ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

POP/ROCK

Songs in the Key of Stevie: Stevie Wonder was serenaded with his own music Monday night at the Century Plaza Hotel by past Grammy winners including Mariah Carey, Tony Bennett, Chaka Khan and LeAnn Rimes at the ninth annual MusiCares Tribute Dinner and Concert. MusiCares, a charity arm of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, honored Wonder as the person of the year for his humanitarian efforts. Previous recipients have included Bennett, Quincy Jones and Bonnie Raitt.

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This Time Hill Came Second: Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” may be the odds-on favorite to win best album honors at tonight’s Grammy Awards, but Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” edged out the Hill collection as the best album of 1998 in the Village Voice’s annual poll of nearly 500 U.S. pop critics. Though “Miseducation” was named on more ballots, “Car Wheels,” which is nominated for a best contemporary folk album Grammy, scored more points (2,129 to 1,985) under a voting system in which critics assign points to each of their Top 10 choices (meanwhile, Williams appears in a post-Grammy concert tonight at the House of Blues). Bob Dylan, whose “Time Out of Mind” won both the Voice poll and the best album Grammy last year, finished third with “Live 1966,” one of the best poll showings ever by a live recording. The rest of the poll’s Top 10 winners, in descending order: Billy Bragg & Wilco, Elliott Smith, OutKast, PJ Harvey, Air, the Beastie Boys and Rufus Wainwright. Fatboy Slim’s “The Rockafeller Skank” was voted the year’s top single, followed by Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing).”

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Grieg Works Found: More than 40 previously unknown works by 19th century composer Edvard Grieg have been discovered in forgotten study books stored in a safe in the composer’s native Norway. The works, discovered by German musicologist Joachim Dorfmueller, are said to show a new picture of the young “Peer Gynt” composer’s work, with more baroque than romantic traits. A few of the organ and piano pieces will be premiered March 5-6 in Leipzig, Germany, where Grieg wrote the pieces while studying at a conservatory from 1858 to 1862.

TELEVISION

Gays on TV: Doubtless encouraged by NBC’s success with “Will & Grace,” a comedy about a gay man and straight woman, producers Jonathan Axelrod and Jamie Widdoes (“Dave’s World”) are developing a TV series based on the 1997 independent film “Kiss Me, Guido,” about two male roommates, one gay and one straight. Separately, Neve Campbell’s “Party of Five” character will become involved in a lesbian relationship as part of a three-episode arc that will air on the Fox series in May, after Julia (Campbell) ends her relationship with an abusive boyfriend. Meanwhile, a perceived increase in gay characters has alarmed some conservative groups, among them the Christian Action Network, which has asked the Federal Communications Commission to label programs containing homosexual content.

ART

Hear This, LACMA: The L.A. County Museum of Art’s “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs” isn’t the only Impressionist exhibition doing blockbuster business these days. In London, a show of Claude Monet paintings is so popular that the Royal Academy of Arts has announced plans to stay open all night before the show’s final day. The museum anticipates it will have sold out all 600,000 available tickets to “Monet in the 20th Century” by the show’s close on April 18; staying open the night of April 17 will allow another 8,000 visitors.

QUICK TAKES

Oscar nominee “Saving Private Ryan” has topped “Armageddon” as the top-grossing film of 1998, DreamWorks Pictures said Tuesday. The film’s box-office total is now more than $203 million. . . . NBC News will broadcast its long-in-the-works interview with Juanita Broaddrick on “Dateline NBC” at 8 tonight. In recent newspaper interviews, Broaddrick has alleged that President Clinton assaulted her sexually 21 years ago, and NBC had been under pressure from conservatives to run the interview, but had said it would hold back until it finished its reporting. . . . Fox’s “Ally McBeal” had its highest-rated episode ever on Monday, with nearly 17 million viewers. . . . Fox has picked up its new animated Eddie Murphy series, “The PJs,” for next season, with a full 22-episode order. . . . KFWB-AM (980) today begins a new monthly, hourlong call-in program with L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, “Ask the Mayor,” airing at 10 a.m. . . . Actress Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and the late Marcello Mastroianni, will introduce her movie “How I Got Into an Argument” during a 9:15 American Cinematheque screening tonight at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre.