Painter Jeremie Queyras will be a lot more famous at 6pm tomorrow than he is now.

That is when his official portrait of former German chancellor Angela Merkel is unveiled at Berlin's Bode Museum.

Amid speculation Merkel would choose a female artist or one like her with roots in the former East Germany, she has actually picked a relative unknown.

The Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported the portrait, which will show her in a blue blazer, was done "in complete secrecy over twelve sessions, allegedly in a specially furnished and secured studio" and the politician kept the painter's identity secret until now.

Queyras, whose work will remain on show until October before moving to the official residence of the German chancellor, was born in France and studied in Paris and London but is now based in Berlin.

Every German chancellor dating back to 1949 has an official portrait hanging in the chancellery including Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schroder who was immortalized as a giant gold head by Jorg Immendorff.

Works by six South Asian artists are taking over Sotheby's London galleries next month.

The South Asia Edit will show pieces by Francis Newton Souza, Mohan Samant, Bhupen Khakhar, Zarina, Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Sheherezade Alam between July 13 and August 7.

Sotheby's holds the auction records for four of the artists, including Samant and Zarina, but a spokesman for the firm said their "significance extends well beyond the market".

From Wednesday if you want to see the nearly 4,000 strong collection at Chicago's De Paul Art Museum you either go online or email asking for access.

The museum, which is home to works by Andy Warhol, Bruce Davidson and Maddy Inez, has officially closed to the public despite a campaign to keep it open.

The university said the collection will remain with the institution and it plans to keep the current building.

Museum director Laura-Caroline de Lara will stay in post to help care for the collection, but the university said its decision to close was about its "responsibility to ensure long-term financial sustainability".

Requests to view the collection after July 1 can be sent to de Lara at [email protected].

The anonymous artists of Hollywood are finally getting their moment in the sun thanks to a new show at the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art.

The exhibition, Staging California in Early Hollywood, includes work by uncredited set artists such as Paul Grimm and features a huge 18-by-25-foot painted backdrop for The Sound of Music which took five artists to create but was only credited to the head of the studio's special effects department.

It’s the first exhibition in the museum, near Los Angeles, since UC Irvine acquired the Orange County Museum of Art last September.

It is also the first under recently appointed director Kathryn Kanjo who took over in December.

She told The LA Times the artists lost "their individual credit and recognition" for their work and were just "at the service of what was needed by the studio".

1 - A new gallery is opening in London to promote Latin American artists. Antesala, founded by Brazilian-born collector Flavia Nespatti, will open in Fitzrovia on October 10 and aims to present four or five shows a year.

2 - A Gustave Courbet painting sold to Bruce Springsteen's long-term manager was at the heart of a recent criminal trial. The New York Times reported Thomas Doyle pleaded guilty to fraud after persuading a London gallery to send him the 1848 work, Mother and Child on a Hammock, which he then sold on to Jon Landau for $125,000 through another gallery in New York.

3 - Two neighborhoods in Seattle will receive thousands of dollars in funding after being officially recognized as creative districts. The Georgetown area is now one of the city's five Arts and Cultural Districts, while Pioneer Square has become one of Washington state’s 25 Creative Districts.

4 - A newly attributed work by pioneering painter Clara Peeters is going on show in an exhibition at Oslo's National Museum of Norway. The show, which opens on October 8, includes 51 paintings by 19 women artists including Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi and Judith Leyster.