January 3, 2012 - Auction Central News

Furniture Specific: Letter to the future

It’s always nice to have access to a good supply of used old pieces of hardware. They might come in handy.

Someone recently mentioned to me that our children are our letters to the future. We prepared them, packaged them, wished them luck and opened the door. But if that’s the case then some folks sent their letters off with not enough packaging and postage. Others apparently sent them off without a good address because there are so many “letters” that seem to be just wandering out there and still others have a “return to sender” stamp on them. Some of that is just luck of the draw and some of it isn’t.

But that doesn’t have to be the case with another type of letter we get to send to the future and to our children—our antiques. And like our children we do not truly “own” the antiques. We are merely entrusted with them for a period of time even though we may actually have paid a pretty penny for them, just as we did for our offspring. In fact, also like our children, sometimes it seems more like they own us rather than the other way around. In either case it still boils down to us being responsible and how we prepare our children or how we take care of our antiques will be part of our message to the future.

PROTECTION

One of the primary services we offer to our children is one that we should offer to our antiques—protection. These artifacts from the past have somehow survived to this date, often by chance and sometimes by design, and it should become our business to make sure they continue to survive, at least on our watch.

Protection can be achieved in a number of ways. First among them is how the artifact, in my case primarily furniture, is displayed. An 18th-century chair simply cannot be left on the front porch. It deserves an inside berth. In general the area in which the furniture is to be displayed should be clean and dry and have a relatively low level of light. That doesn’t mean you have to live in the dark with the old stuff but a low light level helps maintain the original color. When you are in the room or actually using the furniture turn the light up to a level that is comfortable. But when you leave the room turn the lights down or off. The same holds true for window covering. Most pieces of antique furniture do not especially like bright sunlight or even filtered sunlight. Keep drapes closed in the display area when not in use if possible. Even thin liners can help keep out excess light if it is inconvenient to completely close the drapes.

While we are often reminded in the popular press that “change is good” most antiques, especially pieces of wooden furniture, don’t see it that way. They like things just the way they are, thank you, and if any change is to be affected it needs to be minor and gradual. Extremes of temperature and humidity can cause antique furniture items to “squirm,” to move, to expand, to contract and this movement will eventually cause damage to the piece. The general range of relative humidity that maintains a neutral condition is 40 percent to 60 percent and the rule of thumb about temperature is that if you are uncomfortable so is the furniture.

The furniture must also be protected from pests that want to use the antiques for their own purposes. Just be aware that there are no organic forms except you that are beneficial to antique furniture. That includes pets, insects, boorish guests and, I am afraid, the raw material of our original letter to the future, most children.

CARE and REPAIR

While my antiques do not require nearly the time and attention that my children demanded, they still need a little TLC on a regular basis. A well-made piece of antique furniture, in generally good condition, does not require a lot of maintenance on a regular basis but it does need some. Even the cleanest display area sometimes needs to be dusted and if the area needs cleaning so does the furniture. Remove dust with a soft cotton cloth or even with the new Swiffer wipes. They can help you keep from just transferring the dust from place to place. Be sure to use the dry version, not the wet ones. While it is tempting to use a feather duster on fragile antiques they do pose a risk. The feathers often have a tendency to snag in any loose crevices and you may accidentally pull a loose piece of veneer or remove a section of a fragile finish. Soft artist’s bristle brushes can help you get into the nooks and crannies without scraping the surrounding areas. If the area has somehow accumulated a little bit more detritus than just simple dust use a dampened cloth to remove the accumulation.

This dusting regime assumes of course that the furniture has a nice coat of paste wax over the finish. The paste wax will help keep the dust and dirt from adhering to the surface and will give the piece a nice pleasant glow. Paste wax is the primary first line of defense for antique furniture. And a little goes a long way. A thin coat of paste wax applied sparingly and allowed to dry adequately before buffing will greatly enhance your protection program and make routine care less of a chore. Do not use products that contain oil which can be a dust and dirt attractor as well as discolor the original finish.

When serious repairs to our children were required, such as the occasional stitch or sprain, the choice was clear. Get them to the doctor immediately. I was always assigned the stitch patrol duty while my wife handled the other details. But what do you do when your antique furniture needs repair? The good news is that it is not making a lot of noise or a big mess while you consider your options. The bad news is that you may not know exactly who to call. But you do have the time to do the research to find out who can make the correct repair in a reasonable time frame. In that time find a good conservator or repair tech who understands antique furniture and the appropriate repair methods. Most good dealers know the right buttons to push to reach reliable repair folks.

MOVING

Relocation was a painful process in my youth, but I never had that problem with my own children since we lived in the same house all of their youthful lives. But I was in the furniture restoration business and that meant that I had to move a lot of antique furniture and that could be as traumatic an event to the furniture as moving was to me as a child.

A few simple rules about moving go a long way toward a successful change of venue. Make sure the piece is intact before you move it and that it will survive a careful move. Then use the correct method to lift and carry the piece. Tables are lifted by the skirt, chairs by the seat rail, never the arms, case goods by the frame. Remove any loose elements like drawers, finials, marble tops and slip seats and secure the piece in the vehicle with pads, ropes and straps. Totally disregard the presence of wheels on a piece of furniture. They are not for your use in this purpose. Most important of all: Be sure to use your head in thinking through the entire moving process, step by step and location by location.

While it is true that antiques are not as much trouble—or as much fun—as children can be, they do have similarities and require similar approaches.

So how are you doing on your letter to the future?

Send your comments, questions and pictures to Fred Taylor at P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or email them to him at info@furnituredetective.com.

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. “His book How To Be a Furniture Detective” is available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “Identification of Older & Antique Furniture” ($17 + $3 S&H) is also available at the same address. For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or info@furnituredetective.com. All items are also available directly from his website.

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You need to know someone who can properly repair your antiques.

This photos shows three of four essential elements of moving – a dolly, a tape measure and a blanket. The fourth and most important is your head.

Fine art, furniture enhance 700-lot Roland auction Jan. 7

Howard Davis banjo clock, late 19th or early 20th century. Estimate: $300-$500. Image courtesy of Roland.

NEW YORK – Roland Auctioneers & Valuers will feature more than 700 lots of antiques, fine art, decorative arts, silver and jewelry at their auction Saturday, Jan. 7, beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern. The auction will be conducted at the auctioneers’ gallery at 80 E. 11th St. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.

An exceptional collection of paintings, works on paper, photography and sculpture featuring a large group of modern art from the Fluxus school. Highlighted fluxus artists include Paula Scher, Jonas Mekas, George Maciunas, Peter Tunney, Saul Chase, Ken Friedman, Ken Jacobs, and Picasso Gaglione (aka John Held Jr.). Within the collection are hand-pulled silkscreens, a Mekas signed film still of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, a Sher U.S. map and much more.

Other art includes works signed or attributed to A. Lebourg, R. Beal, L. Kroll, E. Berman, P. Signac, H. Frankenthaler and Charles King Wood. A collection of abstract art (Part 2 of the Hill Estate), a Barbizon school landscape, old master drawings, vintage photographs of New York City, and two modern mobiles in the manner of Alexander Calder will also be sold.

Antique maps include Suffolk County, N.Y. (Hamptons), and a Braun & Hogenberg map of Blois, France.

Twentieth-century furniture to be sold includes an outstanding Dunbar sideboard and dining table, a Laverne center table, a snakeskin console attributed to Springer, a Mario Bellini sofa, an Adnet table, decorations and objects of virtue by Josef Hoffman, Hagenauer, E. Brandt and K. Drerup. German Biedemeier furniture deaccessioned from a New York museum will also be sold, along with an antique Venetian desk. Lighting includes a large Rose leaded glass floor lamp.

A Rookwood plaque and Fuller vase are expected to do well.

Florentine Craftsmen garden furniture will be sold, including an exceptional fountain.

Asian arts consist of a varied selection of antique and decorative pieces including a large pair of Japanese porcelain figures, Japanese and Chinese ivory carvings, Chinese propaganda posters, Japanese woodblock prints, assorted jade and other hard stone carvings.

For details contact Roland at 212-260-2000 or email info@rolandantiques.com.

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

Peter Tunney, oil on board with stencil, ‘Don't Read This.’ Estimate: $2,000-$3,000. Image courtesy of Roland. — Peter Tunney, oil on board with stencil, ‘Don’t Read This.’ Estimate: $2,000-$3,000. Image courtesy of Roland.

Old master ink drawing depicting the Assumption of Mary. Estimate: $700-$900. Image courtesy of Roland.

French dore bronze clock, 19th century. Estimate: $400-$500. Image courtesy of Roland.

Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos mantel clock. Estimate: $300-$500. Image courtesy of Roland.

South Africa rhino hunting auction sparks controversy

White rhinos in Namibia. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – A decision by South African wildlife parks to auction the right to hunt white rhinoceros has stirred up controversy, with lobby groups warning that the species is already under pressure from poachers.

A businessman in the Kwazulu-Natal region recently paid 960,150 rands (91,500 euros) for the license to shoot a male rhinoceros in a reserve, after successfully bidding for the right from the regional nature conservation authority, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife.

The authority’s chief Bandile Mkhize defended the decision to auction shooting rights, arguing that the decision to reduce rhino numbers was “based on sound ecological, demographic and genetic wildlife management grounds.”

“We feel more than justified that we have followed defendable principles and protocols,” he said.

Mkhize said reducing certain rhino males could actually enhance the population’s growth rates and help to further genetic conservation.

In addition, auctioning the right to shoot “generates substantial revenues and helps provide much needed additional funding and support to effective conservation management program as well as providing incentives for rhino-specific conservation.”

But while the proceeds from the auctioned hunt are to be reinvested in environment protection, anti-poaching lobby groups are up in arms against the move as they warn that poachers are already depleting South African wildlife reserves.

Simon Bloch, who represents a group of South African citizens outraged by poaching, warned that the wildlife protection authority’s move “sends the wrong message to the world.”

The group Stop Rhino Poaching estimates that 446 rhinos were killed in South Africa in 2011, a sharp jump from the 13 lost in 2007, 83 in 2008, 122 in 2009 and 333 in 2010.

Demand in Asia for use in traditional Chinese medicine, has been blamed for the intensifying trend of rhino poaching.

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Golden year for Klimt as Austria marks 150th anniversary

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918), The Kiss, 1907-8, Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere. Courtesy The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.

VIENNA – His golden The Kiss adorns scarves and coffee mugs worldwide, while his portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer sparked a decades-long restitution battle: in 2012, Austria celebrates 150 years since Klimt’s birth.

Gustav Klimt, born on July 14, 1862, is one of the best known figures of the Jugendstil art period.

In honour of this milestone anniversary, Vienna’s biggest museums – led by the Belvedere, the Albertina and the Leopold Museum – are proposing no less than nine exhibits during the course of the year, all promising new insights into the artist’s life.

“More works by Gustav Klimt will be on display in Vienna in 2012 than ever before: from his decoration work in the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum to his largely unknown drawings and world-renowned paintings like The Kiss, which Vienna’s tourism board has already advertised.

Klimt, the co-founder of the turn-of-the-century Secession movement and one of Austria’s key modern artists alongside Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, was the second of seven children born to a gold engraver and his wife in Baumgarten, near Vienna.

Already as an art student, he founded an artists’ company with his brother Ernst and a friend, taking on major commissions to decorate luxurious salons and create theatre sets.

Although his work adorns the walls and ceilings of prestigious Viennese institutions like the Burgtheater and Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum, KHM), Klimt is best known for his later “Golden Period” paintings.

One of them, the 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I briefly became the most expensive painting ever sold when it changed hands in the United States in 2006 for 135 million dollars (104 million euros).

Earlier, it had made headlines due to a lengthy dispute between the Belvedere – home to the world’s largest collection of Klimt paintings, including The Kiss – and the family of the portrait’s previous Jewish owner, who said it had been stolen by the Nazis.

The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I was eventually handed back to the family after the Austrian state refused to buy it.

To celebrate Klimt’s 150th birthday, the Belvedere has planned an extraordinary exhibit, with its entire collection of Klimt paintings going on display from June 15 until January 2013.

A separate exposition on the artist’s collaboration with architect Josef Hoffmann, another Secession co-founder, is already running until March 4.

The Albertina will focus on Klimt’s drawings, while the Leopold museum is promising “Gustav Klimt – Up Close and Personal,” exploring his private life through his letters.

Further exhibits are planned in four more museums including the Wien Museum – the city’s history museum – and the KHM, which will also offer special guided tours in the grand stairwell which Klimt worked on with his artists’ company.

Moreover, his last workshop in a swanky Viennese district, now recreated, will open to the public in mid-2012, although the villa has been entirely remodelled on the exterior.

Klimt died on February 6, 1918 of a stroke.

His paintings recall a heyday in Viennese cultural life when the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire bustled with the greatest artists and intellectuals of the day, from Sigmund Freud to Otto Wagner, Egon Schiele and Adolf Loos.

The Vienna Ballet presented the first tribute of the year to Klimt on Sunday as dancers performed live among his works at the Belvedere during the traditional New Year’s Concert.

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Couple renovating home of Mark Twain’s girlfriend

Mark Twain at age 15, when he was friends with Laura Hawkins. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

HANNIBAL, Mo. (AP) – At the corner of Fifth and Center streets in downtown Hannibal, local history is coming down section by section, brick by brick.

After years of sitting empty, the old YMCA has met its fate with construction workers and equipment.

Two houses away though, where the dust of the former recreation center settles and blows by in the wind, another historical structure is being brought back to life through passion, determination and care.

To some, 210 Fifth St. is just another house standing among the many older homes in the neighborhood. It’s been there for a century or more, has had a number of residents call it home, and eventually it suffered damage and fell into dire straits.

But Nora Creason wanted this house. She had purchased the Cerretti House next door and when this house became available she went after it. After all, this was the home of a famous Hannibalian, Laura Hawkins Frazer. It’s where she lived her remaining years with her son, it’s where she was living when the world found out who she really was, it’s where she died and went from popular citizen to Hannibal legend.

“That opportunity just dropped in my lap,” Creason, who divides her time between Seattle and Hannibal, said. “We knew it was the famous Laura Hawkins home, so we jumped on it, made an offer to F&M Bank and got it.”

If you’re not familiar with who Hawkins Frazer was, it’s probably because you know her under a different name. She’s better known as Becky Thatcher.

Hawkins was the childhood sweetheart of Samuel Clemens and when he grew up and began writing stories under the name Mark Twain, he used his old flame as the model of the girl who steals the heart of Tom Sawyer in the classic novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain modeled Sawyer after himself from his youthful days.

“We learned quite a bit of history, although there’s very little written history about her. We know of that stuff about her that you can find if you scour history books,” Creason said. “The thing about Laura Hawkins, is after she got married and saved her husband (Dr. James Frazer)—her husband was supposed to have been shot during the Civil War—after that, there’s no written information about Laura Hawkins until way after (her husband died) and she became matron of the friends of the homeless. Since we bought the Laura Hawkins house, our interests have turned more toward restoring historical Hannibal and really educating ourselves on a lot of the history in Hannibal other than Mark Twain, and that’s how we came to restoring the Laura Hawkins house.”

Creason and her husband, Don Metcalf, bought the home in 2007 and have been working to restore it to the days of Hawkins Frazer’s residency. The house had previously been foreclosed on by F&M Bank and was gutted out by Ron Smith who was hired by Creason and Metcalf to renovate it. Previous owners didn’t leave the structure in the best shape.

“It was nasty,” Smith said. “There was junk everywhere, old wood, old clothes, it was a shamble. I took three 40-yard dumpsters out of this place and a 20-yard dumpster out of the garage. There was so much (stuff) in here it was like everybody left everything they owned in here.”

With the trash cleared and a plan in place, the former home of Laura Hawkins Frazer is being rehabbed back to life. Within the next year, Creason hopes to be 90 percent of the way done. Once again, the staircase in the front of the house will stand grand, the fireplaces will burn long trails of smoke out of the chimney tops and the custom windows will bring sunshine into home for the first time in years.

“Our restoration plan is to restore it as Laura had lived there. We would keep all the old radiators and we would do it in a way people would not notice that. We’ll be putting a new efficient furnace in there, but at the same time we will still be keeping the old heating registers,” Creason said. “We’re going to get something as similar, historical in reproduction as what was originally there. The only wallpaper we were able to match, almost exactly, is the wallpaper that’s going to be put along the hallways. We were able to find that with a little more embellishment.

“The plan is to make it a museum. We want this to be as period as possible, trying to replace everything as close as possible, of course that’s hard to do, and I have to rely on folks who used to live in the house, what their memories were of it. We’re basing the interior of the house on those sources.”

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Information from: Hannibal Courier-Post, http://www.hannibal.net

AP-WF-01-02-12 1723GMT

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Navajo weavers get a fair shake at monthly auction

A contemporary Navajo rug. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) – On the second Friday of every month, two very different groups of people, most of them New Mexicans, get together at a school on the Navajo reservation for one of the state’s most unique commercial customs.

The Crownpoint Rug Auction got started in 1968 as a way for Navajo weavers to profit more from their hand-spun and woven textiles that were once used casually as saddle blankets, but were quickly becoming expensive works of art.

By 4 p.m., when the doors open to the Crownpoint Elementary School, more than 100 Navajo weavers and their families begin moving into the gymnasium with the results of months of work rolled up in plastic containers.

