other artists at its booth, reported that 85 percent of its clients at the fair were new to the gallery.

The Aperture Foundation PhotoBook award went to Brazilian artist Rosangela Renno for “A01 (COD 19.1.1.43) – A27 (S/COD.23)” and the first PhotoBook prize was awarded to Spanish artist Oscar Monzon for “Karma.”

LOS ANGELES — It’s not that “Side Show,” the musical about real-life conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, was all wrong when it opened on Broadway back in 1997. It was just that no one came to see it. Critically lauded and nominated for four Tonys, including one for Bill Russell’s book and one for composer Henry Krieger’s score, it closed after only 91 performances.

But now it’s getting a second shot. A new production of “Side Show” directed by Oscar-winner Bill Condon is a full-on revamp of the original, with 12 new songs and new scenes that deepen the sisters’ backstory. The production is running at the La Jolla Playhouse now through December 15. 

“The original director and choreographer, Robert Longbottom, since he was choreographer, he had specific ideas of what he wanted to do dance-wise,” Russell told ARTINFO. “Bill [Condon] just had a different take on things and that was going back to some of this earlier stuff. It’s a new direction he had in mind for the story.”

Long a cult favorite, there had been talk of reviving “Side Show,” but it wasn’t until after Krieger worked with Condon on the film version of “Dreamgirls” in 2006 that talk turned serious. The first thing they did was mine earlier drafts of the play, shifting the focus from a backstage look at circus freaks to a biographical narrative about two sisters who dream of breaking into show business, which is precisely what the Hilton sisters did.

With all its accolades, the original production of “Side Show” might not have seemed like a work that needed to be fixed, but Condon and Russell set about fixing it anyway. “I think Tennessee Williams said plays aren’t so much finished as abandoned,” Russell said. “We had 10 years distance from it, so it wasn’t like we were married to anything at that point. The original, we did a tremendous amount of rewriting and had a trunk of material that never made it into that production.”

“Side Show” is set to travel to the Kennedy Center next year for a June 14 opening. After that, Russell hopes to bring it back to Broadway, 16 years after its debut there. Only this time he’s setting his sights on a longer run. 

– Bush Unleashes Cat Portraits: Former U.S. president George W. Bush is getting in on the art world's cat trend. His most recent feats at the easel include two portraits of his daughter Barbara Bush's feline companion Eleanor and a painting of his own adopted cat Bob — so named "so I can remember how to spell it when I got older." Appearing on "The Tonight Show" to discuss the latest breakthroughs in his artistic practice, Bush even presented host Jay Leno with a portrait. Recalling his first meeting with his art teacher, the two-term president said he presented her with this challenge: "There's a Rembrandt trapped in this body. Your job is to find it." [Vogue, AP]

– Gaga Gears Up For Miami: Recently sent Lady Gaga casting call emails have made it fairly clear that Mother Monster is planning a performance during Art Basel in Miami Beach. Jeff Koons will undoubtedly be there. [Miami Herald]

– Puma Chairman Founds Museum: The former chairman of Puma sportswear, Jochen Zeitz, is creating a museum in Cape Town to house his contemporary African art collection. The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) is due to open in 2016, but until then works from the collection will be on view at the temporary Zeitz MOCAA Pavilion. An exhibition of the work of Swazi artist Nandipha Mntambo opens November 23. [TAN]

– Nazi Law Could Complicate Gurlitt Loot's Return: The 1938 law under whose auspices the Nazis were able to seize thousands of artworks before and during World War II — including many by the modernists they deemed "degenerate artists — is still on the books in Germany, making the return of works found in Cornelius Gurlitt's Munich apartment a very complicated affair. [NYT]

– Bulgaria Demands Stalin's Car Back From Illinois Museum: A custom 1937 Packard Super 12 with steel-armored wheels and bulletproof glass that belonged to Joseph Stalin now sits parked in the Historic Auto Attractions museum in Roscoe, Illinois, after the institution's owner, Wayne Lensing, bought it on eBay. But now the Bulgarian government, who claim it was stolen from outside a museum in Sofia in 1992, is demanding the Soviet ruler's ride be returned. [ABC7 Chicago]

– Auctions Send Sotheby's Stock Soaring: Around the time of its big sales, auction house Sotheby's stock tends to spike, though the fluctuation "is more an indicator of what the 1 percent is doing than anything else," according to short-seller Jim Chanos. [Reuters]

– The Vatican has unveiled a revamped Catacombs museum and a virtual tour system of Rome’s underbelly. [NYT]

– Birmingham University in the U.K. recently returned a Maori skeleton found in storeroom to a delegation from New Zealand. [TAN]

– The International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York has named Mark Lubell as executive director. [press release]

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