MORNING REPORT - News from Nov. 10, 2000

ART & DESIGN

Picasso Record--$55.6 Million: Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period painting “Woman With Crossed Arms” sold for $55.6 million to an anonymous bidder at Christie’s in New York Wednesday night, setting a new record for the artist and becoming the fifth-highest auction price ever paid for a work of art. The previous Picasso high was $51.6 million, paid for “Pierrette’s Wedding” at a Paris auction in 1989, and the last auction price for a Blue Period Picasso was $29.1 million, paid by Andrew Lloyd Webber at Sotheby’s in 1995. Despite the high price for the Picasso, which had been expected to fetch about $25 million, much of the rest of Christie’s sale Wednesday fell short of expectations, with only 43 of 75 works actually finding buyers, for a total of $143.4 million, falling below the pre-sale estimate of $165 million to $220 million. But Alberto Giacometti’s 1962 sculpture “Tall Woman Standing” sold for $14.3 million, nearly doubling the previous Giacometti record ($7.5 million) and also setting a record for a sculpture at auction.

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More Memorial Opposition: As the American Battle Monuments Commission prepares for the ceremonial groundbreaking in Washington on Saturday--Veterans Day--of a controversial World War II Memorial, the National Assn. for Olmsted Parks has released a letter opposing the plan. Written by the group’s co-chairwoman, Mary Fox, the letter condemns “the obvious negligence by the reviewing agencies to preserve one of our nation’s most significant designed historic landscapes.” The 7.4-acre memorial is set to be built on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial, which were designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. Fox’s group meets today to consider joining a lawsuit to stop construction of the World War II Memorial.

POP/ROCK

Live Web Concert Madonna’s sold-out Nov. 28 London concert at the 3,500-capacity Brixton Academy will be broadcast live over the Internet, at

https://www.msn.co.uk/madonna. The concert, to be Webcast here at noon, could challenge the 3-million record for a worldwide Internet audience, set last year by the Webcast of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool performance. Meanwhile, Britain’s Sun tabloid reports that the pop star, who has already been spending a great deal of time in London with beau Guy Ritchie, the father of her new son, has paid $9.9 million for a house in one of London’s trendiest suburbs.

TV & MOVIES

Tim Allen to Don Cat’s Hat: Former “Home Improvement” star Tim Allen announced at Wednesday night’s premiere of Universal Pictures’ “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas” that he will star in another Dr. Seuss adaptation, “The Cat in the Hat.” The film will also be done by Universal, but the release date is unknown.

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NBC Moves: NBC will move the new season’s critical favorite “Ed” to Wednesdays starting in December, with the quirky drama to air at 8 p.m., leading into “The West Wing” and “Law & Order” in what the network is billing as a “three-hour block of ‘Must See TV’ dramas.” That same week, “Titans,” which has been on Wednesdays, will move to Mondays at 8 p.m., while “World’s Most Amazing Videos” will begin airing Sundays at 7 p.m. Meanwhile, Sunday’s “Dateline NBC” moves back an hour, to 8 p.m., starting Dec. 10, with another edition of “Dateline” to air Mondays at 9 p.m.

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‘Gladiator’ Strength: DreamWorks has received a whopping 2.6 million retail orders for its Nov. 21 DVD release of Russell Crowe’s “Gladiator,” marking a U.S. record for initial DVD shipments, the studio said. The DVD orders have topped previous leaders “The Matrix” and “The Sixth Sense.” “Gladiator” has already notched the best first-week-rental-of-the-year title in the United Kingdom, where it was released Oct. 23.

QUICK TAKES

Teri Hatcher, Sally Kellerman and Regina Taylor will be the next cast for “The Vagina Monologues” at Beverly Hills’ Canon Theatre. They will perform Nov. 21 to Dec. 10, replacing Carol Kane, Phylicia Rashad and Kimberly Williams, who appear through Nov. 19. . . . Ken Gross, director of the Petersen Automotive Museum since 1997, will leave that post at the end of the month to resume his career as an international automotive writer and historian. Gross helped build the 6-year-old Petersen into one of the world’s major automotive museums and was instrumental in the move earlier this year to take it out of the county’s Natural History Museum group and turn it into a private, nonprofit institution. Dick Messer, the museum’s inaugural director, will return in an interim post until a replacement for Gross is appointed. . . . Garth Brooks filed for divorce Monday from his wife, Sandy, after nearly 14 years of marriage, citing irreconcilable differences. They have three daughters, ages 8, 6 and 4. . . . ABC holds an open casting call Saturday for the female lead of a TV movie version of the Broadway musical “The Wiz.” Producers seek an African American girl who can play between 14 and 16 years old, sing in a 2 1/2-octave range, and who is no taller than 5-foot-3. Aspirants should be prepared to sing the first 18 bars of the song “Home.” Auditions will be held at Screenland 2 Studios, 10501 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. . . . The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant will guest star on the Nov. 29 episode of CBS’ “Bette.” The show was taped last week at the Forum, which stood in for Staples Center. . . . KRLA-AM (1110) will repeat President Clinton’s election-day visit with morning host Michael Jackson on Saturday during “The Best of Michael Jackson,” from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.