WICHITA, Kan.(AP) – Wichita police say about $50,000 in sports memorabilia – including Babe Ruth autographed baseballs and a World Series championship ring from the 1985 Kansas City Royals – have been stolen from a sports bar.
Police responding to an alarm early Monday found a broken window in the back of Players sports bar in west Wichita. The burglars apparently smashed a glass display case that housed the stolen memorabilia.
Police say the stolen items also include a Mickey Mantle autographed baseball card, two Super Bowl rings, a 1985 Oklahoma football championship ring and a 1981 Nebraska Big 8 championship ring.
Investigators say it’s likely the memorabilia will end up for sale on the Internet or at other sports collectibles shows.
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Information from: KFDI-AM
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
WOODSTOCK, N.Y. – Woodstock Artists Association & Museum has been awarded a $102,289 grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to support projects that help the museum better serve the community.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) initiated the process that resulted in the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum submitting an application to IMLS and encouraged the agency to provide funding.
“These federal funds will be used to educate students and their families about local art history and provide them an engaging artistic experience,” Hinchey said. “Students in Ulster County will benefit greatly from the opportunity to create their own artwork, work with professional artists and display their own artwork to the public.”
The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum will use these funds, to be allocated over a three-year period, to implement the Maverick Youth Project, a museum education program designed to give students hands-on art experiences and educate them about local art history through the museum’s permanent collection. The funds will help to enrich local students’ experience of the visual arts by working with art professionals in which they will observe, interpret and reflect on the artwork from the museum’s permanent collection. Students will have the opportunity to create and showcase their own art in the museum’s youth exhibition space.
“We are very grateful to Congressman Hinchey for his assistance in securing this grant from IMLS, which recognizes the quality of our education program and the relevancy of our museum collection to the community at large,” said Josephine Bloodgood, executive director. “We’re very excited to expand our program under the direction of education curator Beth Humphrey, and to further strengthen the impact it has made in the lives of kids and families in the region.”
The grant comes from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services Museums for America Program, which is designed to strengthen a museum’s ability to serve the public more effectively by supporting high-priority activities that advance the institution’s mission and strategic goals.
Marcel Breuer’s Sitzmaschine model no. B25 with footstool manufactured 1928-1929 by Thonet, Austria; chrome-plated tubular steel, chrome-plated springs, ebonized wood, cane. One of four known examples: one in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, one at the Stiftung Bauhaus in Dessau, one privately owned and this one, which sold for $45,000 in Phillips de Pury’s May 24, 2007 auction in New York. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Phillips de Pury.
BERLIN (AP) – It’s all there: the well-known desk lamps, the original metal tube chairs and models of boxy white buildings.
Ninety years after the founding of the Bauhaus school, a new exhibition in Berlin brings together the collections of three museums for the largest celebration ever of the most famous and influential school of avant-garde art and design in the 20th century.
The 1,000 objects that are presented in 18 galleries at the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum in Berlin extend far beyond the familiar images of Bauhaus.
There are little-known paper cuttings by Bauhaus students, expressionist paintings by their teachers, metal sculptures, pottery, a chess board and even a sleekly designed baby cradle.
“We created a show that has never been seen like this before,” Annemarie Jaeggi, director of the Berlin Bauhaus Archive and one of the exhibit’s three curators, said Wednesday.
The show, titled Bauhaus – A Conceptual Model, already has drawn 17,000 visitors since it opened last week, she said.
“Often one thinks of Bauhaus as a style,” Jaeggi said. “But Bauhaus was foremost a school that – and this was typical for this modernist and upheaval time period after World War I – wanted nothing less than to change the world.”
Shaped by its three directors Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus school was formed in 1919 in Weimar to transcend the divisions that had separated arts and crafts, and emphasize a new modern aesthetic that could also be mass-produced.
World-famous teachers such as Vasily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee or Oskar Schlemmer also put their imprint on the 1,250 students who were enrolled in the 14 years of the school’s existence.
According to the slogan “People’s necessities, not luxuries,” which was coined by Meyer, the “Bauhausers” – including Mies van der Rohe, Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer – created articles of daily use such as tea sets, chairs or set tables that could be afforded by all.
Pictures and models of landmark structures like the Bauhaus school building in Dessau, the flat roof homes of the school’s master teachers, as well as an entire Bauhaus complex in Berlin Bernau that served as a school for a German trade union, catch visitors’ eyes with their unadorned surfaces and clear lines.
The conservative German establishment was hostile toward the Bauhaus movement and its progressive ideas right from the beginning. Only six years after its founding in Weimar, the school had to move to Dessau in 1925, to evade politically motivated attacks. In 1932, the school had to relocate to Berlin, where it eventually was shut down by the Nazis a year later.
