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

Tehran museum to host painting workshop on Imam Ali

A painting workshop will be held on July 15 and 16 at Imam Ali (AS) Religious Arts Museum (IARAM) in commemoration of the birth anniversary of Imam Ali (AS). Some 30 Iranian artists are scheduled to attend the workshop entitled “Imam Ali in the Mirror” at which they plan to create works based on the theme of Imam Ali (AS). Iranian people will celebrate the birth anniversary of Imam Ali (AS) on July 16.

Priceless Treasures Saved From Looters of Baghdad Museum (Documentary/BBC)

It is known as one of the worst episodes of the war in Iraq: one of the world's greatest archaeological collections ransacked while American troops stood by, unable or unwilling to act. But now a different picture is emerging of the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad. Only a few dozen significant pieces, not thousands as originally reported, were stolen. And many, a new investigation has found, may have gone missing long before the Americans arrived in the Iraqi capital. US

Harley-Davidson opens museum in Milwaukee

A banker held beloved motorcycle-maker Harley-Davidson's fate in 1984. He could agree to refinance the $90 million loan that executives took out a few years before to buy the company back from American Machine and Foundry Co., or make them declare bankruptcy. The banker allowed the company to refinance — at the last minute — preserving Harley's folklore for decades to come. Why? No one knows for sure, but company officials say he owned a Harley

I am the forgotten Freud, says brother of Sir Clement Freud and Lucian Freud

He comes from a dynasty of high achievers yet Stephen Freud – brother of Lucian and Sir Clement – spent 40 years selling ironmongery. Here he breaks his lifelong silence to tell Adam Lusher about living in the Freud shadow and the family feud he longs to resolve. ### There was no name on the door. Just a simple sign that read, rather obliquely, "Successors to Charles Harden". For sale were drawer pulls, switch plates and every kind of doorknob imaginable, from

'Bigger than Jesus? The Beatles were a Christian band'

John Lennon famously claimed the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, even predicting that Christianity would "vanish and shrink". But 28 years after his death, in an interview being broadcast for the first time, he claims that on the contrary, he hoped to encourage people to focus on the Christian faith. Despite his familiar image as a hippy icon who invited us to imagine a world without religion, Lennon says he was "one of Christ's biggest fans" a

The Nuclear Family of Man

This essay is a revised and expanded version of an invited lecture at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University, delivered on December 6, 2007. I wish to thank Robert A. Jacobs, Steven L. Leeper, Kazumi Mizumoto, Hiroko Takahashi for their comments on the presentation. At the time of the lecture, I was a visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, investigating nuclear photography. John O’Brian is Professor of Art History and Brenda & David McLean Chair at the

We know Emperor Hadrian for his wall, but a new show celebrates his grandest designs back home

It is still the most powerful building in the world. Every time I walk inside – its vast, silent, columnless dome always a surprise after the hubbub of the city – I get goosebumps. If an Ancient Roman were standing right next to you, living, breathing, you’d think it a miracle. Yet slap-bang in the middle of Rome, surrounded by traffic, German tour groups and pigeons, is a piece of Ancient Rome still living, still breathing almost 2,000 years on. People walk past the Pantheon as if

A new exhibition in the British Museum looks at the man behind Hadrian's Wall

Probably the least embarrassing of all the cock-ups perpetrated by BA and BAA during the opening of Heathrow Terminal 5 a few months ago was the claim that Richard Rogers’ building was the largest free-standing structure in Britain. Wrong. That record has been held for the past 1,880-odd years by Hadrian’s Wall — which is, in my view, a rather more impressive sight. Walking along the Walltown Crags with my family last month, I kept stopping to admire this extraordinar

Mailer on 1968

Don't skim. You'll be tempted to do just that, of course, because his sentences tend to stretch out sinuously like cats in the sun, and because a culture more at home with the rhythms of blogs—quick hits, short takes, lists and nuggets—than with the time-lapse beauty of a printed page whose meanings unfold gradually and gracefully may find Norman Mailer a hard go. But if you dash your way through "Miami and the Siege of Chicago," Mailer's masterful account of

Editorial in the Telegraph: BBC In Colour ... Vivid images of a vanished decade

When we picture the 1930s, the images that spring to mind are, almost invariably, black and white. Although the end of the decade saw Judy Garland's Dorothy following a brilliantly yellow road to the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, for most of us, the film's monochrome Kansas sequences still equate with the "reality" of the era. Colour processing came of age at this time, but it was a while before the mass media got the message. Think of the Thirties and we think of a mo

Stolen 17th century Shakespeare folio recovered

A "priceless" edition of Shakespeare's works stolen 10 years ago from Durham University has been recovered after a man took the book to a US library. The First Folio edition, printed in 1623, was among a number of books and manuscripts taken from the Durham University Library in December 1998. It is believed the Shakespeare book alone would have a market value of at least £15 million. Durham Police said a 51-year-old man, claiming to be an interna

Radio-carbon tests reveal true age of Rome's she-wolf - and she's a relative youngster

It is the very symbol of the glory that was Rome. It figures on the badge of the Serie A side, AS Roma. It was used as the emblem of the 1960 Rome Olympics. For Benito Mussolini, Italy's fascist dictator, there was nothing more representative of the might of the empire he hoped to revive than this magnificent, life-size bronze of a she-wolf suckling the city's legendary founders, Romulus and Remus. Only problem: it was made 1,700-1,800 years later than supposed. Until t

Aboriginal dance causes evacuation of museum

Aboriginal elders caused a British museum to be evacuated when a ceremony to reclaim ancient bones set off the fire alarm. The delegation had travelled from Australia to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, Devon to recover four skulls which were plundered by explorers 140 years ago. But as they carried out a cleansing ritual over the remains, ceremonial incense set off the smoke alarms and everyone in the building was evacuated into the pouring rain.

Art of deception: Crystal skulls in British, US museums were fakes

How about this for the next instalment of the Indy franchise: "Indiana Jones and the Dodgy Antiques Dealer"? Less than three months after the Quai Branly Museum in Paris discovered that a crystal skull once proclaimed as a mystical Aztec masterpiece was a fake, it is now the turn of the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution to find they were victims of skull-duggery. Scientists from those two prestigious institutions on Wednesday said their crystal sk

Kafka's papers to see the light of day?

Scholars of the 20th-century writer Franz Kafka were in a state of suspense last night at the news that the remains of his estate, which have been hoarded in a Tel Aviv flat for decades, may soon be revealed. Previously unseen documents, postcards, sketches and personal belongings of the Czech-Jewish writer, who wrote in German, have been gathering dust in the home of Esther Hoffe, the former secretary of Kafka's friend and executor Max Brod since his death in 1968. Hoffe's refusal

Is the British Museum the greatest museum on earth?

In an age when it can feel as if trash is about to breach the levees and flood the entire cultural landscape, two announcements have offered evidence of the surprising healthiness of the nation's appetite for the highbrow. The first was that the British Museum has overtaken Blackpool Pleasure Beach to become Britain's most popular cultural attraction. In the past year 6.04 million visitors crossed the threshold, trumping Blackpool on 5.5 million and Tate Modern with 5.23 million.

Diverse museums open this summer

Three new but very different museums have opened this summer around the world. First to open in June was the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation, housed in a traditional Middle Eastern souq or indoor market. The museum in the United Arab Emirates contains over 5,000 artefacts from across the Islamic world arranged in themed galleries, from a Faith exhibition to a Science and Technology section. The Museum of the American Cocktail, meanwhile, opens on July 21st in New Orleans. Located near the

History TV network to retell September 11, WWII

Cable network History -- formerly known as the History Channel -- is retelling the stories of World War II and the September 11 attacks from a fresh perspective. The network has ordered a 10-part series, "WW II HD," for 2009 that will make use of 3,000 hours of restored color archival footage and hundreds of pages of unpublished diaries and journals to create what History said will be one of its most ambitious projects ever. Meanwhile, the network has compiled

Tolkien postcard found behind fireplace

A demolition worker has discovered a postcard which was written to JRR Tolkien 40 years ago stuck behind a fireplace. Stephen Malton, who runs Prodem Demolition in Bournemouth, was removing the fixtures from the author's former home in Poole, Dorset, before the property was demolished. As he dismantled the carved wooden fireplace he found three postcards, the last of which was addressed to Tolkien and dated 1968. Malton, 42, has now begun investigating how

FA Cup final ticket from 1895 discovered in dusty scrapbook to sell for

A ticket for the 1895 FA Cup final discovered in a dusty scrapbook recently is expected to fetch £3,000 at auction this week. The ticket cost 12.5p and gained the holder entrance into the match at Crystal Palace, which Aston Villa beat West Midlands rival West Bromwich Albion 1-0. The game, the first final to be played at Crystal Palace, remains famous for the fastest goal ever scored in an FA Cup final - 30 seconds - and also for the fact that the Cup was stolen shortly after