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

Records for Koons, Richter, Kelly

Jeff Koons’ sculpture of a pop star and his monkey, “Michael Jackson and Bubbles,” fetched $5.6 million from an anonymous bidder at Sotheby’s contemporary art auction in New York on Tuesday, obliterating the artist’s previous mark of $1.8 million. The top lot of the sale, which took in a total of $45.3 million (safely within the pre-sale estimate of $38.5 million to $53.8 million) was Jackson Pollock’s “Black and White/Number 6, 1951,” which went for just under $8 million. But while the sale also set records for Gerhard Richter ($5.4 million), Ellsworth Kelly ($1.2 million), Martin Puryear ($764,750) and Ellen Gallagher ($115,750), nearly a quarter of the sale’s 70 lots--including three Alexander Calder sculptures--went unsold.

Sheen as President, then Pitchman

Martin Sheen’s activist muscles were to be flexed Wednesday night in conjunction with the season finale of “The West Wing.” The actor narrated a pitch involving the international diamond trade that was slated to air in the Washington area immediately following the NBC series, in which he stars. “Buy a diamond, and you may be supporting terrorism in other countries,” Sheen says in the commercial. “The Clean Diamonds Act can stop the killing.” Sheen urges viewers to call Congress on behalf of a bill from Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) that would require country-of-origin labels on diamonds and ban imports from African mines controlled by violent rebel groups.

Barenboim Bounces Ball Back

Conductor Daniel Barenboim has rejected calls from organizers of an Israeli music festival that he drop his plans to perform a work by Richard Wagner, Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer, in Jerusalem on July 7. Barenboim told the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times that festival officials “are the ones who invited us to the festival and asked us to play Wagner. They are the ones who now have to say, ‘Please do it as we planned, despite the protests,’ or ‘Play something else,’ or ‘Cancel the concert.’ ”

Pax Will Return to ‘Ponderosa’

The Pax network on Wednesday unveiled several new series for the fall, including “The Ponderosa,” a drama billed as a prequel to the classic western “Bonanza,” and “Forbidden Secrets,” a “documentary-style” show hosted by Lee Majors. Meanwhile, Pax, which begins airing weekly repeats of NBC’s game show “The Weakest Link” on June 1, said it also plans to rebroadcast NBC’s forthcoming fall drama, “Crossing Jordan,” starring Jill Hennessy as a medical examiner.

Cabby Returns $4-Million Cello

Cellist Lynn Harrell has an honest New York cabdriver to thank for the safe return of his prized $4-million Stradivarius. Harrell, 57, told the New York Daily News that he left his 1673 cello in the trunk of a taxi on Monday night. The driver, Mohamed Ibrahim, found and returned the instrument. In 1999, cellist Yo-Yo Ma also forgot his $2.5-million cello in a taxi, but police tracked it down.