Most Kiwis have probably not heard of Hannah O'Neill. The 20-year-old is one of the brightest young stars in the ballet world, who also happens to be a Kiwi.

After working as an artist part-time for a couple of years, Allan Wrath decided in February to give it his full attention.

A novel approach to reading has kids blogging and commenting online about what should happen next in books - and authors follow the instructions.

A never-before-seen painting by Rolling Stones rocker Keith Richards has been stashed in a drawer in a swanky Auckland bed and breakfast for the past seven years.

A mural stenciled on the side of a Hollywood gas station five years ago by the British street artist Banksy has fetched more than $200,000 at a Beverly Hills auction.

A Picasso valued at US$1 million ($1.2 million) is the prize in an unprecedented online Christmas charity raffle.

Leading New Zealand artist Stephen Bambury is in a High Court fight with a gallery director who allegedly failed to pay commissions.

The biggest art auction of the year will be held in Auckland tonight with artworks totalling $3 million going under the hammer.

The words stand-up comedian and sold-out stadium hardly ever appear in that same sentence in this country, but comedy mega-star Michael McIntyre regularly fills Britain's largest venues and he had no trouble packing out the Vector Arena.

The German pensioner accused of hiding a vast Nazi-era collection of artwork in his Munich flat has publicly insisted that the paintings are his "private property".

Already in the hours since the death of Doris Lessing was announced, many people will have watched a widely circulated video, filmed on her doorstep in 2007.

Doris Lessing, the Nobel prize-winning, free-thinking, world-traveling and often-polarising author has died at the age of 94.

When a mutual friend introduced Lucian Freud to Francis Bacon it seeded a competitive friendship between the two titans of 20th century figurative art, who made each other a favoured subject.

When German tax authorities entered the home of a recluse collector and found a trove of art that could include works stolen by the Nazis, they stepped into a legal quagmire - one that may end up being resolved by politics as much as the law.

A website featuring artworks from among a massive trove discovered in a Munich apartment crashed because of heavy traffic, officials said, as a handful of potential heirs came forward to claim art possibly looted by the Nazis.