CAIRO (AP) – Egyptian authorities charged ousted leader Hosni Mubarak’s longtime culture minister with corruption on Tuesday and referred him to trial, the state news agency reported.
During a Justice Ministry investigation, Farouq Hosni, who served as culture minister for most of Mubarak’s 29 year-rule, allegedly failed to account for 18 million Egyptian pounds ($3 million) of his wealth. He is being asked to return the money to the state.
Hosni, a renowned painter, joins some three dozen stalwarts of the Mubarak regime who face corruption charges. Some of them have been convicted, while others are still on trial.
Hosni was widely thought to be close to Mubarak’s wife Suzanne, something believed to have kept him in his prestigious job for close to three decades. Throughout his years as culture minister, Hosni faced a wave after wave of criticism over various issues.
The latest controversy was in 2010 when a $50 million Vincent van Gogh painting was stolen from an Egyptian museum.
Justice Ministry officials also said that Mubarak, his wife and two children were being investigated for new corruption allegations pertaining to the purchase of land in the Nile Delta north of Cairo at a small fraction of its market value. No new charges have brought against any of the four yet.
Mubarak is already serving a life sentence on a conviction of complicity in the killing of hundreds of protesters during last year’s uprising against his rule. His two sons, onetime heir apparent Gamal and wealthy businessman Alaa, are on trial for insider trading. The two were questioned last month over their 1993 purchase of a plot of land from a housing association led at the time by Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister and longtime friend who unsuccessfully ran for president earlier this year.
Mubarak’s wife, Suzanne, was briefly arrested last year on corruption charges but was let go after she paid back to the state money she was accused to stealing.
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
BEVERLY, Mass. – Kaminski Auctions will present an important collection of items, including World Series memorabilia, once owned by former major league baseball player John “Stuffy” McInnis. This exciting group of memorabilia will be featured in the Summer’s End Estate Auction on Saturday, Sept. 15, at 11 a.m. EDT. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
Stuffy McInnis was born in 1890 in Gloucester, Mass., and died in 1960 in Ipswich, Mass. He played for several teams during a major league career that spanned 19 seasons. Making his major league debut on April 12, 1909, McInnis went on to have an impressive career that included four World Series titles with several teams. Overall, he held a .307 batting average, hit 20 home runs, and had 1,062 RBI in 2,128 games.
McInnis began his career as a shortstop for the Philadelphia Athletics. In the 1911 season he was moved to first base, and thus became a member of Connie Mack’s famous “$100,000 Infield.” Playing alongside Eddie Collins at second base, Frank Baker at third base and Jack Barry at shortstop, together the team won the World Series in 1911 and 1913.
McInnis was traded to the Boston Red Sox and played with them from 1918 to 1921. In 644 plate appearances with the Red Sox, he struck out only nine times. In addition to being a member of the Red Sox when they won the 1918 World Series, he also set an impressive record in 1921, his final season with the team. McInnis played 119 consecutive games at first base without an error. It wasn’t until June 25, 2007 that Red Sox player Kevin Youkilis broke that 86 year-old-record.
After just three years in Boston, McInnis was traded to the Cleveland Indians for the 1922 season. He was then traded to the Boston Braves from 1923 until 1924, and later, he was sent to the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1925 until 1926, where he won his fourth World Series title in 1925. McInnis finished his career with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1927.
McInnis continued to add to his impressive baseball resume by serving as the coach for the Harvard baseball team from 1949 to 1954.
Kaminski Auctions will present the collection of this local baseball champion. Included in the single lot are many significant memorabilia items: a 14-karat gold E. Howard pocket watch with a 10-karat watch fob and a gold-filled pen knife, all inscribed with World Series logo 1910-1911-1913 (McInnis was on the Philadelphia Athletics roster when they won their 1910 title); a sterling silver presentation trophy by Gloucester friends, October 1910, made by Newbury Crafters; a 10-karat gold ring inscribed with his name, Baseball Centennial 1839-1939, diamond chip; four photographs from New York Giants vs. Chicago White Sox game in Liverpool, England; photos of King George V and Edward Prince of Wales, circa 1914; and a collection of vintage programs, photographs and newspaper clippings as well as a passport for McInnis issued in 1914. The entire collection is valued $3,000-$4,000.
For details email Kaminski Auctions: sfarnsworth@kaminskiauctions.com or phone 978-927-2223.
Large 1950s campaign button for Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Bob & Sallie Connelly Auctions.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) – Eugene Ola was on a street corner hawking some political buttons with phrases like “Believe in America” and featuring photos of a smiling GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan. But most passersby simply smiled and kept on walking, barely looking at the piece of cardboard he carted around with 50 buttons fastened to it.
In this era of high-tech and nonstop social networking, the campaign button has lost its luster as a central way to promote candidates and their causes. Politicians and their parties instead push their messages with a relentless barrage of television ads, emails and mobile phone alerts, while many voters express their opinions via tweets, Facebook posts and blogs.
“Maybe they are just going out of fashion,” said Ola, 60, who lives in Washington, D.C., and travels the country selling paraphernalia at political gatherings, football games and medical conferences.
Buttons extolling the Republican ticket and tearing into Democrats haven’t disappeared entirely, but they are far from ubiquitous. The days when many delegates were seen littered with partisan messages from seemingly head to toe appear to be long past. Today, attendees roaming the convention halls are more likely to have an iPhone strapped to their belt or a Bluetooth hanging from one ear than a button with Romney’s picture fastened to their lapel.
“We have had pictures of our buttons taken a thousand times,” said Jane Morton, 46, who traveled with her 19-year-old son from Kansas City to sell buttons that say “Show 44 the door,” and depict a foot kicking a cartoon image of Obama, the 44th president of the U.S. “I guess people are just into digital media these days.”
Campaign buttons have been part of American politics since the days of President George Washington. Some of the first buttons were sewn on clothes, or worn similar to a necklace. Those eventually gave way to metal buttons with fastening pins.
These days, the most modern form is the digital variety – “buttons” decorating candidate websites, emails to potential voters and on social networking sites.
To communicate their messages, campaigns have fully moved to online media, said Evan Cornog, a presidential historian and dean of the school of communication at Hofstra University. Increasing urbanization and longer commutes have also likely had a role in diminishing the usefulness of buttons, he said.
“Who is going to see your button on the Long Island Expressway?” he said.
The hotter the campaign, the more intense the interest in buttons. The historic nature of the 2008 campaign, for example, by virtue of Barack Obama – the nation’s first black president – being on the ballot made them more collectible. And there were plenty of opportunities for some catchy phrases that worked well, like: “Sarah Palin, the hottest governor from the coldest state,” juxtaposing the photogenic looks of the Republican vice presidential nominee and her state of Alaska.
Even if fewer people wear them and their effectiveness is muted, vendors say they don’t have to sell many to turn a profit because production costs are low.
Morton, who was laid off in May from a product development firm, says her buttons cost 30 cents to make and she sells them for $3. And most vendors supplement by selling a wide range of other items, like hats, handkerchiefs and T-shirts.
Many conventiongoers buying buttons appear to be collecting them as souvenirs.
“I have buttons from every Republican ticket since World War II,” said Andrew Malcolm, 69, a Los Angeles-based columnist who on Wednesday night bought a button, and then promptly put it in his pocket, before entering the convention hall.
Are they on display at home?
“I just have them in a bag,” he said, adding wryly that if he ever wanted to put them on a wall it would require “some serious negotiations with my wife.”
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Follow Peter Prengaman at http://twitter.com/peterprengaman
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-08-30-12 1944GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Large 1950s campaign button for Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Bob & Sallie Connelly Auctions.
AUBURN, Ind. (AP) – A classic car collector has bought an unused auto museum in northeastern Indiana that was put up for sale under an agreement to keep open a neighboring military museum that faced foreclosure.
The building owned by the Dean Kruse Foundation in Auburn was sold during an auction Sunday for $995,000.
Buyer DeWayne Keiper, a Sioux Falls, S.D., businessman, said he has numerous collector cars and much memorabilia he plans to display at the museum. He also plans to use the building as a sales showroom.
Money from the sale will go toward the $2.9 million the Kruse Foundation owes for what had been planned as a museum for the memorabilia of auto racing icon Andy Granatelli. He changed his mind about using the Auburn location.
“The location, it’s really got a car feel that carries the whole theme with what I’m doing,” Keiper told WPTA-TV of Fort Wayne. “There’s a lot of synergies I think can be created with the museum. There’s nine museums in the area so I think that will work out really well.”
The building sale coincided with classic car auctions being held as part of the annual Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival during Labor Day weekend.
Keiper told The Star of Auburn that he had traveled there to bid on a 1933 Buick at Auburn Auction Park but didn’t win that auction.
Keiper said he expected it would take about six months to establish his collector-car dealership in the city about 20 miles north of Fort Wayne.
Dean Kruse said he had hoped the building would sell for $1.5 million or more. A second auction is planned for November, when Kruse expects the foundation will sell some vehicles from the military museum to help pay off the debt.
Kruse hosted classic car auctions each Labor Day for nearly four decades in Auburn that drew tens of thousands of visitors. But Kruse lost his state auctioneer’s license two years ago after being sued repeatedly in recent years for business practices that include not releasing money to vehicle consigners or vehicle titles to purchasers.
The military museum opened in 2003 after Kruse bought the inventory of a closing World War II museum in Belgium and shipped it to Auburn.
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NEW ORLEANS – Due to power outages and area-wide closures as a result of Hurricane Isaac, Neal Auction Co.’s two-day Fall Estates Auction has been rescheduled to Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 15 and 16.
LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
Neal Auction Co. reopened for exhibition beginning Tuesday, Sept. 4, and will remain open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be an evening preview reception on Thursday, Sept. 13, from 5-7 p.m.
The auction will be begin Saturday, Sept. 15, at 10 a.m. CDT and will resume Sunday, Sept. 16, at 11 a.m.
“The circumstances resulting from this large and persistent storm throughout southern Louisiana’s wetlands and waterways were obviously consequential. Our heartfelt empathy goes out to all of our neighbors in the region who are experiencing misfortune,” said Neal Alford, president of Neal Auction Co.
Some of the aviation material is quite unusual, like this waterproof edition of ‘The Raft Book.’ Sydney Rare Book Auctions image. SYDNEY – The Sydney Rare Book Auction on Sept. 9 will feature a fantastic range of aviation titles, including books from the collection of Sir Hudson Fysh, founder of Qantas. Auction time is 2 p.m. AEDT. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
Many of the books contain Fysh’s signature and bookplate, as well as inscriptions by him in the margins relating to the text. Any aviation enthusiast will appreciate the significance of his work and see these books as highly desirable parts of their collection.
Titles from the Fysh library include two books that he authored and were his personal copies. The first is Qantas Rising: The Autobiography of the Flying Fysh, which is an autobiography of Fysh’s life from World War I and the development of Qantas to the expansion of it into the Qantas Empire Airways in the mid-1930s. The other is The Log of the Astraea, a book on the Imperial Airways monoplane airliner Astraea and the events surrounding the airmail flights to England, which eventually led towards Qantas’ partnership with the Imperial Airways.
There are also several lots that explore aviation history, airlines, aircraft safety and design, plus some amazing early photographs.
The auction will be held at the Sebel Surry Hills Hotel.
For details email sydneyrarebookauctions@hotmail.com or phone +61 2 9552 1070.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal appeals court has ruled that Marilyn Monroe’s estate is powerless to stop a California company from selling her images without its permission.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Thursday that the Milton Greene Archives can continue to sell iconic images of the actress without paying her estate for publicity rights. The ruling hinged on Monroe’s legal residency. She owned a home in California and an apartment in New York when she died in Los Angeles in 1962. Her estate at the time claimed Monroe was a New York resident to avoid paying California inheritance taxes. The court ruled that her estate can’t now claim Monroe was a California resident to take advantage of a state law granting posthumous rights of publicity to the famous. With the estate’s active backing, the state Legislature passed the law in 2007. New York has no such law.
“Monroe’s representatives took one position on Monroe’s domicile at death for 40 years, and then changed their position when it was to their great financial advantage,” Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.
The court, citing Forbes “Top-Earning Dead Celebrities” list, said Monroe generated $27 million in revenue, putting her third on the list.
The ruling allows the Milton Green Archives to sell images taken by its photographers without having to pay the estate royalties. Had the court determined Monroe lived in California, royalties would have been owed. Monroe bought her California house in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood in 1962. She began filming “Something’s Got to Give” in April of that same year 20th Century Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles. Fox fired her two months later for repeated absences and tardiness. She was found dead in her home on Aug. 5, 1962.
