August 6, 2010 - Auction Central News

Alabama mummy’s secrets to be viewed in CT scan

Visitors to the Ancient Egypt exhibit hall at the Anniston Museum of Natural History can view mummies from the Ptolemaic Period of 2,300 years ago. Image courtesy of the Anniston Museum of Natural History.

ANNISTON, Ala. (AP) – One of Anniston’s oldest residents has kept her secrets hidden behind carefully wrapped linen bandages for more than 2,000 years.

But after a visit to Regional Medical Center, those ancient secrets finally will be revealed.

Anniston Museum of Natural History officials plan to transport Tasherytpamenekh (pronounced Ta-SHER-eet-pa-MEN-eck), one of their two Ptolemaic-era Egyptian mummies, to the Tyler Center at RMC Aug. 18 for a state-of-the-art, 64-slice computerized tomography, or CT, scan.

The information from the scan will then be sent to the Ohio-based Phillips Corporation, where the data will be used to render a three-dimensional forensic image of the mummified woman, something never before possible.

“We are all very eager to see the images resulting from this scan and also from the subsequent forensic reconstruction,” Anniston Museum Director Cheryl Bragg said in a press release. “It’s a great honor for us to be a part of this, and we look forward to being able to share a lot of new information with the public as well as other scientific institutions.”

The CT scanner, which RMC acquired about a year ago, is typically used by the hospital to diagnose ailments in patients’ chests, abdomens and pelvic areas. The device combines a series of X-ray views from many different angles to create cross-sectional images of tissue and bone inside a person’s body.

“It’s the most sophisticated piece of diagnostic equipment in the area,” said RMC CEO David McCormack. “This will expose our technology to the community.”

RMC CT and PET supervisor Vincent Glanze, who will perform the scan of the mummy, said the device makes sliced images the way a person might slice bread.

“We do slices all the way down to .4 millimeters, so you can imagine the details we could get off that,” he said.

Glanze said the scan, which should not take more than five minutes, will produce similar, three-dimensional details of the mummy as it would a live patient, even though the mummy is wrapped and 2,000 years old.

“We should be able to get very nice detail on that,” he said. “We will be able to almost construct a face from that.”

Glanze noted that the Phillips Corporation, which sold RMC the CT scanner, would use software to construct a much more detailed 3D image of the mummy’s face.

But museum officials will receive more information than just what the mummy looks like underneath her wrappings.

“We’ll see skin, flesh, teeth, we’ll be able to see where incisions were made,” said Margie Conner, the Anniston Museum’s marketing manager. “We can see this person underneath the bandages without the removal of them.”

Conner said examiners would have to destroy the bandages and likely much of the mummy itself if they wanted to see details like those the CT scan will provide.

“Obviously, that’s not something we’re willing to do,” she said.

This is not the first time technology has been used to examine the mummy.

Tasherytpamenekh and the museum’s other mummy, whose name is unknown, were x-rayed in 1978 in the radiology department of Stringfellow Memorial Hospital.

Both mummies have been part of the Anniston Museum’s permanent collection for 80 years.

Tasherytpamenekh was chosen for the far more advanced CT scan because her skeleton is the most intact, thereby offering the maximum amount of information possible for the x-ray.

Though the CT scan will take just a few minutes, the process of moving the mummy will be long and labor-intensive.

“It will be a very involved process from our point of view,” Conner said. “We’ll have to remove the display case, which is very heavy, then she’ll be taken carefully to the place where we’ll load her, then we’ll shore up her sides and feet so she won’t move.”

Conner said the museum’s exhibit department has special materials to keep the mummy as stable as possible.

To prepare for the move, the museum will close at 4 p.m., which is an hour early for the facility. Once the mummy is ready, it will be placed in a hearse provided by K.L. Brown Funeral Home.

“The mummy is very fragile, very old and incalculably valuable,” Bragg said. “A hearse is immediately recognizable on the road and people expect it to move slowly, so we felt it would allow us the ability to travel safely under the speed limit.”

The Anniston Police Department will provide an escort for the mummy to and from the Tyler Center.

“It’s incredible, the staff is very excited,” Glanze said of the event. “It’s a good opportunity that is great for the community.”

___

Information from: The Anniston Star, http://www.annistonstar.com/

AP-CS-08-05-10 1140EDT

New Dali exhibition exclusively at Atlanta museum

Santiago El Grande, 1957, oil on canvas, 160 1/2 x 120 inches, Collection of the Beaverbrook ArtGallery, New Brunswick, Gift of the Sir James Dunn Foundation. ® Salvador Dali, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dali/ARS, 2010.

ATLANTA (AP) – A new exhibition opening exclusively in Atlanta explores artist Salvador Dali’s late work, including several major pieces that haven’t been seen in the U.S. in half a century.

Dali is best known as a surrealist, his melting watches an iconic image of that movement. But after about 10 years, his relationship with that group grew strained in the late 1930s for a variety reasons both artistic and political. “Salvador Dali: The Late Work,” opening at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta on Saturday, focuses on the period from 1940 to 1983.

“It’s become a really interesting area for investigation because you have Dali’s career which spans almost all of the 20th century, but historically people have really only looked at the 1930s,” said exhibition curator Elliott King. “It was almost like he died in 1940.”

Dali declared himself a classic painter in 1941, and while many critics disparaged his later work as kitsch or too commercial, the general public may not be able to discern much difference between the surrealist period and the later works, King said.

“Even though Dali was defining his work as a radical separation and a lot of critics really began taking that divide up to define late Dali, there are a lot of interesting continuities that kind of work through the whole,” he said.

For that reason, King said, the new exhibition works on multiple levels. For Dali newcomers, it provides an introduction to the deep imagination and showmanship of the Spanish artist. For those who know Dali well, it may challenge perceptions of his later work and provide a glimpse of works not seen before.

The exhibit opens with photos by American photographer Philippe Halsman of the mustachioed artist in crazy poses showcasing what King describes as Dali’s “wacky showman” side. It then moves into some earlier works to give visitors some background.

From there, it progresses to Dali’s exploration of “nuclear mysticism,” which reflects two recurring influences on Dali’s late work _ his return to the Catholic Church and nuclear physics.

A perfect example of this concept is The Madonna of Port-Lligat, which shows the Madonna and Child fragmented and breaking into particles. The large-scale painting is on loan from a museum in Japan and hasn’t been seen in the U.S. since 1951.

Another impressive piece that illustrates this theme is Santiago El Grande, an homage to Saint James, the patron saint of Spain, which features Dali’s vision of the crucifixion and a horse rearing up above an atomic explosion.

Designed as an altarpiece, King said the painting is best viewed from below, lying on the floor and looking up. (Though, for safety reasons, the High would prefer visitors just crouch.) On loan from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, Canada, the painting hasn’t traveled since 1959.

One of the most famous images in the exhibition is Christ of St. John of the Cross, stunning in part for its vantage point _ looking down from above on the crucified Christ. On an adjacent wall is a photo of Dali with Bobby Kennedy in front of the painting in 1965, the last time the painting voyaged to the U.S. from its home in Scotland.

A treat for Dali fanatics is Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapilazulina, which has been in private collections and hasn’t been viewed publicly since 1959. The large painting features Dali’s wife, Gala, as the Virgin Mary dematerializing into Heaven.

“It’s something that I’ve written a lot about, but I’d never seen it before it came here,” King said. “I was so excited to actually see it come out of its shipping crate.”

One of King’s goals with the exhibition was to bring together several significant paintings that haven’t been seen in the U.S. in many decades – or, in some cases, not at all.

“A lot of these paintings are pilgrimage sites of their own,” he said. “I thought if we could get one of them, we’d be in really good shape, and we ended up getting four.”

The final section of the exhibition centers on what King calls Dali’s pop art, which came well before similar commercial efforts by artists like Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons.

There are brooches so gaudy they look like costume jewelry; a chess set in which all the pieces are molds of his fingers, except the rooks which are copies of the salt shakers from the St. Regis hotel; and portraits of American high society figures.

A 1960 film, Chaos and Creation, in which Dali used a motorcycle, popcorn and pigs to create an abstract painting, may be the first example of video art, King said.

The last gallery houses a hologram of rock star Alice Cooper and The Sistine Madonna painting from 1958 that superimposes the image of the Virgin and Child over a photograph of the Pope’s ear rendered in a benday dot pattern, preceding similar pop art works.

