Dueling Court Filings by ‘Rebecca’ Combatants Reveal Backstage Drama

The Broadway publicist who used to represent the troubled musical “Rebecca” has asked a State Supreme Court judge to dismiss a lawsuit that accuses him of torpedoing the show last fall, arguing that he simply warned a potential investor that its producers had fallen prey to a fraud scheme.

But those producers pushed back this week in a lengthy defense of their lawsuit against their onetime publicist and confidante, Marc Thibodeau, accusing him of subterfuge and destroying “Rebecca” by scaring off the potential investor with grimly worded e-mails sent through phony Gmail accounts. The latest arguments by both sides in the lawsuit - which charged Mr. Thibodeau with defamation and breach of contract and fiduciary duty - are now pending before Justice Jeffrey K. Oing.

These new legal developments in the “Rebecca” saga, a rare backstage Broadway melodrama, began on Feb. 26 when lawyers for Mr. Thibodeau, a veteran spokesman of many Broadway shows, filed the motion to dismiss the producers’ lawsuit filed a month earlier.

In their motion Mr. Thibodeau’s lawyers argued that the “Rebecca” producers didn’t identify a provision in his contract that was breached, and also contended that Mr. Thibodeau - as “an arms-length contractor” on the musical - had no fiduciary obligation to the producers.

“A mere business relationship between parties dealing at arm’s length does not give rise to fiduciary duties,” Mr. Thibodeau’s lawyers wrote, citing two examples of case law. As for defamation, the motion says that Mr. Thibodeau had warned the investor about an alleged fraud scheme that the producers themselves now assert had happened; federal authorities announced in October that they had arrested a Long Island stockbro! ker, Mark C. Hotton, for attempting to defraud the producers. Mr. Hotton is now facing federal fraud charges.

On Monday lawyers for the producers, Ben Sprecher and Louise Forlenza, filed their own pleading against the Thibodeau dismissal motion. The producers’ lawyers provided copies of the publicist’s contract and the three e-mails that Mr. Thibodeau sent to the investor, Larry Runsdorf, or his attorney, using the aliases of Bethany Walsh and Sarah Finkelstein. (Mr. Thibodeau’s lawyer had previously acknowledged that Mr. Thibodeau did send the emails.) The producers’ lawyers argued that, in sending those e-mails, Mr. Thibodeau did not provide “public relations services as may customarily be required” by Broadway producers. Indeed, the producers’ lawyers continued, Mr. Thibodeau sent out “false and malicious email, each one designed to scare off the Angel Investor from providing a financial lifeline to the show.”

That investor, Mr. Runsdorf, as preparing to put $2.25 million into “Rebecca,” which would have been a big step toward the $12 million capitalization that the producers needed to raise. But he pulled out after receiving the anonymous e-mail. “Rebecca” was postponed, and the producers are now trying to raise money in hopes of mounting it on Broadway and, in doing so, shield themselves against liability for millions of dollars from other investors that have already been spent on the production.

The producers’ legal brief also cites case law stating that a publicist, in an instance like the “Rebecca” production, has a fiduciary duty to demonstrate “utmost good faith and undivided loyalty” to the client. The lawyers for Mr. Sprecher and Ms. Forlenza also state that Mr. Thibodeau breached his contract and fiduciary duty because he was in the production’s inner circle of leadership and was supposed to give advice in the interest of the commercial success of the show. Regarding defamation, the lawyers argued t! hat Mr. T! hibodeau was liable because his e-mails to Mr. Runsdorf misstated facts or reflected opinions based on undisclosed facts.

Mr. Thibodeau’s lawyers have argued that he e-mailed Mr. Runsdorf as a whistleblower looking to inform and protect the potential investor. But the producers’ lawyers argue a more nefarious motive was at work, suggesting that Mr. Thibodeau was in cahoots with other parties who had an interest in scuttling “Rebecca” on Broadway. The producers’ lawyers are continuing a private investigation to try to uncover evidence of such a plot.

SXSW Music: Dave Grohl Urges Musicians to Discover ‘Your Voice’

Jack Plunkett/Invision, via Associated Press Mr. Grohl delivering his keynote address.

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Recounting his rise from obscure punk rocker to mainstream rock star, Dave Grohl gave a impassioned defense of the importance of artistic freedom and a do-it-yourself ethic in keeping popular music vibrant, as he delivered the keynote address at the South by Southwest Music Festival on Thursday.

Mr. Grohl, the drummer in the seminal grunge band Nirvana who is now the leader of Foo Fighters, gave a punk-rock twist on some well-worn advice to artists: reject mainstream conventions, practice until it hurts, find your individual voice and follow it wherever it leads you.

“There is no right or wrong,” Mr. Grohl sid, speaking to more than 1,000 people at the Austin Convention Center. “There is only your voice, your voice screaming through an old recording console, singing from a laptop, echoing from a street corner, a cello, a turntable, a guitar.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he went on. “What matters most is that it’s your voice. Cherish it. Respect it. Nurture it. Challenge it. Stretch it. Scream it until its gone. Because everyone’s blessed with at least that.  And who knows how long it will last.”

Giving a speech that sums up the yearly music festival is no easy task.  It has become a sprawling affair with more than 2,200 bands from dozens of genres who play over six days at scores of venues.  And it is no longer the celebration of underground music and unsigned musicians it once was, as corporate sponsors, major labels, booking agents and media companies have discovered its power to promote their artists and brands.

Indeed Mr. Grohl, who in th! e last year has become a champion of what he calls “the human element” in music, is here promoting his recent documentary film, “Sound City,” about the celebrated Los Angeles recording studio where Nirvana made “Nevermind.”

But in his 45-minute speech Mr. Grohl asserted young artists needed to be “left to their own devices” to make innovations.  He urged musicians to ignore the pop charts, record their own albums and create a grassroots following, just as punk and grunge bands from his generation in the 1980s and early 1990s had done.  He drew loud applause when he made fun of televised talent shows and taste-makers like the Pitchfork Web site.

“I can truthfully say outloud that ‘Gangnam Style’ is one of my favorite songs of the past decade,” Mr. Grohl said. “It is any better or worse than the latest Atoms for Peace album  We should probably have a celebrity panel of judges to determine that for us. What would J Lo do Paging Pitchfork. Come in Pitchfork. We need you o help us determine the value of a song.”

He added: “Who cares Who’s to say what’s a good voice and what a not-good voice  The ‘Voice’  Imagine Bob Dylan standing there singing “Blowing in the Wind” in front of Christine Aguilera”

By turns self-deprecating and self-congratulatory, Mr. Grohl recounted how he had discovered music as a boy through a record of Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” and learned to play on a cheap Sears guitar. He became obsessed with hard-rock riffs and spending hours making two-track recordings with two cassette players in his bedroom.

As a teen, he discovered punk dropped out of high school to join a band after attending the “Rock Against Reagan” concert on the National Mall in Washington in 1983, which turned violent. “That was my Woodstock,” he said.  He discovered music could “incite a riot, an emotion, start a revolution.”

The unexpected success of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album in 1991 â€" the first one the g! roup had ! recorded on a major label â€" took him by surprise and still puzzles him, he said. The charts were chock-full of polished pop and grunge bands were far from the mainstream. The record label only pressed 35,000 copies of the first release. One explanation, he suggested, is many fans had grown tired of over-produced pop songs from performers like Madonna, Phil Collins and the vocal trio Wilson Phillips.

“I like to think that what people hear in Nirvana’s music was three human beings, three distinct personalities, their inconsistencies and their imperfections proudly on display for everyone to hear,” he said. “Three people who had been left to their own devices their entire lives to find their voices. It was honest. It was pure and it was real.  Up until that point no one had ever told me how to play or what to play.”

Koch’s Touch of the Irish

Librado Romero/The New York Times Edward I. Koch on Fifth Avenue at the 1992 St. Patrick’s Day Parade in a sweater he bought in Ireland in 1978.

For nearly 50 years, since he was a city councilman, Edward I. Koch proudly marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, typically in his Aran Islands fisherman’s sweater. Now, the story can be told of how that tradition began.

Rewind to 1978. Mr. Koch, who died last month, was returning from a trip to Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul I when his plane stopped to refuel in Shannon, Ireland. He and Dennis Martin, a member of his security detail, stopped at the airport’s duty-free shop and eachbought a traditional cable-knit sweater.

The following St. Patrick’s Day, Mr. Koch asked Mr. Martin to drive him downtown from Gracie Mansion to his Greenwich Village apartment to find something green to wear to the parade. Mr. Martin, instead, suggested the cream-colored cable sweater bought at the airport.

