Thursday's Art Notes

_-- Visitors attend press day of "Renoir in the 20th Century," an exhibition at the_ "Los Angeles County Museum of Art":http://www.lacma.org/. _The exhibition, which runs Feb. 14 to May 9, 2010, focuses on the last three decades of Renoir's career. (Photo by Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.)_ * British fashion designer Alexander McQueen "was found dead on Thursday from an apparent suicide":http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059203304215516.html. McQueen founded his own fashion house in the 1990s, which was bought by Gucci in 2000. Throughout his career, his theatrical haute couture garnered great critical acclaim. The 40-year-old designer was less than a month away from presenting a new collection at Paris Fashion Week. * Scholars have discovered the "unpublished diary of a Mississippi plantation owner":http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/books/11faulkner.html that William Faulkner used to inspire names and other details in his novels. * More than 1,200 images from the Polaroid photo collection "will be auctioned off in June":http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=a49VdCIF36ZQ, as the film company continues to struggle through bankruptcy court. Earlier this week, the Austrian company that bought a former Polaroid factory in the Netherlands said it has to "delay its plan to re-start production of the instant film":http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view/20100209instant_film_for_polaroids_delayed/.