Monday’s Art Notes

—Sculptures by Salvador Dali, including “Alice In Wonderland,” are on an exhibition at the Courchevel ski resort in France until April 25, 2010. (Photo by Jean-Pierre Clatot/AFP/Getty Images.)

President Barack Obama’s half brother, Mark Ndesandjo, has turned down an offer to appear in a movie with Hong Kong film star Chow Yun-Fat. Ndesandjo, who lives in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, says he’s too busy with charity work and writing.

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In London, Alfred Molina stars in a new play about Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko. “Red” depicts the volatile artist during the late 1950s (in the play, paint splatters resemble blood), when he was working on a series of paintings for the Seagram building in New York. Reviews of the play can be found here and here.

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Photographer Larry Sultan died Sunday at his home in California. He was 63. He’s best known for his 1977 photo appropriation project called “Evidence.” For that work, he and collaborator Mike Mandel collected intriguing technological and industrial images from the documentary archives of large companies and government organizations, which they installed together without any explanation or additional context. As a photographer, he was also well known for his images of Californians.

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Late last week, the inspector general for the Smithsonian revealed in a congressional hearing that $12.3 million in property belonging to the institution (mostly office supplies) is missing.