“Can I” Mr. Koch asked.

“Here I’m 32 and the chief executive of New York City is asking me if he can do something,” Mr. Martin recalled on Thursday.

Mr. Koch’s informality startled some of the parade organizers (the grand marshals wear top hats, tails and ceremonial sashes), but the sweater became an instant hit with spectators.

Theater Talkback: How to Offend a White Person

Ben Hider Phil Callen, left, and Anthony Gaskins in “Honky” at Urban Stages.

For years people have tried to find a slur for white Americans as evocative and offensive as the N-word is for African-Americans. And, frankly, there aren’t many classics to choose from. Honky, whitey, cracker, hillbilly: they all fall flat.

The problem is, “white” refers to so many different types of people that a reference to it as skin color has no negative historical relevance in this country. Sure, calling someone white implies that he or she is a bad dancer, not cool or watches too much “Downton Abbey.” But to find something even close to the power of the N-word you have to use well-knon slurs that refer specifically to heritage or race. I’m lucky. I’m half Greek and the only slur I could find about my people was “olive picker,” which, honestly, I think is nice. At least it means I’m employed.

I was thinking about this because I have play, “Honky,” that opens Thursday at Urban Stages. It’s a dark comedy about a commercial that glorifies black gang violence in an effort to sell basketball shoes to white teens. When a black teenager is murdered for the shoes, the shoe designer, who is black, promises revenge. Meanwhile, the ad writer sees a therapist for his white guilt, which is only amplified when he discovers that the therapist is black. All the characters are then put to the test when a new pill on the market promises to cure racism.

On the first day of rehearsal, one of the actors asked why I picked the title. The first reason is: the shoe designer’s childhood friends used to call him honky because he grew up in a rich, white neighborhood. The other! reason is simpler: the play is a comedy and the word, once considered offensive, is now unmistakably funny. In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard it used without irony since “Death Wish 3.”

But it did make me wonder: is there a way to offend a white person Obviously you can tell one that he or she kind of reminds you of some actor and then carefully add, “but, you know, not fat.” White people totally hate that. But a single word that can make a white person feel bad simply for being white

I think there is one. I worked as a writer in advertising for a number of years. It’s a pretty white industry, which is strange when you consider how often it markets to a non-white demographic. Yet when a room full of white people have to talk about their target audience they often don’t know how to do it without saying something inadvertently offensive.

We’re in a sort of racially awkward phase in this country. We see progress but don’t possess adequate language to help us bridge where e are to where we’re going. The result is we keep falling somewhere in the gap, either because we don’t know the right words to use, or because we think we do. More liberal-minded white people are often so terrified of saying the wrong thing, the wrong way and with the wrong emphasis that they seem to jump from one wet rock to another, twisting and turning to stay upright. And frankly, it’s hilarious. Even when I’m one of them.

What’s really funny is that all of this linguistic contortionism is done to avoid being called the one thing that makes white people sweat bullets â€" the R-word. No, not Ryan Seacrest. Although that’s also pretty bad.

I mean racist. To hear it, even implied, will make a white person lose sleep. I’m not saying the R-word has anywhere near the cultural significance of the N-word but I think it’s better than honky. Maybe that in itself is a sign of progress.

In my play the racism pill - Driscotol â€" uses this fear as its primary marketing strat! egy. In o! ne draft of the play I had written a commercial where Dr. Driscol says to the audience/camera:

“Just one tiny caplet a day and all your hatred, deep-seeded or on-the-surface, will fade away. Or, hey, maybe this doesn’t apply to you. Maybe you’ve never had a racist thought in your life. Well, stop right there! Because studies show that even if you think you’re not racist, you’re racist for thinking you’re not. And that is totally racist.”

While writing the play, I realized that it wasn’t the pill that had to be effective, but merely the implication that taking it would arm you against ever being called a racist. And wouldn’t that be nice No longer would you have to watch someone offer the awkward defense, “No, it’s cool! I had a black friend once!” But instead, he or she could simply say, “No, it’s cool. I have a note from my doctor.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what plays or musicals made you re-examine the issue of race in you own life. Which shows did it with humor and which with drama

Greg Kalleres has written scripts for the stage, television and radio. His play “Honky” opens tonight at Urban Stages, 259 West 30th Street, Manhattan.

