Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

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-- Pacific Asia Museum and the Bowers Museum plan to cut staff and scale back exhibitions.

-- Financially troubled Pasadena Symphony restores a Beethoven program to its roster.

-- Two offer views on how to rescue the Museum of Contemporary Art: here and here.

-- Good news on Broadway: ‘The Seagull,’ starring Kristin Scott Thomas, and ‘All My Sons,’ with John Lithgow, Patrick Wilson and Katie Holmes, recoup their investment.

-- New York’s Metropolitan Opera will hold a weekly drawing on its website, www.metopera.org, offering for $25 orchestra and grand tier seats that usually sell for $140 to $295.

-- Des Moines Register lays off its longtime editorial cartoonist Brian Duffy.

-- Warren M. Robbins, founder of the Museum of African Art, dies at 85.

-- Choreographer Twyla Tharp, Barbra Streisand and The Who are among the Kennedy Center honorees over the weekend.

-- After several years of deficits, Minnesota Orchestra ends the year in the black.

-- Los Angeles Times Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne is scheduled for a segment on museums on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

-- U.S. understudy performs the lead role at La Scala’s season-opening premiere in Milan after its conductor decided an Italian tenor was not up to scratch.

-- It’s a collection to die for: Brooklyn cemetery acquires works by a diverse group of artists.

-- The Geffen Playhouse will honor Les Moonves and Rita Wilson at its annual gala in March.

-- Lisa Fung

Top photo: Joan Marshall, director of the Pacific Asia Museum. Credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times