Mr. Hall was the author of the novels “Warlock” and “The Downhill Racers” and a literary heir to fellow California writers like Wallace Stegner.

The sum seemed small compared with Sotheby’s and Christie’s totals on Tuesday. But it was a respectable result, and of the 64 works up for sale, only 9 failed to sell.

Anthony Pellicano was a ripped-from-a-pulp-novel private eye who made himself an indispensable Hollywood fixer.

Mr. Law was the handsome movie actor who captured attention as an angel in the futuristic “Barbarella” and a lovesick Russian seaman in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.”

Mr. Cowan represented generations of celebrities, from Doris Day to Bette Midler, Frank Sinatra to Elton John, Ronald Reagan to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Here’s what’s on view right now and what will be brought out of storage or rearranged to honor Robert Rauschenberg in the coming weeks.

Jules Leleu never achieved the international fame of other 20th-century French designers, but he was just as successful and probably more prolific.

The beloved instant photograph could not have hoped for a better sendoff than the Whitney Museum’s exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids.

The New York Photo Festival in Dumbo, Brooklyn, Elizabeth Peyton at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Josephine Meckseper at Elizabeth Dee Gallery.

The New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show assembles a forceful, entrancing ensemble of tribal art from Africa, Oceania, Asia and North and South America.

At Sotheby’s contemporary-art auction in London, one of the star paintings will be a portrait of George Dyer, Francis Bacon’s companion, who committed suicide in 1971.

“Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns?,” a group show at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in Chelsea, is the latest proof that you don’t have to be a museum to shake things up.

Without horses, where would we be? The answer is revealed in a sprawling, charming and illuminating exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History.

Lynn Redgrave has a solo work in progress about her mother, Rachel Kempson, and her relationship with Shakespeare.

Fox’s “American Idol” dominated another night of television ratings on Wednesday.

Joseph O’Neill’s stunning new novel set in post-9/11 New York provides a resonant meditation on the American Dream.

An exuberant, exhilaratingly playful testament to being young and hungry, “Reprise” is a blast of unadulterated movie pleasure.

Although “Sangre de Mi Sangre” exhibits a heartfelt connection with illegal immigrants, its myriad inconsistencies and strained plotting are frustrating.

Christian Petzold’s enigmatic thriller “Yella” offers a surreal X-ray vision of cutthroat capitalism in 21st-century Germany.

“My Father My Lord” observes the severe family life of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi.