Neo Rauch Die Kontrolle, 2010, Öl auf Leinwand, 300 x 420 sm, private Sammlung / Basel mit freundlicher Genehmigung Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and David Zwirner, New York. Foto: Uwe Walter, Berlin.
Proteste im Jahr 2013 zur Erhaltung der Berliner Mauer ? Genau das ist passiert, als sich Kunstliebhaber versammelten, um die East Side Gallery, ein mit faszinierenden politischen Wandbildern versehenes Reststück der Berliner Mauer, zu erhalten. Ein Teil der East Side Gallery sollte zur Schaffung eines Zugangs zu einer Luxuswohnsiedlung entfernt werden, welche am Ufer der Spree errichtet werden soll. Nachfolgend wurde auf einem Treffen von Vertretern der Stadtverwaltung und dem Bauherren am 18. März wurde verkündet, dass die Arbeiten wie geplant fortgeführt würden und lediglich bereits existierende Öffnungen in der Mauer genutzt werden, um Baugerät in das Areal einzubringen.
Die Berliner Mauer, errichtet 1961 und seit 1989 wieder geöffnet, ist ein Magnet für Touristen und Liebhaber von Straßenkunst. Die ungefähr 1,5 km lange East Side Gallery wurde 1990 durch 118 Künstler aus 21 Ländern bemalt. Ein Teil der berühmten Kunstwerke ist der “Bruderkuss”, die Darstellung eines Kusses zwischen Leonid Breschnew, Vorsitzender des Präsidiums des Obersten Sowjet (1964-1982) der früheren UdSSR, und Erich Honnecker, Staatsratsvorsitzender (1976-1989) der früheren DDR.
Eine andere beliebte Gestalt der früheren DDR, der Maler und Graphiker Willi Sitte (92), hat eine Ausstellung seiner Werke in Merseburg bei Halle (Saale) eröffnet. Seine Gemälde und Graphiken des sozialistischen Realismus sind gekennzeichnet durch die Darstellung muskulöser menschlicher Figuren und die prismatische Nutzung von Licht und Farben, die über solid konturierte Oberflächen spielen. Sitte war langjähriger Präsident des Verbandes Bildender Künstler der DDR und erhielt zahlreiche Auszeichnungen. Seine Arbeiten können unter www.willi-sitte-galerie-merseburg.de betrachtet werden.
Ein weiterer ostdeutscher Maler hat Erfolge erfahren, von welchen andere Künstler nur träumen können – Neo Rauch (53). Seine Arbeiten haben inzwischen die 1-Million-Dollar Marke durchbrochen, als sein Gemälde “Suche” bei Christie’s in New York 2004 für 1.082.500 Dollar versteigert wurde. Eine Rückschau auf seine Werke mit dem Titel “Neo Rauch”: “ Die Besessenheit des Demiurgen” wird aktuell im Palais des Beaux-Arts -auch bekannt als Bozar Expo-, Brüssel, ausgestellt.
Rauchs überdimensionale Leinwände ziehen den Betrachter in ihre koexistente unbändige Aktivität und Einsamkeit; ihre gewaltigen Ausdehnungen werden zum Treffpunkt von Gestalten der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Der Kurator der Austellung, Harald Kunde, komplimentiert diese Erfahrung durch sein Arrangement der Werke von 2012 bis 1993. Auf diese Weise machen die Besucher eine Zeitreise durch Rauchs komplexe Stile zurück zu seinen einfacheren Anfängen als einer der Maler der “Neuen Leipziger Schule”. Rauchs Werke werden in der Bozar Expo bis 19. Mai gezeigt.
In Wien eröffnet die Galerie OstLicht am 13. April eine Ausstellung von Fotographien der Künstlerin Hellen van Meene. Die in den Niederlanden geborene Fotographin dokumentiert die Zerbrechlichkeit und Beeinflussbarkeit junger Mädchen auf ihrem Weg zur Frau. Ihre sorgfältig zusammengestellten Schnappschüsse enthüllen eine intuitive Kommunikation mit ihren Modellen, seien es nun Mädchen oder, wie in ihrer neuen Fotoserie, Hunde. Die OstLicht Ausstellung läuft bis zum 15. Juni.
Kunstsammler haben bereits in ihrem Kalender den 13. bis 16. Juni für die “Art Basel” in Basel markiert. Die gewaltige Show und Verkauf bietet Kunstwerke von 304 internationalen Gallerien an, von den frühen Klassikern der Moderne des 20. Jh. bis zu zeigenössischer Kunst. Details dazu finden Sie unter www.artbasel.com
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Neo Rauch Die Kontrolle, 2010, Öl auf Leinwand, 300 x 420 sm, private Sammlung / Basel mit freundlicher Genehmigung Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and David Zwirner, New York. Foto: Uwe Walter, Berlin.Neo Rauch “Nest”, 2012 Öl auf Leinwand, 300 x 250 cm, Sammlung De Heus-Zomer mit freundlicher Genehmigung Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig/Berlin und David Zwirner, New York. Foto: Uwe Walter, BerlinKunstenthusiasten schlendern entlang der East Side Gallery in Berlin, einem kleinen Reststück der Berliner Mauer gewidmet als Freiluftgalerie. Foto von Heidi LuxGolden and moody, dieser unbetitelte C-Druck von Hellen van Meene 2012, 39 x 39 cm, wird gezeigt in der OstLicht Galerie für Fotographie in Wien. Bild mit freundlicher Genehmigung Sadie Coles HQ, London and die Künstlerin.
Neo Rauch ‘Die Kontrolle,’ 2010, oil on canvas, 300 x 420 cm, private collection / Basel courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and David Zwirner, New York. Photo: Uwe Walter, Berlin.
Protesting to keep the Berlin Wall intact in 2013? That’s exactly what happened when art lovers gathered to preserve the open-air East Side Gallery, a remaining section of the Berlin Wall covered with politically intriguing murals. A portion of the gallery wall was to be removed to make a pathway for a luxury apartment complex to be built on the banks of the Spree River.
Following a March 18 meeting between borough mayor and real estate developer, it was announced that while construction would go on as planned, existing openings in the wall would be used to bring in construction equipment.
The Berlin Wall, erected in 1961 and opened in 1989, is a magnet for tourists as well as lovers of street art. The nearly mile-long East Side Gallery portion was painted in 1990 by 118 artists from 21 countries. Included among its famous art works is the mural Fraternal Kiss depicting Lenonid Brezhnev, chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1964-1982) of the former USSR, and Erich Honecker, former chairman of the State Council of the GDR (1976-1989).
Another well-loved figure from former East Germany, the painter and graphic artist Willi Sitte, 92, has a new exhibit of his works opening at his own gallery in Merseburg near Halle (River Saale). His paintings and graphic works of social realism are identifiable by their muscular human figures and a prismatic use of light and color that play over solidly outlined surfaces. Sitte was president of the artists’ union in the GDR (Verbandes Bildender Künstler), and received numerous awards. His work can be viewed at www.willi-sitte-galerie-merseburg.de
A fellow artist from eastern Germany, painter Neo Rauch, 53, has experienced success of which most painters can only dream. His work has already broken the million dollar mark, when his painting Suche was auctioned at Christie’s New York in 2004 for $1,082,500. A retrospective of his paintings titled “Neo Rauch: The Obsession of the Demiurge” is currently on display at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, also known as Bozar Expo, in Brussels.
Rauch’s oversize canvases have a way of pulling you into their world of juxtaposed frenetic activity and loneliness; his vast expanses become a meeting place for characters of the past, present and future. Curator Harald Kunde has complemented this experience by arranging the work in the exhibit from 2012 to 1993. So visitors time travel through Rauch’s complex style, back to its simpler beginnings as one of the Neue Leipziger Schule painters. Rauch’s work is on display at the Bozar through May 19.
In Vienna, Galerie OstLicht opens an exhibit of photographs by Hellen van Meene on April 13. The Netherland-born photographer documents the fragility and impressionability of young girls on their way to womanhood. Her carefully composed shots expose an intuitive communication with her subjects, be they girls or in her new series of photos, dogs. The Ost Licht exhibit runs through June 15.
Art collectors have already marked their calendars for Art Basel, in Basel, Switzerland, June 13-16. This enormous show and sale offers artwork from 304 international galleries, from early 20th century classic modern to contemporary. For details visit www.artbasel.com
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Neo Rauch ‘Die Kontrolle,’ 2010, oil on canvas, 300 x 420 cm, private collection / Basel courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and David Zwirner, New York. Photo: Uwe Walter, Berlin.Neo Rauch ‘Nest,’ 2012 oil on canvas, 300 x 250 cm, collection De Heus – Zomer courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and David Zwirner, New York. Photo: Uwe Walter, Berlin.Golden and moody, this untitled Hellen van Meene 2012 C-Print, 39 x 39 cm, will be displayed at OstLicht Galerie fur Fotografie in Vienna. Photo courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London and the artist.Art enthusiasts stroll past the East Side Gallery in Berlin, a small remaining section of the Berlin wall dedicated as an open-air gallery. Photo by Heidi Lux.
The entrance to the former Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo. Image by Melanom, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
TOKYO (AFP) – The curtain is about to go up at a new theater dedicated to Japan’s centuries-old kabuki-za performing art, sited in a high-tech venue in a 29-storey Tokyo office building.
The theater in the upscale Ginza shopping district, which will open to the public at the start of next month, will let audiences use portable monitors to read subtitles to explain the sometimes difficult to understand art form.
The service will be available only in Japanese at first. But theater managers hope to include foreign language services, starting with English, over the coming months, a spokesman told visiting journalists Monday.
Another feature is the pit below the stage, which is now 54 feet deep – nearly four times what it was. The pit allows for props, actors and scenery to emerge from the bowels of the building.
Despite the high-tech fixes, the theater retains many elements of the original interior as well as the facade, which evokes medieval Japanese castles and temples with its curved roofs and red paper lanterns.
In the 400-year-old stylized performing art, all-male casts perform in extravagant costumes and mask-like facial makeup.
The new four-story playhouse, with an 1,800-seat capacity, is the fifth version of the theater, whose history dates back to 1889.
The previous building, erected in 1951 to replace one heavily damaged in World War II, was demolished in 2010 due to worries over its ability to withstand earthquakes.
The theater is now housed in a 470-foot-tall skyscraper, the tallest building in the area.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The entrance to the former Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo. Image by Melanom, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Pan holding a rabbit is a figure made by Weller Pottery for its Gardenware line. It is a little over a foot high. Weller also made a figure of Pan with a flute, but this version with a rabbit is so rare it sold for $3,540 at Humler & Nolan in Cincinnati in December.
Don’t forget to look in the backyard when you go to a yard or house sale. If the house is old, you may spot a concrete birdbath, an iron garden gnome, old tools hanging on a fence or even a log cabin playhouse. Landscaping and outdoor decorating styles have changed through the years just as styles for houses and living rooms have changed. And a modern landscape can update any house.
During past centuries, trees and plantings were not placed near a house. They were far enough away to provide shade but not harm the roof. By the 1930s, a flat row of bushes, trees and other green plants were placed in a straight line against the house. Today homes have curved beds and walks, colorful flowers in the front and back yards, paved seating areas, patios, fountains and other water features.
In the 1900s, Weller Pottery of Zanesville, Ohio, began to make “Gardenware.” It was not part of the company’s art pottery lines, but it has become popular with today’s collectors. Weller garden figures include a pelican, pop-eyed dog, a variety of frogs, hen and chicks, dogs, squirrels, swans, rabbits, ducks, a boy fishing and even Pan with a flute or rabbit. The figures are about 19 to 20 inches high. They are all realistic.
Weller also made a variety of large frogs with coppertone glazes – a bold green with large blotches – and some figural sprinklers and birdbaths. All of these are popular today and expensive, many costing more than $1,000.
Q: I inherited four Gothic Revival side chairs attributed to J. and J.W. Meeks. I was told they once belonged to the White House and were used in Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet Room. How can I establish authenticity?
A: It probably is impossible for you to determine that the chairs were used in the White House during Lincoln’s administration (1861-65). It is known that during the Polk administration (1845-49), as many as 24 black walnut Gothic Revival chairs made by J. and J.W. Meeks of New York City were purchased for the White House. Lincoln used some of the chairs in his Cabinet Room (now the Lincoln Bedroom). The chairs are shown in the painting, First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln. Four chairs are still in the White House collection. First see if your chairs match those shown in the painting, on display at the U.S. Capitol (the image can be found online). If the chairs match, at least you can say your chairs are identical to those in the White House and were made by Meeks. But without any additional history, it’s unlikely you can ever prove the chairs were once owned by the White House.
Q: I found a metal bracelet while using my metal detector. It may have been silver-plated at one time. It has six links that look like shields. There’s a different name on the back of each shield: Lorraine, Flandre, Normandie, Paris, Alsace and Bretagne. The word “Moutereau” is on the clasp. I would appreciate any information you can give me.
A: The words on your bracelet are the names of six French provinces. The metal is probably brass and would have originally had a silver tone. Montereau, not Moutereau, is an area in France. It could be the name of the maker or just the place it was made. Bracelets like yours were made for the tourist trade and don’t sell for much today. Some have enameled coats of arms and sell for a little more.
Q: We have an ax with a square hole in the blade. A small square piece with a circular hole in one end fits into the square hole in the blade. The words “Bell System” are stamped on the ax. Do you know what it was used for?
A: This type of ax was used by Bell Telephone linemen. The ax was used to cut notches into utility poles. The blunt end of the blade could be used as a hammer, and the square hole could be used as a wrench for turning square nuts. When the “small piece” is inserted into the square hole, it can be used as a wrench on round nuts. Old-timers say the ax also was used to set insulators on poles or to install metal “steps” up the side of poles. Value: about $50.
Q: I’m preparing a program on piano babies for our doll club and have read several articles that say if the hole on the baby’s bottom is big, the baby is “fake” and not original to Germany. Is this true?
A: There are several clues to spotting “fake” or reproduction piano babies or other ceramic figures. Early pottery and porcelain pieces have a smaller hole in the bottom than later reproductions. The hole let gas out so the figurine didn’t explode during firing. Older porcelain figures are heavier than newer reproductions because more clay was used to make them. Reproduction figures, made from a mold cast from an original, are smaller because the material shrinks as it cools.
Tip: Turn a rug a quarter or half turn twice a year so it will wear evenly.
Terry Kovel answers as many questions as possible through the column. By sending a letter with a question, you give full permission for use in the column or any other Kovel forum. Names, addresses or email addresses will not be published. We cannot guarantee the return of any photograph, but if a stamped envelope is included, we will try. The volume of mail makes personal answers or appraisals impossible. Write to Kovels, Auction Central News, King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.
CURRENT PRICES
Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions.
Easter greeting card, boy, basket of eggs, rooster pulling pants, c. 1930, $6.
Trading card, Woolson Spices, sleeping girl dreaming of Easter bunnies, 1893, 7 X 5 inches, $18.
Easter hare automaton store display, seated, glass eyes, turns head, “lays” eggs, Belgium, c. 1930, 27 x 19 1/2 inches, $5,260.
Available now. The best book to own if you want to buy or sell or collect – and if you order now, you’ll receive a copy with the author’s autograph. The new Kovels’ Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide, 2013, 45th edition, is your most accurate source for current prices. This large-size paperback has more than 2,500 color photographs and 40,000 up-to-date prices for more than 775 categories of antiques and collectibles. You’ll also find hundreds of factory histories and marks, a report on the record prices of the year, plus helpful sidebars and tips about buying, selling, collecting and preserving your treasures. Available online at Kovelsonlinestore.com; by phone at 800-303-1996; at your bookstore or send $27.95 plus $4.95 postage to Price Book, Box 22900, Beachwood, OH 44122.
Pan holding a rabbit is a figure made by Weller Pottery for its Gardenware line. It is a little over a foot high. Weller also made a figure of Pan with a flute, but this version with a rabbit is so rare it sold for $3,540 at Humler & Nolan in Cincinnati in December.
Jan Krane will head up Clars’ new Pacific Northwest expansion from an office in Vancouver, Washington. Photo courtesy of Clars.
OAKLAND, Calif. — Clars Auction Gallery, one of the largest full-service auction houses in the western United States, has announced its expansion to the Pacific Northwest. Their new operation is centrally located in the region, in Vancouver, Washington, just north of Portland, Oregon.
“We have looked at expanding to the Pacific Northwest for a while,” said Clars’ president, Redge Martin. “We recognize this region as a sophisticated fine art and antiques community that is worthy of top-rate auction service. The current market has created an ideal time to be opening our satellite office. The decision was a result both of the improving economy once again making fine art and antiques a solid investment class, and Clars’ earlier commitment to developing a huge online bidding [presence], which has driven our global buying and selling market to new heights…”
Clars holds several auction records for both fine and decorative arts. Gaining national news attention in the recent past was their sale of an undiscovered Old Master painting which fetched over $600,000, a 1948 Tucker that brought over $750,000 and a 20th-century Chinese brush pot, attributed to Wang Bu, that just sold for $530,000. Clars routinely represents major estates, which, in the past, have included the Estate of Merv Griffin. The company has worked with several museums in deaccession including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum and the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Jan G. Krane, a nationally recognized fine art expert and dealer who brings over with him 20 years of experience on both the national and international level, will head the new Northwest operation. Mr. Krane has worked extensively with major private collectors, corporate collections and museums. His in-depth knowledge spans all areas of luxury items and fine art.
Jan Krane will be fully supported by Clars’ specialists in each department including: Fine Art, Decorative Arts and Furnishings, Jewelry & Timepieces; and Asian Works of Art.
Initially, consignments from the Northwest will be sold at Clars monthly two-day fine art and antiques auctions held at their gallery in Oakland.
To contact Jan Krane regarding consignment and/or sale of property, call 360-200-6211 or e-mail jkrane@clars.com. Online: www.clars.com.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Jan Krane will head up Clars’ new Pacific Northwest expansion from an office in Vancouver, Washington. Photo courtesy of Clars.
The main building that houses the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island. Image by Ken Thomas, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
NEW YORK (AP) – The Ellis Island Immigration Museum, which sustained severe damage to its infrastructure from the surging waters of Superstorm Sandy, is not expected to reopen to the public this year, the National Park Service said.
The Oct. 29 storm bought water levels as high as 8 feet to Ellis Island, adjacent to the home of the Statue of Liberty, destroying boilers and electrical systems.
The museum “is under repair from storm damage and will not likely be open in 2013,” the park service said Friday, as it announced that security screening for visitors to the Statue of Liberty would be moving to temporary facilities on Ellis Island.
Spokeswoman Linda Friar told The Associated Press on Sunday that the site was still without power, which was continuing to have a negative impact on the physical condition of the building.
Reopening it to the public is a multistep process, she said, which includes getting the power back, restoring the physical condition of the building and then making sure the museum contents are back in place.
The museum, housed in the main building on the grounds, showcases the stories of the millions of immigrants who passed through there to start their lives in the United States, and contains all kinds of documents, photographs and other artifacts.
Those artifacts survived the storm unscathed, but more than 1 million items had to be moved to storage facilities because it has been impossible to maintain the climate-controlled environment needed for their preservation. Those items would need to be put back in place before the museum could reopen.
In the days after the storm, there also had to be a controlled detonation of explosives on the island. The park service said the explosives had been kept there for the training of bomb-sniffing dogs but had been ruined by the storm and needed to be destroyed.
Nearby Liberty Island, where about 75 percent of its 12 acres was flooded, also suffered damage, but the Statue of Liberty was unharmed. Officials said earlier last week that the Statue of Liberty will re-open to the public by July 4.
On Friday, the park service said visitors will board cruise ships from either Battery Park in lower Manhattan or Liberty State Park, N.J., and stop at Ellis Island for a security check. National Park officials said visitors will then continue to Liberty Island for a secondary screening.
The New York Police Department initially expressed concerns about the plan, and said moving screening out of lower Manhattan was being done against its recommendation. The park service and the NYPD then released a statement saying there would continue to be conversations about security protocols before passengers board the ferries in lower Manhattan.
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Copyright 3013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-03-24-13 1843GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The main building that houses the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island. Image by Ken Thomas, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Henry Moore’s ‘Draped Seated Woman’ at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Image by David Sands. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
LONDON (AP) – The massive bronze sculpture is formally known as Draped Seated Woman, a Henry Moore creation that evoked Londoners huddled in air raid shelters during the Blitz.
To the East Enders who lived nearby, the artwork was known as “Old Flo,” a stalwart symbol of people facing oppression with dignity and grace.
But now, Old Flo may have to go.
The cash-strapped London borough of Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest communities in Britain, plans to sell the statue – estimated to be worth as much as 20 million pounds ($30 million).
Art lovers fear the sale of such a famous sculpture would set a worrisome precedent, triggering the sell-off of hundreds of lesser works housed in parks, public buildings and little local museums as communities throughout Britain struggle to balance their budgets amid the longest and deepest economic slowdown since the Great Depression.
“If the sale of Old Flo goes through, it can open the flood gates,” said Sally Wrampling, head of policy at the Art Fund, the national fundraising charity for art and one of the groups campaigning to block the sale.
The proposal embodies a dilemma faced by many struggling households: Do you sell the family silver to get through tough times?
Tower Hamlets, where a recent study found that 42 percent of children live in poverty, is 100 million pounds in the red.
The sculpture hasn’t even been in the borough for 15 years. It was moved to a sculpture park in the north of England when authorities tore down the housing project where it had been placed. The council says just the insurance alone for the massive bronze would be a burden to taxpayers.
“We make this decision with a heavy heart,” said Rania Khan, a local councilor who focuses on culture issues. “We have to make tough decisions.”
Local authorities throughout the country are being hit by funding cuts as the central government seeks to balance the budget and reduce borrowing. Funding for local government will fall 33 percent in real terms between April 2011 and March 2015, according to the Local Government Association. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the cuts tend to hit poor, urban areas like Tower Hamlets hardest, because their spending was higher to begin with.
