Madonna

Sure, Madonna may have scandalized the Vatican and shocked nearly every parent in America at some point during her long and provocative career full of shrewd image transformations. But as the Material Girl hits the half-century mark today, she may be stepping into a role that even she, with all her marketing savvy, might not have dreamed up: poster child for the 50-and-fabulous set. Who cares about those recent tabloid headlines linking her to the Yankees' A-Rod? Many women of a certain age look at Madonna and see a wonderfully fit, stylish, vigorous woman who's made a fortune based on smarts, talent and ambition and who just keeps on going.

Madonna's “Like a Virgin” wedding dress and Jean Paul Gaultier cone-bra corset are two of the iconic costumes in rock 'n' roll history. And they will be on display to the public in L.A. on Thursday during a one-night-only pop-up fashion exhibit at Macy's in Century City. The event, titled “Madonna's Fashion Evolution,” marks the first time many of the star's costumes have been displayed together. Items have been brought in from all over the world. The pink satin cone-bra corset (worn during the "Blonde Ambition" tour)

A small, stylishly dressed woman stands in a narrow corridor at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, staring up in awe at a row of huge photographs of writers and artists, all persecuted or forced to flee Nazi Germany. Eyeing the melancholy visages of Max Beckmann, Franz Werfel, Ernst Barlach and George Grosz, she says quietly, "They all look so sad, like doomed men." Stephanie Barron, the curator who assembled the museum's widely praised "Degenerate Art" exhibit, explains that the art displayed here, which includes work by Chagall, Kandinsky and Klee, was loathed by the Nazis, who vilified it as "degenerate trash."

Pop star Madonna is selling a painting from her private collection to benefit education initiatives for girls. "Trois Femmes à la Table Rouge" (Three Women at the Red Table) by Fernand Léger is worth an estimated $5 million to $7 million and will be sold by Sotheby's, the singer announced Wednesday on her official website. The painting, which dates from 1921, is an abstract work created in Léger's signature pseudo-Cubist style. The work is scheduled to be sold on May 7 as part of a larger Sotheby's auction in New York.

Madonna: Sexcentric. JACK O'MARA Irvine

Madonna as taste maker? C'mon now. Madonna needs to put her clothes back on and get a job. What's left of our culture can do without her brand of kiddie porn disco. (I don't even talk about Prince, another of Calendar's taste makers.) HENRY KRANEN Van Nuys

Now that the exhilaration over Madonna's new book "Sex" has begun to settle, I would like to point out the difference between the Madonna of yesterday and the Madonna of today. The Madonna of the '80s taught America that it was OK to be a woman. Controversial and not afraid to express her sexuality, she did more to liberate women than any ERA bill could have. Now, Madonna is trying to teach America that it is OK to be a slut. From a 22-year-old man's viewpoint--if you want to be a slut, you are going to live a lonely life.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of 2011's cinematic flame-out "W.E.," Madonna has spent this year kicking up the kind of high-profile controversy that originally made her a star. The singer got into a spat with the dance-music heavyweight Deadmau5 after allegedly asking concertgoers at March's Ultra Music Festival if they'd taken Ecstasy. The hubbub only increased once Madonna kicked off her latest world tour, which this week stops at Staples Center for shows on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

For the GLAAD Media Awards on Saturday night, Madonna put together an outfit reminiscent of a Boy Scout: navy shirt with badges, shorts, neckerchief, hat. And fingerless gloves. "I wanted to be a Boy Scout and they wouldn't let me," she said. The event honored newscaster Anderson Cooper. [The Cut] Wal-Mart reportedly is considering phasing out goods sourced in Bangladesh, scene of a fatal factory fire last fall. [WWD] (Subscription required.) Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge attended Cheltenham Gold Cup Day at the Prestbury Park Races on Friday.

A Renaissance-era panel by the artist Botticelli depicting the Virgin Mary, baby Jesus and a young John the Baptist sold for $10.4 million at a Christie's auction in New York on Wednesday. The work was labeled the "Rockefeller Madonna" by the auction house because it was once owned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. AT THE AUCTION: Can you guess the price? The sale was part of a larger sale of Renaissance work that brought in a total of $42.6 million. The Botticelli work was estimated to sell for $5 million to $7 million.

As a sign she may be getting serious about selling, Madonna has put her mansion in Beverly Hills up for sale in the Multiple Listing Service at $22.5 million. The property was being shown privately last year as a pocket listing, area real estate agents reported. During her nearly decade of ownership, the pop icon rebuilt and expanded the estate, completing it in 2010. The gabled-roofed behemoth sits behind gates on 1.17 acres of landscaped grounds. The compound, accessed by a 500-foot tree-lined driveway, includes a nine-bedroom main house, two guesthouses, a resort-size swimming pool and a tennis court.

Hit the road, Jack. That may well be the take-away for musicians when reading Calendar's annual Ultimate Top 10 list, a ranking that combines income from recordings as well as the concert box office to show who had the most lucrative years according to numbers reported by Nielsen SoundScan and the concert industry-tracking publication Pollstar. Since the Ultimate Top 10 began in 1998, there's often been a sizable split between the acts that make their nut from touring and those earning most of their money at physical and virtual cash registers from recordings.

Madonna has put her mansion in Beverly Hills up for sale in the Multiple Listing Service at $22.5 million. During her nearly decade of ownership, the pop icon has extensively remodeled and expanded the estate, which sits behind gates on 1.25 acres of landscaped grounds. The compound includes a 500-foot tree-lined driveway, a nine-bedroom main house, two guesthouses, a resort-size swimming pool and a tennis court. There is a two-story dining room, a gym, a theater/screening room and 17,000 square feet of living space.

Taylor Swift's "Red" appeared to be the music gift of choice among last-minute shoppers, posting a sixth week in the No. 1 slot on the pop music charts in the final week before Christmas and adding 276,000 copies to its total, which is closing in on 3 million. Rapper T.I. came in with the highest chart debut of the week, his new "Trouble Man: Heavy Is the Head" landing at No. 2 with 179,000 copies, just edging out Bruno Mars' "Unorthodox Jukebox," which dropped one slot to No. 3 on second-week sales of 178,000 copies.

Madonna was queen of the world in 2012, at least as far as touring pop music performers, delivering the highest-grossing concert tour of the year and raking in nearly $300 million at the box office worldwide, according to Pollstar, the concert-industry tracking magazine. Madonna's MDNA tour visited 67 cities for 88 performances that grossed $296.1 million, an average of $4.4 million a night, Pollstar's data shows. Her average ticket price was just over $140, far from the priciest concert tickets of the year.

Looks like Lady Gaga is tearing another page out of the Madonna platinum-blond, pop-superstar playbook. In the early '90s, Madonna launched a new phase of her career by allowing director Alek Keshishian to make a documentary, "Truth or Dare," about the singer's Blond Ambition tour. Keshishian's film painted Madonna in a candid and revealing light and included a memorable cameo by her then-boy-toy Warren Beatty, who in one sequence makes the laughing observation about Madonna: "She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk.