Tom Hoepf, Author at Auction Central News

Asia’s super rich building their own art museums

The National Art Museum of China opened in Beijing in 1962. A half century later as China's economy has boomed several private art museums will open soon. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

HONG KONG (AP) – Over the past two years Wang Wei and her husband Liu Yiqian dropped a reported $317 million on their hobby. Now they need somewhere to display the collection they’ve amassed. The solution: a private art museum that Wang hopes will impart some class to China’s flashy nouveau riche.

Wang and billionaire investor Liu are part of a new generation of wealthy Asians that is better known for splashing out on extravagant toys such as private jets, mega-size yachts and supercars. Some, instead, have built big art collections and now aspire to showcase their refined sensibility to a wider audience.

The trend is most apparent in China, where entrepreneurs who have gotten rich off the country’s booming economy have been splurging on art, making it the world’s biggest fine art market last year for the second year in a row.

As China’s best-known art collectors, Wang and her husband spent nearly 2 billion yuan ($317 million) on art in the past two years, according to a report in the state-run China Daily that quoted Wang. She declined to confirm the figure, and said, “I do not like to talk about how much I spent.”

Wang’s 10,000 square meter (107,640 square foot) “Long” museum is scheduled to open in Shanghai in late October and will cost 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) a year to run. Aside from giving her a space to show off her collection of Chinese revolutionary and contemporary art, Wang said it will also help her give her nouveau riche compatriots a cultural education.

“The rich housewives have money but do not know how to spend it without shopping,” she said. “I want to teach them to be more tasteful.”

With that goal in mind, one museum is not enough for Wang. She is planning a second Shanghai museum that will start construction in August and open in October 2013.

More are in the pipeline. Indonesian-Chinese farming tycoon Budi Tek is set to open the De Museum in Shanghai next year featuring Asian and Western contemporary art, after opening his first in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta in 2008.

Tek’s museum will be located in an old aircraft hangar across the river from the site of the World Expo site in Shanghai’s Pudong district, on land that the government is giving to him at a preferential rate. Tek will cover the cost of renovating the building and adding extra wings as well as annual operating costs. He wouldn’t say how much he plans to spend, but said “the operating costs will be expensive, buying works will be expensive.”

Collector Guan Yi is planning one on the outskirts of Beijing, according to art publications. Industry insiders say wealthy collectors are planning museums around China.

Sustainability is a big issue for would-be museum owners, who need deep pockets to deal with costs, said Magnus Renfrew, director of Art HK, Hong Kong’s annual art fair.

“It’s many millions of dollars for construction or refurbishment, and that’s even before you’ve got to the art and before you get to the staffing and ongoing costs” said Renfrew. “It’s not for the faint hearted.”

A growing interest in philanthropy is one reason behind the private museum boomlet. Rapid growth is creating thousands of new millionaires in Asia each year. Their ranks grew to 3.3 million in 2011, surpassing Europe for the first time, according to Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. Between January last year and March this year, China’s top 100 philanthropists donated $1.6 billion, according to the Hurun Report, a Chinese rich list. That’s about a fivefold increase from 2004 when the list started.

But it also recalls earlier periods in the U.S. and Europe when wealthy art patrons helped build museums that are now world-renowned.

In the late 19th century, British sugar magnate Henry Tate help fund the construction of a building to house his collection of Victorian art that he donated to the country, paving the way for the network of renowned museums that bear his name. Members of U.S. oil industrialist John D. Rockefeller’s family helped found New York’s famed Museum of Modern Art in 1929. Businessman Solomon Guggenheim is best remembered for the iconic New York museum his foundation set up in 1939, which was later named after him.

“It’s a complex issue,” said Philip Dodd, organizer of the Hong Kong art fair’s first private museum forum last year.

“Why did Medici commission so much art? Why did the Vatican commission Michelangelo? Was it philanthropy or was it an exercise of power and display and spectacle? I think all those things are involved in Asia too,” said Dodd.

Some 40 private museum owners and collectors from Australia, Japan, Indonesia and China are expected to attend this year’s private museum forum at the fair, which will be held May 17-20.