They unroll their rugs at the registration desk, giving their names and hometowns, which are written onto small cards that are stapled to the rugs that are then displayed on four folding tables.

By 5 p.m., the bidders, almost all of them Anglos, begin to arrive and look through what will be for sale. The biggest contingency is from Albuquerque, with a few from Santa Fe, Rio Rancho, Farmington, Gallup, Las Cruces and other New Mexico towns, a handful from the contiguous states, a smattering from other states, and one European couple.

Some of the bidders look as if they are dripping with money. Most of them appear to know what they’re doing, taking notes and occasionally measuring the rugs. Sizes are not mentioned on the cards. A few bidders appear to be professional traders. They are the most discreet of all.

On Dec. 9, there were 227 rugs up for auction – ranging from 1-by-2-foot wall hangings selling for as little as $35 to rugs up to 8-by-4 feet that went for up to $1,500. About half of them failed to get a minimum bid. Fifty-five people signed up as bidders—slightly less than average, said to be about 75. The auction lasted about two hours.

Before the auction begins, there’s time for a Navajo taco and soda from a vendor inside the little school, and to look through more than a dozen tables with Native American crafts—Acoma pottery, Zuni fetishes, Navajo jewelry.

At 7 p.m., Christina Ellsworth, manager of the Crownpoint Rug Weavers Association, takes to the stage to welcome the bidders and weavers, and warn bidders against trying to buy the rugs outside in the parking lot. That would be unfair to the weavers who pay the association 15 percent of their selling price at auction, she said.

Then the auctioneers, Wayne Connell and Delbert Arty, take over. Mountainair residents who run cattle auctions in Belen, they begin with brief descriptions of each rug as young people display them to the audience. Then they begin their chant, “Do I hear eight hundred? Eight hundred, eight hundred. Eight hundred there! Do I hear nine hundred? Nine hundred, nine hundred … ”

If the rug fails to get a minimum bid after 30 seconds, the auctioneers declare it a no sale and direct it to be put in a special pile. Occasionally, the auctioneers drop the minimum price by $100 or so. In those cases, the rugs often draw a single bid from people seated quietly in the back—apparently professional traders seeking a discount.

In most cases, the rugs that do sell go for a third to half what they would be priced in a gallery in Santa Fe or other cities. Payments can be made in cash or personal check at a desk set up beside the auction stage, but no credit cards are accepted.

There are no overnight accommodations in Crownpoint, about three hours by car from Santa Fe. The nearest motels are in Thoreau on Interstate 40, with better lodging in Gallup or Grants. The next auction is Jan. 13.

Weavers Association manager Ellsworth said she has taken classes in rugmaking and is an amateur weaver herself. She said she’s not a professional, but is experienced enough to understand the amount of work that goes into shearing sheep, carding, dyeing and spinning wool into yarn, setting up a loom and weaving a rug with a unique pattern.

“I’ve done some weaving, but I don’t want to sell what I make,” she said. “It’s my rug, my design, and then I look at these rugs and I think, ‘How can they come up with these designs?’ You get these guys from Blue Gap, from Chinle, from Wide Ruins. How do they get these designs in their heads? I sit at my loom and I think, ‘What kind of design shall I make?’ It’s real puzzling.”

Ellsworth laughs at the prices paid for Navajo rugs off the reservation—“an arm and a leg”—versus what weavers get. She recalled how she and her mother stopped at a trading post near Farmington years ago to overhear a trader trying to persuade an elderly woman to sell him a big Ganado red at a low price.

“He just wanted to give her peanuts for it,” she said, “so my mom told her in Navajo, she said, ‘Don’t be selling your rug like that. You put a lot of work into it. Take it to the Crownpoint Rug Auction. You’ll get better money for it.’ So the lady got her rug and she left, and I felt like saying something to that man: ‘Why are you just giving them peanuts for those rugs? It’s a lot of hard work for them.’”

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Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com

AP-WF-12-30-11 0703GMT

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Preservationists fear end near for Gettysburg Cyclorama

Critics contend the Cyclorama Building blocks views showing the expanse of the Gettysburg battlefield. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) – Fans of the Cyclorama building on the Gettysburg battlefield are awaiting a study on the building’s fate, but say they fear the end is already a foregone conclusion.

