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

A Warhol Surfaces and Is Headed for Court

Last September, a man who has admittedly lived a hard-knock life walked into Christie’s auction house with an Andy Warhol painting of a dollar sign and asked to have it put up for sale. Though one can never judge by appearances, especially when it comes to art lovers, something about this particular art lover, Jason Beltrez, seemed a little bit off to the staff at Christie’s. They accepted the painting but immediately contacted the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest

Can movies teach us about African-American history?

Can movies or television really teach us anything useful about African-American history? It's a reasonable question to ask as we begin Black History Month. Certainly, the legacy of such famous films as "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) and "Gone With the Wind" (1939) was to give the public a distorted view of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction while offering portrayals of African Americans that were either virulently hateful or condescending.

PBS documentary about African prince who became a Mississippi slave

In 1977, millions of TV viewers tuned in to the miniseries version of Alex Haley's Roots, the story of a young man taken from his West African village to work as a slave on a southern plantation. But while the nation's attention was riveted on the depiction of Haley's family tree, the piquing of interest in America's shameful history didn't translate to many other accounts of the transatlantic slave trade. One of those accounts was a book published that same year, Prince Among Slave

Famous Black Lives Through DNA’s Prism (TV Show)

“African-American Lives 2,” a four-part series on PBS that begins on Wednesday night, belies its sleepy name with the poetry of history, the magic of science and the allure of the family trees of Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Tina Turner, Don Cheadle, Tom Joyner and Maya Angelou. It is the latest incarnation of the highly rated, critically successful star genealogy program that its host, the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., presented in 2006. Then Oprah Winfrey, Chris Tucker,

George Westinghouse: Subject of a new documentary

Westinghouse, a feature-length documentary about the life and times of George Westinghouse, will be released nationally on April 8, 2008. This DVD profiles George Westinghouse’s companies, legacy, personality, partnership with Nikola Tesla and conflict with Thomas Edison. It will be available at at large retailers and online retailers nationwide, and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com. For more information, visit www.westinghousefilm

Anne Frank Fund tries to stop musical based on her life

The legal guardians of Anne Frank's memory have stepped in at the 11th hour to try to stop a controversial Spanish musical about the life of one of the Holocaust's best-known victims going ahead. Rafael Alvero, producer of The Diary of Anne Frank: A Song to Life, which is in rehearsal for its opening in Madrid, claims he spent 10 years obtaining approval for the first song and dance version of the teenage diarist's story. But the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fund, headed by the only livin

Museum of American Finance (Review/NYT)

A few years ago, when irrational exuberance reigned, opening a handsome museum devoted to the history and celebration of money just a block from the New York Stock Exchange might have seemed somewhat vulgar. In times of enthusiasm and plenty, celebration is superfluous. Why devote reverential attention to something when its powers are so omnipresent that they provide daily fodder for gossip? Now, of course, it’s a different story. At a time of uncertainty — as the market quavers, th

UN vandals spray graffiti on Sahara’s prehistoric art

Spectacular prehistoric depictions of animal and human figures created up to 6,000 years ago on Western Saharan rocks have been vandalised by United Nations peacekeepers, The Times has learnt. Archaeological sites boasting ancient paintings and engravings of giraffes, buffalo and elephants have been defaced within the past two years by personnel attached to the UN mission, known by its French acronym, Minurso. Graffiti, some of it more than a metre high and sprayed with

Marvel Comics revives Capt. America

It turns out you can't keep a good man down — or even dead and buried — when he wears a red, white and blue uniform and calls himself Captain America. Marvel Comics, which killed off the veteran superhero almost a year ago, brought him back to life Wednesday — sort of. Captain America's alter-ego, Steve Rogers, is still resting in peace at Arlington National Cemetery, having been done in by assassins last March. But his good buddy and sidekick from the 1940s, Bucky Bar

Speakers bemoan loss of Iraqi art

In a forum at Kresge Auditorium last night, scholars discussed a side of Iraq rarely covered in the nightly news: the rich artistic history of the country. “While we all hear about Iraq in the news, we don’t hear that Iraq had a thriving culture,” said Nada Shabout, a professor of Arab visual and Islamic art at the University of North Texas. As the third out of five conversations in the “Iraq: Reframe: Iraq’s Lost National Treasures” series, last night’s event aimed to

