Arts in Brief

TA museum hosts overnight learning.

By NATHAN BURSTEIN, AP, JTA
TA museum hosts overnight learning Artists from a variety of disciplines will gather at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Tuesday night for a Shavuot tradition: the overnight study of Torah. Musicians including Shlomo Artzi, Tal Gordon and Yehudit Ravitz will appear at the all-night event, which kicks off at 9:30p.m. and lasts until sunrise. In addition to reading the Book of Ruth, participants will offer lectures and lead discussions on subjects including the holiday's connection to the environment, the Kabbala and women. As part of the celebration, Ravitz will perform her new show, "Little City," at 2:15 a.m. The event, which is being hosted by Alma Hebrew College, will also feature a lecture by photographer Adi Nes, whose latest collection, "Bible Stories," is currently on display at the museum. Nathan Burstein Elizabeth Taylor to keep Nazi loot A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit demanding that Elizabeth Taylor turn over a Vincent van Gogh painting once confiscated by Nazis. Four descendants of the late Margarete Mauthner, whose possessions were seized by the Nazis after she fled Germany in 1939, claimed in a 2004 lawsuit that Taylor failed to review the ownership history of "View of the Asylum of Saint-Remy" before acquiring the painting more than 40 years ago. The heirs contended a sales brochure warned the painting was likely confiscated by Nazis. They asked for restitution and for the painting, which was appraised at between $10 million and $15 million when it hung in Taylor's living room about two years ago. But the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower federal court properly ruled in 2005 that the statute of limitations had expired for the state law under which the family filed its claim. The lower court also correctly ruled that the Holocaust Victims Redress Act did not establish a right to sue for the return of confiscated property. In court documents, Taylor's attorneys acknowledged that Nazis forced Mauthner and her family to give up jobs, pensions and homes, but said they had no information on whether Mauthner sold the painting or it was stolen from her. Taylor's father, Francis, bought the painting in 1963 on his daughter's behalf for $257,600 at a Sotheby's auction in London. The descendants who sued are Andrew J. Orkin of Canada and three South African residents, F. Mark Orkin, Sarah-Rose Josepha Adler and A. Heinrich Zille. AP Singer dropped for SS comments Singer Bryan Ferry is out as a model for a menswear line in the wake of his comments praising the Nazis for their visual savvy. The high-end British retailer Marks & Spencer said last week it will not renew the contract of the former Roxy Music front man and style icon. In an interview in a German magazine last month, Ferry praised Nazi architecture and propaganda, and admitted that he called his London studio his "furherbunker." Ferry later apologized. Marks & Spencer was founded by a Russian Jewish refugee, Michael Marks, in 1894. JTA