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Detroit Institute of Arts names gallery after donors

The DIA is housed in this 1927 Beaux-Arts building by Paul Cret. Image courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

DETROIT (AP) – The Detroit Institute of Arts announced Wednesday that it is naming a gallery of contemporary African-American art after a pioneering General Motors executive and his wife who made a large donation to the museum.

The newly named Maureen and Roy S. Roberts gallery honors the generosity of the health care professional and retired GM group vice president, respectively, who are longtime philanthropists in the areas of the arts, culture and education.

“Maureen and I have always loved the arts and realize the cultural importance of museums like the DIA, both to our community and for future generations,” Roy Roberts said. “We leave this legacy with our children, to whom we’ve instilled the values of education, working hard and giving back. We are happy to celebrate this milestone with them.”

The Roberts gallery is one in a suite that chronicles the development of modern and contemporary African-American art. It features works by such artists as Benny Andrews, Elizabeth Catlett, Alvin Loving, Joyce Scott and Charles McGee.

The curatorial department, called the General Motors Center for African American art, was established in 2000.

The Robertses were major contributors to the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History when that Detroit museum was fighting for its survival and also have given to the United Negro College Fund, the NAACP, Urban League and Western Michigan University, among many others.

Well before he was a name in the world of philanthropy, Roy Roberts was a trailblazer in the automotive world.

In 1983, the DIA said he became the first African-American plant manager of GM’s assembly facility in North Tarrytown, N.Y., and was the first African-American vice president and corporate officer in charge of personnel administration and development; general manager of field sales, service and parts; and group vice president of North American vehicle sales, service and marketing.

Roberts currently is managing director and co-founding member of the private equity investment firm Reliant Equity Investors.

Maureen Roberts was supervisor of health education and health services for the Grand Rapids Public School District and was a coordinator in the corneal transplant program for the Michigan Eye Bank.

“We are delighted to name a gallery after Maureen and Roy, whose generous gift will help us continue to provide our community with imaginative, high-quality programs and exhibitions,” DIA director Graham W.J. Beal said.

The Detroit Institute of Arts is home to more than 60,000 works from ancient times through present day, and its best-known holdings include Vincent van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait” and Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals.

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Online:

www.dia.org

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Roy and Maureen Roberts have been honored by the DIA with a gallery named after them. Image courtesy of Detroit Institute of Arts.

100,000 dollar bills will become art at Guggenheim

Conceptualist artist Hans-Peter Feldman. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

NEW YORK (AP) – A German artist is using his $100,000 contemporary art prize to create a conceptual piece – literally.

He’s pinning 100,000 used dollar bills to the gallery walls of a major New York City museum.

Hans-Peter Feldmann’s installation at the Guggenheim Museum opens May 20 and runs until Nov. 2.

Feldmann is the 2010 winner of the Hugo Boss Prize, established by the museum and named after the German fashion company.

The Guggenheim says Feldmann is portraying currency as mass-produced material used every day, rather than a symbol of capitalism.

The 70-year-old artist previously has created a sequence of 100 portraits of people, from babies to age 100.

Extra security cameras and guards will ensure the bills remain on the wall.

Feldmann will keep the money after the exhibition.

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First Tower now Paris’ tallest office block

View of La Defense district, home to the new First Tower, as seen in a photo taken from the Eiffel Tower by Harouin. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

PARIS (AFP) – Paris unveiled the latest giant to grace its famous skyline Thursday, with the formal inauguration of France’s tallest skyscraper, known as the “First Tower.”

At 21,000 tonnes, the First is more than twice as heavy as the French capital’s tallest and most famous landmark, the Eiffel Tower, which nevertheless beats it for sheer height at 324 metres (1,063 feet).

The spire was born when developers stripped down and rebuilt the mighty Axa block in La Defense business quarter on the western edge of the city, adding 69 metres to send it soaring to 231 metres. Now, the tower tops the city’s previous – famously unloved – tallest office block, the slab-like Tour de Montparnasse, which looms over the Left Bank at 210 metres (758 feet) tall.

Compared to major financial centers like London, Frankfurt, New York or Hong Kong, Paris has a low-rise skyline, with planners keen to preserve the look of its elegant 19th century boulevards.

Skyscrapers allowed in Paris have been pushed to the edge of the city center to leave a clear view to the iconic Eiffel Tower, and efforts have been made to attract global business to the outlying La Defense district.

But, despite the triumph of its architecture, First has so far not proved a hit with tenants: Only half of its office space, 80,000 square metres spread over 52 floors, has so far been allocated.

Building on the 300 million euro (440 million dollar) tower began in 2008. The first tenant, accountancy giant Ernst and Young, will move in during the second half of the year.

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Austria museum to sell Schiele painting to pay for ‘Wally’

The Leopold Museum of Vienna's prized Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918) painting Portrait of Wally, 1912. Image source: The Yorck Project.

VIENNA (AFP) – The Leopold Museum in Vienna said Thursday it would sell a key painting by Austrian painter Egon Schiele to help finance last year’s acquisition of the Portrait of Wally by the same artist.

The museum said in a statement it planned to put up for auction at Sotheby’s in London next month Schiele’s 1914 canvas entitled House with coloured linen. The Leopold Museum put the painting’s estimated value at 30 million euros ($44.5 million), but said it could sell for even higher and perhaps achieve a record for Schiele’s works at auction.

Sotheby’s said it viewed the picture as “one of Schiele’s most important works” and valued it at $36-50 million (24-33 million euros).

The museum will use the proceeds to pay for “Wally,” which it managed to buy last year for $19 million after years of legal wrangling with the family of the painting’s previous Jewish owner.

In 2006, a landscape by Schiele went for a record $22.4 million. Schiele (1890-1918) was one of Austria’s major expressionist painters, alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka.

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Amid rubble, tornado survivors find family keepsakes

Tornado devastation in Tuscaloosa, Ala., along 15th Street, near the intersection of McFarland Boulevard. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) – When Lois Sayer’s three daughters returned to their tornado-wrecked childhood home, they mourned the loss of their 88-year-old mother and discovered a few of the irreplaceable keepsakes that will tell the story of their parents’ lives.

Across the twister-ravaged South, residents and family members continued picking through the ruins, collecting whatever family treasure or piece of their cherished past they could.

Volunteers used sledgehammers to knock down walls and break concrete so Sayer’s daughters could retrieve their father’s World War II uniform, complete with his Bronze Star. They found their mother’s prized necklace, the one with a shell casing on it that reminded her of the factory where she worked during the war. It was that job that helped their parents build an $8,000 house, which was demolished in the epic Tuscaloosa storm on April 27.

“That was a time when ladies first went into the workforce. She was really, really proud to have been a part of the war effort,” said Sayer’s daughter, Cindy Meyers.

Sayer, whose husband Maurice died four years ago, was killed in the house she had lived in for 62 years.

“We’re coping, but it’s kind of a state of shock,” Meyers said. “It’s so surreal. We would love to wake up from this really horrific dream.”

Searching through the rubble for sentimental items can help the healing process, said Jerry Rosenberg, a psychology professor at the University of Alabama.

“The more you can get the more you have a continuity of what was there before the trauma,” Rosenberg said. “And that’s immensely important for the life you’re going to rebuild.”

Shortly before the tornado struck, Meyers called her mother and told her to get in the hallway. Her mother responded: “I got my helmet,” referring to the bicycle helmet she wore in such storms.

The five-bedroom, three-bath house was sturdy, and had survived many storms. But this was the worst storm since the Great Depression, leaving at least 328 people dead – 236 in Alabama alone.

Another one of Sayer’s daughters, Brenda Dupre, remembered her parents laying the concrete blocks during the home’s construction when she was 5-years-old, her dad telling her to get out of the way.

“I always thought that house was the prettiest house on the street,” Dupre said. “It’s always been home, now we have no home. It’s devastating.”

But all was not lost.

The sisters found their grandmother’s bible, their mother’s diamond engagement ring and a scrapbook. They discovered baby photos, her father’s antique coin collection, the paintings her mother did and the quilts and afghans she sewed.

“We always wore dresses she made,” said Dupre of Mobile, Ala. “She was a good homemaker.”

As they found items, the sisters would reflect, hug and put the ones they wanted to save in a pile.

In Holt, an area just outside Tuscaloosa, residents and relatives of the dead streamed back to the neighborhood to see what they could salvage.

Some people weren’t lucky. Kevin Rice couldn’t find anything he owned in the area where his mobile home once was. He’s staying at a motel as long as he can afford it, and hasn’t even started asking for help, from FEMA or any government agency.

“It’s just a hurting feeling,” he said. “I don’t know what to say or how to act.”

Charles Leonard found some family pictures and records that belonged to his late father when he picked through what’s left of his 68-year-old mother’s home. But he wondered if looters absconded with other valuables before residents were allowed to return.

“The sheriff’s department did the best they could, but there were so many” looters, Leonard said.

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Associated Press writer Michael Kunzelman in Holt contributed to this story.

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Signed Beatles album to headline Case’s auction May 21

Capital Records released ‘Meet the Beatles!' on Jan 20, 1964. Image courtesy of Case Antiques Inc. Auction & Appraisals.

KNOXVILLE – Case Antiques Inc. Auctions & Appraisals will gavel a piece of rock ’n’ roll history: a Meet The Beatles! album signed by all four Beatles the day before their American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The autographed album came from the estate Dr. Jules Gordon, the New York City physician who treated George Harrison for a sore throat on Feb. 8, 1964. The album is included as part of Case’s Spring auction, which will take place May 21 at the company’s Knoxville gallery.

