Quick Takes: Craft and Folk Art Museum director is stepping down

Maryna Hrushetska, who has served as the director of the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles for nearly six years, will be stepping down from her role effective Dec. 30, the museum said Monday.

Hrushetska joined the museum in March 2005 in the midst of a difficult time for the institution, which had gone through five directors in eight years. During her tenure, she helped to stabilize the organization, overseeing 37 exhibitions and helping increase attendance by 67%, with a 38% increase in revenue, the museum said.

A modest institution compared with its much larger neighbors on Wilshire Boulevard, the Craft and Folk Art Museum currently operates under the aegis of a 12-member board of directors and a professional staff.

A new director is expected to be announced by the end of December, the museum said.

—David Ng

Master Chorale on the airwaves

Fourteen performances by the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall will be broadcast on classical music station KUSC-FM (91.5).

The first series of seven concerts, featuring performances from 2009 and 2010, premieres Dec. 19 and will continue from 4 to 6 p.m. Sundays through Jan. 30 under the title, “The L.A. Master Chorale in Concert.” The Dec. 19 broadcast will feature the chorale’s holiday show from last year, including Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s “Midnight Mass for Christmas Eve,” Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Christmas Carols” and Conrad Susa’s “A Christmas Garland.”

Another series of seven programs will begin in December 2011.

“It’s exciting to take our music outside our concert hall and onto the airwaves as part of our ‘on the stage, online and on the air’ initiative to connect with a wider segment of the population,” said Grant Gershon, the chorale’s music director.

—From a Times staff writer

Sheen, a porn star and a lawyer

Charlie Sheen is not about to let someone else besmirch his good name.

The colorful star of CBS’ “Two and a Half Men” is bashing back against Capri Anderson, a porn actress who claims he attacked her during a meltdown last month at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Anderson told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday that she would file a criminal complaint against Sheen, who she says threw things at her and tried to choke her. She said she spurned a $20,000 offer to keep quiet.

Hours later, Sheen filed suit against Anderson, claiming she threatened to make false allegations about him unless he paid her $1 million. His attorney, Yale Galanter, said Anderson had not told police of any wrongful conduct the night of the incident.

—Scott Collins

Fox to star on London stage

The man known to television fans worldwide as Dr. Jack Shephard from “Lost” is set to debut on the British stage.

Matthew Fox led a cast of marooned travelers for nearly six years on the ABC series “Lost” but will now lead a cast of two: He will play Bobby, a crass American carpenter, in the inaugural production next year of “In a Forest, Dark and Deep” by Tony Award-nominated playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute.

“The West End has always been a dream,” Fox said Monday of the London area famous for its world-class theaters. “I always hoped I’d have the opportunity to work here.”

“Forest” will center on the sibling rivalry between Bobby and his university dean sister, Betty, to be played by Olivia Williams, the British actress known for her roles in movies such as “The Sixth Sense” and “The Ghost Writer.”

It is not Fox’s first role on stage, but it is his first in Britain.

—Associated Press

Painting stolen in ’79 is returned

A painting stolen from a London home in 1979 and that ended up in the collection of late Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace has been returned to its original owners, Britain’s Art Loss Register said Monday.

The work by 18th century German artist Johann Zoffany had been billed as the star lot in a Sotheby’s auction of the contents of Versace’s Lake Como villa last year, but it was withdrawn at the last moment.

A direct descendent of the subject of “Portrait of Major George Maule” contacted the Art Loss Register, which tracks lost and stolen art and antiquities, and the ALR in turn contacted Sotheby’s.

“What could have been a protracted legal battle between two very well financed European families and their copious sets of lawyers has been amicably settled by the Art Loss Register’s art mediation team,” the ALR said. The terms of the settlement remained confidential.

“There is no doubt that Gianni Versace had no knowledge that this painting was stolen when he purchased it in the 1980s,” the ALR’s Christopher Marinello said.

—Reuters