Marriage goblet signed & dated by A.F. Schurman, 1757. Estimate: £6,000-8,000. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.
LONDON – An important single-owner collection of quality 18th and early 19th century glass, including decanters from the celebrated Irish distillery, Bushmills Distillery, and rare stipple engraved and diamond point engraved drinking glasses, will be offered in Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ “Fine and Important Furniture, Paintings, Ceramics & other Works of Art” sale on Thursday, Aug. 28.
LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
The collection from County Antrim in Northern Ireland was begun in the mid-1980s with a focus on Dutch engraved glass and Irish glass. It boasts a fine Dutch diamond-engraved commemorative light baluster marriage goblet signed and dated A.F. Schurman, 1757, engraved to Dexter with the arms of Barthold Douma Van Burmania (1695-1766).
Barthold Douma Van Burmania was a Dutch statesman and humanitarian, noted for his efforts to prevent the expulsion of Jews from Bohemia and other parts of the empire.
Fashionable during the 18th and 19th century, skillfully engraved marriage goblets were a given as luxury tokens of enduring love. This fine example, estimated at £6,000-8,000, is by Adam Frederik van Schurman (1730-1783), an amateur engraver related to the famous engraver Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678). Only 11 signed glasses are known by his hand [Lot 402].
Also from the collection is another Dutch diamond-point engraved example signed and dated by A.C. Schonck, 1755, estimated at £3,000-5,000 [Lot 400] and a Dutch stipple-engraved facet-stemmed “Friendship” goblet attributed to David Wolff, circa 1785, estimated at £1,500-2,000 [Lot 401].
From the Bushmills Distillery, County Antrim, is a set of three cut and engraved commemorative spirit decanters with two original stoppers. The Bushmills Distillery is widely regarded as the oldest licensed distillery in the world, having recently celebrated its 400th birthday, and is also a popular tourist destination.
The set of three were probably made for a tantalus and are inscribed “THE BUSHMILLS OLD DISTILLERY PURE MALT Co. ANTRIM IRELAND.” Engraved in the center is a pot still, the company’s original trademark from when the Old Bushmills Distillery was registered by Hugh Anderson in 1784. The pot still, a piece of equipment used in the distilling of whiskey, remains a mark of genuine distinction within the company today. The late 19th century set is accompanied by a Bushmills decanter label and together is estimated at £300-500 [Lot 437].
The sale will be held at Dreweatts Bloomsbury Auctions’ Donnington Priory saleroom, in Newbury, Berkshire, on Aug. 28.
Marriage goblet signed & dated by A.F. Schurman, 1757. Estimate: £6,000-8,000. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.
Goblet signed and dated by A.C. Schonck, 1755. Estimate: £3,000-5,000. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.
‘Friendship’ goblet attributed to David Wolff, 1785. Estimate: £1,500-2,000. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.
Set of three cut and engraved commemorative spirit decanters with two original stoppers, Bushmills Distillery, late 19th century. Estimate: £300-500. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.
NEW YORK – Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be the most important exhibition of the essential Cubists—Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963), Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927), Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955), and Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)—in more than 30 years. The exhibition and accompanying publication will trace the invention and development of Cubism using iconic examples from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, with its unparalleled holdings in this foundational modernist movement. The exhibition will mark the first time that the Collection, which Mr. Lauder pledged to the Museum in April 2013, is shown in its entirety, including the most recent addition, Léger’s The Village. The exhibition, which opens October 20, 2014, will present 79 paintings, works on paper, and sculpture: 17 by Braque, 14 by Gris, 15 by Léger, and 33 by Picasso. Rich in modernist pictures by Picasso and Braque, the exhibition will also include an unprecedented number of papiers collé by Juan Gris and a stunning array of Léger’s most famous series, his Contrasts of Forms.
Over the past 40 years, Leonard Lauder has selectively acquired masterpieces and seminal works to create the most important collection in private hands of works by the four preeminent Cubist artists: Mr. Lauder made his first two Cubist acquisitions in 1976 and continues to add to the Collection, which is distinguished by its quality, focus, and depth.
