Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation’s press.

ART

Another Glass Ceiling Crumbles: British architect Zaha Hadid will become the first woman to design a major U.S. art museum, having been chosen this week to create the new $25-million home for Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center. Hadid was selected from among 97 competing architects in a global search, the museum’s board of directors said. It will be the London-based Hadid’s first design in the United States, though her drawings have been displayed at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

MOVIES

Butch’s Own Museum?: Paul Newman, who starred as Butch Cassidy in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” is trying to secure the state of Utah’s help to turn the outlaw’s tumbled-down birthplace into a museum with artifacts from Cassidy’s life and times. Cassidy, the alias of Robert LeRoy Parker, was born more than 130 years ago in Beaver, a southern Utah town of 5,000. Author Aaron Hotchner, a partner in the charitable Newman’s Own Foundation, said he got the idea when he saw a picture of the now-rickety cabin on the Internet. He said Newman’s foundation has proposed giving a grant to the state to renovate the site, “but there hasn’t seemed to be any response [from Utah officials], and in the meantime it’s deteriorated more.” A spokesman for the state historical society could not be reached for comment.

MUSIC & DANCE

Stradivarius Quartet: Washington’s National Museum of American History--part of the Smithsonian Institution--has been given four instruments created by Antonio Stradivarius more than 250 years ago, appraised together at $50 million. New Jersey book publisher Herbert R. Axelrod and his wife, Evelyn, gave the museum a $1-million endowment along with the two violins, a viola and a cello. The money will help pay for maintenance on the instruments, together called a quartet, and for exhibits and performances. Smithsonian players already have made recordings on the instruments, and recitals are planned for May 30 and 31.

Burying a Dance Icon: Thousands of Russians flocked to Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater Wednesday to pay their last respects to Galina Ulanova, the Russian ballerina who died last week at the age of 88. Ulanova, considered one of the century’s greatest dancers, was the Bolshoi’s principal soloist and the Soviet Union’s top ballerina from 1944 to 1960. President Boris Yeltsin praised her as a “symbol of conscience, honor and dignity in art.”

Pacific Symphony Leader: John E. Forsyte, executive director of Michigan’s Kalamazoo Symphony, has been named executive director of the Santa Ana-based Pacific Symphony. Forsyte, 32, will assume the post May 25. He succeeds Louis G. Spisto, who left last month to become president of the Detroit Symphony.

POP/ROCK

Celine’s Citizenship: Fresh from her appearance at Monday’s Academy Awards, Celine Dion on Thursday was named a recipient of the Order of Canada, an honor given by the Canadian government to those who exemplify “the highest qualities of citizenship” and “enrich the lives of their contemporaries.” She will receive the insignia in Ottawa on May 1.

QUICK TAKES

Comedy Central’s hit adult animated comedy, “South Park,” will be released on video for the first time on May 5. Warner Bros. Home Video will release three volumes, each containing two episodes of the cable show, along with introductions from series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. . . . “Not About Nightingales,” the rediscovered early Tennessee Williams play that recently had its world premiere in London, will have its U.S. premiere June 10 at Houston’s Aerial Theater. The production--a collaboration between Britain’s Royal National Theatre and the Moving Theatre, in association with Vanessa Redgrave’s Houston-based Alley Theatre--is directed by Trevor Nunn. So far, no plans are in place for other U.S. engagements. . . . Actor Ricardo Montalban will receive the first Lifetime Achievement Award on “Hollywood Salutes Easter Seals”--a two-hour program that’s replaced the former Easter Seals telethon--during the show’s broadcast Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. on KCOP-TV Channel 13. Montalban, now 78 and using a walker, will be honored for achieving international acting success despite a debilitating spinal injury in 1949. . . . After failing to find a suitable star during a nationwide casting call, NBC has reportedly decided against putting a remake of Lynda Carter’s 1970s series “Wonder Woman” on its fall schedule. However, the network is said to still be pursuing the series for midseason next year. . . . The Home Shopping Network appearance by Al Yeganeh, the New York soup maker who inspired “Seinfeld’s” “soup nazi,” is now scheduled for 4 to 5 p.m. today. Yeganeh has also been booked for a May 12 appearance on CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman.”