Artifice: Seventy-six paintings seized from Imelda and...

Artifice: Seventy-six paintings seized from Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos are not worth the multimillion-dollar price tag placed on them for auction, an arts magazine says. Experts quoted in the October issue of ARTNews said the artwork is not worth the $8.6 million to $12.5 million Christies auction house estimated they will bring at a January auction. Manhattan conservator Marco Grassi told the magazine that galleries sold Mrs. Marcos “inferior art at superior prices.” The works were seized by the Philippine government after Marcos was ousted in 1986. Christies spokesman Ian Kennedy said: “I am perfectly satisfied” with the prices.

Tutu Tribute: Archbishop Desmond Tutu says South African President F. W. de Klerk deserves praise for progress in dismantling apartheid. “It would be churlish to say that he does not deserve to be praised,” Tutu said at a lawyers’ meeting over the weekend in San Juan, Puerto Rico. But “sanctions must remain until the process is irreversible,” said Tutu, who is leader of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

Spy Catcher: CIA Director William Webster, often on the short list of the most eligible bachelors in Washington, may be about to get off the list. Webster reportedly is planning an Oct. 20 wedding with Lynda Jo Clugstone. She is head of marketing at the Watergate Hotel.

Solidified: Poland’s Solidarity leader and presidential candidate Lech Walesa celebrated his 47th birthday and married off his oldest son on the same day. Bogdan Walesa, 21, wed Agnieszka Drozdowska in a crowded ceremony Saturday at a cathedral in Gdansk. The elder Walesa led strikes in 1980 and 1988 that influenced politics in Poland. Presidential elections are Nov. 25.