ARTNET NEWS

Pittsburgh has the Warhol Museum, and now the tiny burg of York (pop. 43,718) in south-central Pennsylvania is lobbying for a hometown museum for its native-son art celebrity, Jeff Koons. In an editorial -- a kind of open letter to the artist -- the York Daily Record notes that Koons is buying up significant acreage in the area, and has said that he would like it to one day be part of “some foundation,” an area connected to “my own legacy.” The newspaper likes the scheme, saying it could boost the local economy. Clearly, we have the germ of an idea here.

When she wasn't being wife and sometime backup singer for Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney (1941-1998) was an active rock photographer whose archive contains a reported 200,000 images of icons like Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger and, of course, the Beatles. Now, Sir Paul has selected 26 of her prints -- his favorites, supposedly -- which are being displayed and sold for the first time in “Life in Photographs,” June 7-16, 2011 at Phillips de Pury & Company in London. Prices range from £2,500-£10,000.

Detroit is the unusual choice for an even more unusual museum concept: the first light-based art museum in the U.S., which opens its doors next month at 5001 Grand River Avenue in the Motor City. Founded by Russian ballerina and art consultant Tate Osten, the Kunsthalle Detroit Museum premieres with the group show “Time and Place,” June 10-Sept. 10, 2011, including works by William Kentridge, Rodney Graham, Diana Thater, Bill Viola, Joan Jonas, Hans Op de Beeck and six other artists whose specialty is film, video or other light-centric media.

Street artist Becca Midwood, who was left out of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s current “Art in the Streets” exhibition, has responded to the snub in an appropriate fashion -- by wheat-pasting an image of one of her signature girls (this one’s bent over a football) in a bathroom stall at the Geffen Contemporary at MoCA.

As is typically the case with this annual benefit, guests at the Whitney Art Party, held at the Highline Stages on the eve of the museum’s groundbreaking for its new downtown location, belonged as much to the fashion world as they did the art world. That’s not surprising, since the hosts of the fundraiser this year were jewelry designer Eddie Borgo, former fashion editor Shala Monroque and. . . New York Knick Amar’e Stoudemire. Wait, what was he doing there?

* SFMoMA plans to add huge, wedge-shaped Snohetta-designed $250-million expansion to rear of its existing Mario Botta building, reports SF Gate.