“It is one of the phenomena of Bauhaus, that it wasn’t weakened by persecution and oppression, but emerged stronger from every crisis,” said Jaeggi.
After 1933, many Bauhaus students emigrated and spread the signature style of Bauhaus around the world.
Even today, many of the exhibits such as glass ashtrays and models of clear-lined building structures seem surprisingly familiar.
“The idea that one can create mass products well, that are functional and even low-priced … is something that’s understood today, but back then it was really new and revolutionary,” said Jaeggi.
The exhibition, which was curated by the Bauhaus Archive, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and the Klassik Stiftung Bauhaus, is open through Oct. 4. In addition to the show, there also are organized tours to private Bauhaus buildings in Berlin and Dessau.
The show includes some pieces from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and 400 objects from the Berlin exhibit will be shown there in November.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-ES-07-29-09 1003EDT
ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE
Extremely rare and important steel, ebony and porcelain tea glass with saucer and stirrer, 1926, designed by Bauhaus student and professor Josef Albers (1888-1976). Exhibited at Museum of Modern Art’s Bauhaus 1910-1928 show in New York, 1938. Sold at Phillips de Pury for $225,000 on Dec. 14, 2006. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Phillips de Pury. Unique console by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) from the Building Exhibition, Berlin, 1931, Lady’s Bedroom in a Ground Floor Apartment. Mahogany-veneered wood, chrome-plated tubular steel. Literature: Ludwig Glaeser, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, New York, 1977, illustrated p. 25; Bauhaus Furniture A Legend Reviewed, exhibition catalog Bauhaus Archiv Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin, 2002, illustrated p. 311. Sold at Phillips de Pury for $95,000 on Dec. 13, 2007. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Phillips de Pury.
Public domain image of Georgia O’Keeffe during her time at the University of Virginia, where she was a teaching assistant. Photo was taken on July 19, 1915 by Rufus W. Holsinger (1866?-1930). Courtesy Wikipedia.SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) – The guardians of Georgia O’Keeffe’s legacy are not happy with an Albuquerque elementary school named after the artist.
Officials of The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe complained recently about a “GOK” logo proposed for the school’s new facade, and about T-shirts that said “Georgia O’Keeffe Kindergarten.” E-mails from the museum warned of possible trademark infringement and suggested that fees may be required for some uses of the name.
“Everyone’s shocked,” said Yvonne Dion, president of the school’s parent-teacher organization. “This has never, ever, ever been an issue.”
O’Keeffe, one of the foremost American painters, was a modernist whose best-known works include large-scale depictions of flowers. She lived for almost 40 years in northern New Mexico, where the starkness inspired her desert landscapes and iconic paintings of skulls and bones. She died in Santa Fe in 1986 at the age of 98.
The school has borne O’Keeffe’s name since it opened in 1988. While no one asked for permission, O’Keeffe’s estate and the foundation that was formed to perpetuate her legacy didn’t object at the time.
Among the foundation’s stated goals: “to fight the proliferation of unauthorized coffee mugs, T-shirts, buttons, scarves, trivets and other pernicious appropriations of her work.”
Three years ago, the museum took over the foundation’s work and acquired the rights to the artist’s art, likeness and name. The museum wants to ensure that “any uses of the material will promote Miss O’Keeffe and her art in a respectful manner,” rights and reproductions manager Judy Lopez said in an e-mail in June.
The school’s principal, Lucinda Sanchez, was distressed by the message and its tone. “We’ve never used or represented Ms. O’Keeffe’s name in a disparaging way,” Sanchez said. “We’ve worked hard to honor it – and make it a fabulous school.”
The school hasn’t used or reproduced O’Keeffe’s art, she said. If there’s artwork on T-shirts, it’s typically a ram, the school’s mascot. The school’s name does appear on items such as wristbands, water bottles and the T-shirts provided to kindergarten students for field trips.
“For safety, we usually have kids wear T-shirts with the school name on it, just in case they get lost,” Sanchez said.
The award-winning school in northeast Albuquerque, which has 600 students in kindergarten through 5th grade, opened with portable buildings. Permanent facilities are being built and should be ready in 2010.
The initials “GOK” are proposed to appear on the front of the new school.
According to copies of e-mails provided by Albuquerque Public Schools, a lawyer for APS who spoke to Lopez said Lopez thought people might be encouraged to refer to the school as “Gok” – which sounds “just awful” and which she believed O’Keeffe would not approve of – rather than “G-O-K.”
A second e-mail from Lopez, in July, objected to a kindergartener’s T-shirt.
The e-mail said the museum wants to be told about any use of the artist’s name before products are produced. The museum will be “generous in granting permission” and will waive fees “for approved internal use.” The museum may have to charge fees for commercial usage, Lopez said.
Lopez refused to comment for this story, and other museum officials did not respond to repeated requests for interviews.
Sanchez said she’s happy to discuss changes to the “GOK.”
But the principal and the PTA president are worried about a cumbersome approval process for, say, trinkets given to students as rewards. “Everyone is a little blown away that we may have to be going through all these hoops,” Dion said.
And the idea of paying the museum for using the school’s name on T-shirts sold as fundraisers for the library or other projects rankles school officials. “We’re a school, and we’re doing our best to educate children, and we’re not out to commercially gain from Ms. O’Keeffe,” Sanchez said.
The women say it might just be easier to change the name of the school.
The museum said in a statement it was proud to have a school named after O’Keeffe, that it “never had the slightest intention of asking that the name be changed,” and that it looked forward to talking with school officials about the further use of the artist’s name.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) – A Hagerstown woman has agreed to testify against her husband in a case alleging they illegally sold 26 antique cars and other assets belonging to a man with dementia after obtaining his power of attorney.
Prosecutors agreed on Monday to drop charges against 25-year-old Angie Meldron if she testifies truthfully at the trial in September of her 40-year-old husband Daniel.
Angie Meldron was charged in January with taking the victim’s property and neglecting him by allowing him to live in unsanitary conditions with no heat at his home in Boonsboro, Maryland.
Investigators allege the couple sold the antique cars for $325,000. They also allegedly deprived him of investment and bank accounts worth another $307,000.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Spirit of Communications, or Golden Boy, appeared on telephone books in the Northeast during the early to mid-20th century. An example is this 1953-1954 Manhattan telephone book. Image courtesy of Gwillim Law, www.oldtelephonebooks.com.DALLAS (AP) – Golden Boy may – or may not – be one of the masterpieces of American sculpture, but Dallas residents of a certain age might remember him from the cover of a phone book.
“Spirit of Communication,” better known as “Golden Boy,” was the second-largest sculpture in New York – after the Statue of Liberty -when it was first installed in 1916. The 28-foot gilded bronze statue resides in the lobby of AT&T’s headquarters on Akard Street in Dallas, its latest home in 93 years as a symbol of one of the nation’s most famous corporate names.
In the company’s glory days, Golden Boy towered over Lower Manhattan, 9 tons of bronze covered in the thousands of sheets of gold leaf that gave him his nickname.
For most of the 20th century, the statue turned up on company letterhead and stock certificates, and for much of the middle part of the century on local telephone books.
After the Bell System was broken up in the 1980s, he was exiled to New Jersey, where he was eventually consigned to an office park. Now, after SBC acquired AT&T, adopted its name, and moved its corporate offices to downtown Dallas, he’s here.
Lee Sandstead, who hosts the Travel Channel’s Art Attack, is enthusiastic, almost effusive.
“This is absolutely a serious work of art, and it’s absolutely a masterpiece,” said Sandstead, an art historian. “It’s perhaps the most beautiful depiction of the male figure in American art.”
Sandstead is considered the leading expert on Evelyn Beatrice Longman, the statue’s sculptor.
The arrival of Golden Boy gives downtown Dallas its second corporate icon with classical allusions. The first, of course, is Pegasus, the flying red horse that has crowned the top of the Magnolia Building since 1934. (A full-scale copy, for those afraid of heights, is at ground level in the Old Red Museum of Dallas History & Culture.)
Golden Boy is the older of the two works. Sandstead said the design was chosen in a national competition, and the statue was hoisted, with great fanfare, to the top of AT&T’s headquarters on lower Broadway in 1916. It was the second-largest sculpture in New York, behind the Statue of Liberty, he said, and doubly notable because of its sculptor.
Longman is one of the few women in American history to create monumental sculpture.
“The work was considered too physically demanding for a woman,” he said. “It required lifting heavy equipment up and down scaffolding, and bending metal.”
She was a protegée of Daniel Chester French, working with him on the design of the Lincoln Memorial. She is now largely – and, Sandstead thinks, unfairly – forgotten.
“If she had been born 30 years earlier, she would have been more famous,” he said. “By 1915, her kind of art was beginning to wane in popularity, critics were beginning to be attracted by the modernist movement, which was more abstract.”
The sculpture was moved in 1984 to the company’s new building, whose postmodern-notched roof _ it was nicknamed the Chippendale Building – meant Golden Boy had to be moved to the lobby.
A persistent Internet rumor says that officials, concerned that the male nude could now be viewed up close and eye level, ordered Golden Boy un-gendered. Not true.
The sculpture was moved to one site in New Jersey in 1992, then to another 10 years later. Earlier this year, it decamped for Texas.
A former AT&T chairman once explained Golden Boy’s nomadic existence by saying, “He goes where we go.”
An AT&T spokeswoman last week said the company still feels the same way.
