Art Institute

In memory of Megan Hart Jones, who attended the Art Institute of Southern California when it was known as the Laguna Beach School of Art, the school has established a scholarship fund. Contributions will be used to provide studio art scholarship awards for bachelor of fine arts students pursuing degrees in painting, drawing, sculpture or photography. Individuals who contribute $250 to the fund will receive a small etching by Jones, either "English Sheep"--tiny sheep scattered on a field sloping down from a panoramic landscape--or "Flowers and Shells" in which the subjects are scattered within an abstract grid format.

A. James Speyer, a well-known curator of painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, has died after a long illness. He was 73. Speyer, who died Sunday, gained a reputation as a dynamic force in the contemporary art scene during his 25-year tenure at the institute, counting as friends such artists as Jasper Johns, Frank Stella and Georgia O'Keeffe.

A. James Speyer, a well-known curator of painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, has died after a long illness. He was 73. Speyer, who died Sunday, gained a reputation as a dynamic force in the contemporary art scene during his 25-year tenure at the institute, counting as friends such artists as Jasper Johns, Frank Stella and Georgia O'Keeffe.

The roomful of artists at the Art Institute of Chicago were concentrating intently on handcrafting miniature rooms, shaping their creations carefully out of bits of paper, fabric and pictures cut from glossy art catalogues, assisted by gentle suggestions from instructors leading the workshop. Inspiration clearly flowed from table to table as the artists glued and cut. Grandmothers got ideas from toddlers, parents took leads from grade-school kids.

Shulamith Firestone, whose 1970 book "The Dialectic of Sex" became a feminist classic with its calls for a drastic rethinking of women's roles in the bearing and raising of children, was found dead Tuesday in her New York City apartment. She was 67. A recluse who struggled with mental illness in later years, the author apparently died of natural causes, said her sister, Miriam Tirzah Firestone. Only 25 when "The Dialectic of Sex" was published, Firestone vaulted to prominence as a leading theorist of the second wave of feminism that crested in the 1960s and '70s.

J. Thomas Reeve, president of the Art Institute of Southern California in Laguna Beach since March, has resigned. Reeve could not be reached for comment. In a prepared statement he said, "It has been a very good learning experience for me. I believe AISC is in good order at this time for a leadership transition." However, in an interview three weeks ago, Reeve gave no indication that he was dissatisfied with his position or was planning to quit.

Harold Gebhardt, an artist and academician who began carving wooden horses when he was a young man on his father's Wisconsin farm and became a leading sculptor and professor emeritus of fine arts at USC, died Friday in Sylmar. He was 81. Known primarily as a sculptor in wood and stone, Gebhardt also had a reputation for small acrylic paintings. He had exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Los Angeles County Art Museum and institutes and museums in Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Portland, Santa Barbara and elsewhere.

A judge on Thursday ordered a family of British forgers who tricked a museum into buying a fake Egyptian statue to pay back more than $800,000 to institutions they defrauded. George Greenhalgh, 84; his wife, Olive, 83; and their son Shaun, 47, were convicted last year of selling forged artworks between 1989 and 2006. Their biggest sale was a fake Egyptian statue, bought by the Bolton Museum in northern England in 2003. A judge in London ordered the family to repay $723,000 to Bolton Borough Council and smaller sums to Sotheby's auction house and the Henry Moore Institute.

Seven young artists were the toast of Tiffany & Co. last week when the world-famous jewelry company honored select award winners in the "Color It Orange" art show. About 150 guests, many of them parents, teachers and siblings of the honorees, attended the reception at Tiffany in South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa. Tiffany chose the artists from winners in the three-dimensional category of the juried art show sponsored by the Designing Women of the Art Institute of Southern California in Laguna Beach.