LONDON (AP) – The National Gallery is opening an exhibit this week about how experts use technology to properly identify art works and detect forgeries.
The exhibit, “Close Examination – Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries,” shows how devices such as infrared imaging, X-rays and a gas-chromatography-mass-spectrometer can be used to peel back layers of time in art.
One painting on exhibit is The Virgin and Child with an Angel, which was acquired by the National Gallery in 1924. It was believed to be by Italian painter Francesco Francia until a similar painting hit the market.
Last year, an investigation found the museum’s work was a fake.
The exhibit opens Wednesday and lasts until mid-September.
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Online: http://bit.ly/byeR2r
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Detroit Children’s Museum, 2008 photo by Andrew Jameson at en.wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. DETROIT (AP) – The Detroit Children’s Museum, which was shuttered last year amid cost-cutting by the city’s school district, has reopened with revamped exhibits, a new preschool area and more of its thousands of artifacts on display.
Hands-on components are now incorporated into all exhibits, museum director Julie Johnson said. Newly displayed items include the skull of an extinct mammal Andrewsarchus, masks and Civil War artifacts.
The museum previously was run by the cash-strapped Detroit Public Schools, which closed it last August. It’s now being operated by the Detroit Science Center under a 10-year agreement that is expected to save the state’s largest district $11.9 million. The museum reopened June 26.
“We didn’t lose this gem,” Johnson said. “It’s been here since 1917. This is a very important part of Detroit.”
The district still owns the museum, which has more than 100,000 artifacts. New acquisitions will belong to the Science Center, which has brought in some if its displays such as a towering model Tyrannosaurus rex.
“The Detroit Children’s Museum was not a core part of our operations,” Robert Bobb, the district’s state-appointed emergency financial manager, said in statement. “The museum needed to be given the stability of not being in the annual school budget cycle.”
The 93-year-old museum houses dinosaur bones, dioramas, costumes and dolls from around the world. It also has an extensive collection of rocks, fossils and crystals, some of which are being presented in new displays.
The new preschool area will include a puppet theater and live turtles. And some of the museum’s mainstays remain, including a stuffed Bengal tiger named Champ in an expanded animal exhibit and the horse sculpture “Silverbolt” outside.
In the main exhibit hall, more than 500 items are on display – about twice as many as a year ago, Johnson said. In one display, a large doll house that sits behind glass is paired with another where children can play with dolls.
The museum mostly had been used for field trips, Johnson said. Those will continue, with programs available for schools, daycare groups and community centers, but the Science Center also plans to promote the museum for family visits.
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If You Go…
DETROIT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM: 6134 Second Ave., Detroit; http://www.detroitsciencecenter.org/DCM.html or 313-873-8100. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Closed Sundays. Adults, $4; children, $2. Admission includes one planetarium show; additional shows are $1 per person.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Among the many custom-made homes is this manufactured home made by Bliss around the turn of the 20th century. Image courtesy of The Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures. TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) – The towering front door dwarfs visitors, making them feel as if they’re smaller versions of themselves. It seems like the proper beginning for a tour through Tucson’s Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures.
The self-guided tour starts in a magnificent rotunda where visitors can read about the museum’s founder, Pat Arnell, who received her first set of miniatures in the 1930s.
The miniatures enthusiast didn’t seriously start collecting them until 1979 and since has accumulated one of the finest collections in the country, making her well-known in the miniature community, which includes local, national and international organizations.
Arnell’s museum is said to be the first built in the United States specifically to showcase miniatures.
The Mini-Time Machine is separated into three galleries – Exploring the World, History Gallery and the Enchanted Realm. Each has a different theme.
“People should plan on spending a couple of hours here,” said Lisa Hastreiter-Lamb, the museum’s associate director and director of education.
A grand tree beckons you to the Enchanted Realm gallery. It’s the only one where sounds transport museum guests to far off places where fairies, wizards, pocket dragons, witches, frog princes, mermaids and unicorns reside.
The castle’s every nook and cranny tells a different story. Arnell commissioned the castle from a couple in 1998 and more than 40 other artisans contributed to the work.
The Yellow Rose of Texas house is in the Exploring the World gallery. The mansion is the work of Brooke Tucker, a popular artist in the miniature world and the daughter of the late actor Forrest Tucker.
Another highlight in the Exploring the World gallery is Chateau Meno, an elaborate 14-room palace in the Rococo style of French architecture purchased by Arnell in 2006. It had been owned by a Georgia woman who constructed the chateau in her basement over 30 years.
Arnell obtained the collection’s oldest room box at an auction in January and fittingly, it’s found in the History Gallery. The 1742 Nuremberg Kitchen was produced in great detail by artisans in Germany.
“It’s amazing something like this has lasted so long,” Arnell said. “It has all the original furnishings.”
Another kitchen in the gallery, called the Nuremberg Turn-of-the-Century Kitchen, was manufactured by a German toy company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The kitchen is operational and features a working meat grinder, which is better suited for oatmeal than meat, and an oven that can heat up mixtures with candles.
Arnell and her husband, Walter, opened the Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures last Sept. 1 to showcase her vast collection of antique and contemporary miniatures.
More than 26,000 people have walked through its three galleries since the approximately 16,000-square-foot museum opened.
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Information from: Arizona Daily Star, http://www.azstarnet.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WS-06-27-10 1441EDT
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
The museum collection includes approximately 275 houses and room boxes. Image courtesy of The Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures.
Ringo Starr accepting the gold snare drum in 1964 from William F. Ludwig, Jr., president of Ludwig Drum Company (second from left), as his daughter Brooke, Ludwig’s director of marketing R. L. Schory (far right), and the other Beatles (John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney) look on. Photo: Ludwig Industries. NEW YORK – On Wednesday, July 7, Ringo Starr’s 70th birthday, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will inaugurate a special display of his gold-plated snare drum that will remain on view to the public through December 2010 in the Museum’s second-floor Musical Instruments Galleries. On loan from Ringo Starr, it was originally presented to him by the Ludwig Drum Company during The Beatles’ 1964 visit to Chicago when the legendary rock group, in which Starr was the drummer, was on its first tour of the United States.
“This special presentation drum—made for the most influential drummer of a generation and representing the highest-end production of the most important drum manufacturer of the 20th century—holds iconic stature,” stated Jayson Kerr Dobney, Associate Curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Musical Instruments. “We are so pleased to be able to display in our galleries this spectacular loan from Ringo himself, who has owned it since it was first presented to him in September 1964, for thousands of visitors to see during this landmark birthday year.”
Following the appearance of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in early 1964, on which Ringo Starr appeared playing a Ludwig oyster black pearl drum set with the name “Ludwig” prominently displayed, the manufacturer experienced an enormous surge in sales and had to schedule round-the-clock production to accommodate orders. That September, The Beatles performed their first concert in Chicago, home to the Ludwig Drum Company. To thank Ringo for using their instruments, company president William F. Ludwig, Jr., presented him with the specially made, one-of-a-kind gold snare drum (“Super-Sensitive” model) before the concert. It bears a plaque reading: “Ringo Starr, The Beatles.” At the presentation, Mr. Ludwig said, “I have never known a drummer more widely acclaimed and publicized than you, Ringo Starr. Your millions of fans have honored you and the other members of The Beatles by their overwhelming acceptance of your recordings and concert appearances. On behalf of the employees and management of the Ludwig Drum Company, I would like to thank you for choosing our instruments and for the major role you are playing in the music world today.”
The snare drum, which measures 14 inches in diameter and 5-1/2 inches high, will be on view in a special display within the Metropolitan Museum’s newly renovated Musical Instruments Galleries, which house its renowned collection of instruments from six continents and the Pacific Islands, dating from about 300 B.C. to the present. Unsurpassed in its comprehensive scope, the collection illustrates the development of musical instruments from all cultures and eras.
