Image courtesy of Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin.
AUSTIN, Texas – The exhibition “Radical Transformation: Magnum Photos into the Digital Age,” featuring over 450 photographs, books, magazines, films and videos, opens Sept. 10 at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. An opening celebration will be Friday, Sept. 20.
The symposium “Magnum Photos into the Digital Age,” to be held Oct. 25–27, brings together photographers, curators and historians to discuss the ways in which Magnum Photos has continually reinvented itself from the moment of its founding. Twelve Magnum photographers, some of whom rarely give public lectures, will participate in panel discussions focusing on the cooperative’s evolution and future.
Magnum members scheduled to appear include Christopher Anderson, Bruno Barbey, Jim Goldberg, Josef Koudelka, Alex Majoli, Susan Meiselas, Mark Power, Moises Saman, Alec Soth and Chris Steele-Perkins, as well as Magnum CEO Giorgio Psacharopulo. The symposium presents a unique opportunity to hear directly from individual Magnum members as they show and explain how their own work has evolved along with broad changes in the way photographs are created, distributed and viewed, as well as share their opinions and ideas on the future of Magnum.
Opening Oct. 22, will be the special exhibition “Eli Reed: The Lost Boys of Sudan,” a selection of 12 photographs showcasing UT’s own Magnum photographer, Eli Reed, professor in the School of Journalism.
Also, the Harry Ransom Center has partnered with Magnum photographer Alec Soth and writer Brad Zellar to bring The LBM Dispatch, their irregularly published, independent newspaper, to Texas. Soth and Zellar will begin an excursion around Texas in November, working in the mode of small town newspaper reporters as they explore the state’s faces, voices, places and stories. They will share the results of these wanderings in a pop-up show on Dec. 6.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Image courtesy of Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin.
NEW YORK – The inaugural exhibition of the newly renovated Costume Institute in spring 2014 will examine the career of legendary 20th-century Anglo-American couturier Charles James (1906–1978). “Charles James: Beyond Fashion,” on view from May 8 through Aug. 10, 2014 (preceded on May 5 by the Costume Institute Benefit), will be presented in two locations–the Costume Institute’s new galleries as well as special exhibitions galleries on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first floor.
The exhibition will explore James’s design process and his use of sculptural, scientific, and mathematical approaches to construct revolutionary ball gowns and innovative tailoring that continue to influence designers today.
“Charles James considered himself an artist, and approached fashion with a sculptor’s eye and a scientist’s logic,” said Thomas P. Campbell. director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “As such, the museum, and in particular, the new Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Gallery in the Costume Institute, offer the ideal setting in which to contextualize the complexity of James’s work.”
In celebration of the new Costume Institute and the exhibition, the museum’s Costume Institute Benefit will take place on Monday, May 5, 2014. The evening’s Chair will be Aerin Lauder. Co-Chairs will be Bradley Cooper, Oscar de la Renta, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch and Anna Wintour. This event is the Costume Institute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, acquisitions and capital improvements.
“Charles James was a wildly idiosyncratic, emotionally fraught fashion genius who was also committed to teaching,” said Harold Koda, curator in charge of the Costume Institute. “He dreamt that his lifetime of personal creative evolution and the continuous metamorphosis of his designs would be preserved as a study resource for students. In our renovated galleries, we will fulfill his goal, and illuminate his design process as a synthesis of dressmaking, art, math and science.”
IOLA, Wis. — Antique Trader Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide 2014 — America’s No. 1 selling fine art and collectibles price guide four years running — is now on sale with new collecting categories, market analysis and special features.
This year marks the 30th anniversary for the price guide, and it is fully updated with more than 4,500 color photographs, descriptions and real-time market values. At 816 pages, it explains and illustrates a broad range of antiques and collectibles, from art glass to Wild West memorabilia. Once again at the helm is Eric Bradley, public relations associate with Heritage Auctions and former editor of Antique Trader magazine.
“For this very special 30th-anniversary edition of the Antique Trader Price Guide, we chart the dramatic changes taking place in how people collect, where dealers source inventory and why auction houses set records year after year,” Bradley said. “What we found may surprise longtime collectors: several categories are enjoying a renaissance and fascinating discoveries taking place every year are inspiring new collectors. Each entry is guaranteed to be illustrated with a full-color photo so collectors can enjoy the form and function of more than 4,500 antiques and collectibles.”
“We work to make the Antique Trader Price Guide dependable but never predictable, and this very special 30th-anniversary year’s edition is more than just a valuable identification guide to the wide world of fine art and collectibles,” Bradley said. “It’s also an entertaining read that will teach everyone something new about the precious objects they love.”
New categories of this edition include:
• Circus Collectibles
• Antique and Vintage Firearms
• Salesman’s Samples
• Science & Technology
• Transistor Radios
• Western Art
Antique Trader Antiques & Collectibles 2014 Price Guide retails for $22.99 and is available at booksellers nationwide, local antiques shops, and directly from the publisher (Krause Publications) online at www.KrauseBooks.com or by calling 855-864-2579 (M-F 8a.m. – 5 p.m.)
Eric Bradley works in public relations for Heritage Auctions, the largest auction house founded in the United States and the world’s third largest. A lifelong student of antiques, Bradley served as editor of Antique Trader magazine, AntiqueTrader.com and the Antique Trader Blog. In addition to writing hundreds of articles on antiques, collecting and the trade, Bradley has made several media appearances as an expert on the antiques and collectibles market. His work has received press from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Bradley is an avid collector of American art pottery, folk art, and WWII homefront collectibles.
Como Bluff, Wyo., site of numerous important dinosaur discoveries in the late 1800s. Anky-man at the English language Wikipedia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
RAWLINS, Wyo. (AP) – Though built in 1933, the Fossil Cabin near the dinosaur graveyard at Como Bluff is billed as the “Oldest Building in the World.”
That’s because the building, located just inside the Carbon County line on U.S. Route 30, is made primarily of petrified dinosaur bones unearthed from Como Bluff.
According to the National Registry of Historic Places, a University of Wyoming dinosaur specialist concluded that the bones were of “a variety of species but that the bone collection did not include a complete specimen.”
The building reportedly weighs 102,116 pounds and contains 5,796 dinosaur bones with a small amount of rock.
Thomas Boylan, the man responsible for the cabin, came to Wyoming in 1892 and after working as a cowboy for several years, filed for a homestead near Como Bluff in 1908. He began collecting bones in 1916.
According to Phil Roberts, a University of Wyoming history professor, Boylan had originally intended to piece the bones together and erect them as sculptures as a roadside attraction to his soon-to-be-open gas station on the highway.
“At first I planned to get enough of them together to mount a complete dinosaur skeleton,” he told a reporter in 1938. “However, erecting such a skeleton is a long and costly task for an individual to undertake.”
Boylan and his son completed the cabin just in time for “tourist season” in 1933 and established the gas station near the cabin, the Rawlins Daily Times reported.
“The Fossil Cabin is a relic of a bygone era of motorized travel when petting zoos and buildings made of dinosaur bones could entice a driver to stop and gas up,” NRHP’s page on the cabin reads.
The cabin gained national attention in 1938 when Robert L. Ripley called it the “world’s oldest cabin” in his nationally syndicated feature, Believe It or Not.
Boylan also dubbed the cabin the “Creation Museum” and the “Building that used to walk” on his postcards to advertise the cabin.
When Boylan died in 1947, his widow Gracey continued to operate the gas station and cabin museum.
With the completion of Interstate 80 in 1970, traffic on Route 30 dropped sharply, wiping out 82 businesses in the area including Boylan’s gas station, according to an article for Wren Magazine by Medicine Bow resident and historian Marvin Cronberg.
In 1973, Gracey Boylan sold the cabin to Paul and Jody Fultz of Medicine Bow. The Fultzes ran the cabin as a museum during the summer months for many years until they started taking visitors by appointment only in the 1990s.
The cabin reopened to the public in 2001 when Mike Lewis took over as new curator. As of 2013, it is closed due to the “pending acquisition of a suitable manager,” according to the Town of Medicine Bow, the closet town to the cabin.
According to the NRHP, a man from North Carolina offered to buy the building, intending to move it to North Carolina.
“The idea that the Fossil Cabin could be moved to North Carolina, so out of context, is amusing but also indicative of just how underappreciated it is on its home turf. It would be unfortunate if Wyoming loses its most significant piece of roadside architecture, one so evocative of an earlier time and directly related to the first transcontinental highway,” the NRHP concluded.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-09-03-13 0157GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Como Bluff, Wyo., site of numerous important dinosaur discoveries in the late 1800s. Anky-man at the English language Wikipedia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Fitters prepare an M2A4 light tank that has just arrived at a British ordnance depot. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
PINEVILLE, La. (AP) – An engineer battalion from the Fort Polk Army base that has been clearing land for a small arms range at the National Guard’s Camp Beauregard in Pineville has uncovered a World War II-era tank.
Richard Moran, the curator for the Camp Beauregard Louisiana Military Maneuvers Museum, tells The Town Talk that the tank is either an M2A4 or an M3 Stuart tank. Moran says it is one of the earliest tanks mass produced for World War II.
The tank is small by Army tank standards. It holds only three soldiers. It had been converted for nonmilitary use and was likely used as a tractor after the war.
It was discovered by the 687th Engineer Company, 46th Engineer Battalion, First Maneuver Enhancement Brigade.
“It had no armor on the front and no guns in the turret,” Moran said. “The guns could have been removed, or it could have been one that never had a gun because it was used for maneuvers.”
The tank is now in storage at Camp Beauregard, and Moran is researching its history. Restoration is planned but Moran said there is no way to estimate how long it will take.
“It’s going to be a wonderful journey,” he said. “Our sister museum at Jackson Barracks (New Orleans) has an M5, which is a later war tank. If this tank is an M2A4, if it’s the earlier version, it will really be unique. There weren’t that many of them made. But, if it’s and M3, there were 15- to 20,000 of them made.”
Regardless of the type, the tank is still an important part of Louisiana’s military history.
“It’s a model of a tank used during the time of the Louisiana Maneuvers,” Moran said. “And, it’s an example of a tank that was demilitarized. I’ve never seen (a demilitarized tank). That’s enough for me.”
One of the soldiers who discovered the tank was 2nd Lt. G’Nelle Franklin, who said she believes her battalion made an important contribution to history.
“I can’t wait to come back here and see it at the museum,” she said.
Thomas Paine, oil painting by Auguste Millière, circa 1876 after an engraving by William Sharp. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. (AP) – He helped inspire the American Revolution, but Thomas Paine suffered a broad range of indignities afterward: Political cartoonists lampooned him, he was denied the right to vote and a coin was minted that pictured him in a noose.
After his death, his body was dug up and lost and the gravesite was paved over.
As for his writings and personal effects, “His archives, like his bones, have been scattered,” one scholar said.
But now a historic endangered collection, including first editions of Common Sense, Paine’s eyeglasses and locks of his hair, has found a safe new home at Iona College in the New York City suburbs, barely a mile from what was once Paine’s farm.
When the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies formally opens Sept. 9 at Iona, it will be a widely welcomed resolution to a battle over the fate of the memorabilia.
“I’m just delighted,” said Martin Levitt, library director at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, which also has a world-class Paine collection. “Paine is the most misunderstood of the Founding Fathers, sort of the black sheep, and making more of his lifetime work available to scholars is going to be a tremendous improvement.”
Paine is best known for writing Common Sense, a hugely popular pro-Revolution pamphlet that was credited with building enthusiasm for the war and encouraging volunteers for the Continental Army. And his “Crisis” writings helped stiffen American resolve during the difficult war.
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” he wrote during the first winter of the Revolution.
But despite the success of the war, Paine’s popularity soon plummeted over his part in the French Revolution, his writings against organized religion and his letter denouncing George Washington and federalism.
Theodore Roosevelt called Paine a “filthy little atheist,” though modern scholars say he believed in God—but not churches. “My religion is to do good,” he wrote.
“He’s still being argued about today,” said Scott Cleary, faculty director of the new institute.
The collection, 300 or so pieces amassed since 1884 by the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, is to serve as the basis of courses and conferences at Iona, which has already established a minor in Thomas Paine Studies.
Daniel Guiney, an Iona senior from Hastings-on-Hudson who took one of the new Paine courses last year, said, “I kind of stumbled onto it, but I really got the Paine bug. … I’m almost sorry I’ll be graduating soon because I’d like to do the minor.”
The collection will be accessible to students and outside scholars and to the public in rotating displays in Iona’s sleek, climate-controlled Ryan Library.
In contrast, many of the prize pieces spent recent years locked in a huge safe in a back room at the historical association’s 1925 building in New Rochelle as members tried to protect them from deteriorating conditions, said Gary Berton, a former president.
“I was horrified,” said Brad Mulkern, now the president and executive director of the association, recalling his first visit to the building. “The roof had holes in it, it was leaking through the ceiling. … I just couldn’t believe stuff that was so priceless was so exposed. I mean, this is Thomas Paine, the man who called for revolution.”
The association’s board sold some valuable pieces to raise money for repairs, which brought complaints and an investigation by the state attorney general’s office. Eventually, the collection was sent to the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan.
The move to Manhattan didn’t sit well with some in New Rochelle, Paine being a local boy. Meanwhile, just down the street from association headquarters, Iona was undertaking an archive to store its collection of Irish history. The college people and the Paine people got together and the idea of an institute was born—and court approved.
“It was just serendipitous,” Mulkern said. “Before, I was heartbroken. Now, I couldn’t be happier. It’s a win for the community, it’s a win for Iona and it’s a win for Thomas Paine.”
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-09-02-13 1642GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Thomas Paine, oil painting by Auguste Millière, circa 1876 after an engraving by William Sharp. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
