Italian violin, Stefano Scarampella, Mantua, 1917, bearing the maker’s label. Estimate $30,000-$40,000. Image courtesy of Skinner Inc. BOSTON – Skinner Inc. will auction fine musical instruments on May 1 at its Boston gallery. The sale, beginning at noon Eastern, will feature over 450 lots including a large and varied offering of fretted instruments, violins, bows, cellos, woodwinds and brass. Also to be offered are instruments from the Thomas Binkley Collection of Historical Musical Instruments and custom guitars and amps from the Pinkburst Project of Jay Jay French. The Selmer soprano saxophone of late jazz legend Steve Lacy is also a highlight of the sale.
LiveAuctioneers will provide Internet live bidding.
The first segment of the sale is dedicated to the Pinkburst Project, a unique set of custom-made guitars and amplifiers commissioned by Jay Jay French, guitarist of the rock band Twisted Sister, and inspired by his iconic “pink sunburst” Les Paul. The custom models were created specifically for the Pinkburst Project by Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Epiphone, Paul Reed Smith, Roukangas and Martin. Amplifiers by Fender, Marshall, Vox, Mesa, Orange, Hartke and Diamond, along with a number of accessories, will be up for bid as well.
The Pinkburst Project was created to raise awareness about uveitis, the leading cause of blindness among American girls, and a disease that affects French’s daughter Samantha. Proceeds from the sale will benefit the Ocular Immunology and Uveitis Foundation.
The Thomas Binkley Collection of Historical Musical Instruments includes fine wind and fretted instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque period, along with reproductions by some of the leading makers of early musical instruments. The excellent work of the Von Huene Workshop of Boston, Peter Harlett, John Hanchet and the late Gunter Korber is well represented among these instruments, which were played by Binkley on his recordings of early music. Also featured are two antique citterns from the British Isles: Lot 185 is a cittern or English guitar from maker William Gibson of Dublin, dating from 1712 and estimated at $600-$800; and an anonymous cittern from circa 1750 is estimated at $1,200-$1,400. Lot 186 is an Italian pandurina, or soprano lute, from circa 1620, attributed to Marinus di Magistro. This instrument is estimated at $2,000-$3,000.
Included in the offerings of fine fretted instruments are three examples from C.F. Martin: Lot 34 is a Style 00-42 guitar from 1930 with all parts original, estimated at $4,000-$6,000; Lot 35 is a 5K ukulele from 1928 valued at $7,000-$9,000; and lot 35A is a D-18 guitar from 1945, and is estimated at $10,000-$12,000. Featured from Gibson is Lot 38, an L-5 guitar from 1934, whose sale will benefit the City Music program of Berklee College of Music, courtesy of actor/director/musician Christopher Guest. The guitar is estimated at $10,000-$12,000. Also from Gibson is an F-4 mandolin from 1927, Lot 39, valued at $4,000-$6,000; and a “Gold Top” Les Paul guitar from 1957, Lot 42, estimated at $60,000-$80,000. Vintage instruments from Rickenbacker, Gretsch, Fender, Guild, and Vega will also be sold.
Fine violins include an outstanding example of Mantua maker Stefano Scarampella from 1917, Lot 55, which is estimated at $30,000-$50,000; a fine violin from Lorenzo Ventapane of Naples, circa 1810, Lot 58, estimated at $50,000-$70,000; a Milanese violin of Paolo Testore from 1740, Lot 61, valued at $65,000; and an outstanding example from English maker Benjamin Banks from circa 1775, Lot 60, estimated at $8,000-$12,000.
Finally, Skinner is proud to present a special Selmer horn, the saxophone of Steve Lacy, composer, arranger and extraordinary instrumentalist. This Selmer Series lll saxophone was his instrument of choice from 1994 until his death in 2004. Lot 42 is estimated at $10,000-$15,000.
Previews for the auction will be Friday, April 29, noon to 7 p.m., Saturday, April 30, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, May 1, 9 to 10:30 a.m. On Friday, a reception featuring live music from Tomoko Omura Quartet will be held at 5:30 p.m. RSVP to 617-350-5400.
For details visit Skinner’s website at skinnerinc.com.
Model J-200 guitar, Gibson Custom Shop, 2010, expressly for the Pinkburst Project. Estimate: $4,500-$6,000. Image courtesy of Skinner Inc.Model Les Paul guitar, Gibson Inc., 1957, with original case. Estimate: $60,000-$80,000. Image courtesy of Skinner Inc.Cittern, William Gibson, Dublin, 1712, signed and dated at the upper back. Estimate $600-$800. Image courtesy of Skinner Inc.
1837 Auguste Raffet (1804-1860) painting of Bucharest based on a Luigi Mayer (1755-1803) aquarelle.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AFP) – A Romanian court has declared illegal a document used as the basis for the demolition of historic buildings in Bucharest, a court said on Thursday.
The court on Tuesday said that the document issued by local authorities in 2006 delimiting the public area to be altered by the construction of a four-lane boulevard was invalid. The municipality said it would file an appeal against this decision.
A number of groups have called on the municipality to stop the construction works. But 75 buildings have already been demolished and 1,000 people evicted for the project.
“All documents subsequently issued by the municipality are based on the one that was declared illegal. This means that all demolition, eviction, delisting and construction operations are illegal”, Nicusor Dan, chairman of the Save Bucharest Association, told reporters.
Bucharest’s mayor Sorin Oprescu has argued that the road will relieve traffic congestion and that the historic buildings were in a bad state.
For many residents the project recalled the bulldozing of entire districts by the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to build a huge palace in the 1980s.
The Union of Architects in Romania and NGOs have called on several EU commissioners for help, saying the project “was continuing the urbanistic moves of Ceausescu’s dictatorial regime” and was “brutally violating the principles of an integrated city development.”
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
1837 Auguste Raffet (1804-1860) painting of Bucharest based on a Luigi Mayer (1755-1803) aquarelle.
The Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter on Friday, April 12, 1861 at 4:30 a.m., marking the start of the Civil War. The site located in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina is a national monument. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – Booming cannons, plaintive period music and hushed crowds ushered in the 150th anniversary of America’s bloodiest war on Tuesday, a commemoration that continues to underscore a racial divide that had plagued the nation since before the Civil War.
The events marked the 150th anniversary of the Confederate bombardment of Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, an engagement that plunged the nation into four years of war at a cost of more than 600,000 lives.
Several hundred people gathered on Charleston’s Battery in the predawn darkness, much as Charleston residents gathered 150 years ago to view the bombardment of April 12, 1861.
About 4 a.m., a single beam of light reached skyward from the stone works of Fort Sumter. About a half hour later, about the time the first shots were fired, a second beam glowed, signifying a nation torn in two.
Nearby, a brass ensemble played a concert entitled When Jesus Wept as hundreds listened, some in folding chairs, others standing.
Fifty years ago during the centennial of the Civil War, there was a celebratory mood. But on Tuesday, the 150th anniversary events were muted. Even the applause seemed subdued.
At the White House, President Barack Obama captured the somber mood in a proclamation that the date would be the first day of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.
“On this milestone in American history, we remember the great cost of the unity and liberty we now enjoy, causes for which so many have laid down their lives,” the statement released by the White House said.
Alluding to the war’s ultimate end in 1865, Obama added: “When the guns fell silent and the fate of our Nation was secured, blue and gray would unite under one flag and the institution of slavery would be forever abolished from our land.”
“We are the United States of America – we have been tested, we have repaired our Union, and we have emerged stronger,” his proclamation added.
Of about 1,200 people attending two main commemorative events, only a handful were black. One man whose Confederate ancestor is credited with firing the first shot of the war acknowledged his family legacy as a “mixed blessing.”
“I think it signifies the mood of the nation. I think we’re much more sensitive to other people and the diversity in this country,” said Linda Marshall, a 58-year-old registered nurse from Charleston as she waited for the second beam of light as dawn creeped up.
A little over two hours later, as a red sun rose on James Island across the harbor, Confederate re-enactors fired an authentic 1847 seacoast mortar, signaling about 30 other cannons ringing the harbor.
Those cannons quickly thumped and smoke rose in a re-enactment of the Sumter bombardment.
In a dispatch to The Associated Press in 1861, an unnamed correspondent observed the fort’s parapets crumbling under the pounding of artillery. He wrote of gun emplacements being “shot away” and shells falling “thick and fast.”
