ART

Arts protest: An article in Sunday's California section about Vietnamese Americans protesting an art exhibit said that a man was surrounded by demonstrators after he waved a flag of Communist Vietnam. The man was waving a piece of art that featured the flag of Vietnam and the flag of South Vietnam.

Brandeis University, anticipating a budget deficit of more than $10 million over five years, voted to close its art museum and sell a collection that includes pieces by Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning. The 49-year-old Rose Art Museum will close this year and seek buyers for about 6,000 pieces, Dennis Nealon, a spokesman for the Waltham, Mass., school, said Tuesday. The collection was appraised at about $350 million in 2007 by the university, said Michael Rush, the museum's director.

Brandeis University's president said he mishandled statements about the fate of the school's Rose Art Museum and whether Brandeis would sell its 6,000-piece collection to save money. While the building that houses the museum will remain open, the school in Waltham, Mass., has not determined what will be inside. Brandeis may sell some of its art if necessary, "but I assure you other options will also be considered," school President Jehuda Reinharz said in a letter to students, faculty and alumni Thursday.

"Fabulous Las Vegas" got a bit less fabulous in the last few weeks, at least for art. On Saturday, news broke that the Las Vegas Art Museum would shutter its doors at the end of the month. In early February, Poju Zabludowicz, chairman and chief executive of the private investment firm Tamares Group, and his wife, Anita, canceled plans to build a $12-million contemporary art museum downtown. In late January, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, loaned out masterpieces from its collection to a Vegas Strip casino for an undisclosed rental fee. Slumping tourism has battered the gambling mecca, causing some of the distress.

Warhol and what? No, that's "Warhol and Watts." DeAnthony Langston, program director for the youth organization Urban Compass in Watts, loves that the name of tonight's one-off exhibition at the Pharmaka art gallery in downtown L.A. causes people to do a double-take. "Warhol and Watts," Langston says, savoring the words. "It's like peanut butter and jelly -- and mustard." Urban Compass' tiny office is in the back of Verbum Dei High School, a Jesuit-run institution on South Central Boulevard that represents something of an oasis in a troubled neighborhood.

Nudity has been a staple of the visual arts since time began, but apparently the real thing is still too much for some people to handle. On Wednesday, a 26-year-old model was arrested in New York after posing for a photo shoot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Police said Kathleen Neill was naked in full view of visitors in the museum's arms and armor department. "She didn't do anything sexual," said her lawyer, Donald Schechter. "There are nude sculptures and paintings all over the museum.

Nude model: A headline on a Quick Takes item in Friday's Calendar section said a nude model had riled MoMA -- the Museum of Modern Art -- in New York. It was the Metropolitan Museum of Art where the model posed for a photo shoot.

A surfing enthusiast whose entry in a new art competition expresses his love of the sea won the $250,000 top prize. After beating nine other finalists Thursday to win the ArtPrize event in Grand Rapids, Mich., Ran Ortner of Brooklyn, N.Y., said that for the first time in his adult life, he will be able to worry less about paying his rent and concentrate more on creating his art. The public selected the finalists and winners "American Idol"-style from among 1,262 works displayed throughout downtown Grand Rapids.

About 60 works by Impressionist and Modern artists sold for more than $111 million at a Sotheby's auction in London, with Amedeo Modigliani's 1918 work, "Boy With Blue Waistcoat," drawing the highest amount: $11.2 million. Vincent van Gogh's "Two Crabs" earned the second-highest amount, $9.4 million. Egon Schiele's 1913 work, "Liebespaar," was bought for $3.5 million, a record for a work on paper by the artist. The Monday transactions were the largest sale of masterpieces in Britain in a decade.

Cover art: The illustration of Raymond Chandler on the cover of the Dec. 30 Sunday Opinion section lacked an artist's credit. It should have been credited to Scott Lauman.