In the Arts: Last Holdouts Agree to Leave Carnegie Hall Towers

The last elderly denizens of the two high-rise towers built with New York’s Carnegie Hall in the 1890s and used to house actors and artists for more than a half-century have agreed to leave, clearing the final obstacle to a planned $200-million renovation, says the Associated Press.

The former dancer Elizabeth Sargent and Editta Sherman, a photographer, have until August 31 to vacate their subsidized studio apartments in the city-owned buildings where Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Leonard Bernstein, and other luminaries have lived or studied.

Carnegie Hall residents, supported by celebrities like Robert De Niro and Susan Sarandon, had waged a legal battle to prevent their ouster. The city and the Carnegie Hall Corporation are refurbishing the towers to house administrative facilities and an education program paid for by and named for philanthropist Sanford Weill, Carnegie Hall’s chairman.

In other arts news, the billionaire arts patron Eli Broad proposed that a downtown Los Angeles museum could recoup millions of public dollars on its construction cost, the Los Angeles Times says.

Mr. Broad plans to spend $100-million to build a museum to house his modern-art collection as part of L.A.’s Grand Avenue redevelopment project. The museum stands to collect up to $10.5-million in payments to the city from the Grand Avenue project’s chief developer as part of a standard city practice that obliges builders to devote a portion of their costs to art and cultural facilities.

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