Tek acknowledged that vanity and ego played a role when he started building his art collection, but now he has reverted to what he terms a modest lifestyle. He says his only extravagance is flying first class and he doesn’t wear fancy watches or clothes and avoids giving too many media interviews.

“The action of opening the museum is an extension of love to society,” said Tek, who is president of Sierad Produce, a $155 million company listed on the Jakarta stock exchange.

“When you see MoMA, with flocks of people everyday, I’m a little bit jealous,” said Tek, referring to New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Tek, Wang and other wealthy collectors have turned Hong Kong into the world’s third biggest auction hub as they build up their collections of contemporary Chinese art. That segment has boomed in recent years but softened lately.

Gallery owners say choosy buyers have tired of the same artists coming up for sale and are focusing on longer established names. In contrast, during the 1980s Japan bubble, that country’s rich were buying up Impressionist masterpieces, Picassos and other Western art.

In the autumn of 2010, Tek paid $6.7 million at a Hong Kong auction for a painting of a yellow baby by Chinese surrealist painter Zhang Xiaogang entitled Chapter of a New Century Birth of the People’s Republic of China II.

In early April, he slipped into Hong Kong again. After an interview with The Associated Press he attended a Sotheby’s auction of contemporary Asian art, but stayed in the VIP room to avoid being seen by other bidders.

That sale’s highlight was another work by Zhang, a family portrait called Bloodline-Big Family No. 2. Amid furious bidding, it went to a phone bidder for 46 million Hong Kong dollars ($6 million), three times the opening price.

Sotheby’s said the painting and another by Fang Lijun that sold for HK$25 million ($3.2 million) are destined for a private collector’s museum in Shanghai. A spokeswoman for Tek wouldn’t confirm or deny whether he was the buyer.

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Researcher Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this report.

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Follow Kelvin Chan at twitter.com/chanman

AP-WF-05-09-12 1003GMT

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Eagle Scout spends 3 years restoring early jet aircraft

A U.S. Air Force image of a Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

DARLINGTON, S.C. (AP) – It took passion, commitment and paint. A lot of paint.

Florence teen Frankie Slemmer invested three years into the restoration of a decades-old Lockheed T-33 “Shooting Star” airplane that had been ravaged by time and neglect.

Slemmer saw the old jet airplane sitting out front of the Darlington County Jetport several years ago and didn’t fully know then that it would become a shining example of his dedication and perseverance.

He decided he wanted to refurbish the plane as a service project to get his Eagle Scout, and it just so happened he was trying to get his Aviation Merit Badge, too.

“I wanted to do something original that would reflect my patriotism and love for aviation, so I asked about this airplane in front of the airport,” Slemmer said.

He proposed it would only take three months but it ended up taking three years and 222 hours of work.

The aircraft had been moved to the Darlington Jetport some years ago and been sitting there decaying for over a decade. Originally, it was a gleaming example of polished aluminum that was used as a jet trainer for pilot trainees starting in the 1950s.

Once he got approval from the airport commission, Slemmer set to work and spent virtually every minute of spare time polishing, painting and repainting every square-inch of the airplane.

Needless to say, it was a big project. Slemmer said it was tough, but he wanted to look back and say that he had accomplished what he set out to do and be proud of it.

James Marsh, a family friend and a member of the Darlington County Jetport Commission, lent his aviation expertise along with tools to the cause.

Slemmer said he sometimes spent a whole day on one small portion trying to get the plane to shine again.

Marsh said he admired Slemmer’s dedication to remove more than 10 years of oxidation that had dulled the plane’s finish.

“It was an enormous task and not an easy project,” Marsh said. “I really enjoyed seeing the progress week-to-week, especially from a young man that’s doing something for the community.”

Slemmer said he couldn’t have done it without the help from friends and family.

“It feels weird now that it’s done. I spent every summer out there and would come home covered with grime and paint,” he said.

Because of Slemmer’s efforts, the airport has plans to continue keeping up the plane’s appearance.

“Having that airplane out there shows that we take pride in our airport,” Marsh said. “It’s gone from an ugly duckling to a pretty white swan and will last indefinitely.”