Also in celebration of Ringo Starr’s 70th birthday in July, public television stations throughout the United States will broadcast Live from the Artists Den: Ringo Starr with Ben Harper and Relentless7. This one-hour second-season premiere of the popular contemporary music series features Mr. Starr, folk-funk star Ben Harper and Relentless7, and singer Joan Osborne in an intimate concert on the stage of the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. Ringo Starr and Ben Harper are also interviewed in the Museum’s Musical Instruments Galleries. The initial New York-area broadcast of Live from the Artists Den will take place Friday, July 9, at 9:30 p.m. on WNET/Channel 13, and Saturday, July 10, at 10 p.m. on WLIW/Channel 21; check local listings and www.TheArtistsDen.com for dates and times in other areas.
The intelligent, level-headed Carl Hubbell became one of baseball’s best pitchers in the 1930s, ironically by throwing screwballs. Image courtesy of Regency-Superior Ltd. and LiveAuctioneers archive. MEEKER, Okla. (AP) – Humble can be incredibly impressive.
In life, Carl Hubbell, described by many as a very humble man, was one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball.
The pride of Meeker was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1947 and his bio reads: “Baffling hitters with a devastating screwball, The Meal Ticket compiled a streak of 46 1/3 scoreless innings in 1933 and won 16 straight games in 1936 and a record 24 over two seasons. The nine-time All-Star remains famed for his performance in the 1934 All-Star Game, in which he fanned Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin in succession.” That’s very impressive.
But Hubbell is also humble in death.
How?
This is the 30th year of the Carl Hubbell Museum, which is located in the foyer of the City Hall/Fire Station in Meeker. So, you could literally go into City Hall to pay a utility bill and also see a photo that includes Hubbell and Babe Ruth, signed by Ruth. Or you could marvel at the silver boxes he received for winning the National League Most Valuable Player honors in 1933 and 1936.
It is nothing huge, nothing elaborate, but the museum is impressive.
Although born June 22, 1903 – 107 years ago – in Carthage, Mo., Hubbell moved with his family to just outside Meeker 13 years later. In 1923 Carl graduated from Meeker High School. Meeker was home.
In 1978, while visiting the community, Hubbell talked about where he wanted his memorabilia to eventually be displayed.
At that time, lifelong Meeker resident Vernon Markwell and wife, Gail Markwell, became friends with Carl Hubbell. The grand opening of the City Hall/Fire Station and the Carl Hubbell Museum was held Sept. 26, 1980.
“He’s a good example of a young man who tried hard to do his best in what he did and he never bragged, he was so humble,” Gail said of the man called by some “King Carl.”
“He was a really great guy.”
That was in life, but he was already thinking ahead to death and to how what he had might benefit others, such as the children of Meeker.
“He said ‘The Hall of Fame has been wanting my junk,’ that’s what he called it,” Gail Markwell said, “‘but I want it to where kids will be able to come in and see it and say I can be like Carl.’”
He didn’t mean they had to have a great screwball pitch. He was talking about being the best at what you do.
Hubbell and Vernon Markwell became such good friends that one day the retired baseball player called the auctioneer and real estate broker and asked to meet with him.
Again, thinking ahead, he asked Markwell to give his eulogy when the time came.
Hubbell, 85, died Nov. 21, 1988, in Scottsdale, Ariz. One week later, Markwell delivered the eulogy at the Meeker High School gym.
“Through all of these years and all of these outstanding achievements, even to becoming famous,” Markwell said, “Carl was and remained a humble man, a kind man, a modest man, and a quiet man.
“For instance when the subject of errors on the playing field behind him was brought up, Carl was quoted as saying ‘Nobody makes an error on purpose. All you can do is bear down harder and resist the temptation to blame the other fellow.’”
Hubbell’s musuem may be small, but again, it’s remarkably impressive. Many items came from the pitcher but others have been donated. And through the 30 years, visitors have come to the museum from Meeker and throughout Oklahoma as well as Virginia, Ohio and other states.
In addition to the black and white photo with Ruth, there’s a picture of Hubbell standing next to Gehrig. There’s the 1923 Meeker High School baseball team photo. And displayed a few feet away is a commencement announcement from the Meeker Class of 1923.
There are baseballs from a no-hitter in 1929 and his 18-inning 1-0 win in 1933. Then there’s the Baseball Chess Set featuring the American and National Leagues. In the set’s case, the Hubbell piece is between Rogers Hornsby and Stan Musial. And next door, a case contains even more Hubbell items in the Meeker Historical Museum.
What’s powerful about all this is that the items say what the man himself chose not to speak about.
Gail Markwell said, “If you asked Carl something about himself he changed the subject to praise someone else.”
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Information from: The Oklahoman, http://www.newsok.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. Image courtesy NURFC. CINCINNATI (AP) – A two-ton section of the Berlin Wall has become part of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in downtown Cincinnati.
The section measuring 12 feet tall and 4 feet wide will be dedicated as a monument July 3 outside the museum that focuses on how Civil War era slaves reached freedom, and on freedom around the world. It arrived Wednesday.
The Munich, Germany, Sister Cities Association worked to help get the section from Berlin to Cincinnati as part of a relationship with the Ohio city that began more than two decades ago as the Soviet bloc was falling apart.
The Freedom Center plans an educational mini-park for the segment, which will be lit at night. Other sections of the wall that divided East and West Berlin until 1989 have been given to other cities over the years.
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Information from: The Cincinnati Enquirer, http://www.enquirer.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-CS-06-24-10 0854EDT
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
A section of the Berlin Wall, measuring 12 ft by 4ft and weighing two tons, arrives at the NURFC on a flatbed tractor-trailer truck. Image courtesy NURFC. A tug transports the Berlin Wall segment to its new, permanent position at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Image courtesy NURFC. Members of the media were on hand for the arrival of the Berlin Wall section. Image courtesy NURFC.
Early publicity photo of the Jackson 5, auctioned by Guernsey’s on May 30, 2007. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Guernsey’s. DETROIT (AP) – A Jackson 5 exhibit is opening at the Motown Historical Museum in Detroit, marking the one-year anniversary this week of Michael Jackson’s death.
Starting Tuesday, the public will be able to view photographs, awards and uniforms the group wore throughout its career.
Museum chief curator Lina Stephens says the exhibit celebrates the life of Jackson and acknowledges the Jackson 5’s “contribution to the Motown story.” Jackson died June 25, 2009.
Stephens says the exhibit will be open through October. Museum summer hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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Online: http://www.motownmuseum.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Fort Douglas Military Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah, National Historic Landmark and Utah Military History Center. Image used by permission of Fort Douglas Military Museum.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – The Fort Douglas Military Museum is looking for pieces of history.
The museum’s curators say anybody with military artifacts – old or not so old – is welcome to call or bring them by the fort overlooking Salt Lake City.
About 1,000 people attended the annual Fort Douglas Day Celebration at the 149-year-old military post. The museum is seeking donations of military memorabilia to add to its collection.
The museum also is looking for volunteers to help establish a detail of living-history interpreters.
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Online: www.fortdouglas.org
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Henry C. Frick House containing the Frick Collection,located at 1 E. 70th Street in New York City. 2010 image by Gryffindor, licensed under Crative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. NEW YORK (AP) – New York’s incomparable Frick Collection is throwing itself a birthday party this year to mark the 75 years since the museum opened its doors to the public.
As might be expected from an institution established by steel magnate Henry Clay Frick as a “public gallery of art to which the entire public shall forever have access,” the public will reap the benefits.