“It’s always been with the corporate headquarters. It’s absolutely fitting that he should be here now,” Sarah Andreani said.
The work now commands the lobby facing AT&T Plaza. Company employees on a recent morning seemed already used to Golden Boy’s presence, scurrying to their jobs without glancing up.
But visitors seemed impressed, snapping photos on their cellphones and peppering the reception desk with questions.
“I take it it’s not real gold,” one woman said.
“Just in small sheets,” the receptionist explained.
“Well, I think he’s cool,” she replied. Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) – Indiana University is opening up for public view its efforts to restore murals by artist Thomas Hart Benton at the school’s Bloomington campus.
The IU Art Museum’s conservation lab is now open to the public on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays through the end of August.
The lab is in the midst of conserving two panels from Benton’s Indiana murals, which were created for the Indiana Hall at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.
The murals’ 22 panels stretched a total of 250 feet. The conservation effort is complicated by the fact that Benton didn’t record specifics on how he created his paints.
The state gave the murals to IU in 1940.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Indiana Fan Co. of Indianapolis produced this rare water-powered fan, which sold at auction for $1,100 in 2004. Image courtesy Webb’s Auctions, Winter Garden, Fla., and LiveAuctioneers archive.ZIONSVILE, Ind. (AP) – Just in time for the dog days of summer, a new museum dedicated to the cooling effect of old-time fans has blown into Indiana.
The Museum of the Antique Fan Collectors Association opened Thursday at the corporate headquarters of Fanimation, a central Indiana company that designs and makes upscale ceiling fans.
The fan museum had previously been located in Andover, Kan., but now it is in Zionsville, a suburb northwest of Indianapolis.
Fanimation founder and president Tom Frampton said the museum features about 450 fans ranging from electric fans from the 1880s to water-powered fans that date from the early 1880s.
Frampton owns about a third of the collection, and the rest are on loan from members of the Antique Fan Collectors Association.
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Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This information may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NEW YORK (AP) – Experts will spend the next two years painstakingly restoring murals in Manhattan’s historic Rockefeller Center.
The team already has been working nine months in the Art Deco lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. They’re removing decades of yellowed varnish, one inch at a time.
Abolition of War, by Spanish painter Jose Maria Sert, depicts a woman astride two cannons while holding a baby. As the painting aged, the baby became less visible.
Conservator Gillian Randell worried that a chemical solution could damage the murals. He tried an electric toothbrush, but the varnish didn’t come off. He finally started gently flaking it off with a “low-tech” tool that’s commonly used for book binding.
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Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Robert Downey Jr., shown here at the 1990 premiere of Air America, is among the many film stars who turn out for the annual San Diego Comic-Con. Photo by Alan Light.SAN DIEGO (AP) – Robert Downey Jr. said he wished he could don a Mexican wrestling mask and stroll the Comic-Con floor to check out all the collectible toys and geeky-cool stuff. Peter Jackson joked about ducking out of a discussion with director James Cameron – which drew thousands of fans to the San Diego Convention Center’s largest meeting hall – to walk the floor with fewer crowds.
Stars love Comic-Con – and not just because it’s a great place to promote their movies. They’re moved by the passion of the fans, and it seems to rejuvenate their own passion for working in film.
Fans at the pop-culture convention “not only celebrate fantasy and science fiction and fantastic worlds, but they celebrate each other, and they celebrate their geekness, and there’s a sense of solidarity,” said Cameron, who premiered footage from his anticipated 3D sci-fi adventure, Avatar, to conventioneers on Thursday. “And what this group does is make filmmakers do better, because if you don’t live up to their standards, you’re not going to get past this. This is the launch pad right here.”
Stars of the movie Twilight – Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart – said fans’ overwhelming response at Comic-Con helped make their film a success. Kristen Bell, a veteran of five Cons, said, “It’s the best place for super-fans.”
Director Tim Burton, who showed a piece of his forthcoming Alice in Wonderland, said he first came to Comic-Con as an aspiring filmmaker in the 1970s.
“I saw a slideshow for the first Superman. People were very passionate about it and it kind of scared me,” he said. “It’s a very pure form of passion that it transcends business and anything else. Passion is a very good thing. And that’s why you make movies that you hope people respond to, and so it’s good to see and feel that energy here.”
Actor Ben Foster, attending his second Comic-Con, also felt the fear.
“It’s a zoo. It’s a Halloween zoo,” he said. “I have no idea how to process this place. It’s funny. And then you have these waves of fear. … I’m not accustomed to seeing this many people dressed up in samurai outfits and aliens, all in one space.”
Comic-Con wrapped on Sunday. ___
AP Entertainment Writer Ryan Pearson contributed to this report. ___
On the Net:
http://www.comic-con.org Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
