Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Fashion, and Performing Arts, June 25-29, 2012:

ART

— We chronicled the art world’s most influential young figures in our list of 30 power players 30 and under, among them Sheikha Al-Mayassa, Hannah Barry, and Carter Cleveland.

— Judd Tully reported that pieces by Basquiat, Bacon, and Klein led Christie’s staggering $207 million postwar and contemporary sale in London.

— Famed street artist and inveterate doodler Barry McGee told Alanna Martinez about the difficulties of installing his improvisational new San Francisco exhibition.

— Sotheby’sLondon contemporary sale had solid sales but lacked major highlights, netting a grand total of $108 million.

— Modern Painters magazine visited the quirky Chelsea studio of pooch portraiteur William Wegman and discovered a few reminders of the artist’s family and art-world friends.

DESIGN & FASHION

— Janelle Zara discovered the debut of a collection of male sex toys emblazoned with designs courtesy Keith Haring. If you need more details, see the diagram on our Object Lessons blog.

— Kelly Chan analyzed the innovative Via Verde housing complex in the Bronx, praising its community-minded spirit.

— Heiress Daphne Guinness has one of the more couture-packed closets in the world, and she decided to put some of it up for auction through Christie’s, breaking records with clothing from Alexander McQueen, Mario Testino, and others.

— Louis Vuitton is opening no less than seven custom-designed pop-up shops to showcase its capsule collection collaboration with mistress of spots, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.

— Nate Freeman brought to our attention the latest in literary-fashion crossovers, Banana Republic’s new “Anna Karenina” collection. But would Tolstoy approve?

PERFORMING ARTS

— Writer and director Nora Ephron passed away, but her play “Lucky Guy” will still be produced on Broadway. Could it be a posthumous hit?

— J. Hoberman enjoyed Sundancehit “Beasts of the Southern Wild’s” “gumbo magic realism,” but also worried that the fantastical film might have been oversold.

— Handsome leading man Viggo Mortensen, after being offered the role of Henry Clemens in the nautical vampire flick “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” moved the project up to high-profile status.

— A collaboration between music stars Lana Del Ray and A$AP Rocky dropped this week, and the hazed out, Instagram-y music video recalls the age of J.F.K. and Marilyn Monroe.

— The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died in 1953, was revealed to be one of the main characters in the upcoming British film noir “A Visit to America,” based on a screenplay by another Welsh poet, Owen Sheers.

VIDEO

— Tom Chen spoke to Swiss painter Caro Niederer on the occasion of her New York solo debut at Hauser & Wirth: