Jacko on the block

Christie’s auction house will offer up a portrait of Michael Jackson by Andy Warhol in New York on Nov. 10.

The auction house told The Associated Press on Friday that the 30-by-26-inch portrait should fetch an estimated $500,000 to $700,000. It’s one of a small group of Warhol silk-screened images of Jackson created in 1984.

The painting depicts Jackson smiling in a “Thriller”-era jacket, with squiggles of red and yellow in his hair.

Deputy chairman Brett Gorvy says the seller is an anonymous private collector in New York who bought it from the Andy Warhol Foundation in the 1990s.

The image is part of 47 lots, including two other Warhol paintings.

A New York art gallery sold a similar Warhol portrait of Jackson in August to an anonymous buyer. The gallery would not disclose the price, but said it was more than a million dollars.

A Ray of nutrition

Rachael Ray is taking her quick and healthy recipes to New York City’s school children.

The New York Post says the city’s school food program already offers many healthy meals but Ray will spice it up with such recipes as Southwest roasted chicken and soft tacos.

Ray will visit a Manhattan school today to launch the partnership between her Yum-o! nonprofit organization, which teaches kids and families about healthy food and cooking, and the Department of Education.

An Italian job

Louis Freeh, the former head of the FBI, is now an Italian citizen.

Officials at the Italian Embassy in Washington say Freeh was made a citizen at a ceremony Friday.

An announcement on the embassy’s Web site says Freeh was granted citizenship based on his close work with Italian authorities in fighting organized crime.

Before becoming FBI director in 1993, Freeh was a prosecutor who went after organized crime members in the United States and Italy.

Freeh eventually left the director’s job in 2001. According to Italian officials, Freeh’s maternal grandfather came to the United States in 1870 from the province of Avellino. Freeh retains his U. S. citizenship.

Bergman home sold

Ingmar Bergman’s wind-swept Baltic-island home has been sold to Norwegian inventor Hans Gude Gudesen, who intends to create a center for artists and scientists, the Swedish ministry of culture said Friday.

Bergman, who died in 2007, lived and worked in the house on the secluded island of Faaroe for almost 40 years using the surroundings as the location for several films, including “The Shame,” “The Passion of Anna” and “Scenes From a Marriage.” He is buried on the island.

“We have been aware that a sale has been approaching and I am very positive to this solution,” Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth said in a statement.

Daniel Bergman, one of the Swedish director’s nine children, told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter he was pleased with the sale to Gudesen and that the Norwegian had also bought many of the filmmaker’s belongings in an auction on Sept. 29.

“First, he made a bid for the house and then he bought the furnishings without our knowledge in order to move them back in,” he said.

In his will, Bergman said he wanted his belongings to be sold and the proceeds distributed among his heirs. During his career, the director earned a reputation for austere art-house films. Three of them won Academy Awards for best foreign-language film and one, “Fanny and Alexander” in 1982, received four Oscars.