The renovation, which will take several years, will include major architectural, lighting and technology upgrades in each of the galleries to make them more interactive and viewer-friendly. Also, thousands of artifacts, documents and photographs will be periodically rotated.

“It’s a long-term overhaul, but (Eisenhower) was one of the most beloved presidents of all time, and we want this to be a premier presidential library,” Museum Director Karl Weissenbach said. “You have to make changes and renovations to keep yourself relevant. You have to keep your product fresh or people won’t come back.”

The Eisenhower Presidential Foundation, comprised of Eisenhower family members and appointed members, will drive national and international funding and recognition programs for the facility. The Abilene Council will focus on local and regional fundraising, and be a conduit between the local community and national board, The Salina Journal reported Monday.

“We’re here to raise the visibility of Ike in Kansas and, even to some degree, in Abilene,” said Abilene resident Bruce Dale, chairman of the Abilene Council. “The initial goal is to get in front of service organizations and clubs so we can talk about how Ike is still a relevant figure and give them lots of reasons to get involved in the museum and library.”

The museum currently has about 70,000 artifacts and about 350,000 photographs but the public generally can see only 2 percent of the collection at one time, said Samantha Kenner, communications director at the library and museum.

The museum’s Temporary Gallery, which will feature a rotation of original exhibits, is already being renovated.

Beginning May 21, the gallery will open what Weissenbach called its most ambitious exhibit: “Eisenhower: Agent of Change,” a look at Eisenhower’s eight years in the presidency. It will include discussion of civil rights issues, the founding of NASA and implementing the interstate highway system during the Eisenhower administration.

A rotation of artifacts will continue in the museum’s three permanent galleries: the Mamie Eisenhower Gallery, the Military Gallery and the Presidential Gallery, as well as Eisenhower’s boyhood home.

A long-term goal is to create the Eisenhower Leadership Gallery, which Weissenbach said will focus on qualities of leadership Eisenhower displayed during World War II and his presidency.

Weissenbach said he is hopeful the renovations will make the museum and library a destination for national and international visitors of all ages.

“Last year, we had our highest attendance since the Eisenhower centennial in 1990,” Weissenbach said. “We’re hoping to have high numbers again this year and in the future.”

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Information from: The Salina Journal, http://www.salina.com

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Professors Mark Green and Marcia Schmidt Blaine researched and wrote the explanatory text for As Time Passes Over the Land, a collection of 29 paintings of New Hampshire’s White Mountains on temporary display at the university’s Karl Drerup Art Gallery. Their collaboration reflects the university’s approach to not just the exhibit but to the Museum of the White Mountains it plans to open next year.

“It’s going to be completely transdisciplinary,” said Catherine Amidon, director of the gallery and interim director of the planned museum. “Ecology, history, tourism. It’s not an art museum; it’s not a natural history museum; it’s not a science a museum. It’s comprehensive, and it’s all about the region.”

When Amidon walks through the modest exhibit featuring the work of 20 different artists, she sees not only region’s past, but glimpses of the future. The display is the first production of the museum, which will be housed in a former church on the edge of campus. The museum will complement and build upon the work of many departments, including the Institute for New Hampshire Studies and the Center for Rural Partnerships.

The goal is to create a central place for the study of the region’s art, culture and heritage, with galleries, classrooms and state-of-the-art storage. Its core collection includes more than 8,000 items donated by photographer and collector Daniel Noel of Conway shortly before his death last year. The material includes rare photographs, maps, books, stereoscopic images, hotel ledgers and other items, all of which will be digitized and shared with researchers, students and the public.

The current exhibit, which closes April 9, consists of landscape paintings from the 1850s through the 1880s on loan from other private collectors. Many of the artists were part of the famed Hudson River School movement, drawn to White Mountains by the region’s its beauty, wildness and tourists. Though they captured sweeping views, some artists deliberately chose small canvases to cater to wealthy tourists staying at grand hotels who wanted souvenirs to carry home.

The Northeast’s highest peak – Mount Washington – is a common subject, along with rugged peak of Mount Chocorua. There are signs of man’s increasing presence – the steam from locomotive, animals out to pasture and stumps dotted across a hill hinting at the large-scale logging operations just getting under way. As Green and Blaine explain, farming, logging and traveling all combined to expose new scenery. At the time, the White Mountains provided the most accessible mountain scenery in the country.

“These tend to be familiar spots. They’re not going out into the boonies. They’re going to places people visited,” Amidon said.

A painting by Bradford Freeman titled Mount Washington and the Village of North Conway, depicts clouds giving way to sun over a small cluster of buildings with the mountain looming behind. Today, the “village” is known for its cluster of outlet malls.

“It really captures why people loved it in the first place,” Amidon said. “There is nothing like the view of Mount Washington.”

A fair amount of artistic license was taken by some artists, she said, and “people who really love the mountains” have come to the gallery and engaged in spirited debates over the accuracy of the locations depicted.

Though several other New Hampshire museums have White Mountains paintings, they aren’t the focus, Amidon said. She said Plymouth State, located just 20 minutes south of Franconia Notch on Interstate 93, is an ideal physical place for such a museum, but she also expects it to have a large online presence.

“People from all over the country and the world love the White Mountains,” she said.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Those eligible for consideration include anyone who has made a major contribution to the Appalachian Trail, or otherwise has advanced the cause of the Appalachian Trail. A list of persons nominated as of Feb. 28 can be viewed at the museum’s website at www.atmuseum.org.

“We encourage folks to continue sending in nominations, regardless of whether the person you’d like to nominate has already been named or not,” said Jim Foster, chairman of the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame Committee.

The Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame is being established by the Appalachian Trail Museum Society to recognize those who have made a significant contribution toward establishing and maintaining the 2,181-mile footpath that passes through 14 states from Maine to Georgia.

Nominations include pioneers who conceived of and developed the trail; those who organized or directed major trail organizations like the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the Appalachian Trail maintaining clubs; longtime trail maintainers; leaders who promoted and protected the Appalachian Trail; hikers who have made significant accomplishments, and other persons who have enriched the culture or community of the Appalachian Trail by their association with it.

Nominations may be submitted at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/63PYPCT.

The first class of inductees will be announced at the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame Banquet on June 17 at the Allenberry Resort in Boiling Springs, Pa. The banquet will be a part of the first Appalachian Trail Museum Festival, an event that will celebrate the museum and its opening in June 2010 as the first museum in the United States dedicated to hiking. During its first year, the museum attracted more than 8,000 visitors from 48 states and 18 countries.

Located in Pine Grove Furnace State Park and at the midway point of the Appalachian Trail, the museum is across from the Pine Grove General Store on Pennsylvania Route 233. The museum is open from noon to 4 p.m. daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day and on weekends from noon to 4 p.m. in the spring and fall.

The advertisement is for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ exhibition of works by the Italian master Titian. The museum chose to feature the famous Venus Rising from the Sea painting on the billboard because “it’s very typical of paintings in the show,” said MIA spokeswoman Anne-Marie Wagener.

The graffiti was discovered on a billboard in Long Lake, a western suburb, last week. None of the other Minneapolis area billboards advertising the show have been damaged. The one that was vandalized has been restored to its previous condition, despite objections from museum officials.

“We said ‘We think it’s funny, just leave it, don’t bother replacing it,’” Wagener said Thursday.

But she said Clear Channel Outdoor, the company that owns the billboard, has a policy that ads with graffiti must be taken down so as not to encourage vandalism.

The billboards are slated to come down in mid-March.

The museum has fielded about 10 calls from angry passers-by who said they weren’t comfortable seeing nudity outside of the museum, said MIA marketing director Kristin Prestegaard. Some people said it forced them to talk to their children about nudity in art, a conversation they weren’t ready to have.

But during the Italian renaissance period, the human body was held in high esteem and wasn’t seen as erotic, Wagener said.

“It was the absolute of perfection,” she said. “I think it’s only now that people project certain ideas – but it’s art.”

The billboard raises the question of whether it’s acceptable to impose one’s culture and aesthetics on others, said Paul Rosenblatt, a family social science professor at the University of Minnesota.

“That art comes out of a particular culture,” Rosenblatt said. “I can really understand why there are plenty of people who, from their own cultural perspective, would be really uncomfortable.”

The classic paintings in the MIA exhibit – on loan from the National Galleries of Scotland – feature a number of Venetian women, religious figures, mythical Cupids and soldiers. The exhibit closes on May 1.

Wagener denied that the graffiti was a publicity stunt to attract attention to the exhibit, which she said is exceeding attendance projections.

“We’re not that creative,” she said flatly.

Nonetheless, both Prestegaard and Wagener said they think whoever did the graffiti was probably just trying to be funny, not censor the image.

It would be different “if the words ‘Brrr!’ weren’t there and they hadn’t given her such a nice, shapely swimsuit,” Wagener said. “I mean, if you were angry, why would you make it kind of pretty?”

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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