“The ball has opened. War is inaugurated … Fort Sumter has returned the fire and brisk cannonading has been kept up,” the dispatch said.
Sumter fell after a 34-hour bombardment.
One of those on hand on James Island was John Hugh Farley of Roswell, Ga. Many historians credit Farley’s ancestor, Lt. Henry Farley, as firing the first shot at Sumter.
“It’s a real big honor. We are very proud of our family,” said Farley, who had two other ancestors fight for the South. “It certainly is a mixed blessing because it’s bringing back a memory from way back but it also helps us to look at history and learn from history.”
Later in the morning, Danny Lucas, 53 and black, was walking out after visiting Charleston’s Old Slave Mart Museum, where the history of Charleston’s role as an urban slave trading center is recounted.
“I have no problem with the Civil War being honored as long as it is inclusive,” said Lucas, a Ridgeland, S.C. resident. “I don’t think whites should be so defensive and I don’t think blacks should feel they are unwelcome to these kinds of things. I think it will fade over time.”
Lucas does think last December’s secession ball in Charleston, during which South Carolina’s leaving the Union was commemorated, may have soured some blacks on the 150th events.
“The secession ball discouraged them because in their minds, they saw the ball as a celebration,” he said. With other events they may decide “I’m not going to go because there will be a whole lot of rebel yelling and carrying on.”
“In this moment of remembrance, let us all do the tough truth telling necessary for our nation to finally heal from the sins of slavery and fratricide,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in a statement released by the civil rights group.
“Commemorative events must neither ignore slavery as the principal cause of the Civil War, nor romanticize those who fought to keep African Americans in slavery,” he said. “This is a time for the nation to reflect and repent, not ignore – let alone celebrate – the atrocities that tore our country apart.”
State Sen. Glenn McConnell, president pro tempore of the South Carolina Senate and a Civil War re-enactor, told the audience of about 700 on James Island that the effects of the war are still being felt.
“The War Between the States triggered generations of disputes and controversies between regions, races and cultures,” he said.
“Why was the war fought? Was it about slavery or states’ rights? What does the Confederate battle flag stand for? Is it a symbol of bigotry or a memorial to the valor of fallen soldiers,” he asked about 700 people gathered at a ceremony commemorating the first shots of the war. “Many of the emotional issues still rage.”
He said the South has moved on and “the time has come to move beyond the petty disputes of the past.”
Later a black Union re-enactor representing a soldier from the 54th Massachusetts, the company of black troops that fought at Battery Wagner on Charleston Harbor in 1863 in an attack memorialized in the movie Glory, threw a wreath into the water and saluted.
Then seven re-enactors in Confederate gray fired a 21-gun salute in memory of all who died on South Carolina soil. Two buglers then echoed taps.
As the event broke up, a small group of Confederate re-enactors in the back of the crowd took up singing Dixie, although only a handful joined them and not very enthusiastically.
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Associated Press Writer Susanne M. Schafer in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-04-13-11 0119GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter on Friday, April 12, 1861 at 4:30 a.m., marking the start of the Civil War. The site located in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina is a national monument. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Bust of the Roman Emperor Nero (54AD-68AD) at the Capitoline Museum, Rome. Photo by cjh1452000, taken May 19, 2009. Lincensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
ROME (AFP) – It’s safe to say that the Emperor Nero – the subject of a major new exhibition and archaeology trail that opened in the Roman Forum this week – has always had something of an image problem.
He has gone down in the history books as the man who had his domineering mother Agrippina killed, kicked his pregnant wife Poppaea to death and – as legend would have it – played his lyre on a hill while Rome burnt below him.
The new exhibit “Nero,” which runs until September 18, sets out to show that the murderous emperor was not all bad and was also a lavish patron of the arts and an innovative urban planner who re-fashioned large parts of ancient Rome.
“It’s not an attempt at rehabilitating Nero. It helps to explain his merits, his qualities but also his failings, to give a fuller image,” Italy’s junior culture minister Francesco Maria Giro told reporters on a tour of the show.
“He was a man full of lights and shadows,” Giro said, adding: “The exhibition is set out across the area where Nero conducted his public and private life,” including the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill and his Domus Aurea palace.
