ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Babs’ Millennium $$$: As rumored for months, Barbra Streisand will return to the 13,000-seat MGM Grand Garden arena in Las Vegas for a New Year’s Eve concert that may be her final U.S. appearance ever, her manager, Marty Erlichman, announced Wednesday. But in an accompanying statement, Streisand left room for a few appearances outside the country. “I want to work less these days, travel and enjoy my life . . . [though] I may decide later to appear in a few cities around the world that my husband and I would like to visit,” said Streisand, who last year married actor James Brolin. Tickets for the MGM concert, priced from $500 to $2,500, go on sale at 9 a.m. Sunday. They may be purchased by phone through Ticketmaster at (888) 9BARBRA or online at https://www.ticketmaster.com. Special packages, starting at $3,099 for a room and two tickets, are available from the hotel at (800) 929-1111. Streisand’s fee will most certainly set a new single concert record: She was paid an estimated $7 million per show for two 1993 New Year’s Eve weekend appearances at the same venue, where the top ticket price was only $1,000. Though neither Erlichman nor hotel representatives would confirm Streisand’s fee this time, the amount, by some estimates, could be as much as $15 million.

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LACMA Gift: The L.A. County Museum of Art has received a bequest of 55 modern and contemporary artworks from the collection of longtime museum patrons Michael Blankfort, a screenwriter and novelist, and his wife, Dorothy, a literary agent and writer. The Blankforts, who gave the museum more than 200 prints during the 1960s, announced their promised gift and donated a painting by Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning in 1981, in connection with an exhibition of their collection at LACMA. Works by John Altoon, Richard Diebenkorn, Arshile Gorky and Philip Guston are among those in the bequest.

QUICK TAKES

VH1 will premiere the first video from “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” on Monday at 2 p.m. The video to the John Williams’ instrumental “Duel of the Fates” is set to images from the film. . . . Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” tops the nation’s pop singles chart after selling more than 280,000 copies last week, according to SoundScan. TLC’s “Fanmail” reclaimed No. 1 on the album chart with 180,000 copies sold. . . . J.C. Penney said it has stopped ordering merchandise from Comedy Central’s foul-mouthed animated show “South Park” after getting complaints from customers. . . . Italian newspapers are reporting that Monica Lewinsky is in talks for a multimillion-dollar starring role in an Italian-made comedy film.