– Florence and the Machine Will Headline LACMA Gala: The October 27 Art+Film Gala at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, co-chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio and honoring Ed Ruscha and Stanley Kubrick, will feature a set by Florence and the Machine. The selection of the British pop-rock act marks a stark contrast to Stevie Wonder's performance at last year's Baldessari-Eastwood affair, which raised $3 million. [LAT]

– Chinese Art Market Cooling Off: The total auctions sales for all categories this spring from the "Big Four" auction houses in Asia were $1.5 billion, a 32 percent decline from the autumn auction season of 2011, according to ArtTactic. What's behind the drop? Experts suggest a decline in speculative buying as well as more restricted access to easy credit. The previous stratospheric totals were "difficult to sustain," said Christie's Asia president Francois Curiel. [NYT, CNBC]

– U.K.'s Top Arts Officials Replaced: In a pair of surprising picks at the top of the British cultural pecking order, David Cameron has tapped Maria Miller, a Conservative MP and Department for Work and Pensions junior minister, to replace Jeremy Hunt as culture secretary — perhaps because of the latter's disastrous Olympic bell-ringing? — while Sir Peter Bazalgette, the TV producer responsible for "Big Brother," has been appointed the chairman of Arts Council England. "She will have to find a way of dealing with the dual responsibility for culture and equalities at a department that may not be big by Whitehall standards," Liberal Democrats spokesperson Don Foster said of Miller's new gig. [Guardian, BBC]

– Is Lap Dancing a Fine Art?: New York's highest court will have to decide whether nude dancing is an art, and therefore deserves a state tax exemption. On Wednesday, lawyers will present their oral arguments in the dramatic case of Nite Moves, an adult entertainment club in suburban Albany that contested a tax bill of more than $124,000 following a 2005 audit. The appellate court ruled against Nite Moves last year. [AP] 

– Warhol's Brando Could Reach $20-Million at Auction: In November, Museum of Modern Art trustee Donald L. Bryant will send "Marlon" — a 1966 Andy Warhol canvas featuring an image of a leather-clad, motorcycle-straddling Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" that he bought at Christie's in 2003 for $5 million — back to the New York auction house, where it's expected to fetch $20 million. "It’s the best of the four in terms of the image and condition,” said Christie's chairman Brett Gorvy of the image, which recurs in three other Warhol works. “Because of the way the ink seeps into the surface, the image registers extremely well." [Bloomberg]

– Chicago and Ottowa Set Attendance Records: Big-name artists bring big crowds. The Art Institute of Chicago and the National Gallery of Canada recently enjoyed large attendance bumps from their exhibitions of Roy Lichtenstein and Vincent van Gogh, respectively. "Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective" drew 350,00 visitors, making it the best-attended exhibition at the AIC in the last 10 years; "Van Gogh: Up Close" secured 231,000, the highest attendance for a single exhibition at the National Gallery in the last 15 years. [Chicago Tribune, Globe and Mail]

– Buenos Aires Gets a New Contemporary Art Museum: The Argentine capital unveiled a new museum over the weekend dedicated to the private collection of businessman Aldo Rubino. The Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires will display work by international contemporary artists including Sarah Morris, Kenneth Noland, Joao Carlos Galvao, and Francisco Sobrino. [The Squeeze]

– (Most) New Orleans Museums Reopen After Isaac: Following the largely damage-free passage of Hurricane Isaac, most of the Crescent City's art institutions reopened on Tuesday, except the New Orleans Museum of Art, which is still assessing leaks from the storm. The institution said in a statement that it regained full power on Sunday, September 2, and is working with an emergency management company to make a full assessment of the building in preparation for reopening." [Times-Picayune]

– Holocaust Museums Try for Mass Appeal: Holocaust museums in Israel are changing — sometimes in bizarre and unsettling ways — to appeal to broader audiences. One museum on a small kibbutz was described in the newspaper Haaretz as "Warsaw-Ghetto Disneyland" for its new emphasis on sound and lighting effects, including a simulation of a cattle car headed to a death camp. Other institutions are overhauling their exhibitions to teach broader lessons about tolerance, rather than about the Holocaust in particular. [NYT]

– RIP Russian Nonconformist Painter Dmitri Plavinsky: Plavinsky, a vocal and prolific opponent of the USSR's state-sanctioned Soviet Realism whose gloomy and intricate oil paintings gained prominence beyond his circle of avant-garde cohorts following the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on September 1 in Moscow of a heart attack at age 76, his gallery SDZY Contemporary announced today. "He was a pioneer," said Institute for Modern Russian Culture director Dr. John E. Bowlt, "an artist who remained true to his own principles and refused to be deflected by political and commercial pressures." [Press Release]

Video of the Day:

Florence and the Machine's "Spectrum," directed by David LaChapelle & John Byrne

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