The court noted that Monroe maintained her New York apartment and staff during he same time period. Her acting coach Lee Strasberg inherited 75 percent of her estate was named executor. When Strasburg died, his wife Anna Strasberg took over representing the estate. She filed a lawsuit against the California company in 2005.
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Kunsthaus Tacheles building housed an art center in Berlin. Huge, colorful graffiti-style murals are painted on the exterior walls, and contemporary art sculptures are featured inside. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
BERLIN (AFP) – German Bailiffs and police on Tuesday cleared a huge building in central Berlin that had been occupied by squatting artists since 1990 and became an iconic magnet for tourists.
The dilapidated five-storey Tacheles building was seized without violent resistance, according to an AFP reporter at the scene, after housing dozens of artists in different workshops for free since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Nevertheless its closure sparked a protest, with two black-clad Tacheles artists playing a funeral march ahead of the police’s arrival at the site in the Mitte district, in former East Berlin.
“This is the theft of a work of art, supported by the police,” said Tacheles spokesman Martin Reiter, speaking to 100 or so supporters and journalists gathered outside the 1909 building.
“Berlin will soon stop being sexy,” read a banner, in reference to Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit’s famous description of his city as “poor but sexy.”
After the previous owner ran into financial difficulties, the building fell into the hands of HSH Nordbank, which decided to sell it, requiring its complete clearance.
The building stretches over 13,454 square feet and houses a cinema, restaurant and bar, in addition to the artists’ studios and galleries.
Young artists flocked to east Berlin after the fall of the Wall in 1989, drawn by the low cost of living, and squatted or moved their workshops into disused buildings.
“Attracted by low prices and the creative atmosphere which followed the collapse of the communist GDR (German Democratic Republic), many foreign artists moved to Berlin,” Harriet Haeussler, a professor at Berlin’s Free University, said.
But after the government moved from Bonn back to reunified Germany’s capital of Berlin in 1999, the city became home to a host of better-off residents, from politicians to lobbyists.
“The dilapidated apartment blocks were sold to investors who renovated them after having cleared the former occupants out. They rented them again for more,” Haeussler said.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The Kunsthaus Tacheles building housed an art center in Berlin. Huge, colorful graffiti-style murals are painted on the exterior walls, and contemporary art sculptures are featured inside. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The Currier’s own Degas (accession # 1973.01): ‘Dancers,’ c. 1890 by Edgar Degas, pastel on tan and tracing paper mounted on gray paper. Currier Museum of Art image.
MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Currier Museum of Art is exhibiting Edgar Degas’ lyrical 1882 painting Repetition au Foyer de la Danse (Dance Rehearsal) to its European Gallery, on view now through Thanksgiving weekend. The loan is complemented by the Currier’s own Degas pastel drawing, Dancers, about 1890, which has not been on view for a decade due to its fragile nature.
Three other masterpieces on loan from an anonymous donor include a vibrant, sunny 1880 landscape, Un Noyer dans La Prairie Thomery (Landscape with Walnut Tree at Thomery), by the impressionist Alfred Sisley. The Sisley painting is displayed in the European Gallery near the Currier’s early Impressionist canvas by Claude Monet Seine at Bougival, 1869, painted when the artist was just 20 years old.
Visitors will also have the opportunity to see an early Cubist composition The Lute Player (1917–18) by the Spanish painter Maria Gutierrez Blanchard. Blanchard will be the subject of a major retrospective opening in October at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. The Lute Player is exhibited in the company of the Currier’s later Cubist Woman Seated in Chair, 1941, by Pablo Picasso in the Currier’s Modern Gallery.
A classical bronze nude of Diana (1943) by French sculptor Aristide Maillol is also on loan, displayed in the Currier’s Modern Gallery. Diana is shown next to Henri Matisse’s bronze Reclining Nude, 1924. Maillol, one of France’s most important sculptors of the first half of the 20th century, is noted for sensuous female nudes, several of which are displayed in the Gardens of the Carousel, just outside the Louvre in Paris. While Maillol was noted as a sculptor, Matisse, who was of the same generation and also worked in Paris, was best known as a painter.
