ART

Latino Museum Moving Forward: The Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture, in the planning stages since 1987, will hold dedication ceremonies Wednesday at its building at 112 Main St., just off 1st Street downtown. “We’re to the point now where it’s a reality, it’s happening,” said actress Rosana DeSoto, the museum’s vice president. Work has begun on the $500,000 renovation of the site, a one-story, 40,000-square-foot building with a basement being leased from Bank of America. Plans call for the museum’s first exhibition to open this fall. The dedication will be attended by actors Jimmy Smits and Edward James Olmos, who serve on the museum’s board, as well as Mayor Richard Riordan and other city and county officials.

Lighting Back Up: The Museum of Neon Art, which closed its longtime downtown facility on Traction Avenue three years ago, will reopen Feb. 24 in a new permanent home at 501 W. Olympic Blvd., in downtown’s Grand Hope Park. Billed as the only institution of its kind in the world, the museum will showcase 60 neon works by 25 artists in its opening exhibition, “Electric Muse.” The new 7,500-square-foot space, financed by a grant from the Community Redevelopment Agency, includes a bank of windows along Olympic Boulevard to showcase works to passing traffic. MONA was founded in 1981 by neon artist Lili Lakich. The museum has operated a small satellite exhibition space and gift store at Universal CityWalk since 1993.

Warhol Case Continues: A prominent lawyer must return $1.35 million of the $4.85 million he received in fees from pop artist Andy Warhol’s estate, New York’s state appeals court ruled Thursday. The court, which called the fees “exorbitant,” reversed a 1995 surrogate court ruling that granted Edward Hayes more than $7.2 million in legal fees. After Warhol’s death in 1987, Hayes was appointed lawyer for the estate and was promised 2% of the estate’s final value. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts valued the estate at $220 million in 1995; Hayes, however, thought the estate was worth between $600 million to $700 million.