Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ... Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits

Hadrian exhibition: Look on this work, ye mighty, and despair

In post-imperial Europe empires usually get a bad press. Yet they continue to haunt our collective imagination. It is hard to look at the ever-expanding EU without thinking of the Roman empire, which successive conquerors have sought to recreate ever since. It was hard not to be conscious of the reviving power of imperial China during the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing. That was surely the point? The upside of empire is order, stability, trade and prosperity, the spread of im

NYT Pays homage to first nuke reactor with photo display

A radiation warning posted at the perimeter of the B Reactor site hints at the history -- and the dangers surrounding the first major nuclear reactor in the world. The United States government purchased the 586-square-mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation in 1943, and it was the source of plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Last month, B Reactor was designated a national historic landmark.

Are Any 9/11 Conspiracy Films Plausible?

FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS, I've received a steady, unsolicited stream of books and DVDs that purport to reveal What Really Happened on September 11. None of them have come close to convincing me that George W. Bush and his neocon cronies were either evil or, more important, smart enough to have orchestrated the terrorist attacks on the United States. Perhaps that's because I'm one of the media gatekeepers that the "9/11 truth movement" is fond of blaming for its lack of visibility and cre

Is The Guggenheim White-Washing Mao? The Museum's Interim Director Debates With TNR's Art Critic.

In his article on contemporary Chinese art ("Mao Crazy," July 9), Jed Perl is critical of the Guggenheim Museum for hosting a mid-career retrospective of the artist Cai Guo-Qiang, which he views as part of a "globalized political whitewash job" of Maoism and the Cultural Revolution. Perl misreads Cai's work and words. The Guggenheim Museum's mission is to promote the understanding and appreciation of art, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, through

Winston Churchill painting unearthed in attic

The picture, painted in the 1930s, before the Second World War, is of Windlesham Moor, a house in Surrey which was later let to the then Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip after their marriage in 1947. The auctioneers have spent 10 months establishing the provenance of the oil on canvas, which features the estate's Brown Lakes, arched stone bridge and the main house. The painting was originally passed to Lord Taylor, who served Sir Winston during the war as director o

Rare photograph of Florence Nightingale for sale

The black and white image of the silver-haired nursing pioneer shows her in the imposing bedroom of her home just off London's Park Lane, before her death in 1910 at the age of 90. The photograph was taken by Lizzie Caswall Smith, who was a noted studio photographer in the early 1900s, who also took portraits of well-known subjects including George Bernard Shaw and JM Barrie who wrote Peter's Pan. The photograph is all the more remarkable because, despite her fame, Flor

BBC to air Rushdie fatwa documentary

BBC2 is to screen a feature-length documentary marking the 20th anniversary of the publication of The Satanic Verses and the fatwa on author Sir Salman Rushdie. Rushdie himself declined to take part in the as-yet-untitled 90-minute film, although it is understood he is not against the programme being made and his son and sister will take part. However, it is understood the BBC has run into some trouble among those who were involved in the original publication of the boo

Rare Islamic ewer expected to fetch over $5 million

- A 1,000-year-old carved rock crystal ewer, one of only seven known surviving examples, will be offered for auction next month at Christie's Islamic art sale and is expected to fetch over 3 million pounds ($5.3 million). The auctioneer said the ewer was made for the court of the Fatimid rulers of Cairo in the late 10th or early 11th century, and has been embellished in enameled gold mounts made in 1854 by a French silversmith. The ewer is the same one that came up for

Artists impose own likeness on royal portraits

Researchers have discovered the secret behind why portraits of kings and queens bear striking similarities to the painter's own face. Computer-aided comparisons of a series of paintings of British monarchs and the self-portraits by the artists show that the painters often imposed their own features onto the famous person. Art historian Simon Abrahams, who studied hundreds of paintings, wrote on his blog ArtScholar.org that the practice, which he called"face fusion", revealed a

Skeleton in Britney Spears' family closet

She is the former teenage pop sensation from Louisiana better known for her painful divorce and erratic behaviour than her music. But as America’s tarnished pop princess Britney Spears celebrated a triumphant comeback, sweeping the board at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, details emerged of a secret scandal buried in her family history that would have overshadowed even her well-publicised personal troubles. Last week The Times traced the 26-year old singer’s ancestry ba

