Let Curators Be Curators, MOCA’s New Chief Says

By RANDY KENNEDY and JORI FINKEL

Robert Caplin for The New York Times

Philippe Vergne will head west to the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Philippe Vergne said his first priority in rebuilding the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is to find a chief curator.

Critic’s Notebook

A Maya sculpture of a warrior with a jaguar mask at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Stalking Heritage Far From Home

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

About 80 Maya artifacts are on view in Los Angeles, home to many Guatemalans, to drum up support for a national heritage museum.

Mikhail Baryshnikov with his photographs of Merce Cunningham dancers.

Baryshnikov Plans Fund-Raising to Give Artists Space

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

Mikhail Baryshnikov is opening a fund-raising effort to give artists a space to work in Manhattan, through fellowships named for Merce Cunningham and John Cage.

January 17, 2014

Victoria and Albert Museum to Publish Nazi-Era ‘Degenerate Art’ Inventory Online

Victoria & Albert Museum will make a copy of a list of “degenerate art” seized by the Nazis available online to the public starting at the end of January.

January 16, 2014

New Foundation to Focus on Publishing Art Books

The Artist Book Foundation plans to document and distribute a visual record of work that would otherwise hardly be seen.

January 16, 2014

Victoria & Albert Museum to Overhaul Baroque and Rococo Galleries

The renovation is expected to be completed in December and cost $20.4 million.

More Design News in ArtsBeat »

Art

Clothes Inspired on Demand

By ROBERTA SMITH

The resourceful American Folk Art Museum continues to explore new ways of using its collection.

“Pastoral (Den’en),” by Ay-O, in “Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde” at the Museum of Modern Art, which featured non-Western works that are too rarely seen.

Lost in the Gallery-Industrial Complex

By HOLLAND COTTER

Most every aspect of the art world has been affected by high-priced galleries and collectors with deep pockets.

Chryssa, Artist Who Saw Neon’s Potential as a Medium, Dies at 79

By MARGALIT FOX

Chryssa, a Greek-born sculptor, began incorporating neon into her constructions in America in the 1960s, in time mastering the technical difficulties of the medium.

Arts | Connecticut

Ming Cho Lee been a faculty member of the Yale School of Drama for more than four decades.

The Set and Its Designer, Ming Cho Lee, Take Center Stage

By JANE L. LEVERE

More than 90 models, sketches and images on display at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven show how Ming Cho Lee sets up new worlds for actors.

Events in Connecticut | Times Topics: Connecticut Arts

The architects Ricardo Scofidio and Liz Diller, left, urged razing the American Folk Art Museum building, which was designed by another architect duo, their longtime friends Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, right.

Building Faces Wrecking Ball. So Does Couples’ Friendship.

By ROBIN POGREBIN

Since the architects Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller recommended razing the site of the former American Folk Art Museum designed by another well-known pair, the friendship of the two couples has come under stress.

Tobias Frere-Jones, left, and Jonathan Hoefler gave Barack Obama’s presidential campaign a distinctive look.

Typography Partners Part Ways in Money Fight

By NOAM COHEN

Tobias Frere-Jones, in a lawsuit filed late, accused Jonathan Hoefler of luring him to the company in 1999 with the false promise that they would be 50-50 partners.

Art Review

An Opening of the Field Jess’s “The Enamord Mage, Translation #6” (1965), at this show at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.

The Company They Kept

By HOLLAND COTTER

“An Opening of the Field” focuses on the San Francisco poet Robert Duncan and his life partner, the artist Jess, and the assorted band of offbeat artists and writers who found a common link in their friendship.

Exhibition Review

When Slavery and Its Foes Thrived in Brooklyn

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

“Brooklyn Abolitionists/In Pursuit of Freedom,” at the Brooklyn Historical Society, spotlights extraordinary figures in the history of slavery and abolition in New York, and James W. C. Pennington, a preacher and abolitionist.

The invitation to the 1965 premiere of Andy Warhol’s film “Empire,” now being shown in its entirety at the James Fuentes gallery.

Monumental Cast, but Not Much Plot

By BLAKE GOPNIK

Andy Warhol’s 1964 film “Empire” is seven hours of the Empire State Building doing nothing. What’s it like to watch the whole thing?

Art Review

Piero della Francesca's first known work, this

Faith in the Early Age of Reason

By KEN JOHNSON

“Piero della Francesca: Personal Encounters,” at the Metropolitan Museum, puts together Piero’s four devotional paintings in his 30-year career.

Art Review

A Few Pearls of the Grisly and the Mundane

By KAREN ROSENBERG

The Morgan Library & Museum’s first show of Spanish drawings covers four centuries with just 25 objects.

Art Review

Hooray for Hollywood! The art dealer Holly Solomon, photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe in 1976, is the subject of this show at Mixed Greens and Pavel Zoubok.

A Dealer’s Eye, and Life

By ROBERTA SMITH

“Hooray for Hollywood!” celebrates the life and artistic eye of Holly Solomon, an art dealer with an outsize personality who often became the subject of artists’ portraits.

Ideas for everyone on your shopping list.

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Inside Art

Tie-in merchandise from the Frick’s hit exhibition “Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals.”

Dutch Bonanza for the Frick

By CAROL VOGEL

The Frick Collection has decided to keep its three Vermeers hanging side by side to capitalize on interest in a record-breaking show of Dutch paintings that closes there on Sunday.

Antiques

An 18th-century chair that belonged to a New York family.

Disputing the Origins of Four-Legged Treasures

By EVE M. KAHN

Are they Bostonians or New Yorkers? Cherished chairs from colonial days go on display at the Bernard & S. Dean Levy gallery in New York, but their history is anything but clear.

Museum and Gallery Listings for Jan. 17-23

Art in Review

Multimedia

Slide Show

An Artist Who’s Truly Wired

For R. Luke DuBois, art has its basis in mounds of data.

Slide Show

Unfinished Works

The Metropolitan Museum is dotted with paintings that have been left incomplete.

Slide Show

Art and Life on the Border

Artists explore gang violence and the politics of immigration on the Mexican border.

Slide Show

‘Intent to Deceive’

Forgeries and fakes have their own mystique and now their own show.

Slide Show

‘She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers From Iran and the Arab World’

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presents an ambitious and revealing exhibition.

A Culture of Bidding

Forging an Art Market in China

By DAVID BARBOZA, GRAHAM BOWLEY and AMANDA COX

In China’s growing art market, now the second largest in the world, outsize auction results often overshadow false sales data and forged art.

Special Section

Fine Arts & Exhibits

Never mind the record auction prices for art: there are overlooked pockets of the art world still within the realm of affordability to collectors. With news about galleries, museum exhibitions, previews and more.