In coordination with Mr. Lauder’s announcement of the gift of the Cubist works, the Metropolitan Museum, with support from a group of trustees and supporters, including Mr. Lauder, has established a new research center for modern art, housed at the Metropolitan. The Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art will serve as a center for scholarship, archival documentation and collections, and innovative approaches to studying the history of Cubism, its origins and influence. The Center has been envisioned by Mr. Lauder as a means to transform the presence of modern art at the Metropolitan in dialogue with its encyclopedic collections. With its own dedicated two-year fellowships—with two new recipients arriving each year—the Center will also sustain focused research on all aspects of modernism, the Leonard A. Lauder Collection and the Metropolitan Museum’s growing holdings of early and mid-20th-century art.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication edited by the co-curators of the exhibition—Emily Braun, Curator of the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection and Distinguished Professor of Art History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and Rebecca Rabinow, the Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art and Curator in Charge of the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum. The publication will serve as an essential resource for the study of these four artists and their role in inventing and extending the definitions of Cubism. It includes 22 essays by 17 preeminent scholars in the field, who have used the works in the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection as the basis for new discoveries and interpretations. It will also publish 25 years of sustained research on the works in the Collection – their provenance, exhibition history, and inclusion in earlier canonical studies of Cubism.
Cubism was the most influential art movement of the 20th century: it radically destroyed traditional illusionism in painting, revolutionized the way we see the world (as Juan Gris said), and paved the way for the pure abstraction that dominated Western art for the next 50 years. Led by Picasso and Braque, the Cubists dismantled traditional perspective and modeling in the round in order to emphasize the two-dimensional picture plane. Cubist collage introduced fragments of mass-produced popular culture into pictures, thereby changing the very definition of art.
More than half of the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection focuses on the six-year period, 1909-14, during which Braque and Picasso—the two founders of the Cubist movement—collaborated closely. Their partnership began in earnest in the fall of 1908, when the visionary dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler exhibited Braque’s most recent paintings in his Paris gallery. Henri Matisse is known to have disparaged Braque’s pictures as “painting made of small cubes;” the term Cubism first appeared in print in Louis Vauxcelles’s review of the Kahnweiler exhibition. The Collection includes two landscapes from this historic show: The Terrace at the Hôtel Mistral (1907), which marks Braque’s transition from Fauvism to Cubism, and the iconic Trees at L’Estaque (1908), which inaugurates Cubism.
By 1909 Braque and Picasso were inseparable. As Picasso later recounted, “Almost every evening, either I went to Braque’s studio or he came to mine. Each of us HAD to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other’s work. A canvas wasn’t finished until both of us felt it was.” A pair of identically sized paintings from 1911 in the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection—Braque’s Still Life with Clarinet (Bottle and Clarinet) and Picasso’s Pedestal Table, Glasses, Cups, Mandolin—exemplify a pivotal moment in the history of Cubism, when the two artists began to picture objects from different points of view in an increasingly shallow space. Only a few clues were retained to help viewers decode the picture, the profile of an instrument or the tassel of a curtain. As the works hovered on the brink of illegibility, Braque and Picasso began to introduce “certainties,” as Braque called them: painted letters and words and, soon after, actual pieces of rope, newspaper, sheet music, and brand labels. They inspired other artists to incorporate all kinds of unorthodox materials into works of art.
The Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection contains such landmark paintings as Picasso’s landscape The Oil Mill (1909), which was one of the first Cubist pictures reproduced in Italy. After seeing it in the December 1911 issue of the Florentine journal La Voce, the Italian Futurists were inspired to modernize their style and engage in a rivalry with their French peers. Picasso’s Still Life with Fan: “L’Indépendant” (1911), in the Collection, is one of the first works in which he experimented with painted typography, in this case the gothic type masthead of L’Indépendant, the local newspaper of Céret in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
Braque’s Fruit Dish and Glass (1912), the very first Cubist papier collé (paper collage) ever created, is also in the Collection. Collages were a revolutionary Cubist art form in which ready-made objects were incorporated into fine art. In the summer of 1912, while vacationing with Picasso in the south of France, Braque saw imitation wood-grain wallpaper in a store window. He waited until Picasso left town before buying the faux bois paper and pasting it into a still-life composition. Braque’s decision to use mechanically printed, illusionistic wallpaper to represent the texture and color of a wooden table marked a turning point in Cubism. Braque later recounted, “After having made the papier collé [Fruit Dish and Glass], I felt a great shock, and it was an even greater shock for Picasso when I showed it to him.”
Braque and Picasso shared an interest in aviation, which extended to Braque’s nickname, “Wilb[o]urg” (after Wilbur Wright). The most famous example of their aviation puns is Picasso’s The Scallop Shell: “Notre Avenir est dans l’Air” (1912). This oval-shaped painting is simultaneously a representation of a tabletop and a blatantly flat canvas. The still-life elements of the work include a trompe l’oeil rendering of a pamphlet that had been issued by the French government in February 1912 to raise public support for military aviation. Picasso included it as a witty reference to his and Braque’s daring, groundbreaking Cubist enterprise.
