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Three overseers of the Rose Art Museum filed a lawsuit on Monday in state court in Massachusetts, seeking to halt Brandeis University's plans to close the museum and clear the way to sell some of its works, which include pieces by Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly. The university's trustees voted in January to close the museum and sell the works, collectively estimated to be worth a total in the area of $350 million, as a way to help the university contend with an endowment that has been seriously diminished during the financial crisis. Brandeis later backtracked, saying that no works would be sold in the immediate future and that the building would remain open as an art study center, though not as a public museum. In their suit the overseers -- Jonathan O. Lee, Lois Foster and Meryl Rose, a member of the family whose donations created the museum in 1961 -- contend that Brandeis's plans to close the museum ''contradict the charitable intentions'' of the museum's founders, ''abrogate Brandeis's promises that the Rose would be maintained in perpetuity'' as a modern and contemporary art museum, and violate its commitments to those who donated art to the museum. In a statement, attorneys for the university called the lawsuit frivolous and without merit, arguing that the Rose's endowment is part of the larger Brandeis endowment, and that the university is focused first and foremost on ''providing its students with a first class education and ensuring that Brandeis continues to provide financial assistance to needy students.'' This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Art Randy Kennedy [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Five years is not a long time, in some things. But in dog years and especially in Web years, it can be a stretch. So when the Museum of Modern Art began working in late 2007 to renovate its Web site substantially for the first time since 2002, it knew that it wouldn't be just updating a few pieces -- it would be entering a whole new era. The era is one in which blogs, photo sharing, social networking, bookmarking and many other ways of creating art-loving online communities have become a much more important part of museum Web sites, led by places like the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (walkerart.org), the Brooklyn Museum and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is so user-friendly that its site (imamuseum.org) contains a dashboard-like display with up-to-date information, like the size of the museum's endowment, its daily energy use and the average time people spend looking at its Web pages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two museums announced Monday that they had reached a settlement with heirs of the original owner of two Picasso paintings, including ''Boy Leading a Horse,'' who contended that they had been sold under duress in Nazi Germany. The terms of the agreement, reached as a trial was about to begin in federal court in Manhattan, were not disclosed. But the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum said in a statement that they would continue to own the works. The suit involved ''Le Moulin de la Galette,'' given to the Guggenheim in 1963 by the art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser, and ''Boy Leading a Horse,'' sold by Mr.Thannhauser to William S. Paley, who donated it to MoMA in 1964. In 2007 lawyers for Julius H. Schoeps, a great-nephew of the paintings' original owner, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, told the museums that they believed Mr. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German Jewish banker who died in 1935, had sold the works to Mr. Thannhauser under duress, and demanded their return. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Massachusetts attorney general's office said on Tuesday that it planned to conduct a detailed review of Brandeis University's surprise decision to sell off the entire holdings of its Rose Art Museum, one of the most important collections of postwar art in New England. The decision to close the 48-year-old museum in Waltham, Mass., and disperse the collection as a way to shore up the university's struggling finances was denounced by the museum's board, its director and a wide range of art experts, who warned that the university was cannibalizing its cultural heritage to pay its bills. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2005, the British artist Banksy -- then on the verge of becoming probably the world's most famous street artist -- walked into the Museum of Modern Art and three other New York museums done up in a beige raincoat and fake beard, looking more like a subway flasher than a ''quality vandal,'' as he called himself. Once inside he furtively mounted his own work among the masterpieces, relying on speed and two-sided tape rather than curatorial consent as his way into the collections, at least until guards noticed. ''These galleries are just trophy cabinets for a handful of millionaires,'' he wrote later in an e-mail message to a reporter, explaining his dim view of museums and his desire to see his work inside one purely to poke fun at the whole idea. ''The public never has any real say in what art they see.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]