— Richard Phillips and His Lohan Painting Get "Gossip Girl" Cameo: On last night's episode of "Gossip Girl," Kelly Rutherford's character Lily Bass hosted an auction to benefit the Art Production Fund, with Richard Phillips making a cameo alongside APF co-founder Doreen Remen and one of his portrait paintings of Lindsay Lohan — the episode also featured artworks by Marilyn Minter, Dustin Yellin, Kehinde Wiley, Josephine Meckseper, and Fab 5 Freddy. The prized piece of Lily's personal collection, Phillips's "Spectrum," becomes the subject of a bidding war between the characters Chuck (Ed Westwick) and Ivy (Kaylee DeFer). [FanBolt]

— Israeli Museums Safeguard Art Against Rockets: Curators at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Ashdod Art Museum have opted to remove treasured works from their gallery walls and store them in secure facilities in response to fears of rocket attacks in the ongoing violence, bloodshed, and attacks being exchanged between Hamas and the Israeli military. "It’s chutzpah to take a chance on them," Ashdod Art Museum curator Yuval Biton said after taking 15 works by contemporary artist Tsibi Geva to the museum's vault, the first time the institution has taken such a measure since it opened in 2003. [AP]

— Turkey Demands Louvre Return Prized Mosaics: Tomorrow Ertugrul Günay, Turkey's minister of culture, will ask that Paris's Louvre return three 16th-century mosaics that occupy a prominent place in the museum's new Islamic art wing, one of which the institution acquired from art historian Germain Bapst in 1889, and the rest of which comes from the collection of art restorer Alexis Sorlin-Dorigny. However, the Turkish government claims the works were stolen from Istanbul's Piyale Pacha mosque in the late 19th century. [Figaro]

— James Franco Joins London Gallery's Christmas Pop-up: This Christmas, art person and relentless polymath James Franco will lend a hand at House of Voltaire, a pop-up shop in the Mayfair gallery district to benefit south London's Studio Voltaire art space, hawking works by the likes of Mark Titchner, Pablo Bronstein, and others who've designed pieces especially for the store. No word on whether Franco's bout of holiday volunteerism is performance art or the real deal. [Guardian]

— Ono and DMC Team Up for Fundraiser: Fluxus artist Yoko Ono and rap legend Darryl "DMC" McDaniels (of Run-DMC) were on hand yesterday at Times Square's Hard Rock Café for the launch of an annual fundraising campaign for the anti-poverty charity WhyHunger, which is expected to generate roughly $1 million between now and New Year's Eve. "This is the way we can prevent hunger from impacting other generations," McDaniels said. [NYT]

— Abramovic Opera Will Have North American Debut: The Robert Wilson-directed, -conceived, and -staged opera "The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic," which stars the performance art legend alongside Willem Dafoe and Antony and the Johnsons frontman Antony Hegarty, will have its North American debut next spring at Toronto's Luminato festival, running June 14-17. Abramovic hopes the show "could continue to tour after Toronto," she said, "and that there could be somebody else playing me because it is life and death and, it would be great to have someone else playing me while I’m still alive." [Globe and Mail]

— How Brazil's Hazy Tax Laws Hamper its Art Market: Though South America's biggest country has long been one of the art world's fastest-rising economies, local and international dealers and fair organizers are concerned that the country's unclear tax laws on art imports will slow growth and scare away buyers. "It’s very hard to do business when you can’t tell people what the work will cost them," said one dealer who participated in the recent ArtRio fair. "An approximation isn’t good enough." [TAN]

— Trevor Paglen Pictures Headed Into Orbit: Today at 1:31 p.m. the communications satellite EchoStar XVI will lift off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome, taking with it Trevor Paglen's "The Last Pictures," an etched disk containing 100 photographs that will remain in orbit for five billion years. The launch of the Creative Time project is slated for 1:15 p.m., with liftoff scheduled about 15 minutes later; the entire event can be viewed live online. [Press Release]

— Korean Painter's Political Satire Draws Party's Ire: In response to artist Hong Sung-dam's painting of South Korea's ruling Saenuri party's presidential candidate, Park Geun-hye, giving birth to her father — former president Park Chung-hee — party officials are demanding that the painter apologize for what they see as a defamatory artwork, particularly ahead of December's elections. "If a painting like this should be punished by law, then all political cartoons in newspapers should be punished nearly every single day," Hong said. "Park's supporters tend to blindly worship her as if she is a goddess ... but that's not the way voters in a democratic society should support a politician." [BBC]