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

PEOPLE

Calling It Quits: Another prominent Hollywood lesbian couple split Tuesday, when singer Melissa Etheridge and director Julie Cypher announced they were ending their relationship after 12 years. The breakup of the couple--whose family pictures made the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in January when they announced that rock legend David Crosby had fathered their two children--comes in the wake of last month’s split of Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche. “With the utmost of love and respect for one another, we have decided to separate,” the couple said in a statement released by Etheridge’s label, Island Records. “As committed parents, our top priority continues to be what is in the best interest of our children. Though elements of our lives will change, our family will always remain intact.” Cypher gave birth to the couple’s daughter, 3, and son, 1.

TV & MOVIES

Move Over, Nashville: TNN, the cable network known as the Nashville Network, is being “re-branded” as the National Network, with plans calling for “more general entertainment programming that will target a younger and more diverse audience.” Herb Scannell, president of MTV Networks’ sister stations Nickelodeon and TV Land, will take over leadership of the revamped network, which will move its key operations from Nashville to New York. While TNN will continue with some existing programming, like motor sports, long-term plans include the development of original series and movies. A new network logo will be phased in next week.

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Casting Search: Filmmaker Roman Polanski has placed a classified ad to find a leading man for his next film. The ad, which ran Monday in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, seeks a 25- to 35-year-old and reads: “Acting experience not essential but he needs to be sensitive, vulnerable and charismatic.” The film, “The Pianist” is based on the autobiography of Polish composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, who escaped death in a Nazi concentration camp. Polanski (“Rosemary’s Baby,” “Chinatown”) also escaped the Nazis as a child in Poland. “He feels there is someone out there, not necessarily an actor, who embodies what he feels about Szpilman,” casting agent Alex Johnson told The Guardian.

ART

Sharing the Wealth: Northern California real estate developer Kenneth Behring is donating $80 million to the National Museum of American History, part of Washington’s Smithsonian. The donation is the largest single gift in the Smithsonian’s history. Behring, who gave the Smithsonian $20 million three years ago, told the Washington Post that there would be no conditions on the money’s use, but that he hoped the museum would help tell the story of “who we are . . . how we started [and] who made the country. I hope we can . . . inspire people to chase the American Dream.”

POP/ROCK

Hall of Fame Nods: Michael Jackson and Paul Simon, already inductees as members of the Jackson 5 and Simon & Garfunkel, are now also contenders for solo enshrinement into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. The remainder of the 16 nominees announced by the Cleveland museum include rockers Bob Seger, AC/DC and Lynyrd Skynyrd, punk poet Patti Smith, flamboyant cult favorites the New York Dolls, and singer Brenda Lee. The other nominees reappear on the ballot after failing to win election in the past: Aerosmith, Queen, Black Sabbath, Lou Reed, Steely Dan, the Flamingoes, Solomon Burke, and Ritchie Valens. Musicians are eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first recording. Up to seven Hall of Famers will be voted into the hall by artists, producers, journalists and music industry executives. Actual inductees are usually announced in November.

QUICK TAKES

Sports journalist Mitch Albom, author of the best-selling book-turned-TV-movie “Tuesdays With Morrie,” will create and write a new hourlong drama for CBS the fall 2001 season. The series will focus on a young newspaper reporter. . . . ABC, which announced last week that the upcoming premiere of its new Andre Braugher drama “Gideon’s Crossing” would be the first ever commercial-free broadcast of a network drama, has amended its statement. The network now says the Oct. 10 debut “marks the first time in television history that a broadcast network series’ premiere has aired without interruption.” . . . Pop singer and former “General Hospital” star Rick Springfield spent Monday night in jail after being arrested at his Malibu home for alleged spousal assault. Springfield, 51, has been married to wife Barbara for 18 years and has two sons. . . . Botticelli’s illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy were reunited and put on display together at the presidential palace in Rome on Tuesday for the first time in centuries. Experts believe the Renaissance master executed the 92 mostly unfinished ink drawings between 1480 and 1495. Seven belong to the Vatican library; 85 are from a Berlin museum.