Picasso’s synthetic Cubist masterpiece Woman in a Chemise in an Armchair (1913-14) is one of the artist’s most radical and imposing paintings. This provocative and highly eroticized image was hailed by André Breton in his seminal text Surrealism and Painting (1928). Additionally the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection holds examples of two key Cubist sculptures: a rare cast of Picasso’s Head of a Woman (Fernande) (1909), which introduced the analytic Cubist style into three dimensions, and The Absinthe Glass (1914), which signaled the end of traditionally modeled sculpture. Each of the six casts in the edition was hand-painted by Picasso and includes an actual perforated tin absinthe spoon, thus blurring the boundaries between a multiple and a unique work of art.
Still lifes with flutes, guitars, mandolins, violins, and sheet music are indicative of Braque’s and Picasso’s personal pastimes as well as their enthusiasm for popular vaudeville tunes. Their word play and images combine ribald jokes and erudite references, high and low, as well as allusions to the Cubist movement and commentary on world events. In Violin: “Mozart Kubelick” (1912), for example, Braque indulged in a double entendre by including the name of the famed Czech violinist Jan Kubelik (1880-1940). The first three letters of his name (“KUB”) were those of a common bouillon cube, a foodstuff widely advertised on posters of the period, much to the delight of Braque and Picasso, who appreciated the pun on the word “Cub”ism. Violin: “Mozart/Kubelick” was one of three pictures by Braque that Kahnweiler sent to the New York Armory Show of 1913, the exhibition that introduced European modernism to the American public. It became one of the most caricatured Cubist images in the American press, which delighted in pointing out that Braque had put the “cube in Kubelik” and also that he had misspelled the maestro’s name.
Legend has it that, a few years earlier, on his way to visit Picasso at the Bateau-Lavoir, the rundown artist complex in Montmartre, Kahnweiler had glanced into the open window of Juan Gris’s studio and asked to see his work. In late 1912, the dealer began representing Gris. Whereas Braque and Picasso exhibited exclusively with Kahnweiler, Gris sent work to the annual Salon displays, bringing wider visibility to the new Cubist style. The Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni, for example, was directly influenced by Gris’s Head of a Woman (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) after he saw it at the spring 1912 Salon des Indépendants. Gris took the analytic Cubism of Braque and Picasso and made it his own with precisely delineated compositions, flattened planes, and rhythmic surface patterns that prefigure the synthetic Cubism of the war years.
The Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection contains an unparalleled selection of six painted collages that Gris created during the first half of 1914. Several of them incorporate wry references to the fictional criminal mastermind Fantômas, the subject of a wildly popular crime series. The shadowy Man at the Café (1914) hides his face behind a newspaper, made up of an actual clipping whose headline pointedly reads: “Bertillonage/ One will no longer be able to fake works of art.” Gris alludes to the criminal identification systems, or Bertillonage, of Alphonse Bertillon, one of the fathers of forensic science, whose methods were featured in the storylines of the Fantômas films. With mock suspense, Gris suggests that, having read about the latest criminal detection methods in the newspaper, the man at the table will escape the authorities once again—as will the Cubist masterminds in their games of visual deception.
In 1913, Kahnweiler added Fernand Léger to his stable of artists. Like Gris, Léger developed Cubism into a distinctive and influential style, in which dynamic intersections of spherical, cylindrical, and cubic forms evoked the new, syncopated rhythms of modern life. The Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection features several important works from Léger’s series Contrasts of Forms, wherein Léger worked out his primary oppositions of light and dark, angled and curved planes, color and line. The jaunty image of The Smoker (1914), with its body reduced to basic geometric parts, anticipates the dehumanization that Léger would experience first-hand during World War I. Gris and Picasso, both Spanish citizens, remained in France during the war. Picasso’s political sentiments are evident in the Collection’s Playing Cards, Glasses, Bottle of Run: “Vive la France” (summer 1914; partially reworked 1915). Braque and Léger were among the many French artists who were mobilized to the Front. Léger was injured and after more than a year’s hospitalization he began working on Composition (The Typographer) (1918-19), one of the largest Cubist works ever painted. Its mural-like size anticipates his collaboration in the 1920s with the architect Le Corbusier. Composition (The Typographer), the definitive version of a series of three, reflects the affinity Léger felt toward the anonymous working man and his fascination with the trappings of modern Paris, from advertisements to architecture. Léger drew on his background as an architectural draftsman in celebrating the beauty of machines and in this way led Cubism into a new modernist machine aesthetic.