A wall of two dozen magazine covers – just a fraction of the many he appeared on over the years – demonstrates his status as a true celebrity artist.

The exhibition is organized by the High, in collaboration with the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., and the Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali in Figueres, Spain. The exhibition will be at the High, its sole venue, through Jan. 9.

___

Online: High Museum of Art: http://www.high.org/

AP-ES-08-04-10 1409EDT

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

American photographer Philippe Halsman began collaborating with the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí in the late 1940s. The 1948 work shown here, titled Dali Atomicus, explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, water thrown from a bucket, an easel, a footstool and Salvador Dalí all seemingly suspended in mid-air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí's work Leda Atomica (which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats.). Image fro Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. — American photographer Philippe Halsman began collaborating with the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí in the late 1940s. The 1948 work shown here, titled Dali Atomicus, explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, water thrown from a bucket, an easel, a footstool and Salvador Dalí all seemingly suspended in mid-air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí’s work Leda Atomica (which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats.). Image fro Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Philippe Halsman, Dali's Mustache, 1953. ® Philippe Halsman Archive Salvador Dali's Right of Publicity Reserved by Fundació Gala-Salvador Dali. — Philippe Halsman, Dali’s Mustache, 1953. ® Philippe Halsman Archive Salvador Dali’s Right of Publicity Reserved by Fundació Gala-Salvador Dali.

Christ of St. John of the Cross, 1951. Oil on Canvas. 80 3/4 x 45 3/4 inches. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. ® Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums).

Alleged White House dinner crasher auctioning infamous red sari

WASHINGTON (AP) – Michaele Salahi is going to auction off the red sari she wore when she and her husband allegedly crashed a White House state dinner last November.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Salahi said she plans to put the dress up for bid around the time the scandal is addressed in the new TV series The Real Housewives of D.C.

There’s no airdate yet for the episode. Salahi said the auction proceeds will go to victims of the Haitian earthquake and people with multiple sclerosis.

Salahi is one of five women starring in the series that premieres Thursday night on Bravo.

Much of the first episode features the other four housewives criticizing Salahi behind her back for being too skinny and allegedly not paying her bills.

Salahi said watching the episode hurt for “a minute,” but she got over it.

AP-ES-08-04-10 1010EDT

Propworx transporting ‘Star Trek’ props to Las Vegas auction Aug. 8

The Original Series captains chair was used as the stand-in chair while filming the visual effects shots that placed Dax and Sisko on the bridge of Kirk's Enterprise in the 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' episode 'Trials and Tribble-ations.' Included in this lot is a Star Trek original series bridge rail piece. The lot has a $10,000-$20,000 estimate. Image courtesy of Propworx.

LAS VEGAS — Even if you cannot step onto a transporter and beam yourself to Creation Entertainment’s Official Star Trek Convention at the Las Vegas Hilton this weekend, you can still participate in a Star Trek Prop and Costume Auction produced by Propworx and CBS Consumer Products. LiveAuctionees will provide Internet live bidding capabilities for Sunday’s auction, which begins at 10 a.m. Pacific.

On the auction block are original props and costumes used in the production of various Star Trek television series and movies. Most notable among the lots is the only surviving translight panel from the Original Series bridge, the Capt. Kirk spacesuit filming miniature from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and a Sulu tunic from the Original Series. Also included are more than 100 pieces of original concept art Rick Sternbach created for Star Trek.

“This is truly a milestone event. Never before have so many fans had the opportunity to bid on such an incredible variety of items from the Star Trek universe,” said Alec Peters, CEO and founder of Propworx, a leading Hollywood studio auction company. “We are proud to partner with CBS Consumer Products to bring such a monumental piece of American pop culture directly to the fans and excited to be holding the event at the Creation’s Las Vegas Star Trek Convention, the foremost celebration of the Star Trek legacy.”

Propworx bills itself as the premier auction house for Hollywood studios looking to sell their assets in fan-friendly event auctions. For details visit the Website www.propworx.com or call 714-850-1207.

View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bid absentee or live via the Internet as the sale is taking place by logging on to www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Sign up for daily highlights by email