Monday’s Art Notes

Nissan Cohen, 84, inspects his burnt Nisco Museum of Music boxes and Mechanical Music in the artists’ village of Ein Hod near the northern city of Haifa, Israel on December 6, 2010 after a massive forest fire was finally brought under control, with the assistance of equipment and personnel from more than 16 countries. The blaze was the worst in Israel’s 62-year history, consuming thousands of acres of forest and killing 42 people in total. Photo by Jack Guez/ AFP/ Getty Images

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Google launches its own e-bookstore Monday to try and compete with Amazon’s offering for the Kindle e-reader, via the Associated Press.

Last December, the NewsHour explored the Google Books project.

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Dancer Bill T. Jones, rock star Paul McCartney, country legend Merle Haggard and media magnate Oprah Winfrey were honored Sunday by the President at the Kennedy Center, via the Los Angeles Times.

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Actor, comedian, musician, writer and art lover Steve Martin penned an editorial for the New York Times about the art of public discourse, after a kerfuffle at New York’s 92nd Street Y over whether Martin’s conversation about the art world was too boring for his audience, via WNYC.

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Weeks before its 75th anniversary, the Louisville Orchestra files for bankruptcy, via the Lexington Herald-Leader.

In October, Art Beat talked to two filmmakers whose film, Music Makes A City tells the story of how the Louisville Orchestra helped reinvigorate culture and commerce during the 1940s.

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A horde of Hungarian Communist-era artworks, including dozens of portraits of Lenin, will be auctioned off to benefit victims of the October toxic sludge disaster, via BBC.

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The New York Times looks at how the Philadelphia History Museum has recently deaccessioned over 2,000 items from its collection and earned over $5 million to pay for renovations.

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Danish actor Palle Huld, who as a young man was thought to be the original inspiration for the Tintin comic book character, has died at age 98, via The Telegraph.