Curators have mounted a small show, complete with architectural drawings, that explores the transformation of the mansion into a museum and library.
Earlier this year, the Frick launched a new series of docent-led talks in the galleries. A new film about the collection and its founder, which includes recently restored archival footage, airs three times an hour.
As an added bonus, on select Sundays this summer, visitors will be permitted to sketch inside the museum. And the various anniversary celebrations conclude Dec. 16, when the Frick will not charge admission. That is the day in 1935 when New Yorkers first glimpsed one of the world’s finest private collections of art.
Frick, who died in 1919, stipulated in his will that his mansion on Fifth Avenue, and all the treasures inside it, be opened as a museum following the death of his wife, Adelaide.
When his wife died in 1931, the original Beaux Arts home, designed in 1913 by Thomas Hastings of the famed firm Carrere and Hastings, was significantly expanded by the great architect John Russell Pope.
Pope, best known for designing the National Archives, West Building of the National Gallery of Art and Jefferson Memorial in Washington, conceived the idea of enclosing the mansion’s former exterior courtyard under glass to create the Garden Court, now one of the most beloved spaces in the museum.
When the museum finally opened after four years of renovation, it was front-page news. The New York Herald Tribune published the names of 700 guests invited to the private reception, a list that included Rockefellers, Melons and other wealthy and influential citizens. Art critics, for the most part, swooned, with the notable exception of New Yorker critic Lewis Mumford, who bemoaned the display of “carved chests” and “sculptural bric-a-brac.” He felt such decorative arts distracted attention from the masterpieces on the walls.
“The best background for the paintings and sculpture of the past is no background at all _ the bare walls of a modern building,” he fumed.
The Frick’s 300,000 annual visitors most likely couldn’t disagree more. Part of the Frick’s charm is its residential character, with visitors trying to imagine what it could have been like to live there, as Frick did with his wife, his daughter Helen and 27 servants.
In the evening, he might retire to the grand, sky-lit West Gallery, where visitors today can see Turners, a Vermeer and dozens of other masterworks set against dark green walls, some hanging over those Italian wedding chests that so irritated Mumford.
Some great art collectors embrace the new; Frick’s aesthetic was to honor the past. He started out collecting works by the Barbizon school, a group of 19th-century French painters whose realistic landscapes were popular at the time. Over the years, Frick refined his taste, eventually acquiring great works by Titian, Rembrandt, Velazquez, El Greco, Goya and Fragonard, to name just a few.
He gravitated toward landscapes and portraits, many of them of beautiful women. Toward the end of his life, he bought parts of J. Pierpont Morgan’s estate – including Limoges enamels, Sevres porcelain and 18th-century French furniture to display in intimate settings with paintings and sculpture.
He never intended the Frick to compete against institutions with encyclopedic collections; it was always meant to remain a home, albeit a grand one for someone with extraordinary wealth and taste to match.
“You drift though,” says Rika Burnham, head of education at the Frick, “inhaling the Gilded Age.”
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Online: http://www.frick.org/
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
2010 photo of the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1988 and named for the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, the museum is known for its collection of Pennsylvania Impressionists and also houses Michener mementos, including his typewriter, books and other items. DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (AP) – The Michener Museum in Doylestown says it will add a 2,700-square-foot event center to the museum for concerts, exhibit openings and parties.
Museum director Bruce Katsiff said Wednesday the $5 million expansion could generate $150,000 to $250,000 in revenue annually through occasion rentals.
The center will have an entrance within the museum and a separate entrance behind the museum.
It will have glass walls, with sliding doors on its east and west sides so that larger programs and parties can go outside. The structure will have a “green” roof.
Doylestown officials are currently reviewing the plans.
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Information from: The Intelligencer, http://www.phillyburbs.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
LONDON (AP) – The National Gallery is opening an exhibit this week about how experts use technology to properly identify art works and detect forgeries. 