The Currier Museum of Art is located at 150 Ash St., Manchester, N.H. Admission is free for children and teens age 17 and younger. The museum is open daily, with the exception of Tuesdays. For information, visit www.currier.org or call 603-669-6144.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
The Currier’s own Degas (accession # 1973.01): ‘Dancers,’ c. 1890 by Edgar Degas, pastel on tan and tracing paper mounted on gray paper. Currier Museum of Art image.The loaned Degas: ‘Repetition au Foyer de la Danse,’ c. 1882 by Edgar Degas, oil on canvas, anonymous loan to Currier Museum of Art. Currier Museum of Art image.
Ben Schmidt of Detroit carved this 17-inch-long mallard drake decoy circa 1925-1950. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Cowan’s Auctions Inc.
NORTHGLENN, Colo. (AP) – Considering his collection of more than 130 antique and contemporary decoys, some worth more than $1,000 and some he calls “virtually worthless,” Bill Walters shrugged.
“Why would you want to collect these?” he asked, rhetorically.
“I don’t know. Because of the feeling I get when I look at them.”
Take, for example, the two Mallard drakes that hunter Ben Schmidt carved sometime in the 1940s. Run a hand over their sleek backs, and feel the individual feathers, short and long, chiseled from the wood.
Or look at the bald-pate duck carved by Jim Schmiedlin, another hunter and celebrated folk artist. Touch a finger to its back, and it’s a surprise that you can’t feel the feathers so painstaking detailed that they look sculpted, not painted.
Turn the decoy over, and you’ll find all the lakes where Schmiedlin used this piece on duck-hunting trips.
“These decoys were made to use,” Walters said approvingly. He carves decoys, too, and uses them in his seasonal duck-hunting trips.
Trim, with a military bearing, Walters bears a strong resemblance to the actor Martin Sheen. After retiring from his career with the Internal Revenue Service – “I used to press freshly laundered money,” he tells people who ask for details about his former job – Walters devoted more time to his avocation of collecting and carving duck decoys.
Along with other members of the Midwest Decoy Collectors Association, Walters displayed decoys from his collection at the Bass Pro Shop fall hunting exposition in August.
“Bill and his friends are so proud and really passionate about this American art form,” said Simone Geoffrion, promotions director for Bass Pro Denver.
“When I first saw his decoys, I got caught up in that passion. They have decoys from the 1800s to the present. I don’t know if they bring their most treasured pieces, but they never leave that decoy (by itself), either. And then when people come in, bringing their decoys to be appraised, you never know what to expect.”
She remembered a man who arrived at the Bass Pro fall hunting classic one year, carrying a large decoy in a battered pillowcase. Even before the man removed the case, the other decoy collectors converged around him like ducks competing for hunks of bread.
“I thought, wow, this guy has something special, and when he left, I asked Bill why he was so excited,” Geoffrion said.
“Bill said, ‘That was very rare, made by a famous artist. That particular goose decoy has a crack in it.’ You know how wood separates sometimes?
“Bill said, ‘The crack dropped its value, but it’s still worth at least $25,000.’ I asked what it would’ve been worth if it wasn’t cracked, and he said ‘About $55,000.’ And it was just wrapped up in an old pillowcase!”
Walters lives for moments like that. Once, a woman asked him to appraise 14 decoy ducks. One was an eider decoy that Walters recognized as the work of a Maine carver.
The woman looked surprised. That one? Her children liked to play with it.
Walters, whose collectible ducks are carefully mounted on professional racks, tried not to wince. He suggested sending the decoy to an auction house for a targeted appraisal.
“It came back with a preauction estimate of $17,000 to $19,000,” Walters said.
“Needless to say, she took them up on it. It sold for $19,200. And she’s still got all these other birds! She had everything from worthless to four good pieces that we looked up. Not great finds, like the eider decoy, but all around $1,000 or so. Now she’s going to have to decide whether to keep them or put them up for auction.”
As for his own collection, Walters doesn’t intend to auction any of them in the near future. He sidesteps direct questions about the value of his rarest decoys.
“I have three or four that are priceless because I love ’em,” he said. “Sure, some of them are worth a thousand or so. Another one might be maybe 50 bucks, because it’s an unknown carver.
“But eliminate the price. Why would you want to collect this? I don’t know. Because it’s art. Because of the feeling you get when you look at it, and think, ‘Boy, I really like that.’”
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Information from: The Denver Post, http://www.denverpost.com
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-08-30-12 1847GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Ben Schmidt of Detroit carved this 17-inch-long mallard drake decoy circa 1925-1950. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Cowan’s Auctions Inc.