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Information from: Morning News, http://www.scnow.com

AP-WF-05-09-12 1356GMT

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Early Van Gogh watercolor fills gap in museum collection

The Van Gogh Museum paid $1.9 million for the 'Pollard Willow' watercolor. Image courtesy WikiPaintings.org.

AMSTERDAM (AP) – A young Vincent van Gogh was so struck by a dead willow leaning “lonely and melancholy” over a pond near The Hague that he knew at once he had to paint it.

“I’m going to attack it tomorrow morning,” he wrote to his brother Theo on July 26, 1882.

The Van Gogh Museum unveiled the painting Thursday, the first addition in five years to its world-famous collection of works by the postimpressionist master.

At a time when the artist was still honing his skills in perspective, anatomy and proportion using pen and pencil sketches, the watercolor was a bolt from the blue, although its muted tones are still a far cry from the exuberant and colorful oil paintings that characterized Van Gogh’s later works.

“It’s a very elaborate, well-done watercolor and that’s quite extraordinary in this period of Van Gogh’s oeuvre,” said Marije Vellekoop, the museum’s curator of prints and drawings. “Out of the blue, in the summer, in July, he makes a series of watercolors … with a lot of detail, but also very painterly, fluent.”

The willow trunk droops over the water and a path wends its way to the horizon, where a windmill stands near a railroad depot.

Not unusually for a Dutch summer, gray clouds dominate the sky, but Van Gogh also captured the occasional splash of deep blue as the clouds broke. The sky was almost identical Thursday morning—low gray clouds scudding over the landmark Amsterdam museum—as director Axel Rueger revealed the painting to the media.

Rueger said the painting, bought at auction in London earlier this year for 1.5 million euros ($1.9 million), filled a gap in the museum’s collection of Van Gogh works.

“What’s so special is it is for the first time a rather substantial work that he executes in color,” Rueger told The Associated Press. “It comes from a very small group of works he makes at the time and we didn’t have anything like that in our collection.”

For now, it will hang at the Van Gogh Museum. Later this year it and dozens of other paintings will be shifted across the Amstel River to the Hermitage Amsterdam while the Van Gogh Museum closes for several months for renovations.

Van Gogh wrote enthusiastically to Theo a few days after completing the painting, and included a sketch. The letter, on faded brown paper, hangs next to the completed painting in the museum. In it, Van Gogh says he considers the willow the best of a series of watercolors he painted that summer.

“I think he was very happy with the result and he was also confident that he could also work with color,” said Vellekoop.

AP-WF-05-10-12 1214GMT

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Court rules for Kevin Costner in breach of contract suit

Actor and director Kevin Costner in a 2003 photo. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) – The South Dakota Supreme Court has ruled that actor Kevin Costner did not breach a contract with an artist he commissioned to produce bronze sculptures of bison and American Indians.

The Hollywood superstar paid Peggy Detmers $300,000 to make the sculptures in the 1990s for a resort he planned in South Dakota’s Black Hills. The resort was never built, and he instead placed the sculptures at his Tatanka attraction near Deadwood.

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s ruling that the alternative placement did not constitute a breach of contract.

Costner filmed much of his Academy-Award-winning movie Dances with Wolves in South Dakota.

AP-WF-05-10-12 1406GMT

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Saratoga track to celebrate 150th anniversary next year

An early 1900s postcard pictures Saratoga Race Course. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (AP) – Plans to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of thoroughbred racing in Saratoga Springs are getting out of the gate.

Members of the Saratoga 150 Committee held a news conference Thursday at Saratoga Race Course to announce plans for next year’s five-month-long celebration.

Organizers say a friends group, website and forums for collecting old Saratoga images and memorabilia are being set up ahead of the May 2013 start of the 150th anniversary celebration.

The first thoroughbred races were held in Saratoga Springs in the summer of 1863. The next year, the races were moved across the street to their current location. The historic track is considered the oldest sporting venue in the United States.

This year’s Saratoga racing season runs from July 20 through Labor Day.

AP-WF-05-10-12 0703GMT

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Furniture Specific: Cleverly concealed

The drawer hidden behind the valence in this 18th century desk could very well remain hidden.

Watching a good craftsman work is always an entertaining way to spend some time. Have you ever studied the way an expert mason lays brick? The practiced moves and the economy of motion are striking. The same with watching a good fly caster or a professional golfer. These people are good because they have practiced most of their lives at their art or craft. But even the best craftsman gets a little bored on occasion or wants to add some interest or variation to the work or the product. That’s why we have artistic masonry patterns, trick pool shot artists and hotdog snowboarders.

What does that have to do with furniture? Furniture craftsmen like to have a little fun too, and sometimes their creations are just as interesting and amazing as those of any other professional playing at their work. One of the challenges of any cabinetmaker is the task of making the most and best use out of any volume included in a cabinet. It’s no challenge to a master cabinetmaker to build a box. But to build an interesting box is a worthy endeavor. While some of the results are downright clever, some cross over to the devious category and are not meant to be seen unless given a clue or two.

The most obvious little trick is the use of a stylistic element that actually turns out to be something else. The standard of the genre is the set of columns on either side of the prospect door in a 20th century Colonial Revival drop-front desk. Everyone, almost, knows that those little columns pull out to reveal extra storage space. They are called document drawers and almost every drop-front reproduction has them. But they are just the latest in a long line of hiding places created by craftsmen to fill the need for privacy and security at a time when the modern safe deposit box at the bank was just not an option. So where to hide the will and some extra cash? Tricky little spaces abound in older cabinets.

One way to create a private space in a bookcase secretary is to leave a small gap between the upper and lower sections. While not visible from the front of the cabinet, the space is open to the rear, and documents or valuables can easily be slipped into the space to be retrieved as required. The trick is to keep the cabinet fully loaded so the curious spouse, child or domestic doesn’t make a regular practice of checking the contents if they happen to be aware of it.

Another way to hide something is to put it in plain sight disguised as something else. That’s the trick often used by 18th century desk builders to provide a quick access to some private space. The fitted interior of a drop-front desk usually includes slots for folded documents. These spaces are often called cubbyholes or pigeon holes and the arrangement can be quite fanciful in some desks. The spaces are often separated by scroll cut dividers and they are often decorated with draped valences across the top. This gave the cabinetmaker the opportunity to hide a drawer front in plain sight disguised as a valence. Pull on the valence and a small suspended drawer is revealed. Interior prospect doors are another good hiding place to conceal a false bottom leading to space below or a false rear panel that can be removed to show space behind what seems to be the back of the cabinet.

Empire secretaries from the mid-19th century also employ some hidden space. When the foldout top is opened the flat writing surface often lifts to reveal storage below. Often a set of drawers at the base of the bookcase section is revealed when the top is open. Removing one the drawers often leads to another space in the interior of the cabinet below the bookcase section behind the main top drawer. And since many Empire bookcase secretaries employ crowns that can be removed for transportation, another mobile element is introduced that can be used to conceal a private item. It is not unheard of to find a pocket built into the back of the crown frieze front in which a document or some cash can be stashed by the use of a step stool or small ladder.

Mid-century chests also contained some unexpected spaces. It was not uncommon to find that the lower kick panel on a rococo chest was actually a fourth drawer in disguise. I detailed one such chest in this space in August 2004 that resulted in the discovery of a piece of paper bearing the date and the signature of the presumed cabinetmaker in 1869.

After the middle of the century the need for concealment turned from actual deception to concealed storage for convenience or versatility and sometimes it led to Rube Goldberg-type contraptions. Among these were the elaborate folding beds of the 1880s and 1890s made by such companies as Hale & Kilburn in Philadelphia, M. Samuels in New York and Stickley-Brandt in Binghamton, N.Y. These beds predated the famous Murphy bed by many years. The Champion series of beds from Hale & Kilburn came in double, three-quarter and single sizes and folded up into an elaborate solid walnut cabinet in the Renaissance or Aesthetic Movement styles of the period. The complicated hinged mechanisms often allowed the beds to be folded in half. The beds from Samuels were plainer, coming in smaller “imitation walnut” cabinets with a much plainer façade, but that still resembled a chest of drawers. Some models had a mirror. Closer to the turn of the century Stickley-Brandt’s beds looked like cabinets from the Golden Oak era complete with mirrors. William Murphy patented his much simpler bed around 1900. The most famous of his beds worked by pivoting from a doorjamb rather than folding into a cabinet.

George Hunzinger, the German-born cabinetmaker, concentrated on chairs for most of his career, accumulating 20 patents on chair forms over the years. Toward the end of his life he became interested in swiveling tables. One of his most interesting tables was patented in 1894, five years before his death. It was round table of oak or mahogany with a flowing four-legged base. He had several designs for the tops, which pivoted on two of the four supports to provide a table with two top surfaces. In some models one side was a plain wooden tabletop with a game table on the other side featuring brass receptacles for poker chips arranged around a fabric covered playing surface. Other models had a checkerboard or backgammon board inlaid on one side. The tables were quite popular at the time and for several decades after the patent date. Today examples of that table in good condition sell for several thousand dollars.

During the Great Depression combination furniture became widespread as living quarters became smaller. One clever innovation was called the “plantation table.” Usually in a sort of Chippendale-style it appeared to be a regular-size fold-over game table with a drawer. But when the top was folded over the top section could accompany half the frame as it separated and expanded to become an extension dining table. It could accommodate the addition of three or four leaves to make the table full size. Another table appeared to be a low cabinet but it too opened and expanded to become a dining table. The United Table-Bed Co. of Chicago created the “Ta-Bed” which looked like a regular modern dining table except the tabletop flipped back to become the headboard and the apron, leaves and legs extended to create a single bed. One final innovation in table design showed up early in the century and was popular for many decades. It was the folding center leaf of a dining table. The table opened like any other extension table but it had space for only one leaf. That leaf was folded in half and suspended under the tables on a sliding rack. The leaf lifted up and unfolded while still on the rack, never leaving contact with the table. Owners of that arrangement didn’t lose leaves when they moved.

Send comments, questions and pictures to Fred Taylor at P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or email them to him at info@furnituredetective.com.

Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book How To Be a Furniture Detective is available for $18.95 plus $3 shipping. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, P.O. Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.

Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, Identification of Older & Antique Furniture ($17 + $3 S&H) is also available at the same address. For more information call 800-387-6377, fax 352-563-2916, or info@furnituredetective.com. All items are also available directly from his website.

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The ‘document drawers’ in this Colonial Revival desk are no longer secret.

The bottom kick panel of this marble top rococo chest opens to reveal a fourth drawer.

The frame of this folding bed made by National Wire Mattress Co. folded in half to fit into the cabinet.

The fold-over top of the mid-century game table slides aside to reveal the storage space below.

This game table by George Hunzinger pivots on two of the supports to reveal another playing surface on the other side of the top.

One of the more clever concealment schemes of the 20th century is this folding bed, the Ta-Bed, made by the United Table Bed Co. of Chicago during the 1930s. It looks like a desk or sideboard until the top is lifted and the bed folds out.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s rugged nature on display in NM

'Gerald's Tree I 1937.' Image courtesy the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – Georgia O’Keeffe could handle the inhospitable conditions of the American Southwest, with its intense sun and rugged terrain.

Her clothes tell part of the story—jeans worn at the knees and sneakers scuffed. Her handwritten letters tell even more about the dust, the biting gnats, unpredictable rainstorms and the repeated struggles to get to some of New Mexico’s loneliest spots.

The items along with camping gear and snapshots taken by the artist’s friends during some of their outdoor adventures are part of a yearlong exhibition opening Friday at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The show highlights the stretches of high desert she called “the faraway” and the landscape paintings they inspired.

“The unique environment of the Southwest was always a muse for her and it continued to offer her boundless inspiration until the end of her life. But how she did it and how difficult it was is something that we don’t really often talk about,” said Carolyn Kastner, the museum’s associate curator.

The museum’s curators have turned one gallery into a slice of northwestern New Mexico’s badlands with a panoramic photograph of the area that O’Keeffe called the Black Place, where clay hills are colored various shades of black and gray.

The tent O’Keeffe and friend Maria Chabot used during their 1944 camping trip at the Black Place is on display along with their lanterns and cooking equipment.

O’Keeffe described it as an “untouched lonely feeling place” that continually drew her back.

Barbara Buhler Lynes, the museum’s curator and director of the O’Keeffe Research Center, said the artist was able to develop a personal relationship with the Southwest through her camping and rafting trips. It was through those experiences O’Keeffe also realized her independent spirit and sense of adventure, Lynes said.

While the artwork on the gallery’s walls can be mistaken for none other than O’Keeffe, visitors can expect some surprises, Kastner said.

Among them are a couple of paintings, photographs and other documentation related to a 10-day raft trip O’Keeffe took down the Colorado River through Glen Canyon when she was 74. She made the trip more than once, knowing that it would never look the same once the dam was built and the canyons were flooded to form Lake Powell.

Kastner pointed to one image of O’Keeffe by photographer Todd Webb.

“It shows her beautiful artist hands, but they’re at work, paddling a rubber raft down the river. It’s extraordinary,” she said.

Without modern amenities like GPS or four-wheel drive, O’Keeffe would set off alone or sometimes with friends to find her inspiration. There are stories of her bumping along primitive roads and finding refuge from the harsh sunlight in the back of her 1920s Ford Sedan. She would take out the driver’s seat and turn the passenger seat around. It was just enough room to set up a 30-by-40-inch canvas.

“I think it shows this amazing personal will and it was as grand as the landscape she was painting,” Kastner said. “Just to do that was an amazing effort and then to do it again and again.”

In a June 3, 1944 letter, O’Keeffe talked about how rough conditions were at the Black Place.

“We came home very dusty. It is a job to get brushed and shaken off,” she wrote.

The exhibition, “Georgia O’Keeffe and The Faraway: Nature and Image,” was organized by the O’Keeffe Museum and the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Texas. It opened there in 2009 and this marks its debut in Santa Fe.

The show also coincides with a first-time opportunity for artists to paint, sketch and draw on the grounds of O’Keeffe’s adobe estate in Abiquiu, N.M.

Prompted by the suggestion of an employee who is also an artist, museum officials decided to share views of the Chama River Valley from the vantage point O’Keeffe would have had from her driveway and garden. The one-day event is scheduled for May 14. The museum is also considering a second art session in the fall.

Agapita Judy Lopez, the museum’s director of historic properties, said it’s easy to see why O’Keeffe eventually settled in Abiquiu and nearby Ghost Ranch.

“Just the beautiful lighting, the views, the colors—it’s all inspirational,” she said.

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If You Go…

O’KEEFFE EXHIBITION: Through May 5, 2013, at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 17 Johnson St., Santa Fe, N.M., http://www.okeeffemuseum.org. Monday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and until 7 p.m. on Fridays. Adults, $12, children under 18, free.

O’KEEFFE ART SESSION: May 14 at Georgia O’Keeffe’s historic home in Abiquiu, N.M. http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/abiquiu-day.html

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Follow Susan Montoya Bryan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanmbryanNM

AP-WF-05-07-12 1856GMT

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'Road to Pedernal 1941.' Image courtesy the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. — ‘Road to Pedernal 1941.’ Image courtesy the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

'Canyon Country White and Brown Cliffs 1965,' Image courtesy the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. — ‘Canyon Country White and Brown Cliffs 1965,’ Image courtesy the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

'Black Place Grey and Pink 1949.' Image courtesy the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. — ‘Black Place Grey and Pink 1949.’ Image courtesy the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Historic ferry Kalakala and its owner in dire straits

The 77-year-old Kalakala ferry may be too fragile to tow. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) – Once an icon of Puget Sound, the historic ferry Kalakala is in such fragile shape it may not withstand being evicted from a Tacoma moorage and could have to be scrapped, the Coast Guard and other agencies say.

Owner Steve Rodrigues disagrees. He’s still committed to restoring the 77-year-old vessel to its former glory, even though he says owning it the past nine years has left him impoverished.

“I don’t have a penny,” he said. “I’m homeless. I’ve given everything for this.”

He’s sacrificed his career as a civil engineer to the effort, he said, as well as a house he owned in Tumwater, Wash. He’s spent about $500,000 on the Kalakala, The News Tribune reported Tuesday.

The last stop may be the Hylebos Waterway, where the Kalakala has been moored for eight years.

The 276-foot vessel began listing last winter and the Coast Guard declared it a hazard to navigation in December. That gave the Corps of Engineers authority to seize the ferry and dispose of it.

The problem is, there’s no place to take the vessel and, even if there were, the Coast Guard says it’s too fragile to move.

Despite meetings and teleconferences over the past few months by the Coast Guard, the Corps, the Port of Tacoma, Citizens for a Healthy Bay, the state Department of Ecology, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and worried businesses along the Hylebos, nobody’s been able to come up with a solution.

Even the cheapest possibility—fixing up the Kalakala just enough to tow and cutting it up for scrap—is estimated to cost between $2 million and $3 million.

“It’s a piece of junk,” said Bill Anderson at Citizens for a Healthy Bay.

Capt. Scott Ferguson, commander of the Coast Guard’s Puget Sound sector, was less blunt about it, but he essentially agreed.

“There isn’t enough good steel on the vessel,” he said. “We would have to be very careful when we touch her because the steel is so paper thin it’s very delicate.”

“I know there’s historical value here,” Ferguson said. “Ultimately what I would hope is that critical pieces—memorial pieces—could be taken from the vessel and displayed somewhere. The idea of actually trying to fix the Kalakala is going to be pretty far-fetched.”

The Kalakala went into service in 1935 and crisscrossed Puget Sound between Seattle and Bremerton for more than 30 years. Its streamlined design with round windows was the postcard picture for the region, compared in fame to the Space Needle as a city symbol for its time.

It was auctioned in 1967 and repurposed in Alaska as a fish processing ship before being grounded in 1972 as a cannery. It was towed back to Washington in 1998 with the idea it would be restored, but every fundraising effort has failed.

After wearing out its welcome in Seattle, the Kalakala went to Neah Bay, where the Coast Guard threatened to sink it in the ocean as a hazard to navigation.

It was moved to Tacoma’s Hylebos Waterway in 2004 and moored on property owned by Karl Anderson who encouraged restoration plans. Now he’s had enough.

Anderson filed an eviction suit against Rodrigues on March 21 in Pierce County Superior Court, asking for back moorage fees and penalties. Rodrigues has no way of paying.

Rodrigues isn’t giving up.

“I’m going to win. I have no doubt,” he told The News Tribune.

“Give me a home for the Kalakala and I’ll show you the money,” he said. “It would be a success anywhere.”

AP-WF-05-08-12 1823GMT

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Lawsuit demands return of 135 Ira Gershwin letters

A 1930s picture of Ira Gershwin is on a dust jacket of a book containing his song lyrics. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and K&M Liquidation Sales Ltd.

NEW YORK (AP) – A lawsuit filed in New York City claims that a memorabilia dealer is trying to illegally sell 135 letters that Ira Gershwin wrote to a biographer of the legendary lyricist.

The suit was filed by Carla Jablonski. She says her father, Edward Jablonski, received the letters from Gershwin between 1941 and 1980.

The lawsuit accuses the dealer, Gary Zimet, of trying to sell the letters to the Library of Congress last month.

Jablonski told the New York Post she doesn’t know how Zimet obtained them.

The lawsuit demands their return.

Zimet said the lawsuit is without merit.

Edward Jablonski wrote several books on Gershwin, including the 1958 biography The Gershwin Years: George and Ira.

After he died, the family donated most of his Gershwin archive to the Library of Congress.

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Information from: New York Post, http://www.nypost.com

AP-WF-05-09-12 1126GMT

Family physician tuned in to early 20th century radios

Steve Hansman's first radio was the popular Zenith Trans-Oceanic model from the early 1950s. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Hart Galleries.

ARNOLD, Md. (AP) – Dr. Steve Hansman likes to think of himself as a kind of archaeologist.

But the artifacts he seeks aren’t buried in the dirt. They’re at flea markets and antique shops, posted on eBay, or available by networking through people who share his passion.

Radios made by Atwater Kent, Crosley, Grebe, Kennedy, RCA and Zenith are Hansman’s quarry.

“Every week or two I see something I’ve never seen before,” he explained.

That’s saying something, because the basement of his Arnold home functions as a mini-museum. He’s a family physician, but as far as his hobby goes, he’s a radio-logist.

