Monday's Art Notes

_A woman stands next to a painting by "John Currin":http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2009/07/conversation-painter-john-currin.html titled 'Shakespeare Actress' during an auction of Lehman Brothers' artwork collection at Sotheby's in New York, U.S., on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010. Photo by Ramin Talaie/ Bloomberg via Getty Images_ An auction of artworks owned by Lehman Brothers, meant to offset the company's debts after its 2008 bankruptcy, took in $12.5 million, including a record-breaking price for a painting by Julie Mehretu, among others, via "Reuters":http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68P1NW20100926. **Our own Paul Solman had this preview of the works up for sale:** * Egypt's culture minister says he suspects a museum employee is responsible for the August theft of a Van Gogh painting, via "AFP":http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iUQB5fPhmiFCuK-JufZ785Af9icg. * A private company previously hired only by struggling cities to manage their public library systems has now been hired for the job in a fairly prosperous city, via "The New York Times":http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html. * After several international actors' unions joined an Australian boycott of the upcoming film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit," filmmaker Peter Jackson said he might pull the production out of New Zealand, via "The Guardian":http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/27/peter-jackson-the-hobbit-boycott.