ART

Six years ago, Tim Blum and Jeff Poe opened a 5,000-square-foot gallery on a forgotten strip of South La Cienega Boulevard. This weekend, the team will launch a 21,000-square-foot complex across the street -- at the hub of what has become a major center of contemporary art galleries in and around Culver City. The new Blum & Poe has transformed a grungy hulk of a building into a pristine showcase with sleek galleries illuminated by dramatic skylights, a slightly rougher project space and lots of back rooms for storage, offices, private viewing and entertaining.

The history of American art has missed the mark, says curator Alexandra Munroe. It has overlooked the profound and pervasive contribution of Asian philosophy and culture to the caldron, and the exhibition she has spent five years organizing, "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia: 1860-1989," is going to prove her point. Vast and ambitious, the just-opened exhibition at the Solomon R.

For decades, three Italian Renaissance paintings have hung on the walls of Hearst Castle without betraying their grim history. But on Friday, state parks officials will formally acknowledge the artworks' past, turning them over to the heirs of a Jewish couple who were forced by the Nazis to liquidate their Berlin art gallery in 1935.

From the house we built With blood and soil To the road on which The moonlight procession Flies forth on their boat Of shooting stars It is a pity you did not wish To stay here with us The poet had crafted those words so long ago. Flush from the victory of a People's Revolution in Iran that ousted a repressive monarch for a bearded cleric who spouted promises of freedom and quality, Partow Nooriala all too soon came to believe that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had deceived them.

Three Southern California art fairs in January, two of them in one weekend? In this economy? It may defy logic, but business is business. As conceived when the financial outlook was rosier, photo.l.a., an annual marketplace for a kaleidoscopic range of photography, is winding up today at Santa Monica Airport's Barker Hangar. Art LA, a showcase and sales venue for edgy new work, is gearing up for its Jan. 23 to 25 gig, also at Barker Hangar.

In the field of American crafts, Carol Sauvion has just about done it all. A former studio potter and teacher with a college degree in art history, Sauvion opened her L.A. crafts shop, Freehand, in 1980. The 3rd Street emporium expanded into two adjacent storefronts as it became a popular outlet for functional works of clay, glass, wood, fiber and metal and a destination for believers in the power and beauty of the handmade. With a loyal clientele, it specializes in relatively timeless ceramics and jewelry rather than following trends.

The painter was the first artist to move to the downtown corner. His neighbors included a strip club, the Little White Wedding Chapel, a Thai barbecue joint and red neon heralding the Tod Motor Motel. Others might have shunned the gritty storefront near Las Vegas' embryonic arts district, but here, Ezequiel Lee Orona could grasp a decades-old dream for $900 a month.

One of Ulysses Davis' granddaughters has said the artist used to sit in front of the television on election night, a block of wood in hand, ready to start carving a bust of the winner once the election was called. Until his death in 1990, Davis added each new president to the collection of 40 busts that has become his best-known work. The works are part of an exhibition called "The Treasure of Ulysses Davis" at Atlanta's High Museum of Art.

Sydney Shiotani considers herself an artist. The 8-year-old gripped a brown coloring pencil, her electric green nail polish glistening in the sun, and began etching her very own masterpiece on a white card stock. Huddled over her workstation, she adorned the card with heart-shaped embellishments and finished the piece by drawing an ivy-like border -- featuring petite leaves sketched with a gel pen. "I'm done!" she declared. "Can I do another one?" She did. And beside her Sunday afternoon were dozens of other children doing the same at the multicultural trading cards station -- just one of many workshops and performances that make up the annual Children's Festival of the Arts, a daylong celebration of arts and culture in Hollywood.

Last year was the year Bill Gross said his stamps had outperformed his bond fund, Stanley Ho beat Damien Hirst in bidding for a truffle and Amazon.com Inc. paid 39 times estimates for a book of J.K. Rowling stories. Among the mishaps in 2007, Marie Antoinette's pearls and a Van Gogh painting didn't sell. Money poured into the sales rooms in New York, London and Hong Kong, swelling auction sales by 46% at Sotheby's, to $5.33 billion; Christie's International totals aren't in yet.