Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

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--The Los Angeles art community remembers Michael Crichton the collector.

--Shakespeare Festival /LA will honor Australian film director Baz Luhrmann and two others with a Crystal Quill Award for their contributions to arts education.

--A rare, recently restored ‘klezmer’ violin will be heard for the first time in the U.S. and for one of the first times since WWII, in a Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra program to commemorate 70 years since Kristallnacht (‘Night of Broken Glass’).

--The National Park Service has agreed to delay demolition of Richard Neutra’s 1961 cyclorama building at Gettysburg National Military Park in Philadelphia.

--Women playwrights discuss solutions and call for action to end gender inequities in productions in New York. Earlier reports here.

--Citing concerns about the economy, the St. Louis Art Museum announced today that it will delay its plans for a $125-million expansion, designed by London-based architect David Chipperfield.

--Charity leaders can expect the Obama administration to push for changes in the federal tax structure that could spur giving.

--William Petersen, star of ‘CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,’ begins performances today in Chicago in Conor McPherson’s ‘Dublin Carol.’

--Proving it’s not all bad news for opera companies, the Canadian Opera Company posts a surplus. But the future of Orange County’s Opera Pacific looks grim.

--The New Museum in New York unveils a new oil painting of Michelle Obama by artist Elizabeth Peyton.

--The Public Theater’s acclaimed revival of ‘Hair’ will open at Broadway’s Hirschfeld Theatre in March 2009.

--Bidding remains sparse at New York auction houses, further underscoring the effect of the global financial crisis on the art market.

--New York’s Playwrights Horizons receives a record $2-million programming grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

--Lisa Fung