Daniel Boulud once called Miami restaurateur Michelle Bernstein the best female chef in America - and when she blew into town this week for just two days, she had a to-do list of local eateries in hand. Where was she headed?: Torrisi Italian Club, John Dory, Fatty 'Cue and (the one she seemed most excited about) Locande Verde.

Bernstein - who's won lots of awards but won our heart because she trounced the insufferable Bobby Flay on Iron Chef -- added the caveat that she had to focus mostly on eateries open late. She could visit them only after serving diners at the James Beard Foundation's Pop-Up restaurant in Chelsea Market. She cooked two dinners there:  rib eye, cheesy asparagus, and a dessert topped by a really amazing sherry jello. One dinner was sponsored by Delta, for its top clients (Bernstein oversees the food they serve in first class) but another, open to the general public, sold out in under an hour.

Even Beard president Susan Ungaro said she was surprised at the speed the JBF Pop-Up events (The Chelsea Market space is open day and evening though May 14) have been selling out, and how people have been begging for in's to things like Laurent Gras dinners. "It's like Justin Bieber," she laughed.

Bernstein runs Florida eateries Michy's, Sra. Martinez, its bakery, and a Palm Beach property that bears her name.  But, who cares, when is she moving here?  The chef  said she loves New York and "I dream of being here one day," she said. "I'd have to leave Miami - and I would, I can be purchased," she noted. But cooking here's no picnic. "New Yorkers are the fussiest eaters."

Twice a year, Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips auction houses hold their big-money sales: a few hundred artworks, some of them priced as high as $25 million, go on the block next week and the week of May 8.

Art galleries, meanwhile, put out their best stuff, too, as collectors from all over the world swell into the city to shop for art. Window-shoppers are welcome at both galleries and the auction houses.

So, to see highlights of the upcoming sales, check out our slideshow. To see them in person this Saturday through Tuesday, Christie's (20 Rockefeller Center at 49^th Street) and Sotheby's (1300 York Avenue at 72^nd Street) are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (opening later, at 1 p.m., on Sunday.)

Admission is free, the art is most definitely not.

It was a good fight, as intellectual sparring goes. Dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones, over a breakfast of fresh fruit and frittatas at the Four Seasons Hotel, was arguing with Santino Fontana, who's currently starring as Algernon in the Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Earnest. The debate: the use of religious terminology when talking about the arts.

"You use the word 'sacred'," Mr. Jones cried, somewhat horrified, "sacred!"

Across the table, pink-cheeked and delighted at the exchange, was the woman paying for the meal, and, essentially, for everything, Lin Arison, founder of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

If you've ever wondered, when you read or hear about paintings selling for eight-figure sums, who are the people selling them and whatever happened to the money, here's one answer.

Mrs. Arison, at the big New York auctions in November, was the secret seller of $43 million in Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's. The  smiling, capable-looking 60-something blond parted with Claude Monet's Le Bassin aux Nymphaes for $24.7 million, and Amedeo Modigliani's Jeanne Hebutern (au Chapeau) for $19.1 million. After paying the auction house's roughly $4 million commission, she turned over the remainder to the NFAA and its Young Arts program.

Ms. Arison started the Foundation in 1981 with her husband, the late Ted Arison, founder of Carnival Cruises, (Her son is CEO of the company, which also owns Cunard, today) to identify, encourage and train young artists and performers. Earnings from the art-fueled endowment will go toward new arts-education programs in high schools, where arts have become "an endangered species," she said.

And, thus, the breakfast. Ms. Arison is trying to boost the profile of her organization, the fame and public prestige of the award it grants, and is taking on a more public role to do it. Guest Mr. Jones is a master teacher in the NFAA Young Arts program, and Mr. Santino an alumni, just one of 16,000. Also on hand was graduate Abdi Farah, winner of Bravo TV's Work of Art series, another alum drafted to attest to NFAA's usefulness.

Mr. Fontana rose to that occasion, noting that before attending Young Arts as a high-schooler, he had intended to study music in Washington State. Assured "you are an actor," by a Young Arts teacher, he headed to New York, where he's been in Billy Elliott and co-starred in A View From the Bridge.