Some 2,000 museums in Britain are local affairs. Bury Council sold a painting by L.S. Lowry in 2006, and Southampton City Council backed down from plans to sell an Auguste Rodin bronze in the face of public protest. The Museums Association has advised the Northampton council to hold off on the sale of an Egyptian funerary monument estimated to be worth 2 million pounds until more consultation can be done.
The depth of the recession and the lack of hope that things will improve soon are fueling the debate.
The latest figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent agency created in 2010 to advise the government, show the economy is growing more slowly than previously forecast, reducing tax revenue and prolonging the government’s austerity program.
One thing is certain: Tower Hamlets, a community of 254,000 people, desperately needs the money.
Khan says she believes Moore, the son of a coal miner and lifelong socialist who died in 1986, would be moved by the plight of her constituents. She knows women who will be hard hit by proposed limits on benefit payments – people for whom as little as five pounds can make a huge difference – and families living in housing with mold growing on the walls.
“If he thought the sale of the sculpture would benefit the lives of thousands in Tower Hamlets … I think he would be in favor,” Khan said.
Moore attended art school on a scholarship for ex-servicemen. He became fascinated with the human form, creating works with undulating curves that reflect rolling hills and other features of nature. His most beloved motif was the reclining female figure, like that of Old Flo.
The statue features the graceful draping that Moore traced to his observation of people huddled in the Underground during the Blitz. In a 1966 interview with the BBC, Moore talked about the fear and exhilaration of Londoners sheltering against the Nazi barrage. He had concern for those he was drawing: He never sat sketching but waited until the following day and drew from memory – rather than capturing people in their makeshift bedrooms.
Alan Wilkinson, one of the foremost Moore scholars, said the artist would have been sympathetic about the hard times in Tower Hamlets, but would want his sculptures seen the way they were intended to be seen – in public spaces.
“Public sculpture was incredibly important for him,” Wilkinson said. “He was very fussy about where it was placed.”
Moore sold Old Flo at discount to the London County Council, a forerunner of the city’s current administration, in 1962 on condition the statue would be displayed publicly. It was placed at a public housing project.
The East End was one of the areas hardest hit by Nazi bombs, and its residents were directly connected to the work.
Now war memories have faded. The median age of people in Tower Hamlets is 29, the lowest in London, and 43 percent of the population was born outside the U.K., according to the latest census figures.
Old Flo’s story hasn’t been told to the current generation, said Patrick Brill, an artist who uses the pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith.
“If we don’t cherish these things, we lose a bit of our history,” he said. “If you lose your history, you lose a bit of yourself, really.”
Still, Old Flo has a fan club. Danny Boyle, director of films such as Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, signed an open letter asking the council to reverse its decision. A flash mob of people dressed as Old Flo appeared at the Tower Hamlets offices in November to protest the sale. Another London borough has laid claim to the statue.
Critics believe money raised by the sale would quickly vanish – and Old Flo would disappear into the private collection of a foreign hedge fund owner or Russian oligarch, taking Moore’s message into hiding
Rushanara Ali, a member of Parliament who represents part of Tower Hamlets, raised the issue during a December debate, suggesting the proposal was more the result of “profligacy and extraordinary waste,” than tough economic times.
“This bonfire of public art is not the answer,” Ali said. “One has to ask, where does this end? What precedents will be set for other areas that may wish to make such sales to deal with financial challenges?”
Noting Moore’s interest in the work of Pablo Picasso, Brill said Old Flo was influenced by Guernica, the 1937 painting that shows the suffering inflicted by war. As such, she still has resonance for the people of Tower Hamlets, an area that has been home to generations of immigrants, including the Bangladeshis who today account for 32 percent of the population.
“Old Flo … is a very British ‘keep calm carry on’ image of the same thing as Guernica,” he said. “Old Flo is East London’s monument to people seeking sanctuary. She is our Guernica.”
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-03-24-13 0739GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Henry Moore’s ‘Draped Seated Woman’ at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Image by David Sands. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
A windmill in South Dakota. Image by Patrick Bolduan. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. (AP) – Usually, the folks who run museums hate dust. They like to keep artifacts and exhibits clean and tidy.
The Kregel Windmill Factory Museum, set to open April 26 in Nebraska City, is just the opposite. The museum treats dust like a fine patina on a bronze statue – not to be disturbed if at all possible.
The Lincoln Journal Star reports that dust is part of the story told within the Kregel museum’s walls, the story of how prairie windmills were made in small-town America in the early 1900s.
Back then, creaking windmills were a common sight on farms and ranches, where they pumped water from the ground for livestock and households. They were in towns and cities, too.
Today, windmills with brand names like Eli and Dempster rust quietly on abandoned farmsteads, their parts strewn in fields or ditches.
