Hilton Kramer, the former chief art critic at The New York Times and founding editor of The New Criterion magazine, has died. He was 84.

Kramer's wife Esta said he had been suffering from a blood disease, and died early Tuesday. He had been in an assisted living facility in Harpswell, Maine.

A virtual adventure at sea with storms and battles, a new "jewel box" for Asian art and a high-tech building shaped like a bathtub: Amsterdam's landmark museums are getting facelifts to catapult them from their dusty pasts into the 21st century.

The makeover of three of the capital's most important museums, the Maritime Museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum, has been hailed as the dawn of a "new cultural golden age" to attract the 12.2 million visitors to Amsterdam every year.

A rare watercolor study by Paul Cezanne believed lost and last seen in 1953 will be auctioned in New York City where it's expected to fetch up to $20 million.

It's being offered May 1 at Christie's.

Among the items U.S. soldiers seized from Adolf Hitler's Bavarian Alps hideaway in the closing days of World War II were albums meticulously documenting an often forgotten Nazi crime — the massive pillaging of artwork and other cultural items as German troops marched through Europe.

Two of those albums — one filled with photographs of works of art, the other with snapshots of furniture — were donated Tuesday to the U.S. National Archives, which now has custody of 43 albums in a set of what historians believe could be as high as 100.

In an attempt to award performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording "Desert Masterpiece Production” owned by Egyptian media mogul Mr. Ayman Sabek with the partnership of Lions Hermes Beirut District will be hosting on Saturday 31st March 2012, at 6:30PM, a ceremony honoring the renowned Egyptian actor Mr. Mahmoud Hemida at UNESCO Palace.

The Lebanese tenor Gabriel Abdel Nour will mark the opening of this ceremony, singing the Lebanese and Egyptian national anthems.

Thousands of miles (kilometers) from the ocean, a museum tells the story of a woman made famous by the Titanic. No, her name was not Rose, and a movie about her life, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," starring Debbie Reynolds as a plucky lifeboat survivor, was a hit decades before Kate Winslet's doomed romance in "Titanic."

Molly Brown was a real person, but the movie created a myth that the museum, located in Brown's Denver home, attempts to dispel.

Bark beetles and old age have damaged Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century painting "Lady with an Ermine," but the masterpiece is still holding up well, according to a conservationist at the Polish museum where it is displayed.

Recent tests show the chestnut board on which Leonardo painted his masterpiece has weakened after being nibbled at by beetles over the centuries, and the painting has also suffered from a dense network of cracks, said Janusz Czop, the chief conservationist at the National Museum in Krakow.

A New York City auction will feature a painting by art deco artist Tamara de Lempicka that vanished from public view after it was created in 1925.

Sotheby's says "Reclining Nude I" (one) is expected to sell for $3 million to $5 million on May 2.

One of Beirut’s most well-established bookshops, Librairie El Bourj, is to host the official launch of UAE-based writer, author and communicator Alexander McNabb’s Olives – A Violent Romance from 5pm on Thursday 29th March 2012 with a talk by the author followed by a reading and book signing.

The novel is set in Jordan, where British journalist Paul Stokes moves to live and work on a contract to produce a magazine for the Ministry of Natural Resources. The Israelis are competing for dwindling water resources as Jordan and Palestine face drought. Daoud Dajani has the solution to Jordan’s water problems and is bidding against the British for the privatisation of Jordan’s water network. When Paul befriends Dajani’s sister, Aisha, British intelligence agent Gerald Lynch realises Paul offers access to the man threatening to drain Israel’s water supply and snatch the bid from the British. Blackmailed by Lynch into spying on Dajani, his movements seemingly linked to a series of bombings, Paul is pitched into a terrifying fight for survival that forces him to betray everyone around him. Even the woman he comes to love.

One of Japan's cultural treasures, a 30-scroll set of paintings from the 1700s, is being shown together outside of Japan for the first time in a rare display in Washington.

The paintings of birds and flowers on silk, created more than 250 years ago by artist Ito Jakuchu, will go on view Friday at the National Gallery of Art. The four-week exhibition marks the centennial of Japan's gift of 3,000 cherry trees to the U.S. as a symbol of friendship.