Famous dead men walk again at London film festival

George W Bush, Richard Nixon, Che Guevara, Hunter S Thompson and Bobby Sands will all be appearing at this year's London film festival, the full programme of which was announced today. The annual event, which kicks off on October 15 with the world premiere of Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, about David Frost's famous TV interviews with the disgraced US president, will this year feature a record 15 international premieres. Oliver Stone's much anticipated biopic W, starring Jo

Versailles goes kitsch as Jeff Koons's giant Lobster moves into the palace

The palace of Versailles will undergo a kitsch revolution with the opening of a controversial exhibition by pop artist Jeff Koons, amid cries from traditionalists that it is sacrilegious to bring works like his inflatable lobster into the palace of the Sun King. Some 17 oeuvres have been hand-picked by the 53-year old"king of kitsch" to hang in the 17th century chateau and home to the French monarchy until the Revolution. Among those on display in the Grand Apartment, the

Collector's vast model ship armada on display

HAMBURG, Germany: For Peter Tamm, the passion that launched a thousand ships — and Hamburg's newest museum along the port city's old docks — began with a gift from his mother in 1934. "A 500-gross tonnage coaster from the North Sea-Baltic line," Tamm said, rattling off specs of that first vessel in his possession. Of course, 500 gross tons was a little too big for a 6-year-old. What Tamm's mother gave him was an inch-long (2.5-centimeter) model of the cargo ship."Then came the se

KFC shoring up security for secret recipe

Pssst. The secret's out at KFC. Well, sort of. Colonel Harland Sanders' handwritten recipe of 11 herbs and spices was to be removed Tuesday from safekeeping at KFC's corporate offices for the first time in decades. The temporary relocation is allowing KFC to revamp security around a yellowing sheet of paper that contains one of the country's most famous corporate secrets. The brand's top executive admitted his nerves were aflutter despite the tight security he lined up for the oper

Scholar finds 'Beethoven's last piano work' in library

An Australian musicologist has discovered what he believes to be the last piano work written by Beethoven. Peter McCallum, associate professor of musicology at the University of Sydney, found the 32 bars of handwritten music while looking at one of the composer's sketchbooks in Berlin's state library. Most of his books have been studied in detail but the final one has attracted less attention. McCallum said that he didn't know instantly that it was a piano piece because

Ride's over at Coney Island amusement park

When reports circulated over the weekend of a last-minute deal to keep Coney Island's historic Astroland amusement park open for another year, owner Carol Hill Albert was not amused. Indeed, her tone was bitter as she described plans to close the park Sunday night in lieu of an agreement with the city or with private developer Thor Equities, which have competing plans for the 3-acre Brooklyn site. "Despite rumors to the contrary, there are absolutely no negotiatio

New movie about 18th century Spencers tries to cash in on parallel to Lady Di

BORN to one of the richest families in England, she married into a clan that was even wealthier and more eminent. Her husband was nearly a decade older and never pretended to feel anything close to the romantic love she yearned for. Instead he took a mistress. But if he didn’t want his wife, just about everyone else did. She was a huge celebrity with a unique sense of style that was widely copied. Above all, she was devoted to her children. Does the story line sound familiar?

Photo Exhibit: Les Insoumises, France's rebellious female courtesans

In France today, the women known as Les Insoumises are feisty feminists who will not take any affront to their dignity lying down. During the Second Empire (1852-70), lying down was just what Les Insoumises excelled at, and dignity had nothing to do with it. They were courtesans whose nickname"insoumises," meaning insubordinate, came from the fact that, unlike common prostitutes, they refused to submit to police licensing or conventional morals. They were glamorous, venal and usuall

Baltimore Has Poe; Philadelphia Wants Him

BALTIMORE — Edgar Allan Poe never lived in one city for long, and ever since he died and was buried here in 1849 this city has claimed him as its own. But last year Edward Pettit, a Poe scholar in Philadelphia, began arguing that Poe’s remains belong in Philadelphia. Poe wrote many of his most noteworthy works there and, according to Mr. Pettit, that city’s rampant crime and violence in the mid-19th century framed Poe’s sinister outlook and inspired his creation of the detective fic

Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970 at The Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The dawn of the cold war was literally freezing. The winter of 1947 was the worst ever recorded in Europe. From January to late March, it opened a front across Russia, Germany, Italy, France and Britain, and advanced with complete lack of mercy. Snow fell in St Tropez, gale-force winds building up impenetrable drifts; ice floes drifted to the mouth of the Thames; barges bringing coal into Paris became icebound. There, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin found himself "terrified" by the city'