The new Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art will foster research, programming, and publications on the Met’s collections of modern art and on Cubism’s enduring impact in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is supported by an endowment funded by generous grants from Museum trustees and supporters, including Mr. Lauder.
Under the auspices of the Center, the Metropolitan has awarded its inaugural fellowships for terms to begin in September 2014. Two two-year fellowships for pre- and post-doctoral work will be awarded annually. Additionally senior scholars will be invited for residencies at the Museum. Through a program of lectures, study workshops, dossier exhibitions, publications, and a vibrant web presence (available via www.metmuseum.org as of early October 2014), the Center will focus art-historical study and public appreciation of modern art generally and on Cubism in particular, and serve as a training ground for the next generation of scholars. The Center will eventually include a library and an archive on Cubism donated by Mr. Lauder.
Mr. Lauder always intended that his collection would serve as a catalyst for further and sustained study of early modern art. The presence of his extraordinary Cubist collection at the Museum will transform the Metropolitan’s galleries and programming, just as his support of the Center will ensure that modern art remains a focus of continued study at the highest levels of scholarship.
Marked ‘EP’ for Emile Puiforcat, this French silver tankard with domed cover sold for $5,600. Capo Auction Fine Art and Antiques image.
NEW YORK – A Capo Auction Fine Art and Antiques’ mid-summer auction in Long Island City on Saturday, July 26, featured some wonderful art and decorative items from multiple estates. LiveAuctioneers.com provided Internet live bidding.
Among the top sellers was an after Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) The Myths Portfolio (including The Star, Superman, Santa Claus, The Shadow, Mammy, Mickey Mouse, Uncle Sam, The Witch, Dracula and Howdy Doody). Published by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc. in 1981, the lithographs in color, 1981, were ach signed in marker (front), title, date, subject and publisher (verso). Each sheet measured 7 x 7 inches. In an envelope and unframed, the portfolio sold for $6,300.
A more traditional piece was the Royal Vienna porcelain charger titled Rape of the Sabine Women. The 22-inch charger, which was signed “H. Stadler” on the lower left sold for $5,700, while a French silver tankard, marked “EP” for Emile Puiforcat, having a domed cover surmounted by a figure of a putto and a cylindrical body, all around decoration of classical females and a scroll handle, sold for $5,600. The tankard weighed 150 grams and stood 11 1/2 inches tall.
Other decorative items included the blue/green slag glass lamp with pink flower border, standing 21 1/2 inches high, which sold for $1,975 and the carved marble figure of a female nude, modeled reclining. This large carved marble measured 26 inches high, 51 inches wide and 16 inches in depth. It too sold for $1,975.
Marked ‘EP’ for Emile Puiforcat, this French silver tankard with domed cover sold for $5,600. Capo Auction Fine Art and Antiques image.
After Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) ‘The Myths Portfolio’ lithographs in color, 1981, published by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc., sold for $6,300. Capo Auction Fine Art and Antiques image.
Royal Vienna porcelain charger called ‘Rape of the Sabine Women,’ signed ‘H. Stadler,’ sold for $5,700. Capo Auction Fine Art and Antiques image.
Blue-green slag glass lamp with pink flower border, standing 21 1/2 inches high, sold for $1,975. Capo Auction Fine Art and Antiques image.
This carved marble figure of a female nude sold for $1,975. Capo Auction Fine Art and Antiques image.
During her decades-long career as a featured soprano, Frances Yeend performed with many of the world’s great symphonies. She is shown on this promotional poster from the New York City Opera Company. Joe R. Pyle Auction imageFAIRMONT, W.Va. – Joe R. Pyle, owner of Joe R. Pyle Auctions in Shinnston, W.Va., has announced his company will auction the estate collection of the late opera singer Frances Yeend and her husband, James F. Benner. The auction is slated for Friday and Saturday, Aug. 29 and 30, at the West Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame in Fairmont, W.Va., with Internet live bidding through LiveAuctioneers.com.
Frances Yeend was a renowned soprano who performed with many of the world’s great symphonies and opera companies, including The Metropolitan Opera in New York City. While on tour, Yeend and her husband – a pianist, conductor and vocal coach – spent every free minute combing through antique shops, always returning to their Manhattan residence with a bounty of magnificent art and antiques.
In 1966, the couple retired from the stage and relocated to Morgantown, W.Va., where both joined the faculty of West Virginia University’s music department. Their home near the university campus became a showcase for their lifetime collection, which they continued to expand upon until Yeend’s passing in 2008.
“We are so honored to be selling this remarkable collection, which very easily could have gone to a major East Coast auction house. Frances and Jim were very connected to West Virginia, and it was Jim Benner’s wish that the collection be auctioned here,” said Pyle.
Auction Central News will publish a full preview of highlights from the upcoming auction in the weeks to come, with a link to the online catalog where potential bidders can sign up to leave absentee bids or participate live online during the auction through LiveAuctioneers.
For additional information about the sale, call Joe R. Pyle Auctions tollfree at 888-875-1599 or 304-592-6000. Web: www.joerpyleauctions.com
Grande Arche and fountain at night. Image by Atoma, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. PARIS (AFP) – It was inaugurated 25 years ago to much pomp on the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, but Margaret Thatcher no doubt remembered it more as the place where she got stuck in the toilets.
Today, the gigantic Grande Arche on the outskirts of Paris is in a sorry state – the prized Carrara marble covering parts of the structure is worn down, businesses snub its cramped office space and the entire building is now closed to the public for security reasons.
This 20th-century version of the French capital’s Arc de Triomphe – a glass and marble cube so big it could house Notre-Dame Cathedral – stands in the business district of La Defense outside Paris at the end of a long, straight axis that begins at the Louvre museum and takes in the Champs-Elysees.
Danish architect Johan Otto Von Spreckelsen conceived the project, but an illness forced him to hand over the reins in 1986 to France’s Paul Andreu.
The building was inaugurated on July 14, 1989, with a three-day G7 summit attended by top leaders from around the world including Thatcher.
Britain’s then-prime minister “no doubt long remembered her visit,” said an official who was present on that day, who asked to remain anonymous.
“A door handle broke and she got stuck in the toilets. Her bodyguards were forced to break down the door.”
– ‘A little hard-going’ –
Today the Grande Arche is a shadow of its former self.
The base of the cube’s north face has been cordoned off for safety reasons and on the south side, some of the marble has been replaced by granite, a more resistant material.
The rooftop offers an unrivaled view of the Champs-Elysees, the Concorde square and the Tuileries Garden that leads on to the Louvre – but has been closed to the public since April 2010 because of an elevator incident.
The ecology and housing ministries based in the south face of the Grande Arche have narrow corridors with no natural light and cramped offices with low ceilings.
The place is “a little hard-going,” Andreu acknowledged.
“We had big restrictions: to erect a ‘modern Arc de Triomphe’ in line with the historical axis that crosses Paris from east to west,” he said, referring to the straight line stretching from the Louvre to the Grande Arche.
“The exterior was favored over the interior.”
From October, both ministries are launching big renovation works that will cost nearly 200 million euros ($270 million) over two years and will improveinsulation, optimize space and replace all the marble.
But the future of the north face where much of the office space is empty is more uncertain.
Real estate group Jones Lang LaSalle has had to reduce the rent, charging 320 euros per square meter per year compared with an average of 400 euros in the rest of the district.
Reopening the rooftop, which was once visited by tens of thousands of tourists every year, is also an option, though nothing has been done so far.
“But the idea of reopening has never left us,” says Michel-Regis Talon, a spokesman for the ministries.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Grande Arche and fountain at night. Image by Atoma, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
USS Laffey was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986. Image by Allison of Hickory, N.C. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) – From a simulated flight around the moon to the chaos in the gun turret of a destroyer fending off World War II kamikaze attacks, interactive technology is bringing to life what once were staid, static museum displays at the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum.
The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, the World War II destroyer Laffey and the Cold War era submarine Clamagore are moored at the state museum on Charleston Harbor. The museum is also home to the Medal of Honor Museum, an exhibit recreating a Vietnam War river support base and a memorial to Cold War submariners.
But for almost 40 years, Patriots Point showed its vessels and other attractions much as most museums did – static displays and pictures with plaques explaining what visitors were seeing.
Then, about 18 months ago, the museum unveiled a master plan to spend upward to $5 million to make exhibits more interactive, draw more visitors and make history more relevant to a technologically savvy younger generation.
“We have wonderful artifacts in the Yorktown, the Laffey and the Clamagore,” said Mac Burdette, the museum’s executive director. “But this is a very competitive industry and you have to have a better platform than your neighbor or people are going to choose to spend their $20 somewhere else.”
He said attracting more visitors is key to the survival of the museum where, during the next two decades, the Yorktown alone is expected to need $80 million in maintenance work.
A look at recent developments and plans:
Flight to the Moon
As of last month, visitors can experience a flight around the moon amid film footage and radio communications from the December 1968 Apollo 8 mission in a replica of the capsule where seats rumble on takeoff and shake upon splashdown. The Yorktown recovered Apollo 8 from the Pacific.
War in the Pacific
Similar technology in a gun turret on the Laffey recreates what it was like off Okinawa in April 1945 when the destroyer was attacked by 22 Japanese bombers and kamikaze aircraft. Plans are also under way to create an interactive combat information center to give visitors an idea of what it was like tracking enemy subs during the Cold War.
Heading to School
The Patriots Point Flight Academy opened earlier this year aboard the Yorktown giving students experience in computer flight simulators as they work together on simulated missions. The museum’s director of education, Keith Grybowski, said the academy will be open at times for regular museum visitors in the future.
Coming Veterans Day
A renovated and larger Vietnam River base exhibit reopens this November with a refurbished river patrol boat and a Vietnam era helicopter. Visitors will be able to able to experience a nighttime Vietnam firefight in a bunker, complete with shaking from shell hits, and, in another bunker, experience what it was like to direct fire against enemy targets.
In the Future
Interactive exhibits on the Battle of Midway, the fight in which the original carrier Yorktown sank, are planned. A B-25 bomber hanging above the hanger deck is to be renovated and outfitted with technology so visitors can experience what flying in it was like.
By the Numbers
In the past three years, museum attendance has risen from 220,000 to 260,000. The goal is 300,000 at which point visitor spending will cover museum operations. Money from rental of museum property on the harbor, expected in the future to generate $6 million a year, will then cover the cost of ship maintenance.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
USS Laffey was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986. Image by Allison of Hickory, N.C. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.
The Alex Haley boyhood home and memorial in Henning, Tenn. Image by Thomas R. Machnitzki. This file is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. HENNING, Tenn. (AP) – The Alex Haley Museum and Interpretive Center in Henning has been designated a Literary Landmark.
The designation was made by United for Libraries, a division of the American Library Association.
To celebrate the honor, the museum is hosting a ceremony on Saturday at 3 p.m. It will also honor the late Alex Haley.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots would have been 93 on Aug. 11.
The center is only the second Literary Landmark in Tennessee. The first was the Cossitt Library in Memphis honoring famed author Richard Wright in 1998.
For more information about the Alex Haley Museum and Interpretive Center, visit http://www.alexhaleymuseum.org/ or call, 731-738-2240.
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-08-04-14 1228GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The Alex Haley boyhood home and memorial in Henning, Tenn. Image by Thomas R. Machnitzki. This file is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
In the Nelson-Atkins master plan, this circle illustrates the inner ring of a potential cultural district. Weiss/Manfredi/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art image. KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – An ambitious plan being studied at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City could eventually bring a unified cultural district stretching in a 1-mile radius around the museum.
Supporters stress the plan offered by a New York design firm is only in its preliminary stages. The study includes lawns, walkways, bike trails and outdoor art all connected in a nearly 4-square-mile area with the museum at the center.
The plan from the Weiss/Manfredi urban design firm also calls for tearing down some current buildings – including some homes – on museum-owned land.
The Kansas City Star reports a form of the idea has been around for 50 years but it now a key goal in the museum’s April 2013 strategic plan.
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AP-WF-08-04-14 1319GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
In the Nelson-Atkins master plan, this circle illustrates the inner ring of a potential cultural district. Weiss/Manfredi/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art image.
H.C. Porter portrait of B.B. King. Collection of Mark Silverstein. INDIANOLA, Miss. (AP) – An exhibit of 30 paintings of Mississippi blues performers will go on display Aug. 21 at the B. B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center.
The work by Mississippi artist H.C. Porter is paired with oral histories collected and edited by Lauchlin Fields and heard through hand-held audio devices.
An opening reception is planned from 6-8 p.m. on Aug. 21 and is free and open to the public.
Porter’s original works of art are classified as mixed media, combining painting, printmaking and photography.
More information on the Indianola museum and the exhibit is available online at www.hcporter.com/bluesathome and www.bbkingmuseum.org .
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
