May 30, 1996

ANNE D'HARNONCOURT was born and bred for the museum world. Making museum history is in her blood as the only child of Rene d'Harnoncourt, the man who teamed up with Alfred Barr to assemble the Museum of Modern Art's major collections and who was a legend as its director from 1949 to 1968.

A New York City police officer has been charged in the beating of a 21-year-old man outside a Long Island bar where, the authorities said, a raucous Saturday night of drinking ended in racial epithets, drawn guns and blows from a tempered-steel club that left the victim near death. The officer, Detective Constantine Chronis, 34, pleaded not guilty to assault charges and was being held yesterday on $1 million bond. The victim, Shane L. Daniels of Riverhead, L.I., remained in a coma at University Hospital in Stony Brook, L.I., with a skull fracture and injuries to his brain.

THE rules were strict: Carmen Muniz was to sit on a rocky ledge overlooking a glistening lake for two hours, with only her journal as company. She was not totally alone on her migration to the solitude of Harriman State Park in Rockland County, N.Y. Seven other women were within earshot. And it was a particularly gentle spring day. The forest was covered in velvety moss, faint waves lapped the shore and a soft breeze caressed the ledge and its visitor.

On a recent visit to Tbilisi, Georgia, Patriarch Aleksy II tipped his hand about the Russian presidential elections. "Today, in this fateful time for Russia, President Boris Yeltsin has played a great role in uniting the people," he said at a news conference. "If the old regime comes back to power, the country will suffer new tremors." The Patriarch, who has repeated such warnings elsewhere, is stretching the limits of a church ruling made in March that prohibits clergy from officially campaigning in the presidential election. Aleksy II neither endorsed President Boris N. Yeltsin flat-out nor directly condemned the Communist leader, Gennadi A. Zyuganov, who in his campaign for the Kremlin has promised to respect religious freedom.

A State Department of Health task force was named yesterday to examine whether changes should be made in hot tubs in order to prevent accidents like the one early Saturday that took the life of a Lakewood High School junior. The victim, Tanya Nickens, 16, submerged herself in a hot tub at the Atlantic Club in Wall Township and became wedged into a suction outlet whose protective grating was broken, said Robert A. Honecker Jr., an assistant Monmouth County prosecutor. Mr. Honecker said his office would not file criminal charges against the club.