CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – The towering white mausoleum in downtown Caracas is for many Venezuelans a lot like Hugo Chavez, only in architectural terms: disproportionately larger-than-life, flamboyant and self-important.

And no, the grand tomb was not built for Venezuela’s socialist president, who has grappled with his own mortality in his recent battle with cancer and is running for re-election.

It will cradle the remains of South American independence leader Simon Bolivar, who Chavez daily, rapturously and exhaustively exalts as the spiritual father of his own self-styled revolution.

The 160-foot mausoleum is to be inaugurated in the coming days, though it is not quite finished.

Its construction has been delayed, shrouded in secrecy and alternately hailed as fit for a hero of Bolivar’s historical grandeur and criticized as an exaggerated reflection of Chavez’s own ego and alleged desire to be seen as a reincarnation of the independence hero.

Its solemn black granite-floored interior is ready, but the surrounding plaza is not. Workers have been toiling day and night in recent weeks, laying patio tiles, wiring lamps, landscaping and molding concrete steps.

Chavez proposed the shrine, devoted exclusively to “The Liberator,” two years ago when he decided he needed to know whether Venezuela’s main founding father was poisoned.

Historians generally agree that Bolivar, who rallied revolutionaries who won independence from Spain for what would become Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, succumbed to tuberculosis in 1830 at age 47.

But Chavez said he suspected otherwise. So he ordered Bolivar’s tomb opened to great fanfare and convened a team of international scientists to study the remains. The verdict came on Bolivar’s last birthday anniversary: No evidence of foul play.

By then, government officials had already decided it was high time to move Bolivar’s bones from the adjacent National Pantheon, where his remains have been kept since 1876 along with those of more than 100 fellow heroes and heroines of the nation, which at Chavez’s urging was renamed the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Chavez announced on Saturday that the government would release a 3-D image of Bolivar’s face, based on his remains, on Tuesday, the 229th anniversary of his birth.

Completion of the mausoleum was initially promised for December 2011, then for May, the delays mocked by Chavez’s detractors as typical of his 13-year-old administration.

Critics have also decried the lack of transparency.

Governments typically solicit proposals from renowned architects for such projects, opening them to an international field.

Not this one.

“In this case he gave it to friends, although it’s not quite clear to me to whom exactly,” said Oscar Tenreiro, a prominent Caracas architect who disapproves of the mausoleum.

No one has publicly identified the architect, though the person in charge of the project is Francisco Sesto, a Spanish-born architect named “Minister of State for the Transformation of Greater Caracas” by Chavez in late 2010.

Chavez created the job after an opposition candidate was elected mayor of Caracas; Sesto is a former culture minister whose job includes overseeing housing construction in the capital.

Sesto did not respond to repeated requests for an interview through his spokeswoman.

In a public discussion of the project in early June, Sesto said it cost $140 million and was built because “we have always had the sense that Bolivar needed a mausoleum worthy of his grandeur.”

“There was a lot of criticism that his remains were not in a dignified state” in the Pantheon, he added, noting that those who designed the mausoleum “heard a lot of ideas, including those of the president.”

He did not say what exactly Chavez suggested, and defended the austere contemporary style, adding that natural light entering the roof would render “a sensitive and magical appearance” to Bolivar’s pedestal-elevated sarcophagus.

In a blog entry entitled “Arrogance,” Tenreiro remarked on the high quality of the construction and imported materials, including for the exterior white Spanish ceramic tiles and “weathering” steel that oxidizes to orange without losing strength.

“One appreciates the enormous mass, limpid and seductive in itself but gigantic and absurd, out of context, possessive of the same sin as the political system from which it originates.”

Tenreiro expressed concern that the mausoleum’s sloping southern facade, which connects it with the Pantheon, will become a water slide in heavy rains, potentially flooding the smaller, neoclassical former church.

A member of the governing board of Venezuela’s College of Architects, Mitchele Vidal, did not like that the Pantheon, its back wall removed, was “converted into a hallway for entering the mausoleum.”

Other critics have likened the sloping wall to that of a skate park, prompting Sesto to post on his blog a series of world-renowned edifices that also sport a slope.

Vidal called the mausoleum an “unnecessary” expenditure given the need in the very neighborhood it sits for investment in housing and better health care. From the top of the monument, where workers say a persistent flame will burn, one looks down to the east on a squalid collection of tin-roofed hovels.

But others believe Venezuelans deserve a towering monument.

“I don’t think it’s exaggerated at all,” said Isis Berroteran, a 47-year-old housewife from the west-central town of Cagua as she admired it from her car. “The Pantheon, although spectacular, had become pretty small as the city grew.”

A foreman whose workers were painting pipes inside the mausoleum’s shell on Sunday, Jose Freytes, said he was initially skeptical of the monument but came to appreciate it as it took form.

Other countries, including the United States, have built imposing monuments to their founders. Why not Venezuela? After all, Bolivar helped liberate many lands.

“The essence of the idea is to elevate the name of Bolivar internationally. That’s what it’s about,” said Freytes. “I think the president is doing the right thing.”

Elias Pino, a historian and leading expert on Bolivar, considers the mausoleum Chavez’s way of deepening his own identification in people’s minds with the national hero.

“The political intent is that President Hugo Chavez be proclaimed the agent of Bolivar’s will and interpreter of the gospel of Bolivar,” he said.

“This monument will tie together both figures,” he said, “and will not just be the mausoleum of Bolivar but also the entrance of President Chavez into the pantheon of patriots.”

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Associated Press writer Jorge Rueda contributed to this report.

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Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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LONDON (AP) – Love it or loathe it one thing is for sure: The Orbit Tower is not the Olympic cauldron.

Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal says the ruby red steel tower that rises 35 stories above the Olympic Park and resembles a smashed roller coaster is not the cauldron that will hold the ceremonial flame. In an interview Monday, Mittal told The Associated Press that he had met with Olympic authorities about the possibility that the tower would be used for that, but the plans did not get drawn up in time for consideration.

“We were late,” said Mittal, who was listed by the Sunday Times this year as the richest man in Britain.

Mittal’s company, ArcelorMittal, donated the steel for the swirling centerpiece of the park and stumped up most of its 22.7 million-pound ($36.5 million) cost.

The lighting of the cauldron that holds the flame is always a big moment for the Olympics, and organizers usually withhold details about the opening ceremony and the flame lighting to ensure the appropriate drama. But usually there is some structure—somewhere—that hints where the flame will burn.

But not this time. The London cauldron’s location remains a mystery.

Suspicion has long fallen on the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the abstract structure that just sits so close to the stadium one could watch the 100-meter final from its viewing platform. But Mittal says the tower is art to enhance the games that start Friday.

Meant to be a tourist landmark like Big Ben or the London Eye wheel, the abstract work of art has often been the subject of derision. London’s newspapers have coined a few choice nicknames: the Eyeful Tower, the shisha pipe, the Hubble Bubble.

Mittal’s not the least bit troubled that critics have tagged it as being the ugly duckling of the Olympic Park. It just needs to be understood, he told the AP.

“People are still trying to criticize the Mona Lisa,” he said.

But it’s hard to imagine what Leonardo Da Vinci would make of this. The 1,650-ton showcase sculpture of the London Olympics was designed by London-based artist Anish Kapoor, a previous winner of the prestigious Turner Prize, and his design partner Cecil Balmond. Their design, dominated by a looping lattice of tubular steel, won a competition for the games.

One of Britain’s foremost artists, Kapoor is known for large-scale installations like Marsyas—a giant blood-red PVC membrane that was displayed at London’s Tate Modern museum in 2002—and The Bean, a 110-ton stainless steel sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

But the Orbit is a departure even for Kapoor, who based the tower on taking a point in space that is “orbited” by a dancing line of steel.

Mittal’s latest comments mean the question of the London cauldron is still a burning issue.

In the ancient games, Greeks lit a ritual fire to commemorate Prometheus and his theft of fire from Zeus. There was a cauldron at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, but the idea of fires and torches and relays really took hold at the Nazi-backed 1936 Berlin Olympics, when organizers came up with the idea of a relay starting at Olympia in Greece.

The flame moment just kept getting bigger and bigger. Bill Mallon, and Olympic historian described it as a “wow” moment starting in 1952, when the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi, one of the best long- and middle-distance runners ever, brought the flame into the Helsinki stadium and Hannes Kolehmainen, another Finnish long-distance great who competed in 1912 and 1920, lit the cauldron.

After that, there was an arms race of flame moments. There was the archer at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics who lit the cauldron with a flaming arrow. And then there was the tear-jerk moment when Muhammad Ali, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, emerged from the shadows, his arm shaking, putting the torch to a wire that lit the cauldron in Atlanta in 1996.

One certainty remains for the tower: The public wants to take in the view.

Tickets for the tower during the July 27-Aug. 12 London Olympics are already all sold out.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – A private art college is dealing with its financial problems by selling off much of its art collection.

The Memphis College of Art also reduced spending by laying off four professors, cutting some adjunct faculty and eliminating some electives.

MCA officials wouldn’t disclose financial details to The Commercial Appeal newspaper beyond saying that the college cut spending by 28 percent and its budget is now balanced.

The board of trustees approved selling most of the 550-piece collection after President Ron Jones declared a financial emergency in May.

“We’re not a museum, and if I took you on a tour, you would be shocked at the condition of many of these pieces,” Jones said.

“Why should we have 550 pieces of art by people from the past when we have faculty and students who are artists, and there’s a need to raise revenue?” he said.

The works were donated during the college’s 75-year history by faculty, local artists and benefactors. Most pieces aren’t displayed and are running up storage fees, officials said.

Since the college is not a museum, it isn’t restricted by American Association of Museums guidelines that prohibit selling artworks to fund operating budgets.

Art gallery owner David Lusk is on a committee that will decide what to sell. He said some pieces date to the 1940s and 1950s and some are by artists well known locally.

“Other pieces can be sold at the annual Holiday Bazaar. Others might go to auction or to respected dealers,” Lusk said.

He said the art won’t be “dumped” on the market.

The college had 433 students last term. Its staff includes 22 full-time faculty, about 30 adjunct faculty, 40 full-time staff and 20 part-time staff.

Jones blamed the financial problems on real estate purchases for student housing, poor graduate school enrollment and unexpected maintenance, including $1.5 million in air conditioning repairs.

Jones said the school acted in time to avoid more serious financial problems.

“We recognized that there was a train wreck coming and we had to do something about it,” Jones said.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-07-23-12 1736GMT

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VERBIER, Switzerland – I am waiting at the bus stop in Place Centrale in Verbier for a large truck to arrive. It is apparently orange and driven by a Portuguese driver who speaks no English. I am to direct him to La Chaux, where I need him to offload the tonne of stone blocks that he is carrying. These blocks are the final part of the jigsaw that is my Verbier experience. They will become a low retaining wall around the large ‘What if…’ tower. It is 8:30 in the morning.

At 9:15 I attempt to text Mat, my technician, to inform him that the truck has not appeared. What is the French for ‘truck’? I struggle to complete my task in ‘text Francais.’ It is, however, with great joy that I soon see Mat climbing the hill toward me in an old Volkswagen camper van. He pulls up next to me as the engine wheezes out some suffocating bluish smoke. “Get in, the truck is late!’

He explains that the delivery is delayed but that there is no problem, and he drops me off at my spot on the mountain and tells me to keep an eye out for the truck. He disappears in what could be the remains of morning fog or perhaps more bluish effluent from the van. I try to remain relaxed. There is only a day between me and the public opening of the works, and I am awaiting materials. I try to soak up the amazing view, but my neurosis gets the better of me. Perhaps I should learn how to bite my nails… But, what is here? A flash of orange paintwork catches my eye on the road to the west. It is my Portuguese delivery man.

As the enormous tipper truck begins to tip and dump my stones, I am joined by ‘Ludo,’ our video man. He records our every move. He always flashes his broad disarming smile and then aims his camera. Today he is a godsend. The truck is still reversing away from its load of stones. There is supposed to be one cubic tonne here. As the orange truck disappears down the track, Ludo and I stand in front of four tons of stones, which also now block the road.

The stones need to be carried up a 12-ft bank and then placed at the foot of my sculpture some 15 feet further on. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I am afraid that it is. Ludo puts down his camera. We smile at each other, then begin the process of transporting the stones to where they need to be. Two hours later, I wave goodbye to Ludo. He has other artists to frame in his viewfinder. The road is no longer blocked with stones, but I have a wall to build.

In England we call it ‘dry stonewalling.’ I don’t know if they have a name for it in Switzerland, but I have a name for it, and it isn’t pretty. This is torture! I have no fingerprints left, my back is bent double and my arms are aching. My feet are stuck to my socks which are in turn now welded to my steel-toe-capped boots. The goddess of sculpture is again grinning as I struggle to beat the 4:30 deadline for my cable car lift back down the mountain. I will not let this defeat me. The wall will be built and it will be perfect, a fitting accompaniment to my tower.

Smug as the cat that got the cream, I swing myself into the cable car. All is done. I cannot deny this is a very emotional moment, I have completed my works and I am proud. The works are good. Finished on time and only the vernissage to worry about now.

The opening coincides with the ‘inalp.’ This is the arrival of the fighting cows on the mountain. There is a perfect irony about this, the local history and community coming together with the artists and their individual agendas. I can’t wait. I just hope I can still manage to walk when I get up tomorrow morning.

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