The story of the water-pumping windmill and what it meant to the survival of settlers is everywhere in the cluttered Kregel museum: hundreds of undisturbed boxes full of parts, benches littered with one-of-a-kind tools, yards of machine drive belts, heavy drill presses and saws, an old blacksmith’s forge tucked in a corner and an office reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting.
It’s as if everyone left one day and never returned to work.
And that’s what happened.
In 1989 owner Arthur Kregel had a stroke, and the Nebraska City factory closed, with everything intact. Kregel left it that way because he hoped to return one day. He died two years later, never having gone back.
In 1992 heirs donated the factory and its contents to the nonprofit Kregel Windmill Museum Co. of Nebraska City.
Now, thanks to the efforts of community leaders and contributions from local foundations, visitors will be able to see the last historic windmill factory in the United States – dust and all.
“The Kregels kept everything,” curator Jeremy Kirkendall, 31, said during a recent tour. “We tried to move as little as possible to try and leave it as it was.”
Kirkendall and Duane Smith, president of the museum’s board of directors, explained how the factory and its contents were saved and preserved for posterity – a task that required an innovative architectural approach and $1.7 million. Construction began in fall 2011.
“They built an exoskeleton around the building to encapsulate it and protect it from the elements,” said Kirkendall, a Lincoln native.
The factory made about 2,000 water-pumping windmills from 1903 until rationing of raw materials during World War II ended production. After the war, the business focused on maintenance and pump repairs and made beehives and stock tanks as a sideline.
Electronic kiosks placed throughout the museum help tell the story of early windmill manufacturing. Visitors can push buttons to watch videos, some of which show machinery and tools in use.
The factory hasn’t given up all of its secrets.
For instance, Kirkendall and museum volunteers still are poring over 200 to 300 bottles holding sand, gravel and soil from wells they drilled and installed in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. When wells clogged up, workers used the samples to determine which materials could be to blame.
There are also itemized bills, notebooks, ledgers and blueprints to study, along with old photographs. Just how many items are in the factory museum is unknown. Smith estimates the number of artifacts on display and in storage at hundreds of thousands.
“We can still produce a windmill with very little trouble,” Kirkendall said.
The factory museum has an important story to tell, said Kirkendall, because windmills made it possible for people to settle in places far from rivers and streams, because they allowed them to draw water out of the ground.
“This is ingenuity and innovation at its finest and we need to remember that,” Kirkendall said. “It’s a big reason why we are here.”
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Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-03-24-13 0505GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
A windmill in South Dakota. Image by Patrick Bolduan. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Col. Charles Young. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama is designating five new national monuments, using executive authority to protect historic or ecologically significant sites – including one in Delaware sought by Vice President Joe Biden.
The White House said Obama would make the designations Monday, using the century-old Antiquities Act to protect unique natural and historic landmarks. The sites are Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico; First State National Monument in Delaware; Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument in Maryland; Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio; and San Juan Islands National Monument in Washington state.
The Delaware monument, commemorating the state’s history and preserving about 1,100 acres near Wilmington, is the first step toward creating a national park in Delaware, the only state not included in the national park system. The project is a longtime priority for Biden, a former senator from Delaware.
“This national monument will tell the story of the essential role my state played in the history of the United States,” Biden said in a statement. “I couldn’t be more proud to call Delaware home.”
The largest site is Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico, where Obama will designate nearly 240,000 acres for protection. The site includes wildlife habitat valued by hunters and anglers; rafting, camping, and other recreation, and is prized by the region’s Hispanic and tribal groups.
Advocates say the new monument in New Mexico, to be run by the U.S Bureau of Land Management, will contribute an estimated $15 million a year in economic benefits to the area.
The San Juan Islands monument off Washington’s northwest coast includes roughly 1,000 acres of public land already managed by the BLM. Supporters say the designation will protect important cultural and historical areas and safeguard natural areas used for recreation and other purposes.
The Arlington, Va.-based Conservation Fund donated property on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the National Park Service to help tell the story of Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Tubman escaped slavery at age 27 but returned to Maryland’s Dorchester and Caroline counties to help slaves escape to the North.
The Charles Young monument near Xenia, Ohio, recognizes and celebrates Col. Charles Young, a West Point graduate who was the first black national park superintendent. Young was the highest-ranking black officer in the U.S. Army until his death in 1922.
The new monuments would be the first designated by Obama in his second term. Obama created four national monuments in his first term: The Cesar E. Chavez and Fort Ord national monuments in California; Fort Monroe National Monument in Virginia; and Chimney Rock in Colorado.
