Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation’s press.

TELEVISION

‘Creek’ Ratings: The WB network’s lineup of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the new teen drama “Dawson’s Creek” got off to a promising start Tuesday. Moving from Monday, “Buffy” staked out its highest ratings ever, while “Dawson’s” scored the fledgling network’s best results yet for a series premiere. While its 8% of the available audience ranked fifth nationally, WB did twice that well locally on KTLA-TV Channel 5, with “Dawson’s” beating ABC’s “Home Improvement” to finish third behind NBC’s “Frasier”-”Just Shoot Me” tandem and Fox’s “World’s Scariest Police Chases.” On the downside, Nielsen figures show viewing of the program dropped throughout the hour.

THE ARTS

Women Allowed, Finally: In the past 224 years, only three women have seen Francisco Goya’s frescoes of the Virgin Mary in a monastery in northern Spain. But the monks of the Carthusian order have agreed to relax the no-women rule at their Aula Dei monastery in Zaragoza following a two-year controversy over the ban. The monks accepted a government proposal to build a separate visitors’ entrance allowing women to view the Spanish master’s frescoes without being seen by the cloistered monks. Until now, only three women--a member of the Spanish royal family, a judicial secretary and a female restorer--had seen the frescoes, which date from 1774.

More ‘Ragtime’: “Ragtime” has extended its run at the Shubert Theatre from March 8 to April 11. Publicity from the show’s Broadway opening Sunday--including plugs on TV’s “The Rosie O’Donnell Show”--along with improving grosses in L.A. led to the decision, said a spokesman. This extension, like the one before it, is billed as “final,” because the company is expected to open in Vancouver in May.

QUICK TAKES

Edmund P. Pillsbury will step down early next year as director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth to “spend some time with my family and do some writing and lecturing.” Pillsbury, 54, has headed the respected museum since 1980. He said he has no immediate plans to take another museum job. . . . Quincy Jones will executive-produce “Do or Die,” an NBC movie about Los Angeles’ notorious Bloods and Crips gangs. The TV movie is planned for the 1998-99 season. . . . Penny Marshall will host the second “Lifetime Women’s Film Festival” on cable’s Lifetime Television in June. The two-hour mini-festival will showcase film shorts from female independent filmmakers. . . . VH1 will show a new weekly music version of the long-running game show “Jeopardy!” beginning this summer. A host has not been named.