But he has something else on his mind. On July 1 he is selling at Sotheby's a rarely seen portrait by Andy Warhol of him with his first wife, the actress Tatum O'Neal. The proceeds, which could be as much as £350,000 ($722,000), are going to charity. Not a lot of people are aware

that the man once known as "superbrat" has a serious interest in art and an impressive collection.

"It all started in the late '70s," McEnroe tells me. "My parents never went to galleries, so it was a bit like the left side of my brain wasn't there."

During the French championships in 1977 his mixed-doubles partner, Mary Carillo, took him to see Claude Monet's Water Lilies paintings at the Jeu de Paume. "I didn't know a Matisse from a Michelangelo, but when I got up close I thought, 'That is incredible.' But it was really my friend Vitas Gerulaitis who got me looking. He was four years older than me, someone I looked up to."

In the overpriced international art market, the Argentinian peso devaluation of 2001 may have been a blessing in disguise. With the Argentine peso pegged to the US dollar at three to one (currently six pesos to the pound), Argentinian art is more affordable for buyers with foreign currency to spend. Also, ArteBA's oversized crowds (this year, a record 120,000 visitors) may well have been lured by the idea of Buenos Aires as a tourist hotspot as much as the talent on display.

The frenzy for contemporary Latin American art may be due to an economic bubble, which is a fear voiced by gallery owner Jorge Mara, among many others. At ArteBA, red dots noting "sold" dotted gallery walls like confetti. For all the free champagne, splendid chaos of transactions and talk of pricing bubbles, there was also some real talent: the photographs of Buenos Aires-based Marcos López (including The Director's Birthday, a Catholic school scene), which were reminiscent of a subdued David LaChapelle, lived up to early hype. Photographs by Florian Beckers and Santiago Porter's equally luminescent scenes were captured with subtle lighting and breathtaking clarity. So far, the highest reported sale has been an oil painting by Uruguayan artist Pedro Figari, which went for $120,000.

Battle lines have been joined between Britain’s artistic community and a coalition of London auction houses and dealers over a law that would pay resale rights or a royalty on the sale of artists’ works for 70 years after their death.

Living artists across Europe won the right to resale rights or royalties on their works under a European directive in 2006. The Government, which initially opposed the measure, won an opt-out from extending the right to the works of dead artists for 70 years, because of fears that the art market would shift abroad.

That derogation will expire on January 1, 2010. The auction houses and many art dealers want the Government to apply to the European Commission to extend compliance until January 2012 — if not indefinitely. The Government is shortly to publish a consultation paper on the issue but ministers have already indicated that they would like to press for the opt-out to be extended.

Alison Elizabeth Taylor creates lifelike scenes in wood veneer.

“I feel like I’ve got some open wound until these are glued down,” she said as they fitted the piece onto a slab of Baltic birch plywood that they had just slathered with urea resin. “I feel very vulnerable.”

Unusually for a 35-year-old contemporary artist, Ms. Taylor’s favored medium is wood marquetry, a craft that, like oil painting, flourished during the Renaissance. She had come to the woodworking firm William Somerville to finish “Room,” a massive installation that is the highlight of her second solo show at James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea.

What is distinctively American about American art? That is the question John Updike, beak-nosed patriarch of American letters, set for himself in this year's Jefferson Lecture, the 37th in a series of annual talks sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities.

"The Clarity of Things," the lecture's title, comes from Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century Calvinist theologian and divine whose graphic and sometimes terrifying sermons helped spark America's first Great Awakening. The phrase sums up what Updike believes is an enduring feature of the American mentality: an inclination, derived both from Puritanism and the empiricism of early modern science, to find in things, clearly and exactly perceived, the "principal manifestations" of God's perfections and even another text of divine revelation.

More simply, as Updike elaborated, this mentality exhibits a deep-rooted preference for things over abstract concepts, an aesthetic memorably summed up in the words of 20th-century poet William Carlos Williams: "For the poet there are no ideas but in things." Or as Updike would also insist, for the American artist in general.

If Updike's lecture ultimately revealed as much about him as his subject, it is probably little surprise: It distilled much of what he has been up to in a prodigious body of creative and critical works that now includes more than 50 books of fiction, short stories, poetry, and assorted nonfiction.

Updike's heavily laureled career began in small-town Pennsylvania, where artistic ambitions were instilled in the only son by a doting mother who harbored similar ambitions herself. Graduating from Harvard College, Updike spent a year at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England, before settling on writing as his profession. Apart from an early two-year stint at the New Yorker, Updike has lived and worked in Massachusetts, bringing forth, among other fictional creations, the

The niche-insurance market is growing quickly, according to Salvatore, especially for fine art. As an example, AIG's AIG fine-arts division has had a "very healthy" annual growth rate of about 30% in recent years, says Katja Zigerlig, director of fine arts at the insurer's private-client group.

Here are some tips insurers offer to keep your prized possessions in top shape:

Know the people you let into your home.

When things go missing, it's usually an inside job, according to insurers. Whether housekeepers, roof contractors or party guests, those who steal your stuff have usually been in the home before and know where to find the goods. Keep your valuables locked up if you're having major renovations or a party with unfamiliar guests. Make sure to do background checks on hired help who will be spending a good amount of time in your home.

