ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

ART & ARCHITECTURE

Gehry Wins Corcoran Commission: Architect Frank O. Gehry has won a yearlong competition to design a major addition to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. With a projected budget of $40 million, the museum’s gallery space will expand from 29,000 square feet to 52,000 square feet, housed mostly in a reworked interior space in the original structure. The plan also includes a new home for the museum’s school, an auditorium and children’s center. Gehry’s addition, with its layers of billowing forms, will stand in sharp contrast to Ernest Flagg’s 1897 Beaux Arts structure. The project is the latest in a string of major commissions for the 70-year-old Los Angeles-based architect, and is particularly significant because of its location in the center of the the nation’s capital, where contemporary designs are rare. Gehry’s design was selected over proposals by Daniel Libeskind, the architect of Berlin’s celebrated Jewish Museum, and by Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava.

OPERA

Setting Records: L.A. Opera set records for attendance, box-office income and subscriptions in its recently concluded 1998-99 season. Total paid attendance for the company’s eight-opera, 54-performance season was 149,106--reaching an 89.4% capacity for the Music Center’s 3,086-seat Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Ticket sales totaled nearly $11.7 million, nearly 60% of the company’s annual $20-million operating budget. Thirty performances were sold out, and the company broke its single-performance ticket revenue record four times, with the final record going to a non-subscription performance of “La Traviata,” which took in $262,873.

TV & RADIO

Hall of Famers: “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf, CNN anchor Bernard Shaw, the late entertainer Dean Martin and the late comedian Gracie Allen will be inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame during ceremonies Nov. 8 in New York. Additional inductees include America Online COO Robert W. Pittman, the late actor E.G. Marshall, the late producer and talk-show host David Susskind, A&E; Television Networks President Nickolas Davatzes, National Assn. of Broadcasters President Edward O. Fritts, Broadcast Music Inc. President Frances W. Preston, veteran broadcaster Ward L. Huey and the late David C. Adams, a onetime NBC chairman. Previous inductees include Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, Lucille Ball, Norman Lear and Edward R. Murrow.

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Animated Shagging: Mike Myers’ Austin Powers character will be animated in a new HBO prime-time series expected to debut in the summer of 2000. Myers will provide the character’s voice and executive-produce the series, for which HBO has ordered 13 half-hour installments.

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Drudge Report: Internet columnist Matt Drudge--who introduced the world to Monica Lewinsky and Clintongate--is getting his own radio show on KABC-AM (790), starting July 4. A KABC programming official said that the weekly show, to be heard Sunday nights from 10 p.m. to midnight, will be taped in Los Angeles “most of the time,” but will sometimes originate from New York. When Drudge’s show joins the schedule, KABC host Leo Terrell, who currently airs on both Saturday and Sunday nights, will air on Saturdays only, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.

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Costanza Suit Tossed: A New York judge has thrown out a $100-million lawsuit filed by a man who claims Jerry Seinfeld and his TV producers stole his identity for Jason Alexander’s “Seinfeld” character, George Costanza. Michael Costanza, 43, a real estate agent who lives on Long Island, had claimed his rights were violated when the former NBC show used his “name, likeness and persona” to create the neurotic and nutty character of George. He also claimed the show portrayed him in a negative and humiliating light. The judge, however, said he found the suit frivolous and baseless, and fined Costanza and his lawyer each $2,500.

POP/ROCK

Video Jam: If you got stuck in a traffic jam on the 110 Freeway Sunday afternoon, you can blame rap impresario Sean “Puffy” Combs. A portion of the freeway was briefly shut down around 4 p.m. Sunday while Combs filmed the video for his upcoming single “PE 2000,” an update of Public Enemy’s 1980 song “Public Enemy No. 1,” featuring Chuck D and Flavor Flav as guest vocalists. With a police escort in tow to ensure safety, Combs sped through the downtown tunnels in a white Ferrari, as black helicopters swirled overhead. The single goes to radio on July 4, with the video expected to debut around the same time.

QUICK TAKES

Aerosmith has pulled out of the upcoming Woodstock ’99 festival in New York, citing “mutual production problems and scheduling conflicts.” . . . Hollywood’s Celebration Theatre has named Richard Israel, managing director of West Coast Ensemble for the last five years, as its new artistic director, effective Aug. 1. He succeeds Robert Schrock, who resigned April 1. . . . The L.A. County Board of Supervisors will honor KCRW-FM (89.9) host Tom Schnabel today with a commendation recognizing his musical contributions to broadcasting and publishing and his role in launching the Hollywood Bowl’s “World Festival ‘99” concert series.