The National Park Service commissioned the study from a consulting company to determine what to do with the 47-year-old building, which once housed a 360-degree painting of Pickett’s charge that is now on display at the park visitors’ center and which has become the center of a struggle between military historians and preservationists and fans of modern architecture.

The review of alternatives is expected early next year, but backers of the building say they believe it is only being done because the courts ordered it following opposition to the planned demolition.

“I think this is all window dressing. The Park Service’s intention has always been to tear this building down. I don’t think that’s going to change now,” Dion Neutra, a California architect who helped his renowned father, Richard, design the building, told The (Hanover) Evening Sun.

Neutra said he once toyed with the idea of chaining himself to the building, but he’s now in his 80s and too old for such protests.

Some Civil War historians and preservationists have advocated demolition of the building, which closed in 2005, saying it blocks views necessary to teach the story of the Civil War battle of Gettysburg.

“The Cyclorama is literally just a huge view block between two very important parts of the (Union) line,” said Dan Rathert, a licensed battlefield guide. “That’s the biggest problem. With it there, it’s harder for people to understand how parts of the battlefield fit together.”

But architects hail the building as one of the flagships of the “Mission 66” program, launched in the 1950s by President Eisenhower to modernize national parks. It was one of five visitor centers built under the program, and famed architect Richard Neutra was contracted to design the structure, which opened with great fanfare in 1963 on the 100th anniversary of the battle.

Scholars say the building is an artifact of the historic program and one of the last remaining public structures designed by Neutra, considered one of the century’s most influential architects.

“You’ll never have another building that was actually touched by this architectural master,” said Christine Madrid French, who teaches architecture history at the University of Central Florida and wrote her master’s thesis on the Mission 66 buildings.

The National Park Service’s long-term plan for the battlefield unveiled in 1999 called for removal of the building, but Dion Neutra and others began to campaign to save the structure. A federal judge halted the plans, saying officials had not adequately considered alternatives. Federal officials argued in court documents that restoration of the battlefield and telling its story was a “historic mission of the highest order” and outweighed architectural preservation goals at the site.

The park service must now compile an environmental assessment to analyze the alternatives, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act, and with the aid of consulting firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc. is considering four options: leave the building as it is, repair and reuse it, move it, or demolish it.

Park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon said the National Park Service will release the study and the public we be invited to scrutinize the findings.

“When the study is published, we want everybody to take a very careful look at it,” she said. “We want people to see we’ve done a very rigorous job at looking at the alternatives, and the potential impacts and benefits to each.”

Some of the building’s fans express doubt that officials will be open to keeping the building, given the past decision to demolish the structure.

“They let the building sort of neglect,” said Jason Hart of CUBE design + research LLC, which works to save architecturally significant buildings. “It’s just been sitting there for a few years.”

In late 1999, the Cyclorama building was nominated to the National Historic Landmarks program. Three of the five flagship Mission 66 visitor centers have since been recognized as landmarks, but the Cyclorama building and another Neutra-designed center at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona have not been accorded that status.

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Information from: The Evening Sun, http://www.eveningsun.com

AP-WF-01-01-12 1830GMT

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The Gettysburg Cyclorama, a depiction in the round of the Battle of Gettysburg. Image courtesy of The Gettysburg National Museum Foundation.

Detail from the Gettysburg Cyclorama. Image courtesy of The Gettysburg National Museum Foundation.

Antiques Roadshow announces 2012 tour destinations

Antiques Roadshow appraiser Lark Mason with the collection of Chinese rhinoceros-horn cups appraised at the TV show's stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Image copyright Antiques Roadshow, used by permission.

BOSTON —Antiques Roadshow, PBS’s most-watched primetime series, has announced its Summer 2012 Tour destinations: Boston, Myrtle Beach, SC; Rapid City, SD; Cincinnati; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Seattle.

Programs recorded in those locations will make up Roadshow’s 17th broadcast season on PBS, airing in 2013.

“Antiques Roadshow turns seventeen in 2013,” said Roadshow executive producer Marsha Bemko “and even though Justin Bieber beat us to it, we couldn’t be more excited or grateful for having reached this milestone. We’ll be inviting almost 40,000 fans to celebrate with us this summer as we travel across the country.”

Roadshow’s 2012 Tour features a series of local events at which top appraisers offer the public free evaluations of antiques and collectibles—revealing the often surprising history and value of these items.

