Monster Mash: L.A.’s arts funding crisis; financial trouble at Met Museum; Jeff Koons makes a car

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-- Budgetary crisis: A look at the L.A. City Council’s proposed cuts in cultural funding. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Money trouble: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art saw its deficit widen and investments fall in the 2008-09 fiscal year. (Bloomberg)

-- Hot wheels: Jeff Koons will design the 17th BMW Art Car in the 35th-anniversary year of the program. (Art Info)

-- Top seller: A portrait by Pablo Picasso of his second wife has sold for 8.1 million pounds ($12.9 million) in a London auction, more than twice the expected price. (BBC News)

-- Looking ahead: A theater producer who holds the Broadway rights to ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is planning a new revival of the Tennessee Williams play with a multiracial cast, aiming for spring 2011. (The New York Times)

-- Doing time: A box office manager at London’s Barbican Center has been sentenced to prison for his role in a ticket refund scam. (The Guardian)

-- Racy: A production of Berg’s ‘Lulu’ in Geneva has issued a warning for adult content. (Reuters)

-- Also in the L.A. Times: More on an L.A. photographer’s ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ project; theater critic Charles McNulty on Elaine Stritch.

-- David Ng