Get the right kind of anti-theft system.

It might sound too "James Bond" to be true, but there are laser security devices and tiny locator tags developed just to prevent theft and discover where your valuables end up if they get stolen.

Make sure housekeepers know how -- and whether -- to clean your valuables.

Accidental mishaps frequently occur when those hired to tidy up a home start tidying up the 19th century painting as well, says Theresa Lawless, director of fine art and collectibles at Fireman's Fund InsuranceAZ.

"A lot happens with 'The maid did it' or 'The butler did it,'" she says. To avoid such situations, be specific about what items should not be touched and what items have specific cleaning instructions.

The popular event celebrated the OAG's 20th anniversary (hence the name, XX) and raised about $55,000 for its exhibition and educational programs. The organizing committee was headed up by family therapist Susannah Dalfen and included the Urban Element's Carley Schelck as co-ordinator of the participating restaurants and caterers.

Some kibitzing with up-and-coming artist Sarah Hatton revealed she's been both productive (her paintings are now in Montreal and Switzerland galleries) and reproductive (she has a 10-month-old daughter, Stella). Mixed media artist Reuel Dechene showed no signs of cold feet over his plans to tie the knot at City Hall the next day with figurative painter Eliza Griffiths. Arts patrons Glenn and Barbara McInnes were seen chatting with painter Duncan de Kergommeaux, from whom they bought their first painting years ago.

In the largest exhibit room, Les Fougères co-owners and chefs Charles Part and Jennifer Warren-Part prepared culinary delights alongside another staunch art auction supporter, Sheila Whyte and her team from Thyme & Again.

Westnorth Studio--housed

"All the studios I've had except for this one have been loft spaces," he says. "These are the kind of spaces I've been drawn to, because my palette is fairly wide-ranging."

Roycrosse, who moved here in 2002, has lived in a number of artsy neighborhoods all over North America, from the warehouse district around Toronto's Niagara Street to the cheap rental spaces of Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Prospect Park and Cambridge, Mass. Roycrosse is originally from Trinidad, as his slight trace of Caribbean accent attests, and after six years in Baltimore, he is just starting to come out of his shell.

A recent show at the opening of the North Avenue Market, a new arts venue down the block from Westnorth, was curated by roycrosse, and the artist now has several site-specific works of his own on display to the public in his studio. This weekend, the marketing organization behind the Station North Arts and Entertainment District hosts Gotta Have Art festival, which brings together the arts destinations along North Avenue, including Load of Fun and Westnorth; roycrosse, who was the festival's head curator in 2007, is again helping out this year.

"Wherever I've lived, I've always taken part," roycrosse says. "There has to be some kind of reciprocity with a place. You can't just pay your rent or your mortgage and go. . . . I'm personally hoping for a larger public participation [in Gotta Have Art], to take it from being a door-to-door tour, and having businesses and people interested enough to maybe sponsor an installation, so that it appeals to a much larger regional audience. . . . We want to bring people, not just tourists, but dedicated art lovers, dealers, and agents, and build this into a bona fide art event of regional value. We're still at the district level."

This club, however, is open to anyone willing to pay the cost of admission. Opening just as the art world is abuzz with the latest auction figures for contemporary work, it is a kind of refuge for collectors seeking something more traditional.

The fair, now in its 15th year, is a good place to find highly decorative examples of familiar styles. It is somewhat cluttered with academic painting and lots of minor Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

At the booth of Hill-Stone, for instance, a painting that appears to be a Monet “Haystacks in the Snow” is, upon closer examination, a painting by the Monet-influenced Belgian artist Emile Claus. Regular museumgoers, though, will be able to discern works of greater originality.

Melotti’s art has appeared sporadically in group shows of Italian sculpture, but he has never had a solo exhibition in New York. The first major Melotti retrospective in this country, organized by the independent curator and art advisor Elena Geuna, fills two floors of the Acquavella Galleries town house with sculptures, from his plaster works of 1935 to wire constructions from 1984. His work unites disparate strains of 20th-century Italian art: the Futurist embrace of modernity, the metaphysical yearnings of the Surrealists and the material curiosity of Arte Povera.

The exhibition catalog, an appropriately scholarly affair, features essays by the international curator Germano Celant; Stephen Nash, director of the Palm Springs Art Museum; and Melotti’s longtime friend Italo Calvino (who died in 1985). It also includes writings and aphorisms by the artist, who contributed criticism to Domus, the influential architecture and aesthetics magazine, over several decades.

Born into a musical family, Melotti studied physics, mathematics and electrical engineering. At 27 he enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where he trained alongside Fontana with the sculptor Adolfo Wildt.

During the early years of his artistic career Melotti developed firm ideas about the relationship of abstract art to architecture, music, math and science. “Greek architecture, Piero della Francesca’s painting, Bach’s music, rationalist architecture — these are all ‘exact’ arts,” he wrote in 1935. His own sculpture aspired to musical principles: rhythm, harmony, counterpoint.