– Who's the Most Popular Girl in the Art World?: Why, Marie-Thérèse Walter of course. Last year Picasso's painting of his nymphet mistress set a $106.5 million world record at Christie's New York, her portraits are the subject of a ravishing Picasso show at Gagosian,
and now Christie's will be presenting another of the artist's libidinal
paintings of her as its marquee lot in London on June 21. Titled "Jeune
Fille Endormie," the Fauve-paletted 1935 painting of Walter napping
(while her vaginal hands hint at where the artist's mind really is) will be
hitting the block with a high estimate of £12 million ($13.55 million),
with the proceeds pledged by its anonymous seller to the University of
Sydney's medical research fund. Not seen in public for 70 years,
according to the auction house, the painting joins another Walter
portrait that is heading to Sotheby's in May. [Bloomberg]

– Ai Weiwei's Rock Star Friend Detained: Over two weeks after Chinese officials took Ai Weiwei from a Beijing airport and placed him in secretive custody, the artist's friend Zuoxiao Zuzhou and his wife, Xiao Li,
may have met a similar fate at a Shanghai airport. The couple was
reportedly picked up today, and people have not been able to contact them
since. On Tuesday, Zuoxiao published an article headlined "Who Doesn't
Love Ai Weiwei?" in the Hong Kong paper Mingpao. [Guardian]   

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– Massive Pharaoh Statue Found in Egypt: A nearly 43-foot likeness of Amenhotep II, grandfather to Tutankhamun,
has been unearthed at a mortuary temple in Luxor, where it is believed
to be one of a pair that flanked the entrance to the grand funerary
temple. The country's antiquities authority has stated that the headless
statue was originally found in the '70s but was re-hidden. [Daily Star]

– L.A. Street Artist Sentenced to Six Months in Jail:
Los Angeles law enforcement is not playing around with its crackdown on
street art, as can be seen by a judge's tremendously harsh sentence of
180 days — half a year — in prison for Jason Williams, aka Revok, a 34-year-old graffiti artist whose work appears in MOCA's
"Art in the Streets" show. Williams was arrested while trying to fly
out of the city last Thursday, and has been found guilty of violating
probation from a previous graffiti-related conviction. The LAPD says it
is also expanding its investigation of the artist's activities, which
shouldn't be hard since he is one of the most visible and prolific
taggers in L.A. [LAT]

– Caravaggio's "The Fortune Teller" to Tour U.S.: The mythic painter's circa 1594 masterpiece will be traveling from Rome's Capitoline Museums to the U.S. (only the second time it's ever visited America), stopping first at New York's Italian Cultural Institute on May 11-15 and then going on view at Kentucky's Speed Art Museum until June 5. To coincide with the early painting's New York stay, Hunter College will hold a Caravaggio symposium on May 13. [press release]

– Andorra at the Venice Biennale: The small European nation of Andorra has selected two Andorran artists, photographer Helena Guàrdia Ribó and painter Francisco Sánchez Sánchez (no typo), for its inaugural exhibition at the Campo San Samuele at the Venice Biennale, curated by Paolo De Grandis and Josep M. Ubach Bernada.
The artists will present two discrete bodies of work in Venice:
Guàrdia's series, "La Ciutat Flotant" ("The Floating City"), consists of
digitally altered photographs of everyday life, often focused on the
role of light. Sánchez will present a triptych called "L'Efimer i
l'Etern" ("The Ephemeral and the Eternal"), which explores scientific
concepts of energy and frequency. [press release]

– Deutsche Börse Prize Winner: Magnum photographer of refugees and displaced people Jim Goldberg
has received the £30,000 award. His project "Open See" of photos, video
stills, found images, and hand-written texts, on which he has worked in
Africa, the Middle East, and Europe since the early 80s, also led him to
win the 2007 Cartier-Bresson Prize. [Guardian] 

– SVA's Sneaky Subway Ads: New York's School of Visual Arts
has had some interesting underground ad campaigns over the years, but
perhaps none so sly as the latest offering, created for the school by Louise Fili Ltd. The MTA
stipulated, "No adult images, vulgarity, transit-bashing (even if
tongue in cheek) or text in a form that could be construed to be
graffiti or promoting graffiti will be accepted." Check out the
resulting mosaic-inspired poster! If you can find it — it blends right
in. [Salon]

– Bruce Davidson Seeks "Girl Holding Kitten": The American
photographer is looking for the subject of an image he snapped in London
in 1960. "She was with two friends and they were on their way to a
concert which, as I remember it, took place on an island," Davidson told
the Guardian. "I hung around with them for a few hours. The girl with
the kitten, the bedroll and the beautifully innocent, hopeful,
mysterious face has stayed with me ever since." He added, "I never even
wrote down her first name. I know it's 50 odd years ago, but someone out
there must know who she is, surely." [Guardian]

– More Than 1,000 Artists Apply for smARTpower: Artists are competing to serve as the 15 cultural ambassadors with the program, which is organized by the Bronx Museum of the Arts
and the U.S. Department of State. The artists, who will be selected
this May, will travel to 15 countries to work on collaborative projects
with local communities. [press release]