It’s a desert oasis that hangs its priciest paintings on casino walls, where neon signs are a point of a pride and theme hotels pay tribute to architecture’s golden eras. Still, Las Vegas’ cultural offerings have long taken a back seat to the glamour and crudity of its most notorious vices.Now a new $470 million arts complex is daring to challenge that. The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, a gleaming art deco-inspired jewel, hopes to reintroduce Las Vegas as a cultural destination.It will

TAOS, New Mexico (AP) ― Ken Price, an internationally known artist whose glazed and painted clay blurred the lines between ceramics and sculpture, is being remembered for his humor, his love of natural shapes and for the long hours he spent in the studio perfecting what became a style all his own.Family and friends gathered at his studio in Taos to share their stories Sunday following his death Friday morning at his home in Taos. By Monday, the makeshift memorial of flowers and notes at The Harw

In the year since Japan‘s northeast coast was torn apart by a massive quake-tsunami and ensuing nuclear crisis, artists have searched for new ways to come to terms with the disaster.The so-called “Post-3/11” movement has taken its inspiration from images of tsunami-ravaged townships and grief-stricken victims in the aftermath of the the worst tragedy to hit the nation since World War II.From activist performance art to the creation of a memorial, artists have found new ways to either make a stat

Italian art sleuths announced on Friday they had successfully authenticated a painting of the snake-haired Medusa from Greek mythology as the work of 17th-century master Caravaggio using X-ray technology.“The X-rays allowed us to see some sketches under the surface. This is therefore a creation, not a copy,” Caravaggio expert Mina Gregori said in Rome at the presentation of a book about the project which has lasted several years.The round painting has a diameter of 50 centimeters and is a smalle

NEW YORK (AFP) ― A version of “The Scream,” one of the world’s most famous paintings and an iconic image of despair, is expected to fetch at least $80 million when it goes on sale this May, Sotheby’s auctioneers said Tuesday.Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen, whose father was a friend and patron of “Scream” painter Edvard Munch, owns the work, which will go on the block in New York on May 2.There are four versions of the painting, which features a man screaming and clutching his head against a

MADRID (AFP) ― Spain’s Prado Museum put the earliest known copy of the “Mona Lisa” on display Tuesday for the first time since restoration work revealed it was likely painted by one of Leonardo da Vinci’s apprentices as he worked on the original.Throughout the day, a crowd gathered around the painting, which shows the same woman the Italian artist painted, backed by a landscape of hills resembling those of the original masterpiece which hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.“It is the most importa

A Vienna museum launched Monday an unusual contribution to celebrations marking 150 years since Gustav Klimt‘s birth with an online search for the kitschiest objects adorned with the artist’s work.The Wien Museum‘s “Worst of Klimt” campaign invites people to post on its Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/WienMuseum “the most horrible or most absurd Klimt products.”Examples already posted on Monday included cake tins embossed with the Austrian artist’s famous “The Kiss”, a dog blanket, a pair