Antiques Roadshow 2012 stops and dates include:

Boston – June 9, 2012

Myrtle Beach, SC – June 23, 2012

Rapid City, SD – July 14, 2012

Cincinnati – July 21, 2012

Corpus Christi, Texas – Aug. 4, 2012

Seattle – Aug. 18, 2012

Admission to Antiques Roadshow events is free, but tickets are required and must be obtained in advance. Ticket applications and complete ticketing rules will be available on pbs.org/antiques or by dialing toll-free 1-888-762-3749 at 9 p.m. ET, after Antiques Roadshow’s season premiere, Monday, Jan. 2, 2012 at 8 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Central on PBS.

Ticket applications must be received by April 16, 2012. Tickets will be awarded by random drawing. Additional information about the summer 2012 tour is available at pbs.org/antiques.

This year’s broadcast lineup, with host Mark L. Walberg, kicks off from Tulsa, Okla., with the highest-value treasure ever seen on Antiques Roadshow: a collection of late 17th/early 18th-century Chinese carved rhinoceros horn cups valued at between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Visit pbs.org/antiques for a preview of this season premiere.

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Expert Lark Mason (left) breaks the good news to the anonymous owner of the Chinese rhino-horn cups that his mini trove is worth $1-$1.5 million. The episode featuring this appraisal will air on Jan. 2, 2012 on PBS's Antiques Roadshow. Image copyright Antiques Roadshow, used by permission. — Expert Lark Mason (left) breaks the good news to the anonymous owner of the Chinese rhino-horn cups that his mini trove is worth $1-$1.5 million. The episode featuring this appraisal will air on Jan. 2, 2012 on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow. Image copyright Antiques Roadshow, used by permission.

Madrid’s top museums post record attendance in 2011

Museo del Prado, 2008 image by Brian Snelson, licensed under the Creative Commons 2.0 Generic license.

MADRID (AFP) – Madrid’s top three museums — the Prado, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen-Bornemisza — received a record number of visitors last year as blockbuster exhibits drew crowds despite a weak economy.

The private Thyssen-Bornemisza, which displays works by artists ranging from El Greco to Picasso, posted the biggest rise in visitor numbers of the three museums that make up the Spanish capital’s so-called “Golden Triangle of Art.”

It drew 1,070,390 visitors, a 30.4 percent jump over the previous year and the biggest number since the museum opened its doors in 1992.

The rise is due to the success of the seven temporary exhibits it held last year, longer opening hours and an increase in the number of visitors to Madrid, the museum’s director general Miguel Angel Recio said.

“All of this helped improve visitor numbers,” he told AFP.

A temporary exhibit of works by Spanish painter Antonio Lopez, who is known for his realistic style, drew 320,000 visitors, the most of any temporary exhibit ever hosted by the museum.

The visitors to the museum last year were split almost evenly between Spaniards and foreigners.

Spain’s top modern art museum, the Reina Sofia which houses Dali’s masterpiece Guernica, drew 2,705,529 visitors in 2011, a 17 percent increase over the previous year, it said in a statement.

The Prado Museum, which houses works from before the 20th century, received the most visitors of the three but its rise over the previous year was the smallest.

It drew 2,911,767 visitors, a 6.6 percent increase over 2010 with the majority of visitors, 59 percent, from outside of Spain.

Italy, the United States and France accounted for the greatest number of foreign visitors to the museum, it said in a statement.

The number of visitors was buoyed by the 919,584 people who flocked to temporary exhibits held by the museum, including the nearly 220,000 people who saw an exhibit of works on loan from Russia’s Hermitage Museum.

The three museums are all within an easy walk of one another on the Paseo del Prado in the centre of Madrid.

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Visitors to New Mexico museum call it ‘the little Smithsonian’

The Deming Luna Mimbres Museum is housed in the town's former armory. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

DEMING, N.M. (AP) – You wouldn’t know it from its austere exterior, a former Armory built in 1918, but inside, the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum is as warm and inclusive as a bulging family photo album.

If the brick facade seems to say “you cannot pass,” the museum staff says “all are welcome.”

Inside, visitors encounter a dizzying variety of items, sometimes perplexing, always fascinating, in the halls of the 30,000-square-foot museum: from hundreds of dolls dating from the 19th century through the 1970s, fine examples of Mimbres pottery, war memorabilia and a room crammed with whiskey bottles in every conceivable shape, from the Pope to leprechauns to Spock from Star Trek.

Museum administrator Virginia Pool says the institution’s roughly 13,000 annual visitors, the bulk of whom arrive during winter with the snowbird invasion, are charmed by the diversity.