Supporters called the monument designations especially important at a time of partisan gridlock over wilderness issues. No new wilderness areas were approved in the last Congress, the first time lawmakers have failed to create new wilderness since the 1960s.
“Understanding that Congress is broken, The Wilderness Society is very pleased to see President Obama taking important steps toward putting conservation on equal ground with energy development,” said Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society. “Protecting our lands and waters can’t wait.”
The New Mexico project in particular is crucial, Williams and other environmentalists said, because it includes some of the most ecologically significant lands in the state, most notably Ute Mountain, which towers over the region and provides habitat for the elk, bald eagle, peregrine falcon, great horned owl and other species.
The monument designations follow a call from former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to put conservation on equal ground with energy development on public lands. Babbitt said in a speech last month that for every acre of public land leased to the oil and gas industry, an acre should be permanently protected for future generations.
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Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-03-23-13 0046GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Col. Charles Young. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.The Col. Charles Young house, built in 1864, is located along U.S. Route 42 between Xenia and Wilberforce, Ohio. Image by Nyttend, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The dome of the Vigo County Courthouse in Terre Haute, Ind. Image by Huw Williams, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) – Despite receiving a multi-million-dollar facelift a few years ago, there is still plenty of history inside the walls of the Vigo County Courthouse.
One striking piece of that history is now on display inside a large glass case on the courthouse ground floor – the 19th century machinery that operated the massive courthouse clock.
As with many local government structures, the Vigo County Courthouse features a big clock in its towering dome, more than 200 feet above the ground. For most of the past 120-plus years, that giant clock, which faces north, east, south and west, kept time thanks to the cast-iron clockworks assembled in New England not long after the Civil War.
On direction from the Vigo County Commissioners, county maintenance workers and employees of Smith’s Bell and Clock Service of Mooresville, Ind., the massive machinery was dismantled, carefully carried down steep iron stairs and then reassembled on the ground floor of the courthouse. It is now standing inside a large glass case for anyone to see.
“It’s pretty unique,” said Jake Compton, director of maintenance for the historic courthouse, which was constructed in the 1880s. It took five people most of a full day to move the clock from the tower to the ground floor, he told The Tribune-Star.
The clock was installed in the courthouse in time for the building’s opening in 1888, said Mike McCormick, a Vigo County historian.
For more than a century, the clockworks stood inside the courthouse dome with four, long iron rods extending to the faces of the four clock faces. Those rods slowly rotated, moving the hands on all four clock faces at the same time, Compton said.
The company that made the clock in the 1880s, the E. Howard Clock Co. of Boston, Mass., guaranteed it to operate for 200 years, Compton said. It was still functioning about two years ago when the county switched to a fully electronic system, he said.
For many decades, it was necessary for someone to climb the steep stairs into the tower to wind the clock every day, Compton noted. He also discovered original instructions for oiling and maintaining the machinery, which will also eventually become part of the courthouse display.
E. Howard Clock Co. was a nationwide supplier of large, sophisticated clocks in the latter half of the 19th Century. According to documents Compton uncovered in studying the clock’s history, the company also sold clocks in the 1880s to Rose-Hulman (then called Rose-Polytechnic) and H.F. Schmidt, a jeweler, watchmaker and engraver in Terre Haute. Courthouses and town halls in several Indiana cities had or have E. Howard clocks, including Indianapolis, Greencastle, Danville and Vincennes.
The heavy clock was disassembled and moved downstairs in early March. In doing the job, workers took photographs and labeled the parts carefully so they could reassemble the clock, Compton noted. They were also dealing with some heavy materials. The cast iron base of the clock weighs an estimated 500 pounds, he said.
Today, the clock atop the courthouse dome is operated by small electronic boxes behind each clock face. And an electronic signal now cause the big bell two floors below to mark the hours.
Vigo County Commissioner Mike Ciolli was the driving force behind moving the old clock from the tower to the ground floor of the Courthouse, a job that cost the county about $3,000, including the glass and wooden case in which the clock is on display, he said.
“It’s something numerous people have been interested in seeing,” Ciolli said of the antique. But getting most people up the narrow stairs into the tower is “almost impossible,” so putting it on display seemed like a good solution, he said. The alternative was to leave it in the tower to deteriorate over time, he said.
“It’s part of the history of the courthouse,”Ciolli said of the old clock. “I just felt we should share it.”
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Information from: Tribune-Star, http://www.tribstar.com
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-03-23-13 1808GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The dome of the Vigo County Courthouse in Terre Haute, Ind. Image by Huw Williams, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