92nd Street Y to Leave Its Downtown Space

The 92nd Street Y will leave its space at 200 Hudson Street, known as 92YTribeca, because “a second, physical location is not critical to our mission,” according to a letter sent Thursday afternoon to the workers at both sites. The decision was made by the 92nd St Y board Wednesday night. The 92nd Street Y expects to be out of the Hudson Street space sometime this summer, according to the letter signed by Sol Adler, the Y’s executive director.

92YTribeca, an arts and entertainment branch that seemed to be aimed at a younger, downtown crowd, opened in October 2008 with the indie rocker John Vanderslice and a screening of the comedy “Wet Hot American Summer.” “We believe 92Y can best serve the community now and in the future by investing our resources into our flagship location uptown on Lexington Avenue,” Mr. Adler’s letter said in part. He said the organization would continue “to invest in strateic partnerships and technologies that allow us to offer our programs and create communities far beyond the walls of any building â€" livecasts, online classes, partnerships, and the success of initiatives like the Social Good Summit and Giving Tuesday.”

92YTribeca was originally named Makor (Hebrew for “source”). In 2001 Makor, a cultural organization serving New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s, merged with the 92nd Street Y. It was housed on West 67th Street until 2008, when it moved to its current home, which features a performance stage with full bar, a 72-seat movie theater, a wireless cafe serving food and drinks, a lecture hall and an art gallery.

92nd Street Y to Leave Its Downtown Space

The 92nd Street Y will leave its space at 200 Hudson Street, known as 92YTribeca, because “a second, physical location is not critical to our mission,” according to a letter sent Thursday afternoon to the workers at both sites. The decision was made by the 92nd St Y board Wednesday night. The 92nd Street Y expects to be out of the Hudson Street space sometime this summer, according to the letter signed by Sol Adler, the Y’s executive director.

92YTribeca, an arts and entertainment branch that seemed to be aimed at a younger, downtown crowd, opened in October 2008 with the indie rocker John Vanderslice and a screening of the comedy “Wet Hot American Summer.” “We believe 92Y can best serve the community now and in the future by investing our resources into our flagship location uptown on Lexington Avenue,” Mr. Adler’s letter said in part. He said the organization would continue “to invest in strateic partnerships and technologies that allow us to offer our programs and create communities far beyond the walls of any building â€" livecasts, online classes, partnerships, and the success of initiatives like the Social Good Summit and Giving Tuesday.”

92YTribeca was originally named Makor (Hebrew for “source”). In 2001 Makor, a cultural organization serving New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s, merged with the 92nd Street Y. It was housed on West 67th Street until 2008, when it moved to its current home, which features a performance stage with full bar, a 72-seat movie theater, a wireless cafe serving food and drinks, a lecture hall and an art gallery.

SXSW Music: Scenes From Day Two

A slide show of images from the music festival, from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to the Coo Coo Birds.

Aaron Swartz to Be Honored by Library Association

The Internet activist Aaron Swartz will be awarded the American Library Association’s James Madison Award on Friday as part of the group’s Freedom of Information Day event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Swartz, who committed suicide in January in the midst of a federal prosecution for document theft, will be honored for his efforts to promote open access to research and government information, according to the group’s president, Maureen Sullivan.

“Aaron had a deep commitment in all his work to support open access, which is a core value of libraries and so many people who use them,” Ms. Sullivan said, adding: “At times, it was beyond a passion.”

As a teenager, Mr. Swartz designed code for the Creative Commons licensing system, helped to develop the RSS Web feed tchnology, and helped found the social news Web site Reddit. In 2008, he created a computer program that enabled free access to federal judicial documents. He is also the founder of Demand Progress, a group that promotes online social justice campaigns.

In 2011, Mr. Swartz was arrested and accused of hacking into the MIT computer system and stealing more than 4 million documents from JSTOR, a database of scientific and scholarly articles. Mr. Swartz was eventually charged with 13 felonies faced up to $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison, a penalty that many activists and others denounced overly harsh and that Mr. Swartz’s family maintained caused his suicide.

The award ! to Mr. Swartz will be formally presented by U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat and a sponsor of “Aaron’s Law,” a bill introduced shortly after Mr. Swartz’s death that would revise federal computer fraud law to prevent similar prosecutions.

Ms. Lofgren, whose district includes Silicon Valley, herself received the award last year, in recognition of her co-sponsorship of the Federal Research Public Access Act and her efforts against the Stop Online Piracy Act, whic Mr. Swartz also campaigned against. The Stop Online Piracy Act was withdrawn last year.

A Few Stray SXSW Thoughts

Josh Haner/The New York Times Emicida performs at Meduse Lounge.

The best lost-love song with advanced-physics puns has to be “Redshift” by Darwin Deez, whose mission as a songwriter seems to involve merging the guitar-scrubbing light funk of the 1970’s with the musicianly twists-gnarled harmonies, leaping and twisting melodies-of Frank Zappa. “You loved all of my little quarks, so what went wrong/Don’t superstring me along,” he lamented in a semblance of an R&B ballad. “Wave or particle, I can’t be both.”

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Does enjoying hip-hop require understanding the words Not with Emicida, a Brazilian rapper from Sao Paulo. He gave a few clues in English to what his songs were about: peace, love, defying the sstem. But his rhymes are in Portuguese, and what made the songs work was the way they bounced off the music, in cadences that sometimes sounded like hip-hop in English but also had the briskness of the quick lyrics in upbeat Brazilian pop. The grooves, delivered by a small group including a guitarist, a DJ and Emicida on a sampler, juggled and mingled funk with Brazilian rhythms like forro and maracatu and Emicida kept changing up his tone: accusatory or affectionate, buttonholing or casual. There weren’t a lot of people in the room on Wednesday night, but hardly any of them could resist dancing.

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Dance-pop music loves a woman scorned, and the English singer and songwriter Charli XCX is more than willing to step into the role. She collaborated with Icona Pop on the irresistible “I Love It,” but her own songs are more elaborate, and sometimes blunt to point of profanity, in their denunciations of guys who tried to get away with too much. She has happier songs too, but even ! in those, romantic tension can be literally earth-shattering, as it is in “Nuclear Seasons.” Onstage at SXSW, backed by recorded tracks and a drummer, she danced up a storm in towering platform shoes, belting thoughts of revenge and passion. Her production choices have moved from brittle electronics to booming, chiming pop, and she’s got her archetype well under construction.

Billie Joe Armstrong to Write Songs for Yale Repertory Theater Show

The Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong will write new songs for Yale Repertory Theater’s production of “These Paper Bullets,” a rock ‘n’ roll updating of “Much Ado About Nothing” that will have its world premiere next March, the theater announced on Thursday.

The play, adapted by Rolin Jones (“The Jammer”) and directed by Jackson Gay, centers on a band from Liverpool dealing with romance and the music industry in London. The project marks a return to theater for Mr. Armstrong, who was a key creative force behind the 2010 Broadway musical “American Idiot,” which was based on Green Day songs, and who is resuming a band tour this month after treatment for substance abus..

“These Paper Bullets” is one of six productions unveiled for Yale Rep’s 2013-14 season, which will include another premiere, “The House That Will Not Stand,” written by Marcus Gardley (“dance of the holy ghosts: a play on memory”) and directed by Patricia McGregor (“Hurt Village”). Mr. Gardley’s play, which will begin performances in April 2014, delves into the tribulations of a free woman of color and her three daughters in 1836 New Orleans.

The Yale Rep season will also feature productions of Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Caryl Churchill’s “Owners,” and Dario Fo’s “Accidental Death of an Anarchist,” as well as Meg Miroshnik’s play “The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls,” which was a finalist for the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

A New Cookie for a New Pope’s Followers

Michael Falco for The New York Times Not long after Pope Francis was chosen, cookies bearing his likeness were ready at Artuso Pastry Shop in the Bronx. The bakery also cranked out some Pope Benedict XVI cookies (rear) for old-time sake. Click to enlarge.

At Artuso Pastry shop in the Bronx, the demand was there, but over on the supply side in the Vatican, the cardinals were not immediately obliging.

“So many people were calling forpope cookies and we didn’t know who the new pope would be,” said Natalie Corridori, a manager at the bakery.

So on Wednesday, under lingering black-smoke conditions, the bakers at Artuso, famed for their Pope Benedict XVI cookies, jumped the gun and started making papal cookies with a question mark for a face.

The timing was rotten. Just before the question mark could be printed out on sheets of sugar paper to apply to the cookies - stop the presses! â€" Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

But it did not take long for bakery workers to download a photo of the new pope. Soon his confectionery likeness adorned the first batch of Pope Francis cookies.

Ms. Corridori, an Argentine-born Catholic of Italian descent, just like His Holiness, could not have been more pleased by the selectio! n.

“When It was announced, I called my parents, and they sounded like we just won the World Cup,” she said. With a little luck, the cookies could be a crossover hit for Artuso, a holdover Italian-owned business in the Belmont neighborhood, where Latinos (and Albanians) have moved in great numbers in recent years.

Artuso’s papal cookies are made from the same recipe as a standard bakery black-and-white, but with the pope’s photo printed with food-coloring ink and layered onto the icing.

By Thursday morning, the bakery had made so many Pope Francis cookies - pope in white, with an orange background - that the main printer broke. The bakers switched to a backup printer, turned out a few batches and put them on the shelves with the sfingi and zeppole (for St. Joseph’s Day on Tuesday), the Easter candy and the St. Patrick’s-themed pastries.

By midday, Artuso had sold nearly 100 of the cookies, as several customers tasted and debated the religious implications of eating them.

“I don’t think it’s a sin - it’s a blessing,” said Yada Santos, a native of Puerto Rico who hailed the selection of Pope Francis. She decided to buy a cookie even though she had come for a cheesecake, which she also bought. “Hopefully it’s a blessing that will keep the calorie count down, too.”

Ms. Corridori decided to also make a final batch of Pope Benedict XVI cookies, for old time’s sake, and for anyone who might buy one as a collector’s item.

“Last chance to get Pope Benedict the 16th cookies,” she called out from behind the counter.

Dolphin’s Still in East River. What’s Up With That

Yana Paskova for The New York Times The dolphin, swimming off Queens on Wednesday.

The dolphin that turned up Wednesday morning in the East River has yet to return to sea, and while rescue experts are growing more concerned, they say that the animal, while “on the thin side,” does not appear to have any obvious health issues and is still swimming well.

The dolphin appears to be an offshore bottlenose, which is “a little bit more of a concern because these animals typically are open-ocean animals” compared to their cousins the coastal bottlenoses, said Kimberly Durham,rescue program manager for the Riverhead Foundation. Dolphin also usually travel in groups, not alone.

The dolphin in the East River is only a few miles from Long Island Sound and open water, but as on Wednesday, it was spending Thursday in an area bounded roughly by the East 90s in Manhattan, Randalls Island and Astoria, Queens.

“We don’t understand why it’s staying in that area,” Robert DiGiovanni Jr., executive director of the Riverhead Foundation, said on Thursday. Mr. DiGiovanni said he got within 50 feet of it on Wednesday evening and said the dolphin knew to stay clear of his boat. He said someone reported seeing the dolphin eating a fish.

In the absence of any clear indicators that the dolphin is in trouble, he said his organization would just continue to monitor it.

Gagosian Gallery Settles Suit Filed Over Lichtenstein Painting

A bitter lawsuit in which the gallery owner Larry Gagosian was accused of selling a prominent collector’s Roy Lichtenstein painting without her permission and making a huge commission on the deal has been settled.

The settlement, reported by The Wall Street Journal and Artinfo.com, is confidential and no terms were disclosed, except that the painting will remain the property of the man who bought it from the Gagosian Gallery, Thompson Dean, a managing partner of a private equity firm.

Mr. Gagosian settled an earlier case involving the same collector, Jan Cowles, 94, but a different artist’s work, for $4.4 million in 2011.

In the Lichtenstein case, Ms. Cowles sued in state court in Manhattan, claiming that in 2008, her son, Charles Cowles, a New York art dealer in desperate financial straits, had tranferred the painting, “Girl in Mirror,” to Mr. Gagosian to sell, even though Mr. Cowles did not own it and had no permission to sell it. The suit contended Mr. Gagosian later fraudulently claimed the painting was damaged and sold it to Mr. Dean for $2 million, less than its market value, taking a $1 million commission on the sale.

The suit revealed frank emails (“Seller now in terrible straits and needs cash,” said one to Mr. Dean from a Gagosian staff member. “Are you interested in making a cruel and offensive offer”).

During depositions, Mr. Gagosian was questioned about working both ends of the deal. He said he did not disclose to Mr. Cowles that his gallery had a relationship with the buyer and was asked if he had tried to get a favorable price for that buyer at Mr. Cowles’ expense.
Mr. Gagosian said that he! frequently represented both the seller and buyer in a deal without disclosing that fact to either party.