The affable Mr. Farah said he went from feeling like an outcast as a high-schooler interested in art to being thanked by high-schoolers for showing that a career in art was a possible choice for them, in part as a result of Young Arts. (In the visual arts discipline, one of nine, John Currin is an alumni of the program, and Olafur Eliasson, Chuck Close and James Rosenquist have been or are master teachers.)

Ms. Arison, sadly, did not want to talk about her painting sales, preferring to keep a low profile as a philanthropist and changing the subject. She also funded and executive produced, she noted, Strangers No More, a documentary short film on Israeli schoolchildren facing deportation. It won the Academy Award earlier this year. As for her Foundation, it has made a big impact on New York, she bragged. Sixteen alumni are employed at the Metropolitan Opera, and six at Lincoln Center in jazz, theater or chamber music; nearly three dozen attend Juilliard.

Meanwhile, ordering tea, Mr. Santino listed the redeeming values of reality television, especially as a tool for actors. Mr. Farah, a veteran of it, snacked on his honeydew and stayed out of the fray. Mr. Jones fretted that we've gone from a celebrity culture to a situation where "the culture is celebrity." They hashed it out until nearly lunch.

"This is wonderful," Mrs. Arison said.

apeers@observer.com

It's charity benefit season, which sometimes means art collectors end up benefiting themselves. At upcoming galas (for the Bronx and Brooklyn Museums, Creative Time and Exit Art, among lots of others) buyers will have opportunities to bypass gallery waiting lists for hot artists or pay prices below what galleries charge.

Some of what's offered is unspectacular, of course, but there's also opportunities to buy works by famous names who may have hit a (temporary?) career lull. (See our slideshow here.)

The Bronx Museum of the Arts will offer works May 18 ranging from a Ryan Humphrey image of a boom box (suggested bids start at $500) to a colored pencil-and-marker sketch by perhaps the most famous living Russian artists, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. Bidding for that starts at a suggested $15,000.

One tip: know whether the artwork has been donated by a dealer or by an artist  Insiders say artists tend to give away higher-quality works than their dealers do, but they also price them at less of a discount.

Christie's auction house will sell the jewels, clothes and art of Elizabeth Taylor in auctions late this year or next, with some of the proceeds likely going to benefit the American Foundation for AIDS Research, which she co-founded in 1985. But the deal has been in the works for nearly a decade, and Taylor's estate planning overall has been marked by savvy, sophisticated strategies designed to make a glittering, history-making spectacle that will bring a tremendous windfall to her heirs and favored charities.

From preemptively establishing clear title in court to an eight-figure Vincent van Gogh, to structuring her will in a manner that keeps it out of the public record, and cutting an elaborate financial and marketing deal with Christie's years before her death, people close to these matters said, Ms. Taylor was planning ahead.

Most notably, in the fall of 2006, in an arrangement that resembled a reverse mortgage in extremis, the star--who in her later years asked that Christie's employees call her "Dame Taylor"--contracted with the auction house to sell her property there after her death in exchange for a private multimillion-dollar line of credit, people close to the matter said. Insiders declined to comment on the extent of the financing, but it was likely in excess of $10 million.

Did the legendary, eight-times-married Academy Award winner really need the cash? While there are published rumors that Ms. Taylor's estate may be valued at up to $1 billion--"Tabloid reports of the potential value are, as ever, wildly exaggerated," according to a spokeswoman for the actress--at that time, at least, she may have needed it. Her publicly traded House of Taylor jewelry company (ticker symbol: HOT) was facing difficulties. It was de-listed by Nasdaq and in 2008 filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection.