Hansman has about 200 vintage radios, not to mention old-time advertisements, a few Victrolas, and a workshop filled with boxes and boxes of all kinds of vacuum tubes and other replacement parts. Vacuum tubes gave way to transistors after they were developed in the 1950s.

The old radios aren’t necessarily worth a lot of money; they’re more valuable in terms of reminiscences and a window to the evolution of technology. “It’s not just about the equipment, it’s the whole history,” Hansman said.

His particular interests are radios from the 1920s, which encompass the first models widely sold to the general public. He has a 1921 Kennedy that more than anything resembles lab equipment. Beginning in the late ’20s, manufacturers started to make much more ornate models. Hansman has plenty of those, too. “That’s when they started to become more like furniture,” he said.

Among his collection is a 1937 radio that doubles as a bar, and another with rotary tuning reminiscent of old telephones. But the president of the 700-member Mid-Atlantic Antique Radio Club is quick to point out he knows people with larger collections.

Not all of Hansman’s radios work, but he’s repaired quite a few. When he turned on the Kennedy last weekend, it took a few seconds to warm up before the Baltimore Orioles game came over the speaker. There was a bit of static, but it lent itself to the old-time feel.

Brian Belanger, curator of the National Capital Radio & Television Museum in Bowie, said there’s also a beauty in the glow of the tubes or dials that light up. The museum was founded by club members and opened in 1999.

“There’s more of a living presence than the modern radios that just sit there,” said Belanger, who also helps edit MAARC’s monthly newsletter, “Radio Age.”

Club member Steve McAllister of Bowie remembered a similar feeling when he plugged in the first old radio he bought at a neighbor’s yard sale. “It was cool when it lit up, almost like an indication of being alive,” he said.

His particular interest is hi-fi gear from the late ’30s to about 1960. This includes not only radios, but also amplifiers and speakers. The mechanical engineer brought a couple models to Hansman’s home and discussed how elegantly the components were laid out.

McAllister enjoys fixing old radios, as well listening to them. “I enjoy the sound,” he said. “It has a different sound. (It’s) not as clinical, it tends to be warmer.”

The old radios, he added, are exceptional in the mid-range, but not as good as modern equipment with bass or treble.

Compared to the crystal “foxhole” radio built by club member Carl Smith of Annapolis, they’re iPods. Smith still has his very first radio, a 1954 model his parents bought for him—and it’s still in mint condition. The stout black radio, called a Zenith Trans-Oceanic, has a lengthy antenna and holds an equally long string of memories.

“It was fabulous, said Smith, a retired maintenance worker. “It was the cream of the crop. I’d never heard short wave or anything like that. I did a lot of listening at nighttime.”

Hansman traces his interest in radios back to his parents. His father taught electronics, and his mother was interested in antiques.

But he didn’t get his first old model until college, when he visited a Western Maryland farm and found three radios in the attic. The farm’s owner gave him one, and Hansman and his father fixed it up.

His career and the military put a hold on further activity until 1989, when he went to an auction and made a couple purchases. He also found out about the club.

MAARC was founded in 1984 and the majority of its members are from Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Delaware–although 48 states and five countries are also represented. Most are ages 40 to 60, and men outnumber women about 20 to 1.

“I like the whole idea (of old radios),” Hansman said. “With the old parts, it’s easier to understand what’s going on. You can see the wires, see the components.”

He taught himself radio repair, and like McAllister, said there’s a certain satisfaction in getting an old model running.

When Hansman acquires a radio, he examines all the component first. People should never just plug them in because that approach can do damage, he said.

Electric radios were offered as early as 1926, but didn’t become common in cities until 1928 to 1930, Hansman said. Prior to that, radios ran on batteries, and before that, crystals. Early radios were AM, although many also offered short wave. FM was developed in 1926, but the first FM sets didn’t come out until 1939, Hansman said, and became popular much later.

“For me, when I look at my radios, I get a feeling of how America was and how America could be when they produced their own products,” he said. “It reflects a time we like to remember.”

But the sentiment goes even deeper.

“Sometimes,” he said, “they feel like old friends.”

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Information from: The Capital of Annapolis, Md., http://capitalgazette.com

AP-WF-05-09-12 1322GMT

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