The Gagosian Gallery called the lawsuit baseless and said its “practices are fully consistent with both the law and the standards in the art world.”

SXSW Music: Punks Not Dead

Jack Plunkett/Invision, via Associated Press Nick Cave performing at South by Southwest.

Punk lives at South by Southwest: across generations, genders, wardrobes and skill sets. As Dr. Seuss never wrote, you can do it in a suit, you can do it in a dress, you can play it quite precisely, you can play it like a mess. Much of my Wednesday at SXSW was a blast of punk old and new, a testament both to indie-rock’s archival pride and to the enduring alchemy of frustration and loud guitars.

But SXSW didn’t have to compound the frustration by scheduling two punk elders â€" Nick Cave and Iggy and the Stooges â€" in overlapping sets at different (and fully packed) clubs, so that only someone with connections could hear them boh. Mr. Cave, in a black suit, was wrathful, sarcastic and slow-burning as he stalked the stage, with a band that built the music from glowering dirges to apocalyptic blasts of dissonance; songs from his new album, “Push the Sky Away,” were interspersed with equally barbed dramas from years past like “From Her to Eternity.”

Luckily, NPR was recording the set. So I broke away to hear Iggy and the Stooges, reuniting Iggy Pop with the guitarist James Williamson, gleefully cackling and hammering through the live premieres of songs from their album due in April, “Ready to Die,” with titles like “Burn,” “Dirty Deal” and “Sex and Money,” which rev up to garage-rock speeds. ! With Mr. Williamson making every lead sound proudly insolent, Iggy Pop â€" shirtless of course â€" hurled himself balletically around the stage and into the crowd, grinning as he introduced new songs like “Gun,” which he said was about thoughts of buying one. “Would you give a gun to a guy like me” he asked.

None of the younger punk (and punky) bands I saw matched the untrammeled physicality of Mr. Pop, who’s 65. But Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs had her own nutty spontaneity: cooing at one moment and screeching moments later, bounding around the stage, wrapping herself in a big scarf as she sang and eventually flinging it into the crowd.

Other groups were busy with their instruments. Wax Idols, from Oakland, reached back to the crashing, dissonant Gothic new wave of Siouxsie and the Banshees, with the singer and guitarist Heather Fedewa (aka Hether Fortune) always keeping a melody within the blre of scrabbling guitars. And a band that set off serious moshing, Fidlar, from Los Angeles, worked a sly paradox. In songs about characters leading dissolute, drug-addled lives, the music is as cleanly executed as punk could be; unisons are perfectly tuned and timed, like one big shared instrument, pounding home riffs like a stainless-steel railroad spike. It’s punk as a known genre: not a new invention, but a mighty efficient one.

Not Your Parents’ Mary Poppins at Art Fair in Maastricht

“Mary Poppins” by Joana Vasconcelos.

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands â€" As floods of collectors began pouring into the cavernous convention center here for the invitation-only opening of the European Fine Art Fair on Thursday afternoon, the first artwork they encountered was a bit confounding. Called “Mary Poppins,’’ it is a monumental and wildly colorful hanging creature with elongated arms and a strangely organic body that hangs, chandelier-like, at the fair’s entrance.

The work of the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, it is fashioned from a patchwork of handmade woolen knitting and crohet, found fabrics, mass-produced objects and polyester.

Ms. Vasconcelos, who was born in 1971, was the first woman and the youngest artist to show at the Versailles palace known as the Grand Trianon where “Mary Poppins,” hung last summer, one of 15 artworks on view there as part of its four-year-old contemporary art program.

The work’s appearance in Maastricht has drawn mixed reviews. James Roundell, a London dealer who is on the fair’s executive committee, said it was chosen “to be a wow, whether you love it or hate it.” He added, “You don’t want something nobody notices.’’

Notice they did. Many dealers (who refused to be quoted by name, for fear of angering the fair’s organizers) resorted to their annual name-calling. Last year “Cylinder II,’’ a computerized light installation by the American artist Leo Villareal that hung in ! the same spot, was christened “the disco inferno’’ or “the Las Vegas light show,” among other, far less polite names.

This year “Mary Poppins’’ has not exactly gone down like a spoonful of sugar. In addition to some unprintable descriptions, one dealer said: “It looks like a piñata. I think we should all be given bamboo sticks so we can take a good whack at it.’’ For those who disagree “Mary Poppins,” like everything at this fair, is for sale. The asking price is 300,000 euros or about $389,000.

