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Art Randy Kennedy [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art said Thursday that it would lay off more than a quarter of its merchandising staff, eliminating 74 jobs in addition to 53 already cut over the last year. It also warned that the worsening economy would most likely force it to shrink its overall work force by 10 percent -- as many as 250 full- and part-time jobs in all -- before the summer, including some in curatorial and other pivotal departments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its advertising contractors routinely review the content of subway ads, keeping their eyes out for things that are too racy or rude. But they have never had an ad quite like one that came their way recently: an image of five naked women (probably prostitutes) vamping it up and staring down the viewer. The fact that the frontal nudity is fully Cubist and was painted by Picasso more than a century ago undoubtedly made the decision a lot easier. And so on Monday, a glossy reproduction of that artwork, ''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,'' took its place underground in the Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street subway stations in Brooklyn, with copies of 57 other works from the Museum of Modern Art that will briefly transform the cavernous stations into a kunsthalle. [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]

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]