The biggest art auction of the year will be held in Auckland tonight with artworks totalling $3 million going under the hammer.

The words stand-up comedian and sold-out stadium hardly ever appear in that same sentence in this country, but comedy mega-star Michael McIntyre regularly fills Britain's largest venues and he had no trouble packing out the Vector Arena.

Already in the hours since the death of Doris Lessing was announced, many people will have watched a widely circulated video, filmed on her doorstep in 2007.

Doris Lessing, the Nobel prize-winning, free-thinking, world-traveling and often-polarising author has died at the age of 94.

When a mutual friend introduced Lucian Freud to Francis Bacon it seeded a competitive friendship between the two titans of 20th century figurative art, who made each other a favoured subject.

When German tax authorities entered the home of a recluse collector and found a trove of art that could include works stolen by the Nazis, they stepped into a legal quagmire - one that may end up being resolved by politics as much as the law.

A website featuring artworks from among a massive trove discovered in a Munich apartment crashed because of heavy traffic, officials said, as a handful of potential heirs came forward to claim art possibly looted by the Nazis.

It started with a routine check by German tax inspectors - and resulted in the discovery of an art hoard so vast and spectacular that no one yet knows how the story truly ends.

Play embraces the digital age, writes Barney McDonald.

Julianne Moore, star of stage and screen, mother of two and successful children's writer, remains the most unaffected of actresses despite her illustrious career.

A controversial image of a strike-breaker will be removed from a waterfront history panel and replaced with a wharfie.

An artwork depicting controversial strikes on Auckland's waterfront 100 years ago has been covered up ahead of its removal this morning.

She was New Zealand's first Poet Laureate and now Michele Leggott has won the PM's award for literature, which she'll receive in Wellington tonight.

Online portal open all hours puts buyers close-up in front of works throughout the Asia-Pacific region.