When the artist Laddie John Dill fenced in a part of the railroad easement behind his studio in the dilapidated beach community of Venice nearly three decades ago, it was less to stake a claim to an otherwise unwanted parcel of real estate than to keep at bay a growing coterie of drug dealers, prostitutes, and vagrants who were encroaching on his work space, he said. He was soon joined by the painter Ed Ruscha, and together they have toiled for twenty-five years in the open-air studio, which is still ringed with the detritus of homeless people who camp in the dirt alley outside the fence. Now the City of Los Angeles wants to tear down the fence, pave the space, and put up a parking lot, reports Edward Wyatt in the New York Times. City bulldozers were expected to begin work on the one-hundred-space parking project soon after a groundbreaking ceremony tomorrow. That has led the owner of the warehouse leased by the two artists to begin preparing a lawsuit seeking to stop the project. Bill Rosendahl, the city councilman who represents the district, said in an interview that he met with Ruscha at the studio on Sunday and that the city would be able to delay destruction of the fenced-in artists’ enclave at least until March, allowing time for a compromise solution.

In unrelated news, when New York art collector William Kingsland died in 2006, he left behind hundreds of works of art. But some, including works by Pablo Picasso, turned out to have been stolen, reports Ritsuko Ando for Reuters. The FBI, searching for the rightful owners of possibly stolen items, posted photographs on Monday of some of the items online. Kingsland left behind an impressive collection of more than three hundred pieces, including a minimal still life by Giorgio Morandi and collages by Kurt Schwitters. Because the collector left no will and no heirs stepped forward, public administrators hired auction houses Christie's and Stair Galleries to sell the art. But an oil painting by early American painter John Singleton auctioned off by Stair for eighty-five thousand dollars was discovered to have been a stolen item, and Christie's had to cancel a sale from Kingsland's collection when issues of provenance cropped up. The FBI said it has since found several items had been stolen and believes there are more.