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.

It may look like a photograph of actor Morgan Freeman, but this picture is a painting of the actor done using an iPad.

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

There's an immediate frisson of friction between the two characters - a teacher and a mother - in this hour-long, real-time conversation.

From heavy bronze wings to delicately patterned parasols, Danielle Wright is spoiled for choice at Auckland Botanic Garden's fourth Sculpture in the Gardens exhibition.

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.

It started with a routine check by German tax inspectors - and resulted in the discovery of an art hoard so vast and spectacular that no one yet knows how the story truly ends.

It has only been four months but I have fallen hard for Auckland.