Nero became emperor at just 17 in 54 AD thanks to his mother and met his end in 68 AD after his legions and the Roman Senate rebelled against him. He fled Rome and stabbed himself in the throat before he could be arrested.
The victims of his rule included not only his mother and two wives, but also his rival Britannicus and his philosophical mentor Seneca who was accused of plotting to assassinate Nero and was ordered by the emperor to kill himself.
The characters of a life that reads like a cross between a horror film and a soap opera come to life in the exhibition, which begins with busts and portraits of Nero, Agrippina and Poppaea in the Roman Curia in the Forum.
The flavor of emperor’s decadent rule is re-created with showings of the cult 1951 film “Quo Vadis?” starring Peter Ustinov as Nero projected inside the Temple of Romulus – now the church of Saints Cosma and Damiano.
But the centerpiece of the trail is Nero’s vast palace complex, the Domus Aurea, which was never completed and was destroyed by a fire after his death.
The palace “was an extremely complex structure” which occupied a vast chunk of ancient Rome, Rossella Rea, director of the Colosseum museum, told AFP.
“It was a complex of various palaces set in a very green landscape and rich in aquatic imagery. We have to remember that the place where the Flavian emperors had the Colosseum built was a large artificial lake,” Rea said.
Even the name Colosseum comes from a “colossal” 35-metre high statue of the Sun God with Nero’s features that stood on the site.
Visitors can also see for the first time the famous “Cenatio Rotunda” – a revolving dining room in the palace complex that was discovered in 2009.
But access to the interior of the Domus Aurea itself is barred as the structure has been severely weakened by water leakage and is being restored.
Rea’s tip for visitors is to leave plenty of time for the exhibition, spread across eight locations. The average time to complete the tour? Three hours.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Bust of the Roman Emperor Nero (54AD-68AD) at the Capitoline Museum, Rome. Photo by cjh1452000, taken May 19, 2009. Lincensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Artist’s rendering of face of Daemonosaurus chauliodus. Illustration: Jeffrey Martz. Courtesy The Smithsonian.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The surprising discovery of a fossil of a sharp-toothed beast that lurked in what is now the western U.S. more than 200 million years ago is filling a gap in dinosaur evolution.
The short snout and slanting front teeth of the find – Daemonosaurus chauliodus – had never before been seen in a Triassic-era dinosaur, said Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Sues and colleagues report the discovery in Wednesday’s edition of the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Sues, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum, said the discovery helps fill the evolutionary gap between the dinosaurs that lived in what is now Argentina and Brazil about 230 million years ago and the later theropods like the famous Tyrannosaurus rex.
Features of the skull and neck of Daemonosaurus indicate it was intermediate between the earliest known predatory dinosaurs from South America and more advanced theropods,” said Sues. “One such feature is the presence of cavities on some of the neck vertebrae related to the structure of the respiratory system.”
Daemonosaurus was discovered at Ghost Ranch, N.M., a well-known fossil site famous for the thousands of fossilized skeletons found there, notably the small dinosaur Coelophysis. Ghost Ranch was more recently the home of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who was known to visit the archaeological digs under way there, Sues noted.
Having found only the head and neck of sharp-toothed Daemonosaurus, the researchers aren’t sure of its exact size but they speculate it would have been near that of a tall dog. Its name is from the Greek words “daimon” meaning evil spirit and “sauros” meaning lizard or reptile. Chauliodus is derived from the Greek word for “buck-toothed” and refers to the species’ big slanted front teeth.
“It looks to be a mean character,” commented paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, who was not part of the research team. “I can’t wait to see if they get any more of the skeleton.”
This fits in quite nicely between the dinosaur groups, Sereno said, even though its face is unlike anything that would have been expected in these early dinosaurs, which tended to have more elongated snouts.
This find shows there is still much to be learned about the early evolution of dinosaurs. “The continued exploration of even well-studied regions like the American Southwest will still yield remarkable new fossil finds,” Sues said.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
This rendering of Daemonosaurus chauliodus shows its size relative to an American quarter. The species name chauliodus is derived from the Greek word for “buck-toothed” and refers to the species’ big slanted front teeth. Illustration: Jeffrey Martz. Courtesy The Smithsonian.The skull of Daemonosaurus chauliodus is narrow and relatively deep, measuring 5.5 inches long from the tip of its snout to the back of the skull and has proportionately large eye sockets. The upper jaw has large, forward-slanted front teeth. Photo: Carnegie Museum of Natural History.Daemonosaurus chauliodus, the new species of dinosaur discovered at Ghost Ranch, N.M., is estimated to have been similar in size to a tall dog. Image: Smithsonian Institution.