I Want My Music Videos: The Art Form Gets Its Own Museum Exhibition

Contemporary Arts Center Bjork in a scene from the music video for her song “Wanderlust,” directed by Encyclopedia Pictura.

Long before party-goers at New Jersey beaches and dudes who shock themselves with Taser guns were deemed worthy of their own television series, there was the music video: an art form so prolific and diverse that there were whole television channels that ran almost nothing but these short musical films, nearly 24 hours a day.

Times have changed, and while music videos seem rarer, they are revered enough (or old enough) to warrant their own exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. On Tursday the museum announced that it would present “Spectacle: The Music Video,” which will open April 3 and celebrate the form for its “place at the forefront of creative technology, its role in pushing the boundaries of innovative production, its important role as an experimental sandbox for filmmakers and its lasting effects on popular culture globally,” the museum said in a news release.

In addition to displays of well-known and genre-defining videos like Devo’s “Whip It,” Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” and “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys, the exhibition will feature items like the original animation drawings made for A-ha’s “Take on Me”; the jumpsuits worn by! the band members of OK Go in their video for “This Too Shall Pass”; an original eyeball and top hat created by Homer Flynn for the Residents; and artwork and objects created for Bjork’s “Wanderlust” (which will be shown in 3-D).

The exhibition, which is curated by Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells of the programming collective Flux, will also include a section on the hip-hop oriented television shows “Video Music Box” and “Yo! MTV Raps”; installations on artists like Arcade Fire, Johnny Cash and Radiohead; and a history on the origins of music videos from the 1920s through the 1960s.

“Spectacle: the Music Video” will run at the Museum of the Moving Image through June 16.

‘Veronica Mars’ Movie Meets $2 Million Fundraising Goal in One Day

Michael Desmond/CW Kristen Bell on “Veronica Mars” in 2007.

In its three seasons on the air “Veronica Mars” was never even one of television’s Top 100 most-watched series, but in its afterlife it has broken new ground. On Wednesday night fans and supporters of that show about a wisecracking young sleuth (played by Kristen Bell) pledged more than $2 million to produce a “Veronica Mars” movie, less than 12 hours after the fundraising drive was announced on Kickstarter.

Rob Thomas, the “Veronica Mars” creator and producer, announced on Wednesday morning that he and Ms. Bell had got the blessing of Warner Brothers (which owns the “Veronica Mars” property) to seek donations for a possible movie project. Mr. Thomas told fans they had 30 days to raise $2 million for “our shot” at producing a film, adding, “I believe it’s the only one we’ve got.” And by about 9 p.m. that goal was met, with pledges continuing to come in on Day 2. (As of 9:30 a.m. Thursday the project had been promised more than $2.5 million from more than 42,000 backers.)

Mr. Thomas wrote in his Kickstarter announcement that he would put any additional money to good use. At $3 million, he said, “We can afford a full-on brawl. Ten million Who knows… For some reason the Neptune High class reunion takes place on a nuclear submarine! A Hobbit shows up! There’s a Bollywood end-credit dance number! I’ve always wanted to direct Bill Murray. We’ll figure out s! omething cool. Hey, if that total goes high enough, I’ll bet the good folks at Warner Bros. will agree a sequel is a good idea.”

In a post on his Twitter account, Mr. Thomas wrote: “Hallelujah! It’s a green light my friends. I love you all, but particularly the donors among you.” Production for the “Veronica Mars” movie is planned to begin this summer for an early 2014 release.

A Deal on Chicken Sandwiches

Dear Diary:

The other day, I bought two chicken sandwiches - a childhood favorite - having been talked into a two-for-one deal by the cashier. Ate one for lunch; saved the other for later.

On my way home I phoned my sister, excitedly reliving my lunchtime bonanza for her. She recalled clipping coupons back in the day - two chicken sandwiches for $1. We agreed that after all these years, though the sandwiches were smaller than we remembered, and tasted different - probably all that filler, she sighed - they were nonetheless a standup choice. Then Sandwich No. 2 and I hopped on a Manhattan-bound N train.

A homeless gentleman entered my car and quietly began his spiel. When he passed me, I asked if he was hungry and he said yes. I fished Sandwich No. 2 out of my bag and handed it to him. He took one look and announced:

“Ooh, a chicken sandwich, right”

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