Christie's, meanwhile, had had a long history with Ms. Taylor. Along with fifth/sixth husband Richard Burton, buying on her behalf, Taylor was a client of both Sotheby's and Christie's, and both companies had hosted galas to benefit amfAR, in part to curry favor with the acting legend. But in 1999, Christie's had a significant success that paved the way for future business dealings. It auctioned the lush blue gown she wore to the 1969 Academy Awards for $150,000, at that time the second-highest price ever paid for a dress at auction. According to Christie's, proceeds from the sale of it and 55 other dresses worn by other stars to the Academy Awards generated about $787,000 for amfAR. Later, Christie's would go on to aid Ms. Taylor in the publication of her 2003 limited-edition book, My Love Affair With Jewelry.

The notable jewels in the Taylor collection, according to a Christie's 2006 statement, include the 33-carat Krupp diamond ring, the LaPeregrina pearl (a Valentine present from Burton), an antique diamond tiara (a gift from her third husband, the producer Mike Todd), a Taj Mahal heart-shaped yellow diamond necklace (a gift from Burton), that Duchess of Windsor diamond brooch, a 29-carat diamond ring (a gift from Todd), the pear-shaped 69-carat Taylor-Burton diamond and the spectacular Grand Duchess of Russia emeralds, said to be among her favorites.

The jewelry collection was appraised about 15 years ago, according to people close to the matter, at $30 million to $40 million, but is more valuable now, especially in the context of a blockbuster Greta Garbo- or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis-style marketing campaign. Christie's likely take of the Taylor trove is undisclosed. Normally, an auction house nets, after expenses, about 14 percent to 20 percent from a sale's proceeds, with commissions coming from both buyers and sellers. In the April 1996 "Jackie O" sale at Sotheby's, however, the auction house was guaranteed a higher percentage if the sale went above certain target levels, which it did--in other words, it was rewarded for its ability to hype the merchandise and generate bidding fever.

As for the disposition of the estate, who will get what? Taylor structured her will as a "revocable living trust"--which is generally a private contract between the decedent and trustees (who include, in this case, her son with second husband Michael Wilding, Christopher E. Wilding). Unless her heirs dispute the division of the estate and file a lawsuit questioning the validity of the trust, it will likely remain private.

In an email, Taylor's attorney, Paul Gordon Hoffman, wrote that as the actress "wished to keep her personal and financial situation private, I cannot confirm or deny" any matters not in the public record.

But Taylor's estate planning literally seemed to go as far as the Supreme Court. An effort by heirs of a Jewish art collector to recover her 1889 van Gogh landscape went all the way to the highest court in 2007. Taylor's father, an art dealer, bought the painting, Vue de l'Asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Rémy, for her in 1963. She offered it at auction decades later, but, with a high reserve and under a cloud as to its legal title, it failed to sell. Relatives of the original owner had claimed it, saying it had been sold only under duress. But the district court dismissed their suit as untimely. And the high court opted not to hear the appeal.

Though Christie's declined to comment on any specifics of the Taylor auctions, the house is likely to offer that van Gogh along with other somewhat less notable Impressionist and post-Impressionist works from her collection. (Articles on Taylor over the years refer to works by Renoir and Degas, some displayed on the boat she owned with Burton.) As for the prospects for that van Gogh, a person close to the initial, unsuccessful sale of it said Taylor once reported she had had a dream that the painting of a chapel and asylum would fetch $27 million.

Sounds like as good an estimate as any.

apeers@observer.com

But the protesters may be getting ahead of themselves in several respects.

Although the co-organizer of the petition, Cooper Union professor and artist Walid Raad, has work in the Guggenheim collection, as do prominent signers Shirin Neshat and Martha Rosler, the vast majority (more than 80 percent) of petitioners do not--nor, say insiders, is their work likely to be on the museum's must-have list anytime soon. As one dealer noted, "Few artists were burning bridges here."

The protest has been a public-relations embarrassment for the museum and for the art community, which has largely embraced aggressive plans by the Abu Dhabi Tourism, Development and Investment Company to build a cultural center that would include the new Guggenheim. Art dealer Larry Gagosian has spoken at TDIC events and last year loaned his private collection to the entity for view in Abu Dhabi. Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry, an Islamic art scholar, was in neighboring Dubai at an art fair when the petition was released and was visibly upset by it, according to sources who were present. (So far, none of the artists who signed the petition, many of them from the region, have requested that their art be banned from sale at the TDIC's annual art fair.)