The orbiter Discovery, shown during a landing Nov. 7, 1998, will go to the Smithsonian Institution’s branch in northern Virginia. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – On a memorable day in space history, NASA began its goodbyes to the shuttle program Tuesday, announcing the aged spacecraft will retire to museums in Cape Canaveral, Los Angeles and suburban Washington and sending a test-flight orbiter to New York City.
It was an emotional day – the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle launch and the 50th anniversary of man’s first journey into space by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Just two more shuttle flights remain, and the head of NASA choked up as he revealed the new homes for the spacecraft in an event at the Kennedy Space Center.
“For all of them, take good care of our vehicles,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, said with a catch in his voice. “They served a nation well, and we at NASA have a deep and abiding relationship and love affair with them that is hard to put into words.”
The choice of homes for the spaceships – sometimes described as the most complex machinery ever devised – was hotly contested. Twenty-one museums and visitor centers around the country put in bids.
The winners will have to come up with an estimated $28.8 million to ferry the shuttles to their new homes and put them on display. Across the country, cheers erupted at the four winning facilities and groans at the locations that lost out.
After it closes out the program, shuttle Atlantis will stay in Cape Canaveral at the space center’s visitor complex, just miles from the pair of launch pads used to shoot the orbiters into space. Space center workers, some of whom are likely to lose jobs when the shuttles quit flying later this summer, gave Bolden a standing ovation and whooped and hollered with the news.
Shuttle Endeavour, which makes its last flight at the end of the month, will head to the California Science Center in Los Angeles, about 60 miles from the plant where the shuttle was assembled.
“I’m still pinching myself,” said Robert Yowell, who drove from his Los Angeles home to the museum upon hearing the news. He worked as a NASA flight controller at the Johnson Space Center from 1989 to 2000. “Nobody in my circle of space geeks guessed that LA was going to get this.”
Discovery’s new home will be the Smithsonian Institution’s branch in northern Virginia near Washington Dulles International Airport. In exchange for the oldest shuttle, the Smithsonian is giving up Enterprise, a shuttle prototype used for test flights in the 1970s.
Enterprise will go to New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum for display in a glass enclosure on a Manhattan pier on the Hudson River, next to the aircraft carrier that houses the museum.
Sam Folsom, 90, of New York City, an Intrepid museum volunteer and retired Marine pilot, was elated.
“It’s really important for children to actually see the shuttle, so they don’t forget the history of America’s space exploration,” he said.
But there was no celebrating among the hundreds of visitors and workers watching the announcement on television at the National Museum of the Air Force near Dayton, Ohio, the hometown of the Wright brothers.
The decision “doesn’t recognize the contributions and innovations that came from the heartland,” complained Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican.
Houston was bitterly disappointed that Johnson Space Center, home of Mission Control, would only get seats from a shuttle.
“There was no other city with our history of human space flight or more deserving of a retiring orbiter,” Houston Mayor Annise Parker said.
In a statement, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said the choice clearly showed “political favors trumped common sense and fairness.”
Olga Dominguez, an assistant NASA administrator, said among the factors for NASA’s choices was reaching the largest population possible. The chosen locations already draw more than 1 million visitors apiece each year.
Dominguez denied politics played any role. “It’s unfortunate that the middle of the country didn’t fare as well as the coasts,” she said.
Asked why Houston was bypassed, she said: “We just didn’t have enough to go around.”
There were originally four space shuttles. Challenger was destroyed during liftoff in 1986, and Endeavour was built as a replacement. Then Columbia was lost in 2003.
The space shuttles are being retired as part of NASA’s shifting and still-uncertain future for sending astronauts into space.
“The shuttle program will go down in history as a very, very successful program,” said former shuttle commander Eileen Collins, who led the crew of Discovery on the first flight after Columbia.
