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.

There's an immediate frisson of friction between the two characters - a teacher and a mother - in this hour-long, real-time conversation.

From heavy bronze wings to delicately patterned parasols, Danielle Wright is spoiled for choice at Auckland Botanic Garden's fourth Sculpture in the Gardens exhibition.

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.

It has only been four months but I have fallen hard for Auckland.

Claims by New York's newest resident and elusive artist Banksy that the new World Trade Center is a "disaster" have caused a stir in the Big Apple.

Check out footage from the Michael Jackson-inspired Cirque du Soleil show Immortal, starting in Auckland tonight.

Dutch museums are trying to trace the owners of a unexpectedly high number of art pieces that were confiscated by the Nazis over 70 years ago.

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