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

Exhibit sets record straight: Tiffany lamps were designed by women

NEW YORK -- With evocative names like Wisteria, Dragonfly, Peony, Arrowhead and Peacock and their fanciful shapes of colorful leaded glass, Tiffany lamps have enchanted art lovers for more than a century. The epitome of art nouveau, thousands of lamps were designed and handmade in the New York workshops of Louis C. Tiffany largely between 1898 and 1909 from the iridescent opaque glass he patented. But despite his sterling label, Tiffany had only a minor role in these ma

Replaying the saga of opening Tut's tomb

NEW YORK -- Of all the cold cases in the art world thrillers, none beats the story of Tutankhamun's funerary chamber and the saga of the art treasures it held, recovered in what turned out to be the most important excavation ever relating to the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. Yet it took more than 80 years for the visual evidence to go on display under the title "Discovering Tutankhamun: The Photographs of Harry Burton," first at the Oriental Institute Museum (at the Universit

Five decades on, one of Picasso's muses steps out as an artist

Picasso only saw the shy 17-year-old girl, whose head was bowed with her hair high in a ponytail, for a few fleeting moments. But that was enough for him to become entranced by her beauty... It was the young woman's sultry Brigitte Bardot look that captivated the Spanish artist. The encounter [in Provence] led to a year-long friendship in which Lydia Corbett, then known as Sylvette David, became the painter's model and posed for hours at his studio in the Cote d'Azur town of Vallaur

'30's government propaganda films on behalf of social causes (DVD sale)

NEVER in American history, many argue, have political parties and administrations been more brazen about image manipulation and message control than they are now. But recent examples — the “Mission Accomplished” carrier landing, the new Democratic leadership team’s victory lap packaged as a listening tour — seem hapless in comparison with “The Plow That Broke the Plains” and “The River,” two government-financed documentaries from the 1930s that were shameless propaganda efforts. The

The Eisenhower Decade Is Back, at Least Onstage

IN various pockets of the fashion and design worlds, the years of the new millennium have been characterized by a return to the visual language of the 1950s. We have seen the arch-frump style of Prada, the housewife-at-the-country-club dresses from various American designers, the pink KitchenAid mixers that might have come from the cabinets of Ozzie and Harriet. Sometimes the take has been wistful, sometimes cheeky. Often the players involved hope to call our attention to some of the more insidi

Create your own WW II war game

Strategy First today announced that the PC game "MAKING HISTORY: The Calm & the Storm" developed by Muzzy Lane Software, has officially gone gold. "MAKING HISTORY: The Calm & the Storm" is due to hit stores in North America March 13th, 2007. "MAKING HISTORY" puts players in control of global conflict, combining a highly sophisticated AI with rich historical detail. The game is unique among World War II games in the way it challenges gamers to ac

Tibetan Exhibition Draws Criticism (Berlin)

BERLIN -- A new exhibit of Tibetan art in Berlin offers a rare chance to see treasures from ancient Buddhist monasteries, but is also being criticized as whitewashing China's treatment of Tibet's ancient culture. Curator Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch said the exhibit at the Museum of Asian Art was a unique opportunity to see masterpieces that are not found in other museums. "There has never been an exhibition in which the objects came directly from the monasteries in centr

NY exhibit remembers Latin America's 'disappeared'

NEW YORK -- In Latin America, the memory of the "disappeared" never went away. In the United States, they were hardly ever known. Now some of the tens of thousands who vanished during Latin America's so-called dirty wars will be introduced to New York on Friday when a stark exhibit, "The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos)," opens at the Museo del Barrio for its first stop on a U.S. tour. With works such as Arturo Duclos's Chilean flag made from 75 human

Memory Lane Is Bittersweet in Hometown of the Champ (Ali)

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Feb. 21 — Forty years after a draft board here rejected his bid for conscientious objector status, Muhammad Ali plans to return to live in the city where he was born and where resentment engendered by his refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam War has not entirely died away. “He’s nothing more than a draft-dodger to me, and I’d say that’s the consensus around here,” said Wayne Love, 61, who tends bar here at the Veterans of Foreign War post in a mostly white neighbo

The Imperfect Soul Who Helped Bring an End to the Slave Trade (NYT Review/Amazing Grace)

“Amazing Grace,” a prettified take on the life and times of the 18th-century reformer William Wilberforce, carries a strong whiff of piety. It isn’t a bad smell; there are notes of roses and treacle in the mix, but also elements of sweat and pain. Wilberforce, born in 1759, was an abolitionist for much of his adult life and helped bring about the end of the slave trade in the British Empire and then slavery itself. He was an evangelical Christian and social conservative who rallied for animal ri

Remembering Warhol: A Tomato Soup Can and a Pocketful of Coins

BETHEL PARK, Pa., Feb. 22 — For 20 years, it has appeared every month: one Campbell’s tomato soup can and a pocketful of change left on the plain black granite tombstone. Claire Gibson, who has tended Andy Warhol’s grave since he died 20 years ago Thursday, said she has never figured out who is leaving the items at this Byzantine-Catholic cemetery alongside Route 88 just outside Pittsburgh. “I have my theories,” she said, “but we don’t know.” The silk-screens, Brillo pa

A powerful history lesson, from dolls

They're just dolls, barely two feet tall. They're made of cloth, with porcelain heads and porcelain hands. Displayed behind a pane of glass, near a wall of Shirley Temple dolls, they represent a forgotten form of entertainment that feels as antiquated as an eight-track tape. Yet, these 16 dolls inside High Point's Angela Peterson Doll & Miniature Museum mean much to Chris Greene. She's a guidance counselor at High Point Central. And six years ago, she h

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (HBO documentary)

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, a new documentary by Rory Kennedy, is raising hell in the nation's capital. Sparks flew at a February 12 screening of the film for Beltway bigwigs--among them Rory's uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham--when Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski--who was demoted for her role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison--said during a panel discussion that she had been "scapegoated." Karpinski then called Graham "a coward" to his face, "a

Stunning new frame based on old design for Leutze's Washington Crossing

One of the most complex restoration and reframing projects in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has collided with a 9-foot-3-inch-high doorway. The doorway won. That is because the heroic and stupendously popular 1851 “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” familiar to generations of schoolchildren, is one of the largest paintings in the museum, measuring 21 feet wide and 12 feet high. It is heavy too, and will be getting heavier, because curators are currently

Heeere’s Johnny, Not Quite Fully Formed

IT is a television moment almost no one has seen in more than half a century: On the evening of June 30, 1955, an eager 29-year-old comedian emerged from behind a curtain and onto a CBS stage in Hollywood, propelled by coincidence and good timing into the starring role of his first prime-time series. Just before he stepped forward to meet his audience — each strand of his close-cropped haircut perfectly in place, his handkerchief neatly folded into his left breast pocket, his frame so thin that

Britain’s Slave Empire, as the Sun Set (NYT review/Amazing Grace)

ON March 25, 1807, Britain ended its participation in the slave trade. The move hardly absolved the country of the sin of having shipped millions of Africans to the New World for sale as chattels. But it was nonetheless a rare point of light in one of the darkest chapters of human history, and it set in motion the gradual emancipation of slaves across the Americas. Now, two centuries later, the story of how William Wilberforce and a handful of other Quaker activists persuaded a relu

Little-known abolitionist celebrated (movie)

William Wilberforce is not a household name, particularly in America in the 21 st century. Unless you are a student of British history or are aware of Ohio’s Wilberforce University, the first private black college in the United States, you aren’t likely to be familiar with the British member of Parliament who led a 30-year struggle to abolish slavery and the slave trade. That might change in the coming months with the nationwide release of the movie Amazing Grace. (The

Famed Shanghai Museum Opens U.S. Exhibit

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- The bronze bowl seems unremarkable until you study it from above. Then, the shallow basin suddenly seems to teem with life: etchings of tiny tadpoles, turtles and fish wriggle across the bottom and up the sides, as if trapped in a real-life pond. The bowl, which dates to 770 B.C. and was used in an ancient Chinese hand-washing ritual, is one of dozens of artifacts on loan from the famed Shanghai Museum for a six-month exhibit at the Bowers Museum. The show will

Tracing the Lines Of 20th Century's Varied Influences On Religious Art

The artistic giants of the 20th century -- the Andy Warhols, Jackson Pollocks and Pablo Picassos of the art world -- were known more for their modernist and abstract impulses than their depiction of religious themes. But does that tell the whole story of art in the 20th century? That's the question animating an exhibit of 20th century art, "Biblical Art in a Secular Century: Selections, 1896-1993," at New York's Museum of Biblical Art. The show f

The longest running play in a single theater ... ever

A world theatrical record was set last night in a small, scruffy theatre in one of the most tasteless streets in Paris. Every day, except Sundays, for the past 50 years, the curtain has risen on "Mr and Mrs Smith", an (allegedly) typical English couple. Mr Smith smokes his English pipe. Mrs Smith darns her English socks. "There is a long moment of English silence. The English clock strikes 17 English chimes." These are the opening stage directions of La Cantatri