LONDON (AFP) – Street artist Banksy announced the opening of a dystopian theme park in a British seaside town on Thursday, featuring boats filled with migrants and an anarchist training camp.
‘Simpsons’ co-creator’s collections to be auctioned for charities
NEW YORK (AP) – A pinball machine from The Simpsons and fun pinup art are among the items going to auction from the collection of the show’s co-creator Sam Simon.
Miscellaneana: Sèvres and ‘Sèvres-style’
LONDON – When an old sugar bowl estimated to fetch for £150-£250 sells for £45,000 (plus 20 per cent buyer’s premium) it’s time to find out why. So, this week’s column is all about porcelain made by the Sèvres company, founded in 1738, although the sucrier, to give the bowl its more appropriate French name, came from the Vincennes factory. Read on, all will become clear.
Southern tradition runs deep in Crescent City Auction event Sept. 11-13
NEW ORLEANS – The contents of Twin Oaks in Prairieville, La., the onetime home of Robert Penn Warren, author of All the King’s Men; items deaccessioned from the Alexandria Museum of Art in Alexandria, La.; and items descended in the family of former New Orleans Mayor Paul Capedevielle will all be sold at public auction Sept. 11-13 by Crescent City Auction Gallery.
Foreigners named to run Italy’s top museums
MILAN (AP) – Seven foreigners were named Tuesday to run some of Italy’s most prestigious museums, including the famed Uffizi Gallery in Florence, after the government opened up top museum jobs to international competition for the first time in what the culture minister described as “an historic step.”
Culture Minister Dario Franceschini named directors to 20 of the country’s top museums, including seven foreigners and four Italians returning from posts abroad, as part of a general reform of the museum system that he described as being too focused on preservation and not enough on investment and modernization.
The foreigners included German Eike Schmidt as director of the Uffizi – one of the world’s oldest museums housing such treasures as Botticelli’s “Primavera” and Leonardo’s “Adoration of the Magi” – Briton James Bradburne to the Brera picture gallery in Milan and Frenchman Sylvain Bellenger to the Capodimonte in Naples.
Schmidt, a 47-year-old art historian who is currently a curator for decorative arts at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, said he would first focus on the visitor experience at Uffizi and on developing programs for children and teenagers.
“If someone from America and China comes to the Uffizi and starts the visit by standing in line for two to three hours, that is not the ideal way to begin,” Schmidt told The Associated Press over the telephone.
Evolving technologies for purchasing tickets online and via smartphones could be part of the solution, he said, but evaluations are needed to see what works in the Italian context. Schmidt has previously held positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Between 1994 and 2001 he worked at the German-funded Art History Institute in Florence and he also curated a show at the Pitti Palace in Florence two years ago.
“I will certainly bring international experiences to the process, but I think it is also important, and I imagine that it might have played a role, that I am quite familiar with the Italian system,” he said.
Franceschini actively sought foreign candidates for the jobs, publishing advertisements in publications abroad to attract experts from around the world with the aim of making Italian museums more dynamic in both their services and fundraising. He also has pledged to give museum directors more autonomy.
“Modernizing our museums means better protecting our treasures, but also investing in the growth of the country,” Franceschini told SkyTG 24, adding that museum visitors today expect multi-media exhibits, cafeterias on site and educational laboratories for children.
Franceschini said the recruitment process was only part of cultural reforms he has enacted, citing also a move to make Italy’s 400 state museums free on the first Sunday of the month. He said the policy had boosted visitor numbers to 40 million last year, up by 2.6 million from a year earlier.
Still, Italy’s museums are generally seen as being under-exploited: only five receive more than a million visitors a year, including the Uffizi and the Pantheon in Rome.
While the recruitment choices were greeted with diplomacy, some in Italy criticized the process. Vittorio Sgarbi, a former Milan culture official and well-known commentator, said Franceschini had demoralized his troops with the new recruitment system, calling it “a dangerous political act.”
“There are capable people among the 20 selected, but I don’t believe that the new director of the Uffizi … is better than the outgoing,” Sgarbi was quoted by the news agency ANSA as saying.
For his part, outgoing Uffizi director Antonio Natali told ANSA that he hadn’t expected to retain the post after the changes were announced but that he was no longer bitter.
“I was bitter when I understood the script. But I continued to work as always, as if I would remain at the Uffizi until the year 3000,” he said.
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By COLLEEN BARRY, Associated Press
Copyright 2015 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-08-18-15 1939GMT
IS beheads leading Syrian antiquities scholar in Palmyra
BEIRUT (AP) – Islamic State militants beheaded one of Syria’s most prominent antiquities scholars in the ancient town of Palmyra, then strapped his body from one of the town’s Roman columns, Syrian state media and an activist group said Wednesday.
Meridian marks WWII anniversary with photo auction Aug. 21
CLIFFSIDE PARK, N.J. – As the world commemorates the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Meridian Creations Inc. on Friday, Aug. 21, will auction 49 wartime images taken by prominent Russian photographers. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide absentee and Internet live bidding.
Specialists of the South Inc. to sell large estate Aug. 29
PANAMA CITY, Fla. – Antiques and collectibles gathered by the late Yolande Freeman – a woman who was born in France and immigrated to the United States in 1961, frequently traveling back and forth between Europe and the U.S, adding to her collections as she went – will be sold at auction by The Specialists of the South Inc. on Saturday, Aug. 29. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide absentee and Internet live bidding.
Goalie’s 1936 Olympic gold medal up for bids at SCP auction Aug. 22
LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. – SCP Auctions’ “Mid-Summer Classic” online auction runs through Sat., Aug. 22. The auction features nearly 1,000 different lots of vintage sports memorabilia. Among the most intriguing is a 1936 Winter Olympics gold medal that was presented to Great Britain hockey goaltender Jimmy Foster.
Historic Gloucester home could serve as artists’ studio
GLOUCESTER, Mass. (AP) – Sitting on high atop the Capt. Solomon Jacobs Park hill, the old stone house built by famed Cape Ann painter Fitz Henry Lane more than 150 years ago commands some of the best views of Gloucester’s working harbor.