New laws passed in the United States about looted artwork have prompted legal action against two different museums over paintings taken by the Nazis.

The daughters of Auschwitz survivor Dina Gottliebova Babbitt are suing the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland for the return of seven watercolors of fellow prisoners their mother was made to paint for Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who was known as the Angel of Death for his vicious experiments carried out in the camp.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and its chair, Daniel Gryczman, have sued the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena to recover two 16th-century works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Both cases have been revived after California and the US Congress passed laws boosting U.S.-based claims to Nazi-looted artwork around the world by stating US law applies in cases where other countries' laws may have taken precedence in the past.

A spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial told the newspaper they understood the family's "emotional approach" but the works should stay in the museum "as part of the documentation of the crimes of Mengele".

The Norton Simon Museum said it was reviewing the case involving its works which originally belonged to Dutch Jewish collector Jacques Goudstikker.

The individual cost of the signs being prepared by the US Interior Department to be installed outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington DC. About a dozen signs will be put in place to warn visitors about what the White House says is its idealogical bias, according to the Washington Post.

Psychedelic Pop artist Peter Max, who has died aged 88, took his work to a wider audience than most artists dream of.

His colorful, counter-cultural designs were seen on posters, postage stamps and the cover of the Manhattan Yellow Pages directory as well as on the sides of airplanes and cruise ships.

His son Adam announced his death, telling journalists: "His art became part of American culture, but the man behind that art – the father we knew and loved – is the person we will miss most."

Max, who served as official artist to events from the Olympics to the Super Bowl and the World Series, was born in Berlin but his family fled the Nazis via Tibet, Israel and France before settling in New York.

He performed 800 hours of community service teaching art in Harlem schools as part of his sentence after he pleaded guilty to tax fraud in 1997.

1 - The Lucio Fontana show, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero and opening at Hauser & Wirth in Hong Kong tonight, is making history. It is accompanied by a new book, edited by Barbero, which translates some of the Argentine-Italian artist's writings into Chinese for the first time.

2 - Hank Willis Thomas returns to Paris for the first time in nearly two decades with his show, Afterimage, which opens at Galleria Continua today. Among the work on show is a print, Woman in the Red Dress (After Keita), which is directly inspired by a photograph by Malian photographer Seydou Keita whose work was shown in a major exhibition at New York's Brooklyn Museum last year.

3 - Poetry provides much of the inspiration - and the title - for Walton Ford's show opening today at Galerie Max Hetzler in London. An Orbed Drop of Light, takes its name from a poem by John Keats, and another work, Outward and outward and forever outward, draws on a line from Walt Whitman from his classic of American literature, Leaves of Grass.

1 - Henry Highley has been appointed Worldwide Head of Private Sales at Phillips auction house. The company said private sales generated more than $200 million last year - up 66% on the previous year.

2 - Curator Line Kouwatli brought together 47 Syrian artists for the country's first Art Week. She said she hoped the event, held in Damascus, would become "an annual event" and attract international audiences to the city.

3 - Plans have been unveiled for an $80 million second site for Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. The project will transform a currently empty, 100-year-old building, into a home for mainly 21st-century art with more than 180 works from the collection of Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza whose father, Hans, founded the museum.