WARHOL TOPS SALES LIST

Andy Warhol has overtaken Picasso as the world’s most actively traded artist, said the French-based art-market database, Artprice, in its annual report on trends.

Warhol led the 2007 table of the world’s 500 most auctioned artists with $422.3 million in sales, more than doubling the year-earlier $199.6 million, Artprice said. Seventy-four Warhol works sold for more than $1 million, led by the hammer price of $64 million paid for “Green Car Crash” at Christie’s International, New York, in May. Christie’s is based in London.

Sales of works by Picasso totaled $319.7 million at auction last year, down $20 million from 2006. Francis Bacon leaped to third place from 19th with $244.5 million, lifted by seven results of more than $10 million. The best-selling living artist was Gerhard Richter, whose works sold for $85.9 million, ranking him 12th.

Bloomberg News

MORGAN UNVEILS GUTENBERG BIBLES

For the first time in more than a decade, the Morgan Library & Museum will exhibit all three of its Gutenberg Bibles, the largest number of copies in any single collection, it was announced yesterday. The exhibition, which will run between May 20 and September 28 in the library’s Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery, is designed to showcase important differences in copies of the first substantial printed book in the Western world, and also to celebrate an early high point in the art of graphic design.

Staff Reporter of the Sun

TOOBIN, SILVER WIN NONFICTION BOOK PRIZES

Writer Jeffrey Toobin, a New Yorker staffer whose latest book provides an intimate look at the nine current members of the Supreme Court, is among the winners of the Lukas Prize, which recognizes excellence in nonfiction writing. The awards, whose winners were announced yesterday, are handed out jointly by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize went to Mr. Toobin for “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,” while the Mark Lynton History Prize went to Peter Silver, who wrote “Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America.” Both award winners will receive $10,000 in prize money.

Each year, the schools also award a $30,000 Lukas Prize to an author of a work in progress, which, this year, went to Michelle Goldberg, who is in the process of writing a book, “The Means of Reproduction,” which looks at sex trafficking, abortion rights, and abstinence-only programs.

The Lukas awards, now in their 11th year, are named for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas, who died in 1997.

Staff Reporter of the Sun

NEW SCHOLARS AT THE NYPL

The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers named its 10th class of fellows yesterday.

The group includes four novelists, Andrew Sean Greer, Hari Kunzru, Julie Orringer, and Lore Segal; a poet, Rosanna Warren; an illustrator, Lauren Redniss, who is working on an illustrated nonfiction book about Pierre and Marie Curie; a Polish journalist, Anna Bikont, who is writing a biography of Ryszard Kapuscinski; the journalist Laura Secor, who is writing a book about the movement for democratic reform in Iran, and the biographer Deborah Baker, who is researching the life of an American woman who moved to Pakistan and became the protégé of the intellectual founder of political Islam. The academics — Akeel Bilgrami, Deborah Cohen, Daniel Kevles, Robert O’Meally, Martha Saxton, and Ezra Tawil — are working on subjects including intellectual property, Gahndi, and George Washington’s mother.

Each fellow will receive a stipend and office space in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on 42nd Street to help in their research.

Staff Reporter of the Sun

RAJIV JOSEPH WINS PLAYWRITING AWARD

The Vineyard Theatre has selected playwright Rajiv Joseph as the 2008 recipient of its Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, the theater announced yesterday. Mr. Joseph, whose new play, “Animals Out of Paper,” will be presented at the Second Stage Theatre Uptown this summer, is the author of “All This Intimacy,” and “Huck & Holden,” both produced in 2006. The award, now in its second year, is named in honor of playwright Paula Vogel, who won a Pulitzer Prize for drama for “How I Learned To Drive” in 1997, and carries a cash prize and a staged reading of the winner’s work. The 2007 recipient was playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose play “Wig Out!” is currently being developed by the Vineyard.

Staff Reporter of the Sun