LiveAuctioneers will provide Internet live bidding.

On Feb. 9, 1964, the Beatles made their much-anticipated American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. But the day before the show there was concern George Harrison, might miss the big moment because he had strep throat. Thomas Buckley noted in the New York Times on Feb. 8, 1964: “Mr. Harrison, who is known as the quiet Beatle, awoke yesterday with a sore throat. He was treated by Dr. Jules Gordon, used a vaporizer and rejoined his colleagues at the studio late in the afternoon. ‘I should be perfect for tomorrow,’ he said.”

According to George Harrison’s sister, Louise Caldwell, the situation was more serious than they let on. In The Beatles Off The Record by Keith Badman, Caldwell recalled: “The doctor said he couldn’t do the Ed Sullivan Show because he had a temperature of 104. But they pumped him with everything. He was thinking about getting a nurse to administer the medicine, every hour on the hour. Then the doctor suddenly realized that I was there and was his sister and he said to me, ‘Would you see to it? It’s probably just as well that you’re here because I don’t think there’s a single female in the city that isn’t crazy about the Beatles! You’re probably the only one who could function around him normally.’”

The physician who treated Harrison was Dr. Jules Gordon, the house doctor at the Plaza Hotel from 1942 until 1985. Dr. Gordon was called from his fourth-floor office to the Presidential Suites on the 12th floor where the Beatles were staying. As doctor to many celebrities, Dr. Gordon didn’t fawn over The Beatles.

“He was very unassuming and treated everyone with the same respect, no matter who they were. People just took to him,” said a Gordon family member. The Beatles must have liked Dr. Gordon because they gave him several unsolicited personalized autographs. Dr. Gordon met the Beatles on at least two occasions during their visit to New York for the Ed Sullivan Show and commented to his family that the Beatles were very accommodating and likeable each time.

Over the years, as the house physician for the Plaza and other well-known hotels in New York City, Dr. Gordon treated many famous people and Hollywood stars such as Rock Hudson, Bette Davis, Burt Lancaster, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liz Taylor, Judy Garland and Rita Hayworth. Dr. Gordon, who died in 1993, was also the team physician for the New York Yankees in the 1940s and 1950s. He made the news in 1947 when he performed surgery on Joe DiMaggio and removed a 3-inch spur from his left heel, which enabled Dimaggio to go on to help the Yankees win the 1947 World Series.

The Meet The Beatles! album contained the Beatle’s first U.S. chart-topping hit I Want to Hold Your Hand. It was released in the United States on Jan. 20, just ahead of the band’s first American tour, and less than three weeks before the Beatles signed it for Dr. Gordon.

Autographs by all four Beatles on an LP from their early years are highly sought after by collectors. As Autograph Magazine noted in an article on Jan. 25, 2011, “If you have a Beatles album signed by all four band members, you’ve got something quite valuable. Albums in good condition typically range from about $15,000 for the most common one, Please Please Me, to well over $100,000 for some of the rarest albums, especially U.S. releases. … Band-signed Beatles albums are very hard to come by.”

Although the Meet The Beatles! album in this auction is conservatively estimated at $10,000-$15,000, it is such a unique item that the hammer price could be much higher.

“It’s one of the earliest signed Beatles albums we’re aware of, and for it to be associated with such an important moment in the Beatles’ career makes it even more extraordinary,” said John Case, president of Case Antiques Inc. Auctions & Appraisals.

Case Antiques Inc. Auction & Appraisals, based in Knoxville, Tenn., was founded and is owned by John Case, who has over 20 years experience researching and evaluating antiques and art, with a specialization in early Southern decorative arts.

The auction will be held at Case’s gallery in the historic Cherokee Mills Building, 2240 Sutherland Ave. A preview will take place on Friday, May 20, from noon to 6 p.m. Eastern. The sale will begin on Saturday, May 21 at 9:30 a.m. Eastern. For details see www.caseantiques.com or call the gallery in Knoxville at (865) 558-3033.

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All four of the Beatles signed the back of the album cover. Image courtesy of Case Antiques Inc. Auction & Appraisals.

Ginger Rogers gowns, shoes sold at Ore. fundraiser

1937 Promotional photo of Ginger Rogers for Argentinean Magazine (printed in USA), produced by RKO Pictures and supplied to CINEGRAF.

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) – Actress Ginger Rogers bought a ranch on the Rogue River in 1940 to serve as her sanctuary from the Hollywood madness.

“The ranch was her hideaway and a place she could go and not wear makeup,” said Roberta Olden, Rogers’ former personal secretary.

When Rogers visited Southern Oregon, she put away her gowns in favor of casual clothes she could wear fishing on the Rogue River or picking blackberries to make jam.

Rogers’ presence at her Southern Oregon oasis on the 1,000-acre ranch between Eagle Point and Shady Cove helped to build the region’s reputation as a tourist destination where visitors could be one with nature, Olden said.

Rogers, who died in 1995, left her mark yet again Sunday when some of her most glamorous gowns and shoes were sold at a tea and fashion show to raise money for Southern Oregon Historical Society, an organization dedicated to keeping Rogers and other characters in Southern Oregon’s history alive in the minds of the public.

“It helps to show that history can be very glamorous,” said Allison Weiss, the historical society’s executive director.

Since 1998, the historical society’s budget has withered from more than $2 million to $600,000 per year due to the loss of funding from Jackson County, as well as the economic downturn. The organization relies completely on donations, grants and interest earnings. The event Sunday was expected to raise about $15,000.

Sharon Wesner Becker, wife of Jacksonville Mayor Paul Becker, came up with the idea about six years ago after seeing some of Rogers’ gowns in a closet at Olden’s home in Palm Desert, Calif. Paul Becker was a personal friend of Rogers for 20 years. The idea finally took form this year in honor of the 100th anniversary of Rogers’ birth.

“Ginger was history here,” Sharon Becker said. “She probably was one of our most famous residents.”

Models on Sunday breathed life into 20 of Rogers’ personal gowns and paraded them down a catwalk set up before an audience of about 300 at the Rogue Valley Country Club. Five of the gowns were auctioned off at the end of the event, and 25 pairs of Rogers’ shoes were sold at a silent auction before the fashion show. One of the gowns that Rogers wore in 1981 for an event, titled ‘Texas Women: A Celebration of History,” sold for $1,200.

Rogers bought her Rogue River ranch in 1940, the same year she starred in Kitty Foyle for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She visited the ranch when she had time off and wanted some solitude, Olden said. After she retired in 1969, she spent summers at the Southern Oregon ranch and spent the winter in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Olden said.

She used to shop at Quality Market on Jackson Street and the old Safeway, Olden said.

Rogers is the namesake for downtown Medford’s Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater. She performed in the Hunt’s Craterian theater in the 1920s and later, was instrumental in securing the seed money from the Fred Meyer Trust to build the current Craterian theater, which opened in 1997 after Rogers’ death, Paul Becker said.

Becker met Rogers in Los Angeles in 1978 when he worked on a radio station.

“She introduced me to the (Southern Oregon) area, and I fell in love with it,” he said. She also was a draw for others to visit Southern Oregon, including stars such Clark Gable.

Rogers’ magnetism also drew two women from out of state to Medford on Sunday.

Joanne Carlson of Chicago and Whitney Hopler of Fairfax, Va. flew into Southern Oregon especially for the event. Both women said the actress was their role model during difficult times in their childhood.

“She was caring, but she wasn’t a pushover,” Carlson said. “When there was a conflict in my life, I would always ask myself what would she have done.”

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Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/

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Former Miss. auctioneer appeals felony conviction

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – During its May-June term, the Mississippi Appellate Court will consider the appeal of former auctioneer Jim Durham, who was sentenced to a nine-year prison term after being convicted on four felony counts of writing bad checks.

Durham was found guilty of the charges in Forrest County in 2010. Prosecutors said Durham, former vice president of Durham Auctions, passed bad checks totaling more than $230,000 including a $125,000 check to the Warren County Board of Supervisors.

Prosecutors said Durham used an escrow account to hold money that should have gone straight to the seller after an auction. They said Durham used the money to pay off loans and investors.

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Barnes Foundation lawyers say no grounds for new hearing

Barnes Foundation building in Merion, Pa. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The Barnes Foundation is telling a judge that there are no grounds to reopen hearings in the contentious case.

The multibillion-dollar art collection is scheduled to relocate near the Philadelphia Museum of Art next year from its longtime home in suburban Merion.

Opponents of the move are asking a Montgomery County judge to hold new hearings. They say the judge didn’t have all the evidence when he approved the Barnes’ move in 2006.

The Barnes Foundation says the opponents have no legal standing in the case, and the judge already rejected all of their arguments five years ago.

Now the people who want to keep the Barnes in Merion have a few weeks to file a response before the judge makes his decision on whether to hold new hearings.

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Gretzky’s NHL rookie card auctioned for $94,163

Wayne Gretzky rookie card auctioned by SCP Auctions, Inc. for $94,163. Image courtesy of SCP Auctions, Inc.

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (AP) – The Great One is still setting records.

Wayne Gretzky’s NHL rookie card earned $94,163 at an online sports memorabilia auction Sunday. SCP Auctions says that’s the highest price ever paid for a hockey card.

While a Gretzky rookie card is easy enough to find on eBay, it is rare to find one free of small flaws or imperfections. The card sold Sunday was graded 10, or mint condition, by Professional Sports Authenticator.

SCP calls it “arguably the most valuable modern trading card in existence.”

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