“We get comments all the time, they call it ‘the little Smithsonian,’” said Pool. “When you look around, we’ve got something for everybody. Whatever a person’s interests are, we’ve got something for them. That’s what I love about it.”

Dr. Jerry Brody, retired professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico and former director of the Maxwell Museum, said that for community-based museums that rely on donations from local residents, having a wide-ranging collection “comes with the territory.” But, Brody said, that’s not a bad thing.

Brody said that Deming’s museum, run and managed by a staff that is all volunteer with the exception of a custodian, is one of his favorites. In the Albuquerque Archaeological Society Newsletter some years back, Brody wrote that the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum “is the only volunteer-begun, volunteer-run, low-budget museum that I know of to not only survive for a full human generation, but also to flourish.”

Las Cruces resident John Porter Bloom, a former historian with the National Park Service and an at-large board member of the Historical Society of New Mexico, called the museum “terrific.”

“It’s head and shoulders above anything in any town of its size anywhere in the United States,” Bloom said. “I’d bet you $10 to a doughnut on that.”

Fittingly enough, the museum made its way to the landmark Armory building in 1977 in order to display the town’s first powered washing machine.

The washing machine was once owned by the mother of a local businessman, Hubert Ruebush. When it was purchased in 1921, curious residents came from all over the town to see it work, according to a booklet written by former museum director Ruth Brown.

Ruebush wanted to give the washer to the Luna County Historical Society, but the organization, then renting a four-room house on Nickel Street for a museum, had little display space, so Ruebush suggested buying the National Guard Armory then for sale.

Ruebush put up half the money for the purchase, and local residents raised the rest, Brown said.

Funded largely by a state appropriation combined with help from Deming and Luna County, the museum completed a $1.1 million renovation project in 2007 to install new flooring, an elevator, restrooms and a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.

From its opening in the Armory, the museum displayed items of local historical interest, such as an upright Steinway grand piano and late 19th-century dresses worn around the time of the town’s founding in 1881 when the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads completed the nation’s second transcontinental railroad.

Soon after the new museum’s first open house, the wife of a Michigan transplant, who became the museum’s director, donated her collection of dolls, including many China dolls, some dating to the early 19th century.

That gift, it turned out, was the first of many from local residents that would reflect individuals’ passions or hold some strong personal value. So, the doll collection, housed in a former small arms firing range, has grown with other gifts. It now includes kitsch (a 1963 Bam Bam doll from the Flintstones cartoon series and a 1977 replica of actress Kristy McNichol) along with an eerie Japanese doll, undamaged, that an American sailor from Wisconsin plucked from the rubble of the atomic blast in Hiroshima in 1945.

The Japanese doll, acknowledged assistant director Katy Hofacket, has no real connection to Deming. But the veteran, after visiting the museum, “just thought it should have a good home,” and the museum accepted, she said.

Other rooms in the museum are dedicated to an impressive collection of Mimbres pottery and other artifacts donated by two local ranchers in the mid-1990s; thousands of fossils, geodes and thunder eggs donated by world-renowned collector Robert Colburn; military relics, some dating back to an 1860s fort, up to more modern conflicts. Visitors can inspect handcrafted saddles and a chuck wagon reflecting ranching and cowboy culture, and see examples of local fine art and quilts.

The museum’s Main Street room includes detailed representations of local storefronts from yesteryear, like a barbershop, a mercantile and a beauty shop, each housing equipment from the past. The room includes the town’s first traffic light and the first car owned by a local resident, a 1904 Reo.

The museum covers the gamut of Deming’s social life, with fine china from local families on the first floor and, on the second floor, the wooden-wheeled hand cart from which a local man, Leonardo Reyes, sold tamales in the city’s downtown from the 1930s to the early ’50s.

Visitors looking to be surprised by wonderfully odd exhibits will not be disappointed. Spend time on the second floor and one will encounter, near a display of Alaskan native artifacts, cases with scores of tiny hand bells from around the world as well as one late local’s nearly 200 button hooks from a bygone era. On the ground floor there is a horse-drawn sleigh, built in Michigan in the early 1900s, that probably got little use in the Chihuahuan desert, but was acquired by a local.

“Sometimes we just get things that we think are really cute,” Hofacket said.

And somewhere in the museum’s storage, Pool said, is a rare early edition of Playboy magazine—in braille.

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Information from: Albuquerque Journal, http://www.abqjournal.com

AP-WF-01-01-12 1903GMT

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