“We made mistakes. The space community made mistakes along the way. We learned from them,” she told The Associated Press at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.
After the 2003 Columbia accident, President George W. Bush proposed sending astronauts back to the moon. To pay for the expensive new rockets, NASA would retire the space shuttles.
President Barack Obama continued the shuttle retirement, but cancelled the return-to-moon mission in favor of a combination approach. Private companies would build their own rockets, and NASA would pay for rides to the International Space Station, like a taxi.
At the same time, NASA would work on bigger rocket ships that would eventually take astronauts to other places, such as an asteroid, and eventually to Mars.
From the space station, American astronaut Catherine Coleman said during the ceremony that the retirement of the space shuttle program should not be viewed as an end.
“It represents the next step in extending humanity’s reach further into space,” said Coleman, one of six people living on the orbiting outpost.
Earlier Tuesday, Coleman’s station crewmate, astronaut Ron Garan, noted that Gagarin’s flight and the first shuttle launch were byproducts of a space race between two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition has evolved into a space station program where engineers and astronauts from 16 nations work together.
“You look at us today … representing all of the nations, really. And you see where we’ve come,” he told reporters from the space station.
Russia spent Tuesday celebrating its Gagarin’s space accomplishment in 1961. It was another 23 days before American Alan Shepard became the second man in space.
A Soviet capsule that carried a dog into space and was used on a test run weeks before Gagarin’s flight was auctioned Tuesday for $2.9 million in New York. Sotheby’s said the anonymous seller bought it privately from the Russians years ago. It was bought by Russian businessman Evgeny Yurchenko, who wants it to go to a Russian museum, according to the auction house.
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Associated Press writers Alicia Chang in Los Angeles; Dan Sewell in Dayton, Ohio; Seth Borenstein in Washington; Marcia Dunn in Colorado Springs, Colo.; Verena Dobnik in New York; and Will Weissert in San Antonio contributed to this report.
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Online:
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov
Smithsonian: http://www.nasm.si.edu/
Kennedy Space Center: http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-04-13-11 0136GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The orbiter Discovery, shown during a landing Nov. 7, 1998, will go to the Smithsonian Institution’s branch in northern Virginia. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Residents’ entrance to The Masterpiece luxury high-rise hotel and apartment complex in Hong Kong, which anchors one of the new K11 art malls. Image by WING, taken Dec. 10, 2009. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
HONG KONG (AFP) – Shoppers in China are getting more sophisticated, says Adrian Cheng. They’re yearning for something more than just another day of retail therapy. Could art be what they’re looking for?
It could well be, says the youthful scion of a Hong Kong real estate dynasty who is planning to turn his vision of “art malls” into reality in Beijing, Shanghai and other big Chinese cities.
Cheng, 31, already has so-called K11 malls up and running in Hong Kong and the central Chinese city of Wuhan, showcasing local artists – and, in the case of Wuhan, urban farming – as consumers reach out for something different.
“We did extensive research in China,” the effervescent Cheng, 32, told AFP during a recent visit to Paris to promote the K11 concept and introduce a selection of young Chinese artists and fashion designers.
“We realized that customers feel very bored by the existing malls in China, because it’s a box and there are lot of brands – that’s it. You go there and buy and nothing else,” he said.
“People want something more, but they don’t know what… and because our art theme is so strong, we can attract a new customer base,” he said, “a diverse new customer base that is not normally seen at shopping malls.”
The grandson of Cheng Yu-tung, octogenarian founder of New World Development and one of Hong Kong’s richest tycoons, Cheng joined the family business after studying humanities – rather than business – at Harvard University.
He oversees a lucrative cornerstone of the Cheng empire, jewellers Chow Tai Fook, but with K11 his grandfather and father, New World managing director Henry Cheng, are giving him a free rein to fuse art and real estate.
“I try to inject an art gallery, an art museum kind of experience into the whole retail experience,” said Cheng, an amateur painter who favours D&G and Yves Saint Laurent over grey flannel suits.
In Hong Kong, K11 is anchored to a bigger New World venture, the 64-story Masterpiece luxury hotel and apartment tower in the Tsim Sha Shui district, where a one-bedroom flat once sold for $3.16 million (2.21 million euros).
