Quick Takes: Richard Avedon photos to be sold

New York-based Avedon Foundation, the largest repository of works by the late Richard Avedon, is for the first time selling photographs from its archive to establish an endowment to promote the work and legacy of the master fashion photographer and portraitist of such famous people as Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles and Malcolm X.

More than 60 of his photographs will be auctioned by Christie’s in Paris on Nov. 20. The collection is expected to bring $3.7 million to $6 million.

The foundation and Christie’s said it was the largest number of Avedon works to come on the market.

Avedon, whose career spanned 60 years, died in 2004 at the age of 81.

—Associated Press

LACMA hires deputy director

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art said last month that it has lifted the hiring freeze that it imposed during the recession. Wasting little time, officials announced Friday a major addition to its curatorial ranks.

The museum said that it has appointed Brooke Davis Anderson to the newly created position of deputy director for curatorial planning. A spokeswoman for the museum said that Anderson is expected to begin her new job in September.

Anderson recently served as director and curator of the Contemporary Center and Henry Darger Study Center of the American Folk Art Museum in New York. She has also served as director of the Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University.

LACMA’s budget for the coming year calls for adding just three positions to the current staff of 325. LACMA said it currently employs 32 curators, and maintains a curatorial staff of 60.

—David Ng

10 Lilith Tour dates canceled

The Lilith Tour has canceled 10 dates on its summer concert schedule in what Lilith co-founder and Nettwerk Records President Terry McBride calls “one of the most challenging summer concert seasons.”

But the Los Angeles appearance, July 10, remains on the schedule.

The all-female tour, which was revived this year after being dormant for a decade, is the brainchild of McBride and singer Sarah McLachlan.

The canceled dates are in Salt Lake City, Montreal, Raleigh, Charlotte, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Birmingham, Austin, Houston and Dallas.

—Randall Roberts

‘Love’ bites the dust on NBC

NBC’s “Love Bites” has been bitten by some bad breaks and won’t be on the network’s fall schedule as originally planned.

“Love Bites,” an hour-long romantic comedy that is best described as an updated version of “Love American Style,” will not be on the fall schedule because of some behind-the-scenes and on-camera changes that would make it difficult for NBC to have enough episodes ready to go by September. The show had been scheduled to air 10 p.m. Thursdays.

Cindy Chupack, the executive producer of “Love Bites,” whose other credits include HBO’s “Sex and the City,” is giving up that position for personal reasons but will continue to write for the show. A new show runner will be named shortly.

The program is also being delayed because actress Becki Newton, one of the anthology show’s few regular characters, is pregnant, and shooting around that was going to prove difficult.

Jordana Spiro was also supposed to be a regular on “Love Bites” but that conflicted with her role on the TBS sitcom “My Boys” and now her part has been eliminated. If “My Boys” had not been renewed by TBS, then Spiro would have been free to join the NBC show. Replacing “Love Bites” on Thursdays will be another version of “The Apprentice.”

—Joe Flint

Star Tours ride being updated

Imagine a theme park ride that is never the same experience twice.

Riders aboard the new Star Tours attraction coming to Disneyland in Anaheim and Disney’s Hollywood Studios near Orlando, Fla., in 2011 will have the power to change the storyline throughout the simulator ride, resulting in a different beginning, middle and end for every journey.

Star Tours 2.0, taking place between the “Star Wars” prequels and the original trilogy, will update the 1980s simulator ride with high-definition 3-D technology and special effects.

In the new ride, dubbed “The Adventures Continue,” riders on board the StarSpeeder 3000 transport ship will join a pod race on the fictional planet Tatooine; fly above the skyscrapers of Coruscant, another fictional planet; and visit other destinations in the “Star Wars” universe.

Disneyland’s Star Tours will close July 27, with reopening tentatively set for May.

—Brady MacDonald