Legos: 50th anniversary of enduring toy

Lego celebrated its 50th anniversary by featuring in the logo on internet search engine Google. The brick design was patented by the Danish toy manufacturer on January 28th, 1958. The concept was started in the 1930s by carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen who began working on wooden toys. His son, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, became manager at Lego in 1940 rather than studying in Germany after Denmark was occupied. He took over the brand after his father passed away in the year Lego was patented and

“Secrets of the Parthenon” (Documentary/PBS)

“Secrets of the Parthenon,” Tuesday night on PBS, is no mere how-did-they-lift-those-heavy-rocks rumination. It’s a condensed mathematics course, challenging you to keep up as it examines the principles and proportions the ancient Greeks used to erect that majestic building. You may fall by the wayside in the home stretch, which features a detailed analysis of the slight curve in the Parthenon’s columns, but you’ll still feel smarter by the program’s end. “The Parthenon, like a stat

Oxford pensioner's paintings worth millions

A collection of paintings found in a pensioner's modest house was worth more than £2.7 million. After Jean Preston died two years ago, two paintings by the Renaissance artist Fra Angelico were found behind the door of the spare room in her two-up, two-down terraced home in Oxford. The works sold for £1.7 million at auction, a record for a sale outside London. Guy Schwinge, of Duke's auction house in Dorchester, Dorset, said: "Her family told us that there may be so

Diary Revisits American Tragedy Dreiser Wrote About

On March 30, 1908, Chester Gillette, 25, was executed at Auburn State Prison in New York for the murder of his pregnant lover, Grace Brown, on an Adirondack lake in 1906. His sensational trial inspired the Theodore Dreiser novel “An American Tragedy,” the 1951 film “A Place in the Sun” and an opera staged by the Metropolitan Opera. Now, as the 100th anniversary of Gillette’s electrocution approaches, Hamilton College has published “The Prison Diary and Letters of Chester Gillette,” taken from pa

Lincoln's relatives planning to gather at museum opening

Many of Abraham Lincoln's relatives remain in Kentucky, including Nina Warren Clooney, the mother of actor George Clooney. She is among numerous descendants of Lincoln's family who are expected to gather in the small Boyle County community of Forkland, near Perryville, on March 1 for the opening of a Lincoln Museum at the Forkland Community Center. Clooney, a descendant of Lincoln's grandmother, Lucey Shipley Hanks Sparrow, and wife of media personality Nick Clooney, wi

The shame of the attack on Robert Frost's house

Imagining that late December night of long darkness, you can almost hear these youths of Vermont tramping up to the isolated farmhouse to intrude upon the sanctuary stillness. The break of snow beneath their feet would be the least of it. They had driven or walked a half-mile up a snow-covered lane called Frost Road, then trudged past a large blue sign that explained the historic significance of the farmhouse and the cabin beyond. And now they were entering the coldness of an uninha

'Things Fall Apart' turns 50

The odds are that this title appeared on the "required texts" list of at least one of your college-course syllabi and likely appeared on several in a variety of disciplines. But don't worry if you didn't read it then – here's your second chance. Anchor Books will publish a 50th anniversary edition on Feb. 12 to celebrate Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, and the book's longstanding social importance. The novel is set in the 1890s and tells the story of O

When Icons Die Young

Heath Ledger passed away only Tuesday, but his transformation is already under way, from acclaimed actor to most-searched Internet term, from film star to cultural touchstone. The blogosphere went into overdrive. In two days his memorial page on Facebook had over 30,000 members. The entertainment Web site TMZ generated over 74 pages of user comments. Hundreds of eulogies for the 28-year-old Australian appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald’s site. What accounts for this

The Capa Cache of long-lost photos

TO the small group of photography experts aware of its existence, it was known simply as “the Mexican suitcase.” And in the pantheon of lost modern cultural treasures, it was surrounded by the same mythical aura as Hemingway’s early manuscripts, which vanished from a train station in 1922. The suitcase — actually three flimsy cardboard valises — contained thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil

Painting Bush reveres is of a horse thief

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography.... "I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up w