Set for rebirthA British theatre company has announced plans to rebuild an Elizabethan playhouse using the set from hit film
Shakespeare in Love.
The oak-timbered set, modelled on London's 16th-century Rose Theatre, was donated to the British Shakespeare Company by Judi Dench (pictured), who won an Academy Award for playing Queen Elizabeth I in the 1998 romantic comedy.
The set - a full-size replica of a galleried theatre interior - was given to Dench by the filmmakers. British Shakespeare Company artistic director Robert Williamson said the actress recently donated it to the troupe for a permanent base in northern England.
Williamson said he imagined the venue as "a living history centre", offering live performances and a display of costumes from the film that won seven Oscars, including best picture.
The original Rose was built in 1587 on the south bank of the River Thames. Its repertoire included plays by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. AP
Rothko show in Moscow
US financier J. Ezra Merkin's US$310 million collection of Mark Rothko paintings, sold earlier this year to a mystery buyer, will be exhibited at Moscow's new Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture next spring.
Merkin is facing a lawsuit by New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, who accuses Merkin and Gabriel Capital of secretly placing US$2.4 billion of client funds with Bernard Madoff, who ran the largest Ponzi scheme ever. Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence for the fraud. Merkin previously owned the world's largest private collection of Rothko paintings.
The Garage is an exhibition venue founded last year in a former bus depot by Russian collector Dasha Zhukova and her billionaire partner Roman Abramovich. The show organisers say Abramovich doesn't own the artworks.
This will be Russian-born Rothko's first solo show in Moscow. The artist rose to fame in the US as an abstract expressionist painter. He committed suicide in 1970. Bloomberg
Steep loss for Sotheby's
Sotheby's, the world's largest publicly traded auction house, reported a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss, hurt by a steep drop in net auction sales.
The auctioneer of fine art, antiques and decorative art, jewellery and collectables, which competes with privately held Christie's, posted a quarterly loss of US$57.8 million, or 89 US cents a share, up from US$47 million, or 73 US cents a share, a year earlier.
Excluding restructuring charges, Sotheby's posted a loss of 88 US cents a share.
Revenue at New York-based Sotheby's slumped 41 per cent to US$44.9 million, hurt by an 80 per cent decline in net auction sales.
Analysts were expecting a loss of 31 US cents a share, on revenue of US$65.7 million. Reuters