Meanwhile, construction of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi remains far from a sure thing. In the past decade, the Guggenheim has announced plans for branches in Taiwan, Rio de Janeiro, Guadalajara and Hong Kong, all of which remain unbuilt. When the Abu Dhabi satellite was announced in July 2006, it was expected to open in 2011. That date has been pushed back to 2013.

Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi's Ferrari World, the largest indoor amusement park in the world, which was announced around the same time, is now open for business.

Who?

Judging by a luncheon at the venerable museum Tuesday, the Guggenheim seems to know it's going to be an uphill battle promoting its big Lee Ufan retrospective in June, a show slated to take up the entire rotunda, six ramps and two annex galleries.

The Korean-born Japanese post-minimalist has something of a passionate cult following for his subtle, elegant, extremely under-stated works--but he's far from well-known.  Ufan's body of work includes such pieces as Dialogue (2008), described as "just two broad grey-black brushstrokes that hover on an expanse of white canvas," and a sculpture of "a large rock, a pane of glass, and a sheet of rolled steel."

At the presentation, senior curator for Asian art Alexandra Munroe admitted that there's little buzz here about the theory-heavy artist and philosopher: " Lee Ufan is relatively unknown in America" but deserves to be presented to "a wider public" to become part of  "a historical discourse" she said. He's part of the Mono Ha movement, which questioned the traditional Western ideas of what art should be. Many of the 90 pieces have never been shown in the U.S. before.

At least 75-year-old Ufan will finally be getting his due. Munroe said it was "extraordinarily crazy" that no museum has done a retrospective on him yet. Someone else murmured to a friend, "Just between us, MoMa should have done this 25 years ago."

Last week, one of the hottest chefs in New York-hell, in America-turned a plastic crank, demonstrating a strawberry-red Tupperware hand mixer, the Whip 'N Prep, for a crowd of diners at a pop-up restaurant dubbed the TupperClub, in the penthouse of the Setai Hotel.On the menu? Nova Scotia lobster with burrata and eggplant al funghetto.

You might not expect to find Michael White at a Tupperware party, even a swanky one. Not with his restaurant, Marea, on Central Park South, attracting the likes of Bill Clinton, Michael Douglas, Sumner Redstone and Henry Kravis.

But it's a touchy time for the Norwegian food wiz. Two restaurants he helmed or founded-Alto and Convivio-closed unexpectedly on March 3, following Mr. White's split with his partner of three years, restaurateur Chris Cannon, and a lawsuit by waiters over allegedly plundered tips.

And so, the chef's colleagues and rivals said, he's on a bit of a goodwill tour.

Mr. White hooked up with Mr. Cannon after the restaurateur's infamous split with Scott Conant in 2007. They expanded swiftly, rebranding one restaurant and opening two more in three years. All were solid efforts, but nobody expected a spot as buzzy as Marea, which won the James Beard Award for best new restaurant last year.

Yet the White-Cannon love affair was short-lived. In August, Alto was hit with that class-action suit. (It is being settled, attorney Rachel Bien told The Observer.)

By January, the two men's Altamarea Group was kaput, reportedly over differences over who got credit for their success. Mr. Cannon declined to comment.

In the divorce, Mr. Cannon got Alto and Convivio; Mr. White and Ahmass Fakahany, the company's chief executive, got all the rest: Marea, Osteria Morini, Al Fiori in the Setai and two spots in New Jersey. Then Mr. Cannon closed his two.

"It's unfortunate," Mr. White told The Observer after the dinner, refusing to comment further. He also deflected questions about rumors that he plans to expand Osteria Morini, on Lafayette Street. He emphasized, however, after tweeting a related message to his 3,900 followers, that he liked Tupperware.

His guests would soon judge for themselves. The gift bag included a variety of products, including that Whip 'N Prep. But oddly, no bowls. A publicist explained patiently: "Tupperware's not just bowls." -Alexandra Peers