Breaking from the city’s architectural preference for function over form, it pulls in passers-by – many of them tourists from mainland China – with curving structural lines into a bright open piazza.
Its six floors are lit more like an art gallery, and between the trendy shops are large showcases for rotating exhibitions. On a lower floor, a towering tree-like sculpture takes pride of place. Dominating one entrance is “the world’s largest toast mosaic”, a recreation of the Mona Lisa in slices of toasted sandwich bread, by New Zealand grocer turned artist Maurice Bennett.
But promoting local artists is central to the concept, said Cheng. This year, for instance, K11 – “there’s no specific meaning,” he says of the name – has been championing the work of Florian Ma, a Hong Kong artist exploring the apparently conflicting notions of Genesis and evolution.
“If I build a K11 mall in Beijing, it would showcase only Beijing artists… It’s very local taste, local connections,” said Cheng.
Tianjin, Shenyang and Hainan Island, plus an expansion of the Wuhan location – where the ability to rent gardening boxes to grow vegetables lends the development an eco-friendly touch.
“In the next five years, Chinese customers will still be very curious,” said Cheng, yet more demanding in terms of design and quality “because they’ve seen more” and traveled more widely.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Residents’ entrance to The Masterpiece luxury high-rise hotel and apartment complex in Hong Kong, which anchors one of the new K11 art malls. Image by WING, taken Dec. 10, 2009. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The rose rock city of Petra in Jordan was established in the sixth century B.C. This building is known as the Treasury. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. AMMAN, Jordan (AP) – Jordan on Tuesday launched the world’s largest online antiquities database, which details every archaeological site in the country and aims to help preserve its treasures. Its creators said the Web platform could be a model for Iraq, where looters have plundered its ancient heritage.
Experts said the Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities is the first such countrywide system. The site uses Geographic Information System, similar to Google Earth, to map 11,000 registered sites in the country – and a click on each reveals inventories of what they contain and reports on their conditions.
The public can use the material for planning visits. Scholars and inspectors approved by Jordan’s Antiquities can update the information in a user-friendly way for other professionals to follow and for authorities to keep track of threats to the sites.
Jordan hosts a number of World Heritage sites, most famously the 2,000 year-old rose rock city of Petra – but also Umm er-Rassas, a city dating back to the fifth century that features ancient Byzantine churches, and Qasr Amra, an eighth-century Islamic castle. It is also dotted with sites dating from the Neolithic Age, through Biblical times to the Crusades.
The $1 million MEGA program was developed in cooperation with Getty Institute of Los Angeles and the New York-based World Monuments Fund.
“Jordan is at the forefront of safeguarding its heritage,” Getty’s director Tim Whalen said at an Amman press conference with antiquities chief Ziad al-Saad unveiling the system.
“A piece of software is not going to stop looting,” Whalen said, but MEGA’s cataloging system will enable “greater protection and attention to archaeological heritage.”
Archaeologists have increasingly used GIS and similar technologies to inventory digs and other uses. But Barbara A. Porter, director of the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, said that MEGA ‘is the first of its kind.”
“It has been a huge undertaking in terms of its breadth, time and finance. Rarely do you find that amount of money involved in creating such a system,” said Porter, whose center was not involved in developing MEGA.
Joseph Greene, the assistant director at Harvard University’s Semitic Museum, said MEGA stands out from among other GIS archaeological systems, which have been more narrow in scope and intention.
MEGA is the “first countrywide system used by an antiquities department” and is unique because it can used both for research and for managing sites in a readily usable format, he said.
The online system defines the boundaries of each site, an important factor in trying to prevent urban encroachment on antiquities zones, its creators say. It can help authorities in planning strategies for research and tourism development, and makes it easier for government agencies to share information. Those working in the field can report theft of wear and tear caused by tourist traffic.
Al-Saad said the system is expected to be used regionally, especially in Iraq, which has seen wide-scale damage and theft of its extensive archaeological treasures.
Whalen said MEGA will give Iraqi colleagues a modern way to inventory the country’s sites, their condition, potential threats, but “most importantly identify their geographical boundaries in a relatively easy-to-use system.”
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Online:
MEGA Jordan: http://megajordan.org
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The rose rock city of Petra in Jordan was established in the sixth century B.C. This building is known as the Treasury. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.
