VENICE (AFP) ― Fifty-two drawings by Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci are going on show in Venice from Thursday, including the famous but rarely seen Vitruvian Man charting the ideal proportions of the human body.The show in the city’s Galleria dell’Academia displays works from the museum’s own archives as well as from the collections of the British Royal Family, the Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum and the Louvre.“Leonardo da Vinci: The Universal Man” charts his artistic and scientific

NEW YORK (AP) ― Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment on Wednesday agreed to manage and produce a live show in a specially built $65 million theater in central China that will celebrate the world famous Terra Cotta Warriors, a high-profile step for America’s live theater giant into the world’s most promising consumer market.The heads of Nederlander group and the Shaanxi Qinhuang Grand Theater Performing Arts Company signed the contract at the Minskoff Theatre on Broadway as two actors in elaborate

LONDON (AFP) ― The auction of works by Banksy, the world’s most infamous graffiti artist, has angered residents of looted London neighborhoods and “embarrassed” the artist as the sale of street art becomes a lucrative enterprise.Hollywood A-listers Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are fans of the British artist’s stencilled designs, known for their irreverent humour and political activism.One of his most famous works is painted on the Israeli separation wall and depicts a young girl flying away whil

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ― She’s the toast of New York and beloved in Paris and London, but Beatriz Milhazes thinks there’s no place like home.More than a decade after her last show in her native Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s highest-paid artist is gearing up for a homecoming of sorts, a major retrospective spanning most of her 30-year career. The exhibition, opening Thursday at the Paco Imperial Cultural Center in downtown Rio, brings together more than five dozen paintings, silk screens and collages cov

NEW YORK (AFP) ― A mass of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s personal items will be auctioned in New York next month in what is billed as the biggest collection of the French Impressionist artist’s memorabilia.The Renoir Estate Collection of 143 lots is set to be sold on Sept. 19, for an estimated $3 million.The sale includes 20 original sculptural plaster maquettes created during Renoir’s final years with the help of a young assistant, Richard Guino, at the painter’s Les Collettes home in the southeaster

BERLIN (AFP) ― Berlin agreed Wednesday to build a new museum for 20th-century masterpieces by artists including Rothko, Magritte and Dali donated by a wealthy couple, potentially resolving a years-long dispute.The state museums foundation put forward a proposal for the cash-strapped city to create a 130 million euro ($174 million) home for the collection directly behind the already overflowing New National Gallery at the Cultural Forum in central Berlin.The works themselves belonging to milliona