The National Gallery is to pay consultants up to €75,000 to provide an economic assessment that will include a cost benefit analysis on its proposed €50m to €60m final phase of its Master Development Plan (MDP).

Historian Gabriel Doherty outlines impacts of the Lusitania sinking, due to be analysed at a seminar in UCC; the following pages feature articles by other conference speakers

Brazil is not only famous for its soccer team. Sathnam Sanghera meets pioneering plastic surgeon Ivo Pitanguy, the country’s most celebrated person after Pelé.

If you’ve ever wondered how Hollywood actors would fare in a real apocalyptic scenario (nope, me neither), then This is the End (16s) may well be your perfect movie.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has one of theworld’s best art collections but is without a family to inherit it. Where will it go, asks Blake Gopnik

The Memory of Scent

Tipperary artist John Keating has described as a “massive career boost” being selected to exhibit his work during the Olympic Games.

Galway Fisherfolk by Augustus John from the Elizabeth Taylor art collection made £5,625 at Christie’s in London on Wednesday.

FORMER Beatle, Paul McCartney, and American heiress, Nancy Shevell, were married yesterday, emerging joyously from a 45-minute civil ceremony to be showered with confetti from fans.

SATURDAY

Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves How the Victorians Collected the World

DUTCH police have recovered eight valuable paintings, including works by Renoir and Pissaro, 22 years after they were stolen from a gallery.

An irresistible collection of seven films makes up the Jean Renoir Boxset (Optimum, €55.99), from the anti-war classic Le Grande Illusion to Le Marseille, La Bete Humaine, Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe, La Caporal Epingle, Elenea et les Hommes, Le Testament Du Docteur Cordelier.

La Grande Illusion: Special Edition (Optimum, €24.99) is a digitally restored uncut version of Jean Renoir’s 1937 classic.

Eight famous impressionist paintings are going on display today to mark the reopening of Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery.

BIDDERS went bananas yesterday, paying €21,000 for paintings by a chimpanzee named Congo which were sold alongside works by Renoir and Andy Warhol.

A CHIMPANZEE’S abstract paintings are going under the hammer at a top auction house.

THE Hunt Museum is to ask a senior judge to begin an investigation into claims that some artefacts in the precious collection are treasures looted by the Nazis.

THE former Tyco International executives accused of pilfering company funds for lavish homes and decadent parties spent the money like lottery winners, but they “didn’t win the jackpot, they stole it” a prosecutor said yesterday.

THE Board of the Hunt Museum has announced that Virginia Teehan has been appointed as the new director of the Limerick-based museum.

A masterpiece by Claude Monet which has not been seen in public for over a century has been unveiled at an auction house.

The National Art gallery is set to stage one of the most ambitious exhibitions in its history involving top European impressionists - soon after the New Year introduction of the new euro currency.