Art Undone
By SETH ASHLEY of the Tribune’s staff 
Public funding for the arts is like the brakes on your car: You don’t miss them ’til they’re gone. In Missouri, the brake pads are wearing thin, and local artists, patrons, administrators and legislators are working to get the car to the shop before there’s a crash.

NICHE: A WEEKLY PEEK AT AN EMERGING ARTIST
Ming Zhou
By MARCIA VANDERLIP of the Tribune’s staff
Ming Zhou likes to blur the borders - both in her art and in her life. "I like to look at the painting as a whole," she said, discussing "Dew," an acrylic of a contented woman in a wild garden.

BEHIND THE SCENES
Missouri Theatre‘s organ gala expected to be the bee’s knees
By LYNN ISRAEL of the Tribune’s staff
If the thought of a magic flute can conjure up visions of Tamino and Pamina, dragons and boy-angels, imagine what a magic organ can achieve. Time travel? Perhaps. A swanky evening? Most certainly. At least, that is the promise when the Missouri Theatre celebrates the unveiling of its long-awaited pipe organ.

Winner turns loser

Karma comes home to roost

Chris Penn remembered

PERFORMING ARTS

LIFTING THE CURTAIN
The Chalk Garden

Ball goes bawdy
By JUSTIN BERGMAN of The Associated Press
NEW YORK - When Michael Ball stepped into the role of Count Fosco last year in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical, "The Woman in White," he sought inspiration in an unlikely place: the world of pornography.

ON STAGE

 MUSIC

Climb to the top
By ALEX VEIGA of The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Music took hold of Gustavo Santaolalla when he was a boy in Argentina and hasn’t let go of him since.

LIVE MUSIC

CHART TOPPERS

BOOKS

COVER TO COVER
“Diamonds Take Forever” by Jessica Jiji (Avon Trade, 263 pages)
By PAULINE MILLARD of The Associated Press
NEW YORK - International atrocities were all in a day’s work for Jessica Jiji, a news writer at the United Nations. Foreign policy, election results and body counts were, and still are, her bread and butter.

LITERARY LINKS

BEST SELLERS

 VISUAL ARTS

DOWNEY'S FINE LINE
Good art graces walls of Poppy for ’06 show
By JAMES DOWNEY
As I write this, I have the onset of the latest cold/flu bug going around. And I’m pretty sure where I got it: at the Feb. 19 Winter Exhibition Opening Reception at Poppy Fine Art.

Gathering of masters
By NANCY RABINOWITZ of The Associated Press
BOSTON - The curators at the Museum of Fine Arts have put together an expansive collection of work by some of the biggest names in 20th-century art.

Attacker of famed Dada urinal art claims artist would agree with him
By PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARD of The Associated Press
PARIS - A court has convicted a 77-year-old French man for attacking artist Marcel Duchamp’s famed porcelain urinal with a hammer, rejecting the defendant’s contention that he had increased the value of the art work by making it an "original."

Under fire, Getty’s oceanfront museum reopens
By JOHN ROGERS of The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Eight years and a $275 million face-lift later, the old J. Paul Getty Museum is ready for its close-up.

EXHIBITS