Entertainment : Arts & Stage

ARTINFO - Though artist Faith Ringgold is perhaps best known for delighting American schoolchildren with her lusciously illustrated 1991 masterwork of a children?s book "Tar Beach," her first public commission was actually designed for another audience: female prisoners eating in the cafeteria of the Rikers Island prison in New York City. Now that incarcerated work, the 1971 "For the Women?s House," is being released after a tumultuous stretch for a show at the Neuberger Museum of Art, in Purchase, New York.

ARTINFO - "Tonight, I?m announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended," President Obama declared last week. Seven years after the United States-led invasion of the country, the war is officially over. In the U.K., however, the debate over Britain's involvement in the conflict is as fractious as ever: the government?s "Iraq Inquiry" has been severely criticized, and former Prime Minister Tony BlairÂ’s newly published autobiography, "A Journey," has triggered angry protests.

ARTINFO - A Kennedy Center Honor, which the Kennedy CenterÂ’s website likens to a knighthood in Britain, is the ultimate reward for a person?s ?lifetime contribution to American culture.? This year those contributions included outlaw country music, "Yesterday," uplifting car giveaways, and scintillatingly vibrant choreography.

ARTINFO - As a reminder that the looting of Iraq's heritage has hardly been restricted to the militant thieves who pillaged the Iraqi National Museum after the 2003 American invasion, the United States has repatriated a group of objects, some of which were apparently taken as war booty, and others that reflect the region's history of artifact smuggling. This step, by all accounts, is only a small one in what will have to be a concerted international effort to undo the work of all kinds of opportunistic raiders.

ARTINFO - As Sotheby's and Christie's stake out their blue-chip consignment territory in advance of the fall market season, second-string boutique Phillips de Pury seems to be working a burgeoning, if unglamorous, niche: helping disgraced financiers sell off their ill-gotten art. After bringing in more than $24 million this spring by auctioning the collection of debt-ridden Internet entrepreneur Hasley Minor, Phillips is now angling for the corporate art collection of the defunct law firm of Marc Dreier, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for federal fraud after having attempted to sell $700 million bonus promissory notes to investors.According to the Wall Street Journal, a bankruptcy official has filed for court approval for a November 21 Phillips auction of the modern and contemporary works Dreier amassed before his 2008 arrest. The 81-piece collection includes works by Damien Hirst, Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, and Willem de Kooning, as well as photographs of the Dreier family and of Audrey Hepburn playing that other fiscally inept individual Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany?s."

ARTINFO - With Fashion Week fast approaching, a grateful look to the golden age of couture, when clothing design approached the realm of art, seems to be merited. Thankfully, it is readily available at the Brisbane?s Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, which is hosting "Valentino, Retrospective: Past/Present/Future" until November 14. Developed by curator Pamela Golbin from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the show highlights 100 ensembles, celebrating the past half-century of garb by the Italian fashion house.

Reuters - Former British premier Tony Blair has been forced to postponed a party at the Tate Modern art gallery celebrating the launch of his autobiography because of threats from anti-war protesters, his office said on Wednesday.

ARTINFO - After almost a year of speculation, the Puerto Rico?based multimedia duo Allora & Calzadilla has been announced as the United States' representatives to the 2011 Venice Biennale, marking the first time that an artist pair or collective has been picked by the nation to fill the prestigious role. The selection was made by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which the U.S. State Department has entrusted to organize next year's pavilion; Lisa Freiman, the chair of the museum?s contemporary art department, has been tapped as the commissioner of the pavilion. She will also curate the presentation.

ARTINFO - Dresden's Museum of Military History has existed in a variety of incarnations over the years, each mirroring the successive regime that shaped its image. Established in 1897 in a stately neoclassical building that once housed an arsenal, the museum became a celebration of German military might under the Nazis. Its location outside the historic center of Dresden allowed the building to survive the Allied bombing campaign at the end of World War II; thereafter it proudly displayed Communist tanks and submarines under East German rule. In 1989, Germany's Bundeswehr ? or Federal Defense Force ? was unsure how the museum would fit into the newly unified German state, deciding to simply shut it down.