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

ART

L.A. Court Keeps Nazi-Looting Case

An 85-year-old woman will be allowed to take the Austrian government to court in her hometown of Los Angeles in an attempt to retrieve six Gustav Klimt paintings the Nazis seized from her uncle in 1938, a federal judge ruled Monday. Maria Altmann claims the Republic of Austria and the Austrian Gallery are illegally keeping the paintings--together worth an estimated $150 million--including Klimt’s well-known “gold” portrait of Altmann’s aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer. Austria had sought a dismissal of the suit, saying that the case should be tried in Austria. But a U.S. district judge ruled that she has jurisdiction over the case, because Altmann can reasonably claim Austria took the paintings in violation of international law. An attorney representing Austria said he plans to appeal.

Getty Goes for van Gogh at Auction

The J. Paul Getty Museum didn’t buy Paul Cezanne’s “La Montagne Sainte-Victoire” from dealer Heinz Berggruen’s collection at Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg’s New York auction Monday, as speculated. The classic landscape went to an unidentified buyer for $38.5 million--the top price in an Impressionist and modern art sale that totaled $124 million. But the Getty didn’t leave empty-handed; it snagged another Berggruen-owned work, Vincent van Gogh’s pen-and-ink drawing, “Arles: View From the Wheatfields,” for $4.4 million. It was the sixth-most expensive item in a closely watched sale that fell below the $170-million-to-$236-million pre-sale estimate but still marked a big step in Phillips’ bid to upset industry giants Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

But Other Museums Go to Market

Several works from San Francisco’s M.H. DeYoung Memorial Museum will be offered in an auction June 25 and 26 of more than 500 lots culled from several U.S. museums that are deaccessioning works from their collections. Offerings from the Denver Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Indianapolis Museum of Art will be included in the sale, at Butterfields Auctioneers in San Francisco. Proceeds will go toward future acquisitions at each museum, Butterfields said. Among the lots from the DeYoung Museum--which has been closed since 2000 while undergoing a major reconstruction and is expected to open in 2005--are a complete Louis XVI room removed from Paris’ Place Vendome that’s expected to fetch up to $60,000, and an 1837 oil painting by Eugene Verboeckhoven, “A Pastoral Scene With Cows, Sheep and a Donkey Resting,” that’s also estimated to bring about $60,000.

TV & MOVIES

Imagen the Possible Winners

Two Lifetime Television cable series--”The Division” and “Strong Medicine”--will compete with CBS’ “JAG” and NBC’s “Third Watch” and “The West Wing” in the TV drama category at the 16th annual Imagen Awards on June 14. The awards honor positive portrayals of Latinos and Latino cultures. Nickelodeon’s kids show, “The Brothers Garcia,” will vie with Fox’s “That ‘70s Show” and the WB’s “For Your Love” in the comedy series category, while “Luminarias,” “Girlfight” and “Traffic” are up for best feature film. Meanwhile, actors Benicio Del Toro and Cheech Marin will receive special awards.

Remembering Son’s Close Call

Actress Kelly Preston said on Tuesday’s “Good Morning America” that her and husband John Travolta’s 9-year-old son, Jett, was hospitalized and nearly died when he was 2 after inhaling fumes from a carpet cleaner. “We’ve never spoken about it before,” said Preston, who will be on Capitol Hill today to lobby for more detailed labeling on chemical products. “We cleaned the carpets religiously because we didn’t want to have bacteria in them. Because of breathing the fumes, his immune system shut down and . . . we almost lost him.”

THEATER

Schell Passes Swastika ‘Judgment’

Someone spray-painted Stars of David over the swastikas on the theater marquee for Broadway’s “Judgment at Nuremberg.” But the culprit turned out to be none other than the show’s star, Maximilian Schell. “Basically, he was tired of looking at the swastika every day,” said the production’s publicist, noting that Schell owned up to the act a few days after the six-pointed stars appeared last week on the Longacre Theatre’s marquee. It’s still unknown whether Schell, 70, did the graffiti himself or delegated the job. The show, an adaptation of the 1961 film of the same name for which Schell won an Academy Award in a different role, closes Sunday after 56 performances.

QUICK TAKES

The Hollywood Bowl sold a record 10,000 tickets on its season-opening sales day Sunday. . . . Loretta Lynn’s concert at Irvine’s Crazy Horse Steak House has been rescheduled for Sept. 10. The country singer’s April 9 show was postponed when she was hospitalized with pneumonia. . . . The Stereophonics have postponed their U.S. tour, including an L.A. date next Wednesday at the Palace, because the Welsh band’s singer, Kelly Jones, is ill.