The Chicago International Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, to be held at Navy Pier in April, should have clear sailing after the cancellation of the Merchandise Mart’s antiques show. Image by Banpei. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
CHICAGO – The Merchandise Mart’s Chicago International Antiques and Fine Art Fair has been canceled, according to a report in the Chicago Business Journal.
The cancellation brings an end to the 16-year-old show, which was scheduled for April 26-29. The show’s demise opens the door for the new Navy Pier show known as the Chicago International Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, produced by the Palm Beach Show Group.
Last May, the Merchandise Mart antiques fair said its show would go on as scheduled after the Palm Beach Show Group announced its new Navy Pier show would be held on the same dates.
The new Chicago International Art, Antique & Jewelry Show will run April 24-28. It will feature more than 100 exhibitors showcasing fine art, antique and estate jewelry, Asian antiquities, sculpture, textiles, American and European silver, furniture and contemporary art.
Gottlieb’s 1975 Spin Out pinball game is among the classic machines that can be played at the Seattle Pinball Museum. Image courtesy of LiveAucitoneers.com Archive and RM Auctions. SEATTLE (AP) – For $13, you can play pinball until your arms fall off at Seattle’s working pinball museum.
The two-story storefront in Seattle’s International District is filled with games from every era from the 1960s to today.
The museum, which houses about 50 or so machines, started in 2010 as one couple’s obsession and grew to be something they wanted to share with others, or as Cindy Martin puts it: a good solution when they ran out of space in their garage.
“Any serious collector will tell you collecting these machines is an incurable disease,” said Charlie Martin, her husband and business partner.
They keep the equipment fixed up – with some help from other collectors – offer brief historical information and “fun” ratings on small cards above the games and sell snacks, beer and soda to visitors from around the world.
The Seattle museum is one of a handful around the country celebrating a pastime that seems to be in the midst of revival.
In addition to the look back at pinball through the ages, the 1,900-square-foot space also features a glimpse of the future. In December, four one-of-a-kind artist-made machines were on display and – of course – were playable.
The Martins own dozens more pinball machines and constantly move machines in and out. The oldest machine in the building was made in 1963, but they have a few from the 1930s they keep at home.
The Martins continue to buy the newest pinball machines on the commercial market and just installed a state-of-the-art Star Trek game. Many of their machines are limited edition models, but games enthusiasts are also likely to find a favorite machine from their youth.
The museum, which isn’t a nonprofit, averages about 15,000 visitors a year. It isn’t a profitable operation, although Charlie Martin said they’re “holding steady.” Both Charlie and Cindy Martin also continue to work full-time jobs.
It’s smaller and less well known than the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas or the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, Calif., but Charlie Martin said they’re happy staying small. “We’re very comfortable with where we’re at right now,” he said. “We don’t want a mob scene.”
A couple from the Seattle area spending a day holiday shopping in Seattle and acting like tourists made a stop at the museum recently.
“This was the No. 1 thing we wanted to do,” said Lisa Nordeen, of Kirkland, Wash. She and her husband John spent two hours at the museum, as long as their parking meter allowed and until they started thinking about lunch.
Richard Dyer, a University of Washington law student from Chicago, brought out-of-town visitors to the museum.
Decorated truck in Islamabad. Image by Baptiste Marcel, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. KARACHI, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistan’s truck artists, who transform ugly lorries into flamboyant moving works of art, fear boom times for their trade could be at an end as NATO winds down its mission in Afghanistan.
The workhorses of the Pakistani haulage industry are often ageing, patched-up Bedford and Dodge models, but almost without exception they are lavishly decorated.
Elaborate colorful designs, calligraphy, portraits of heroes and singers, mirrors and jingling tassels are skillfully worked onto the trucks by artists such as Haider Ali.
In his open-air workshop in the heart of Karachi, a goat or two browsing the dusty ground, Ali sketches out a design for a boat.
Others include horses, partridges, tigers, the faces of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto or singer Attaullah Khan Esakhelvi.
“The design depends on the owner of the truck. Everyone wants his truck to be different from everyone else’s,” Ali, who left school to follow his father Mohammad into the truck art business, told AFP.
Truck art has become one of Pakistan’s most distinctive cultural exports in recent years, but it is still not highly regarded at home.
“The higher echelons of society don’t call it art but craft – or anything else, just not art,” said Ali.
Call it what you will, decorating trucks is big business – haulage firms and lorry owners shell out $5,000, even $10,000 a time to have their vehicles adorned.
It can take a team of half a dozen artists nearly six weeks to decorate a truck, not just painting but working up intricate arabesque collages of laminated stickers.
Jamal Elias, a truck art expert from Penn State University, said it represents the largest art sector of the Pakistani economy.
“You can’t say the gallery world or textile design begins to compare in size,” he told AFP.
But in Pakistan, he said, the artists “are never going to be treated as real artists as long as the social structure remains the way it is.”
Boom turning to bust
For the past decade, hauliers in Pakistan have been making money by ferrying supplies for the NATO mission in neighboring, landlocked Afghanistan from the port of Karachi.
Profits from this work have meant they have been happy to spend on decorating their vehicles, but with NATO withdrawing from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the artists fear the good times could be over.
“There was a great deal of demand because of NATO trucking, and everyone was trying to get the work, but the decline has already started,” said Ali.
Noor Hussain, 76, who has been painting trucks in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad, for 65 years, shares his fears.
“We’re afraid that because of the decrease in trucks circulating, people will lose their jobs in our business,” he told AFP.
“Because if there are fewer lorries in circulation, we will have fewer to decorate.”
Mumtaz Ahmed, another Karachi artist, said business surged under the rule of former army dictator Pervez Musharraf, who gave Pakistan’s support to the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
A foretaste of what might happen came in late 2011 and 2012, when the Pakistan government shut NATO’s supply routes through its territory for several months in protest at a botched U.S. air raid that killed 24 soldiers at a border post.
“We felt a real slowdown when there was the ban on NATO supplies,” said Ahmed.
“Things are just getting better now. NATO has meant a good boom for us.”
But in a country with a stagnant economy and galloping inflation, why bother spending so much just to decorate a lorry?
“It shows our pride, our love for our job and also that our trucks are in good condition and attractive,” said Mir Hussain, who was about to spend a small fortune repairing and redecorating a truck.
The more a lorry grabs the attention with its beauty, the better its owner thinks it will attract clients, though most contracts are granted without regard to looks.
Perhaps the real reason behind the slightly shaky logic is the simple love of man for his machine.
“His wife may be dying of hunger at home in the village, but the driver will still go ahead and have his truck decorated,” said mechanic Sajid Mahmood.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Decorated truck in Islamabad. Image by Baptiste Marcel, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Michael Dezer began his collection of vintage vehicles with Vespa scooters, like this 50-year-old 150 GL. Image by Christian Scheja. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. NORTH MIAMI, Fla. (AP) – The classic cars lined up against an empty, vintage gas station along a busy street in North Miami attract visitors to a much larger space right behind it.
More than 1,000 cars are on display at the 250,000-square-foot Miami Auto Museum at the Dezer Collection that includes American classics, military and electric cars, bicycles and more. The museum is so large that if every passenger on three Boing 747 airplanes were given just one item from the museum, they could all bike, drive or pedal their way out, said curator Myles Kornblatt.
There are eight galleries spread throughout two large buildings in a part of Miami not known to showcase collectibles, much less $25 million to $30 million worth of one-of-a-kind vehicles.
“We are a bit of a hidden gem,” Kornblatt said.
Jorge Ivan Vergara Salazar, who came from Colombia to Miami on a family vacation, recently visited the museum and said he was surprised to find so many rare cars under one roof.
“Everything that you see in television, like James Bond and Indiana Jones, those are all marvelous things. You get astonished by the things that are here in America,” Salazar, 49, said in Spanish while touring the museum.
Real estate developer Michael Dezer, 72, started his massive collection as a teenager and has one of the largest Vespa scooter collections in the world.
“I knew it was original before I showed up,” said AJ Palmgren, a self-proclaimed Knight Rider historian who traveled from Des Moines, Iowa, to Florida for a family vacation. He made sure to stop at the museum on this trip because the television series about the talking, crime-fighting car has been his passion since the day it first aired Sept. 26, 1982.
“It’s very familiar. I’ve studied all of the remaining surviving original cars,” he said while standing next to KITT, the black Pontiac Trans Am that was featured in the popular television series.
The museum houses the largest collection of micro cars on display, including a Velorex made in Czechoslovakia. Some are so small that they could barely accommodate one person, yet many were known for carrying two or three.
There’s also a Duesenberg Model X from 1927, a sedan car with a rear windshield to shield the backseat passengers. It is just one of five known to still exist.
Among the most popular galleries at the museum is the Hollywood Cars of the Stars exhibit, which showcases cars, submarines, airplanes and more that were featured in movies, including the BMW motorcycle from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the Mitsubishi Eclipse from the Fast and the Furious film in 2001, which was the first car the late Paul Walker drove in the film series.
The Batboat used in the Batman television series that aired during the 1960s was signed by the builder, George Barris, and the Batmobile (also a Barris creation) is also on display.
The museum also houses the largest collection of everything James Bond, including the Aston Martin sports car he drove in 1964’s Goldfinger and a massive glass enclosure filled with rows of books, toy cars and figurines.
“There were no James Bond vehicles that really survived the first film, so you have to get to the second one,” Kornblatt said. And that film was 1963’s From Russia with Love. The boat featured in that film with Sean Connery is “the oldest surviving James Bond movie vehicle,” Kornblatt said.
Some of the items in the museum are replicas, including the Cadillac from Ghostbusters. But a majority of the cars at the museum are originals.
“The replicas are sort of like a great side dish because we have so many originals,” Kornblatt said. “It’s the idea that at some point, whether kids or enthusiasts, there’s going to be something that makes them say, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen one of those before.’ And people still walk away very happy with what they see.”
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If You Go:
Miami Auto Museum at The Dezer Collection (http://www.dezercollection.com/ ). Open Monday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The museum is located off Biscayne Boulevard in North Miami, about 7 miles south of Aventura, Fla., and 13 miles northeast of Miami Beach.
Admission is $25 for adults and $10 for children under 12 to see one of the buildings or $40/$10 to see the entire collection. Children younger than 5 are admitted free. The museum offers special rates for groups, and Florida residents are also given a discount.
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-12-27-13 1709GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Michael Dezer began his collection of vintage vehicles with Vespa scooters, like this 50-year-old 150 GL. Image by Christian Scheja. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
These pilots leaving their aircraft at the four engine school at Lockbourne AAF, Ohio, are members of a group of Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) who have been trained to ferry B-17 Flying Fortresseses. From the left are Frances Green, Margaret Kirchner, Ann Waldner and Blanche Osborn. U.S. Air Force photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Even with enough artifacts to fill a growing number of buildings, the National World War II Museum’s collections have some gaping holes. Those include items from the Holocaust, the first U.S. engagement with German troops, and the women who flew military airplanes to the front, freeing male pilots to fight.
Although the museum’s 100,000-plus artifacts include belongings from about 900 women in other services and the home front, its only illustration of the Women Airforce Service Pilots is a single shoulder patch embroidered with a winged Disney character. It came from a patch collector, without information about the pilot who wore it, said Toni M. Kiser, assistant director of collections and exhibits.
What she’d like is a uniform, a log book, a flight jacket or other artifact with information about its owner. “We like to collect the personal story that goes along with any gear, any uniform, any helmet,” she said.
The WASP trained more than 1,000 pilots starting in November 1942; the last graduation was in December 1944.
“There just weren’t nearly as many WASP as there were women in other service branches. They also weren’t recognized as a service branch for a long time. They had to really fight to be recognized for their work,” Kizer said.
Furthermore, each woman had to buy her own gear. “There was no standard issue gear, so there was no surplus,” Kizer said.
The Holocaust is another “particularly spare” area for the museum, said curator Kimberly Guise.
“We would be overjoyed to get any material connected to the camps,” she said.
Guise said the museum’s few concentration camp artifacts include a jacket without information about its wearer.
The permanent home for Holocaust artifacts would be the museum’s sixth and final building, to be called the Liberation Pavilion. It hasn’t been started. The fifth building, showcasing the European and Pacific theaters, is scheduled to open in November 2014 with The Road to Berlin, and its second floor – The Road to Tokyo – opening in summer 2015.
Guise would also like more items from Japanese troops, Japanese-American troops, and the 100,000-plus Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps, such as clothing or anything else made in the internment camps and a senninbari or – “thousand-stitch belt” – a good-luck talisman given to one of the 33,000 Japanese-American soldiers who went to war.
Senninbari are “handmade Shinto religious items – something that’s particularly evocative,” Guise said.
The thousand or more knotted stitches, often red, were set in rows, drawings or other patterns. Each was sewn by a different woman – Japanese wartime postcards show women gathering stitches at a train station, a high-traffic location. Many were stamped with patterns, like embroidery kits.
“We have a couple collections of dictionaries used by Japanese-American translators and we have a couple uniforms but would certainly like to increase our collections in this area,” Guise said. The uniforms include one worn by a member of the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Japanese-American regiment in which the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye served.
The museum’s online list of what it wants includes “military and nonmilitary items made in Japan during the war and occupation,” but asks for a photo before any decision is made. “We are no longer accepting katanas or samurai swords,” it states.
As the museum has filled up its existing buildings and reduced its acquisitions budget, it’s shifted from actively hunting for artifacts, said Tom Czekanski, director of collections and exhibits.
“For example, we wanted a light tank. … We would continually check through assorted websites and e-Bay and chat boards and things where people would offer stuff like that for sale,” he said. After nine years, it got an M3A1 Stuart, which is currently in the shop to fix oil leaks.
As for money, he said, “Right now we don’t have a budget for acquisitions. So our principal means of working on acquiring those items are more passive. We have a list on our website …”
That online list is general, except for specific Axis pistols and rifles.
Curator Eric Rivet estimated that the museum has more than 100 artifacts, mostly photographs, papers and oral histories, to illuminate the story of African-American war service. “In terms of actual three-dimensional objects – uniforms, that kind of thing – it’s very small,” he said.
Gear used by a member of the Tuskegee Airmen or the USS Mason – the first U.S. Navy ship with an African-American crew – also would be appreciated.
A canteen from the Battle of the Kasserine Pass in North Africa and a worker’s badge from the Manhattan Project would gratify curator Larry Decuers.
The Battle of the Kasserine Pass was the first time U.S. forces faced German troops. “We had more troops involved in the battle than the Germans did. But the Germans were battle-hardened at that point and we weren’t,” said Decuers.
The 30,000 U.S. troops retreated 50 miles in days, taking heavy losses.
A canteen would illustrate the desert environment, “But again, I think if we had anything from that specific battle it would be a big score for us.”
Czekanski’s wish list includes correspondent Ernie Pyle’s typewriter and a rivet gun used during the war at the Boeing company’s Seattle plant.
If he had to choose, he’d go for the rivet gun. “This museum has always been about the common man. And while Ernie Pyle certainly reflects the view of the common man, (the gun) would be an even more common piece.”
The armed forces’ 16 million men and women made a great sacrifice, but “none would have been done without the arsenal of democracy – products made in the United States and shipped to our services and allies all over the world,” Czekanski said.
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-01-01-14 1910GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
These pilots leaving their aircraft at the four engine school at Lockbourne AAF, Ohio, are members of a group of Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) who have been trained to ferry B-17 Flying Fortresseses. From the left are Frances Green, Margaret Kirchner, Ann Waldner and Blanche Osborn. U.S. Air Force photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Ruins of the temple of Khnum at the southern point of Elephantine Island where the Aswan Museum is located. Image by Claude Vallette. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.
CAIRO (AP) – Nearly a hundred small artifacts, some dating back to the time of the pharaohs, have gone missing from a museum in southern Egypt, officials said Wednesday.
The Ministry of Antiquities said 96 artifacts, mostly small figurines and beads, disappeared from the Aswan Museum’s storehouse.
Employees noticed a number of artifacts missing, the statement said. A committee looking into the objects’ disappearance checked the storehouse’s inventory and found that the lock on the inner door had been broken.
Officials in Aswan said the disappearance was a first for the museum, which hasn’t experienced the thefts that have plagued some other museums around the country throughout the unrest of the past three years. They said evidence pointed to an insider theft.
They spoke anonymously as they weren’t authorized to brief the press,
Egypt’s ancient treasures have suffered during the aftermath of the uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. During the 18 days of protest that led to Mubarak stepping down, 51 pieces were stolen from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, located on the edge of Tahrir Square, the center of the uprising. Some have been recovered.
Not long after Mubarak left office on Feb, 11, 2011, a Jordanian man was caught trying to smuggle as many as 3,753 artifacts including pharaonic statues, Roman coins, and medieval jewelry out of the country, according to earlier statements by Interior Ministry officials.
There have also been a number of break-ins at antiquity storehouses around the country. In one of the largest thefts, in the city of Qantara on the Sinai peninsula, roughly 800 artifacts were damaged or stolen, with some subsequently recovered.
Located next to ruins on the tip of Elephantine Island in the Nile in Egypt’s southernmost city, the Aswan Museum holds artifacts from the southern region of Nubia.
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-01-01-14 1921GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Ruins of the temple of Khnum at the southern point of Elephantine Island where the Aswan Museum is located. Image by Claude Vallette. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.
