February 21, 2014 - Auction Central News

Dreweatts & Bloomsbury March 6 auction has Russian accent

Issue No. 3 of 'The USSR in Construction,' a photographic propaganda magazine published in the Soviet Union for foreign distribution. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.

LONDON – As the Sochi Winter Olympic Games focuses world attention on the future of Russia, Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions offer the opportunity to explore the country’s vivid history with a 19th century French book on Russian customs in their sale of Printed Books and Manuscripts on Thursday, March 6.

Les Peuples de la Russie is a celebrated work on the customs and costumes of the peoples of the Russian empire including Tartars, Caucasians and Mongols. This first edition, by Charles Rechberg and George Bernhard Deppin, was printed in Paris in 1813 and beautifully illustrated with 47 hand-colored plates as well as nine original illustrations. It is estimated to sell for £6,000-£8,000 [Lot 191] .

Internet live bidding will be facilitated by LiveAuctioneers.com.

A run of important illustrated magazines, The USSR in Construction, provides a focus on Russia’s modern history. Positively promoting the industrialization and collectivization of Stalinist Russia, they feature electric power plants, regional capitals, metals, agriculture and copper mining. Printed in Moscow in 1930 at the beginning of Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical leadership of the Soviet Union, the magazines are estimated at £300-£400.

The USSR in Construction was a photographic propaganda magazine published in the Soviet Union for foreign distribution that proclaimed to “reflect in photography the whole scope and variety of the construction work now going on in the USSR.” Employing the top writers, playwrights, photographers and graphic designers of the day, it was predominately designed as a foreign relations tool to promote the Soviet Union [Lot 139].

The most expensive work in the sale is Histoire Générale des Insects de Surinam et de Toute l’Europe by Maria Sibylla Merian, estimated to achieve £25,000-£35,000. This third edition was printed in Paris in 1771.

Merian, a German botanical artist, arrived in Surinam, South America, in 1699 and stayed until 1701 recording the plants and insects of the Dutch colony. The results of her research can be found in the Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, published in 1705 with 60 plates. Later editions included 23 additional plates by Merian’s daughter Johanna in the first volume, while the second volume recorded her later studies of European plants and insects.

The present work was produced by Desnos after he discovered the printing plates in a Paris auction. The plates display remarkable accuracy and include several species of plants and fruit new to Europeans. A third volume Des plantes bulbeueses, liliacées, caryophyllées with 69 plates was also published, but this is often found separately to those on insects [Lot 215].

A second edition of Johann Jacob Scheuchzer’s Herbarium Deluvianum Collectum, shares a preoccupation with the natural world. An important early work of paleobotany and the study of fossilized plants, it includes four additional plates not present in the first edition. It is estimated at £600-£800 [Lot 210].

The oldest work in the sale, Elementa, by the Greek mathematician and “Father of Geometry,” Euclid, is described by politian Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford as “possibly the most remarkable of all printed editions of Euclid.” The famous work is one of the most influential books on modern geology and mathematics and this first edition of the Arabic translation is ascribed to Nasir al-Din al-Tusi.

Euclid was a Greek mathematician active in Alexandria, Northern Egypt, during the reign of Ptolemy I (323-283 B.C.) his influential work remains in use by students today.

This Arabic edition of the book has an extra chapter, The Privilege of Sultan Murad III, which was added for its release in the Ottoman Empire. The work was printed at the press founded by Ferdinando de’ Medici under Pope Gregory XIII to disseminate works in Oriental languages [Lot 18].

A copy of Salvador Dalí’s Biblia Sacra, 1967-69, in five volumes, number 394 of 1499 “luxus” copies, includes 105 color lithographs by Dalí which form a magnificent set, in fine condition. The illustrated book was conceived by Dali’s friend and patron Dr. Giuseppe Albaretto as a new and entirely illustrated edition of the Bible. It is estimated to sell for £6,000-£8,000 [Lot 141].

View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bid absentee or live via the Internet as the sale is taking place by logging on to www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Printed in Paris in 1813, 'Les Peuples de la Russie' by Charles Rechberg and George Bernhard Deppin, is beautifully illustrated with 47 hand-colored plates nine original illustrations. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image. — Printed in Paris in 1813, ‘Les Peuples de la Russie’ by Charles Rechberg and George Bernhard Deppin, is beautifully illustrated with 47 hand-colored plates nine original illustrations. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.

The most expensive work in the sale is 'Histoire Générale des Insects de Surinam et de Toute l’Europe' by Maria Sibylla Merian, estimated to achieve £25,000-£35,000. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image. — The most expensive work in the sale is ‘Histoire Générale des Insects de Surinam et de Toute l’Europe’ by Maria Sibylla Merian, estimated to achieve £25,000-£35,000. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.

Met picks Dan Graham to create rooftop garden installation

Pavilion by Dan Graham in Berlin. Copyright BILD-BY, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

NEW YORK – American artist Dan Graham (born 1942, Urbana, Ill.) will create a site-specific installation atop the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden – the second in a new series of commissions for the outdoor site. The installation will comprise one of Graham’s unique steel and glass pavilions – structures for which he has been renowned since the early 1980s – set within a specially engineered landscape designed in collaboration with Swiss landscape architect Günther Vogt (born 1957, Balzers, Liechtenstein). Constructed of hedgerows and curves of two-way mirrored glass, the pavilion will be both transparent and reflective, creating a changing and visually complex environment for visitors. “The Roof Garden Commission: Dan Graham” will be on view from April 29 through Nov. 2, 2014 (weather permitting)

“For decades, Dan Graham has created work that challenges viewers to think in new and thought-provoking ways about the streets and cities they traverse every day. In his reimagining of the Met’s roof, visitors will discover a picturesque landscape that is at once unexpected and familiar,” said Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum.

“What Dan creates is a new form of quixotic landscape architecture that combines maker and community within a city environment,” said Sheena Wagstaff, the museum’s Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art. “It is work that draws paradoxically on formal 18th-century Northern European gardens, while also referencing the glossy sleekness of corporate skyscrapers and the American suburban vernacular.”

Since the publication of his landmark photo-essay “Homes for America” in 1966, Graham’s work has engaged with issues of urbanity, public space, and the viewer’s own experience within it through a multidisciplinary practice that includes writing, photography, video, performance, and the creation of sculptural environments of mirrored glass and metal. His 1976 entry for the Venice Biennale, Public Space/Two Audiences, disrupted the gallery space with a room split in two by a wall of mirrored glass. This transformed observers of the work into performers within it, and, through the sight of their own reflections, made them acutely aware of their own viewership. Graham’s site-specific pavilions of the years that followed built on the artist’s interest in engaging the public with the space and structures that surround them. With its spectacular views of the city skyline and Central Park, the museum’s Roof Garden presents a unique environment for Graham to further engage with notions of the city, its landscape and manufacture, and the role of the public within its spaces.

Born in 1942 in Urbana, Ill., and raised in Winfield Township, N.J., Dan Graham lives and works in New York City. Graham has been investigating the relationship between architectural environments and those who inhabit them since the late 1960s. His multifarious practice, which encompasses writing, photography, video, performance and the creation of sculptural environments, has influenced generations of artists. Graham’s glass pavilions have been realized in sites worldwide, particularly in Europe. The Roof Garden Commission: Dan Graham is the artist’s first major site-specific commission in New York City since his 1991 installation, Dan Graham: Rooftop Urban Park Project at Dia Center for the Arts. Graham has had retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Walker Art Center (2009-10); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2006); Museu Serralves, Porto (2001); Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1997); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1993); Kunsthalle Berne (1983); and the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (1981). He has participated in Documenta 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 (1972, 1977, 1982, 1992, and 1997). Among the numerous awards he has received are the Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation Award, Zurich (1992) and the French Vermeil Medal, Paris (2001). He also was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, in 2010.

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Museum exhibit examines fates of Confederate veterans

Please use the attached logo to go with the article about the Museum of the Confederacy, which is in Top News / Museums.

RICHMOND, Va. – The Museum of the Confederacy-Appomattox will host the opening of a new temporary exhibit titled: “When Johnny Comes Marching Home: Veterans in the Post-War South.”

Approximately 30 percent of the estimated 900,000 men who served in the Confederate army died in service; the other 70 percent returned home to their families, their jobs, their farms, and the rest of their lives. The years that Civil War soldiers spent in uniform shaped them. But the “Boys in Gray” returned to become the gray old men who rebuilt the South, dominated Southern society, business and politics for the ensuing half-century and commemorated their fallen comrades and heroes and the cause for which they fought.

Just as in wars of our own time, Civil War veterans who reentered society yet remained, as historian Bruce Catton described them, “men set apart.” Only other veterans could understand what they had endured.

This exhibit examines the lives of Confederate and Southern veterans as veterans, as citizens and as humans.

The Museum of the Confederacy-Appomattox is open 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., Sunday through Saturday. The museum is located at 159 Horseshoe Road, Appomattox, VA 24522.

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Please use the attached logo to go with the article about the Museum of the Confederacy, which is in Top News / Museums.

Il mercato dell’arte in Italia: Aste di Dipinti antichi

Lotto 59: ‘Bona Dea,’ II-III secolo D.C., Courtesy Wannenes Genova.

GENOVA, Italia – Le prossime aste di Wannenes, il 4 e il 5 marzo a Genova, raccolgono arredi, oggetti d’arte e dipinti di due galleristi italiani conosciuti: Claudio Zanettin, fondatore de “La Ruota” a Cortina d’Ampezzo e Gennaro Berger, antiquario di Roma.

Claudio Zanettin ha avuto un ruolo fondamentale a Cortina nell’arredare le case dell’alta borghesia. Dagli anni 50, infatti, quando la città ha ospitato le Olimpiadi invernali del 1956, Cortina ha accolto generazioni di imprenditori, nobili e star del jetset internazionale che hanno scelto questo posto come luogo favorito di ritiro, ed è stata inoltre set di film come la “Pantera rosa” con David Niven e Peter Seller, e “Solo per i tuoi occhi” con Roger Moore nei panni dell’agente 007 James Bond.

In questo contesto dorato, Zanettin, antiquario e interior designer, ha aperto la sua galleria nel 1975. Il suo gusto si è distinto per il carattere eclettico, effervescente e imprevedibile, capace di mischiare oggetti tra loro disparati e di contaminare i generi, esaltando comunque la peculiarità di ogni singolo manufatto. Ha creato numerose collezioni selezionando oggetti che non sono solo autentici, ma anche estrosi, originali, eccezionali, pieni di carattere, che hanno forza emblematica e metaforica.

Tra i suoi clienti ci sono stati nomi come Gianni Versace, Luca di Montezemolo, Pietro Barilla, Gianni e Nicole Bulgari, Elton John e Joan Collins.

Gli oggetti in vendita da Wannenes includono una consolle in legno intagliato e dorato del XVIII secolo (lotto 824, stima €2.000-3.000), una collezione di calamai in argento (lotti 783-798), tre figure di un presepe napoletano del Settecento raffiguranti i Re Magi (lotto 799, stima €1.000-€1.500), una coppia di tempere neoclassiche del XVIII secolo (lotto 708, stima €1.500-€2.000).

Gennaro Berger, invece, ha iniziato la sua carriera a metà degli anni 80 con l’apertura di un laboratorio di restauro ligneo che, nel giro di qualche anno, è diventato una galleria commerciale. Matematico mancato, si è distinto per la sobrietà del suo gusto. Le sue due gallerie a Roma, una in via Margutta e l’altra in Via dei Coronari, gestite insieme all’esperto di dipinti antichi Antonio Fratangeli e al conoscitore di oggetti d’arte e archeologici Nicola Marletta, hanno raccolto oggetti che spaziavano dalla pittura alla scultura, dall’archeologia agli oggetti da Wunderkammer.

Tra i pezzi interessanti dell’asta ci sono la “Bona Dea” romana in marmo (lotto 59, stima €15.000-€20.000), il frammento di sarcofago (lotto 65, stima €18.000-€22.000), il ritratto in miniatura ottocentesco di un giovane con occhiali di Jean Paulin Lassouquere (lotto 275, stima €150-€300), la coppia di torciere in legno intagliato e dorato del XVIII secolo (lotto 71, stima €2.000-€3.000) e la figura neoclassica di Andromeda in avorio (lotto 270, stima €800-€1.200).

Le due aste anticipano la vendita di Dipinti antichi e del XIX secolo di varie provenienze, il 6 marzo. Anche a quest’asta ci saranno opere interessanti come due tavole bolognesi del XVI secolo provenienti dalla collezione di Federico Mason Perkins, storico dell’arte statunitense, raffiguranti un episodio di profanazione (lotti 1110 e 1111, stima per entrambi di €15.000-€25.000).

Le due tavole rimandano ad un peculiare capitolo dell’iconografia poco studiato: erano immagini destinate ad essere esposte in luoghi di culto cristiano per indottrinare i fedeli e affermare il trionfo della chiesa sulla sinagoga. Erano temi diffusi particolarmente in Italia Centrale, nell’ambito dello Stato Pontificio, soprattutto tra il XV e il XVI secolo. Inoltre, queste opere furono studiate dal famoso storico dell’arte Federico Zeri che ha specificato l’origine bolognese-ferrarese dell’autore.

Altri tre dipinti testimoniano, invece, l’evoluzione della pittura nel primo Settecento, dal Barocco al Neoclassicismo. Si tratta di “Nascita della Vergine” di Francesco Solimena (lotto 1080, stima €15.000-€18.000), un’opera caratterizzata da una composizione narrativa e coreografica che risente della cultura teatrale dell’epoca; “Madonna col Bambino e Santi” di Carlo Innocenzo Carloni (lotto 1102, stima €2.400-€2.800), verosimilmente un bozzetto preparatorio per una pala d’altare che presenta un’estrema leggerezza pittorica; e infine una “Scena mitologica” da riferirsi alla Bologna settecentesca (lotto 1103, stima €6.000-€8.000).

Negli stessi giorni anche Babuino a Roma terrà una serie di aste di Arredi e dipinti antichi, del XIX secolo, antiquariato, argenteria e varia. Tra i maestri italiani ci saranno opere di Gian Paolo Pannini e Francesco Monti, ma anche nomi dell’Ottocento, un secolo che sta recuperando terreno sul mercato dell’arte.

Per esempio, ci sarà il “Ritratto di Matilde Tolomei” di Giovanni Boldini, amatissimo ritrattista della Parigi della Belle Epoque, che risale però agli anni precedenti al periodo parigino (lotto 332, stima €6.000-€9.000). Di Francesco Paolo Michetti viene offerto un piccolo dipinto con “Spiaggia” (lotto 345, €3.000-€4.000).

ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

Lotto 1080: Francesco Solimena, (1657-1747), ‘Nascita della Vergine,’ olio su tela, cm 103 X 108. Stima: €15.000-€18.000. Courtesy Wannenes Genova.

Lotto 1110: Pittore bolognese del XVI secolo, ‘Episodio della leggenda del Crocifisso di Berytus,’ tempera su tavola, cm 25 X 39,5. Stima €15.000-€25.000. Courtesy Wannenes Genova.

Lotto 824: console in legno intagliato e dorato, XVIII secolo, con piano in marmo bianco ed inserti policromi, altezza cm 90, larghezza cm 113, profondità cm 51. Stima €2.000-€3.000. Courtesy Wannenes Genova.

Art Market Italy: Old Masters auctions

Lot 59: Bona Dea, second-third century. Courtesy Wannenes Genoa.

GENOA, Italy – The next sales at Genoa-based auction house Wannenes, on March 4-5, include furniture, objects and paintings coming from the collections of two noted Italian gallery owners: Claudio Zanettin, founder of La Ruota in Cortina d’Ampezzo, and Gennaro Berger, an antiquarian in Rome.

Claudio Zanettin has played a key role in furnishing the homes of the upper class in Cortina. In fact, since the 1950s, when the town hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics, Cortina has welcomed generations of entrepreneurs, nobles and stars of the international jet set who have chosen this place as their favorite place of retreat. It was also the set of movies such as The Pink Panther with David Niven and Peter Sellers, and For Your Eyes Only with Roger Moore as agent 007 James Bond.

In this golden context, antiques dealer and interior designer Zanettin opened his gallery in 1975. His taste is distinguished for its eclectic, vibrant and unpredictable character. He is capable of mixing disparate objects and contaminate genres, nonetheless exalting the particularities of each artifact. He has created numerous collections by selecting objects that are not only authentic, but also whimsical, original, exceptional, full of character, with a symbolic and metaphorical strength.

Among his clients are names like Gianni Versace, Luca di Montezemolo, Pietro Barilla, Gianni and Nicole Bulgari, Elton John and Joan Collins.

Items on sale at Wannenes include a console in carved and gilded wood from the 18th century (lot 824, estimate €2,000-€3,000), a collection of silver inkwells (lots 783-798), three figures of an 18th-century Neapolitan nativity scene depicting the Three Kings (lot 799, estimate €1,000-€1,500) and a pair of neoclassical tempera from the 18th century (lot 708, estimate €1,500-€2,000).

Gennaro Berger, instead, began his career in the mid-1980s with the opening of a workshop for wood restoration that within a few years became a commercial gallery. A mathematician manqué, Berger has distinguished himself for the sobriety of his taste. In his two galleries in Rome – one in Via Margutta and the other in Via dei Coronari, managed together with Old Masters specialist Antonio Fratangeli and art and archaeological connoisseur Nicola Marletta – he collected items ranging from painting to sculpture, from archaeology to Wunderkammer objects.

Among the interesting pieces at auction are the Roman Bona Dea in marble (lot 59, estimate €15,000-€20,000), a fragment of a sarcophagus (lot 65, estimate €18,000-€22,000), the miniature portrait of a 19th-century young man with glasses by Jean Paulin Lassouquere (lot 275, estimate €150-€300), a pair of carved and gilded candelabra from the 18th century (lot 71, estimate €2,000-€3,000) and a neoclassical figure of Andromeda in ivory (lot 270, estimate €800-€1,200).

The two auctions precede a various-owner sale of Old Master and 19th century paintings on March 6. Also at this auction there will be some interesting works such as two panels from the Bolognese 16th century from the collection of American art historian Frederick Mason Perkins, depicting an episode of desecration (lots 1110 and 1111, estimate for both €15,000-€25,000).

The two panels refer to a particular, but little-studied section of the iconography: these images were intended for display in places of Christian worship to indoctrinate the faithful and affirm the triumph of the Church on the Synagogue. These themes were especially popular in Central Italy, in the Papal State, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries. Furthermore, these works were studied by the renowned art historian Federico Zeri, who stated the Bologna-Ferrara origin of the author.

Three other paintings testify, instead, the evolution of painting in the early 18th century, from Baroque to Neoclassicism. They are: Birth of the Virgin by Francesco Solimena (lot 1080, estimate €15,000-€18,000), a work characterized by a narrative and choreographic composition that reflects the theatrical culture of the time; Madonna and Child with Saints by Carlo Innocenzo Carloni (lot 1102, estimate. €2,400-€2,800), probably a preparatory sketch for an altarpiece painting that presents an extreme lightness, and finally a mythological scene to refer to the 18th-century Bologna (lot 1103, estimate €6,000-€8,000).

In the same days also Babuino in Rome will hold a series of auctions of furniture and Old Masters paintings, paintings from the 19th century, antiques, silverware and various items. Among the Italian masters there will be works by Gian Paolo Pannini and Francesco Monti, but also other names from the 19th century, a century that is growing on the art market.

For example, there will be the Portrait of Matilda Tolomei by Giovanni Boldini, the beloved portraitist of the Parisian Belle Epoque, however, dating back to years before the Parisian period (lot 332, estimate €6,000-€9,000). Francesco Paolo Michetti will be represented with a small painting depicting a beach (lot 345, €3,000-€4,000).

ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

Lot 1080: Francesco Solimena (1657-1747), ‘The Birth of the Virgin,’ oil on canvas, 103 X 108 cm. Estimate: €15,000-€18,000. Courtesy Wannenes Genoa.

Lot 1110: Bolognese painter from the 16th century, ‘Episode of the Legend of the Crucifix of Berytus,’ tempera on panel, 25 X 39.5 cm. Estimate €15,000-€25,000. Courtesy Wannenes Genoa.

Lot 824; Console, carved and gilded wood from the 18th century, with white marble top and polychrome inserts, height 90 cm, width 113 cm, depth 51 cm. Estimate €2,000-€3,000. Courtesy Wannenes Genoa.

Gift nearly doubles Norman Rockwell Museum collection

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. Image by Melongrower. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – The Norman Rockwell Museum says it has nearly doubled its collection of American illustration art with a new gift from the Famous Artists School of Westport, Conn.

The donation includes more than 5,000 un-catalogued artworks, including several original works by Rockwell, along with other archives.

Rockwell is known for capturing everyday mid-20th century American culture, particularly in his illustrations for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post magazine. The Famous Artists School was the most popular art technique correspondence course of that period.

The Rockwell museum has the world’s largest collection of original Norman Rockwell art, and said the new gift allows it to better show the works’ cultural context.

Museum Director and CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt says it’s important to preserve American visual culture that millions of people experienced through published mass media.

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Canterbury Cathedral windows go on display at NY museum

Jared (detail), from the Ancestors of Christ Windows, Canterbury Cathedral, England, 1178–80, colored glass and vitreous paint; lead came. Image © Robert Greshoff Photography, courtesy Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.

NEW YORK (AP) –Six medieval stained glass windows from England’s historic Canterbury Cathedral will be displayed at a branch of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The windows will go on view next Tuesday at The Cloisters.

It will be first time that the glass panels have left the cathedral since they were created in the years 1178 to 1180.

They were removed during restoration of cathedral walls.

The exhibit will include an interactive panorama of the Canterbury Cathedral.

The Cloisters focuses on the art and architecture of medieval Europe.

Canterbury Cathedral is part of a World Heritage Site as well as a house of worship.

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Online:

_ The Cloisters: http://www.metmuseum.org/visit/visit-the-cloisters

_ Canterbury Cathedral: http://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/

_ World Heritage: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/496

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US museum acquires philosopher’s Nazi appeasement letter

Bertrand Russell (center, dark coat and hat) and his wife, Edith Russell, lead anti-nuclear march in London in 1961. Image by Tony French. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – The Museum of Tolerance has acquired a 1937 letter written by Bertrand Russell in which the Nobel Prize-winning philosopher says if the Nazi army invades his native England the British should invite Adolf Hitler to dinner rather than fight.

The museum, part of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, announced Wednesday that it paid $4,000 for the letter at an auction in England last month.

“If the Germans succeed in sending an invading army to England we should do best to treat them as visitors, give them quarters and invite the commander and chief to dine with the prime minister,” Russell wrote to British critic Godfrey Carter. “Such behavior would completely baffle them.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s founder, says Bertrand’s letter will be placed in the museum alongside one that Hitler wrote in 1919 outlining the anti-Semitic views that would lead to the Holocaust and killing of 6 million Jews.

The museum’s mission is to educate people about the Holocaust and challenge them to oppose discrimination in all forms. The Russell letter is important, Hier said, because it warns future generations that even a distinguished scholar can be wrong in allowing evil to go unchallenged.

“The fact of the matter is he had all the credentials. He probably was Britain’s greatest philosopher and won the Nobel Prize for literature after all,” Hier said. “But he didn’t understand a basic concept: that the idea that you allow evil to flourish under these conditions, that if we act nice to Hitler, serve him the best wine, that Hitler will come around to see things our way is just preposterous.”

Russell, one of the 20th century’s leading pacifists, eventually changed his views on Hitler.

In the letter, written during the time Hitler was stripping German Jews of their rights, sending political prisoners to the brutal Dachau concentration camp and building a huge military machine, Russell said he saw no value in engaging the country in war.

“We may win or we may lose,” he wrote. “If we lose obviously no good has been done. If we win we shall inevitably during the struggle acquire their bad qualities and the world at the end will be no better off than if we had lost.”

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Menil unveils design plans for $40M drawing institute

View of the present Menil Collection campus in Houston. Argos'Dad at the English language Wikipedia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

HOUSTON (AP) – Houston’s Menil Collection has unveiled design plans for a drawing institute, which will be devoted to the exhibit, study, storage and conservation of artworks on paper.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the design for the $40 million Menil Drawing Institute on the art museum’s campus will feature a roof of thin steel plate that resembles a piece of folded paper.

Menil director Josef Helfenstein says, “It’s very respectful of the environment and yet it really opens up the campus into a new phase.”

Half of the building’s about 30,000 square feet will be for underground storage, while the ground level will contain a living room, an exhibit space, a scholar’s cloister, rooms for seminars and other events, and a conservation lab.

Construction is set to begin in early 2015.

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Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com

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Tribal objects shown reverence on trip home to US

Drawings from an 1894 anthropology book of katsina figures, or spirits, made by the native Pueblo people of the Southwestern United States.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) – Two dozen ceremonial items bought last year at auction in France are set to return to Arizona in a way that pays reverence to the beliefs of American Indian tribes.

The masks and hoods invoke the ancestral spirits of the Hopi and Apache Tribes – who consider them living beings in keeping with tradition – and the expectation is they will be treated as such. That means shipping the sacred items free of plastics, bubble wrap or other synthetic material that would be suffocating. The items also should face the direction of the rising sun, have space to breathe, and be spoken to during their journey.

The shipping reflects the deeply sensitive nature of the items that the Los Angeles-based Annenberg Foundation quietly bought for $530,000 at a contested Paris auction two months ago with the goal of sending them back to their tribal homes in eastern Arizona.

The Hopi and two Apache tribes believe the return of the objects, kept largely out of public view, will put tribal members on a healing path and help restore harmony not only in their communities but among humanity.

“The elders have told us the reason we have the ills of society, suicides, murders, domestic violence, all these things, is we’re suffering because these things are gone and the harmony is gone,” said Vincent Randall, cultural director for the Yavapai-Apache Nation.

The tribes say the items – 21 pieces are headed to the Hopi, two to the San Carlos Apache and one to the White Mountain Apache – were taken from their reservations in the late 19th and 20th centuries at a time when collectors and museums competed for sensitive items from Western tribes. Tribal archaeologists say the objects also could have been traded for food and water, or unrightfully sold.

In Hopi belief, the Kachina friends emerge from the earth and sky to connect people to the spiritual world and to their ancestors. Caretakers, who mostly are men, nurture the masks as if they are the living dead. Visitors to the Hopi reservation won’t see the masks displayed on shelves or in museums, and the ritual associated with them is a lifelong learning process.

The San Carlos Apache recount a story of ceremonial items being wrenched from the hands of tribal members who were imprisoned by the U.S. military at Fort Apache. Journal entries from the time showed that hoods, as well as medicine bundles and other prayer items were taken, said Vernelda Grant, director of the Historic Preservation and Archaeology Department for the San Carlos Apache Tribe.

“Of course you’re going to be emotional, and of course it’s going to have an effect on your health, the welfare of your people,” she said. “It kills them, it killed us emotionally. Those items were taken care of until those times came. We were forced to hand them over so we could get what? A box of rations, a blanket?”

For the San Carlos Apache, the hoods represent the mountain spirits reincarnated in men who make and wear them in ceremonial dances for healing or when girls reach puberty. Each is fashioned by a tribal member endowed with a gift of being a spiritual leader. Once the hoods have been used, they are put away in an undisclosed location in the mountains, known only to the spiritual leader through a revelation from the “ruler of life,” or God.

If they are disturbed or removed, a curse of sorts can be placed upon humanity, Randall said.

Although the Apaches are among the most successful tribes in getting items within the United States returned to the tribes, they could do little to stop the sale in France.

The auction house argued that the items rightfully were in private collectors’ hands. A judge hearing the Hopi’s plea to block the sale said that unlike the U.S., France has no laws to protect indigenous peoples.

In a similar dispute in April, a Paris court ruled that such sales are legal. Around 70 masks were sold for some $1.2 million, despite protests and criticism from the U.S. government.

The Annenberg Foundation took note of the Hopi Tribe’s heartbreaking loss and in December employed a well-orchestrated, secretive plan to successfully bid on most of the items at auction.

The plan involved foundation employees placing bids by phone and keeping its plan private to save the tribes from potential disappointment. A French lawyer working for the Hopis and Survival International, Pierre Servan-Schreiber, said he spoke with the foundation using a discreet earpiece to keep the objects’ prices from skyrocketing as he bid on behalf of a U.S. benefactor.

“This is how we achieved this brilliant result,” Servan-Schreiber said in an email.

The foundation said it has complied with the tribes’ shipping requests to ensure the items are treated with care and respect. Those requests include shipping the items in specially designed, individual crates, turning them in a clockwise direction and entrusting them to the hands of men.

Should the items be handled contrary to Hopi and Apache practices, the tribes asked the foundation to apologize to the spirits and explain that it’s not intentional.

Two of the Hopi items, which have golden eagle and cooper’s hawk feathers, will require import permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because the birds are protected under federal law. The sacred “Crow Mother,” which sold for twice its expected value at $171,000, requires an export permit from the French government, the foundation said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it also would comply to the extent possible as the items enter the United States.

“It gives me immense satisfaction to know that they will be returned home to their rightful owners, the Native Americans,” said the foundation’s director and vice president, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten.

When the items reach the tribes after traveling overseas from France and to Los Angeles, there will be no extravagant celebrations – just quiet exaltation in knowing that their ancestral spirits will return to the mountainous areas of the San Carlos Apache reservation and to the hands of caretakers in Hopi villages.

“We understand their purpose for us. It’s not to be put up in the old circus shows of the bearded lady or the two-headed man,” said Sam Tenakhongva, the Kachina Society leader from the Hopi village of Walpi. “What it’s here for is to bring life, both for humanity and all living things.”

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Follow Felicia Fonseca on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/FonsecaAP

AP-WF-02-20-14 0900GMT

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