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

Heirs race to find Nazi-looted art

Eighty-one-year old Thomas Selldorff, who fled Austria with his family before it was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, hopes an upcoming international conference will bolster efforts to return Nazi-looted art. The Nazis seized over 200 artworks owned by his grandfather, an avid art collector, as part of a policy of seizing Jewish property. So far, Selldorff has been able to retrieve only two of the lost paintings."I want to be able to pass these things on to my family. . . I want

Jack the Ripper documentaries on UK TV

The legend of Jack the Ripper has an eternal fascination. Headlines were made every time a new suspect entered the frame and it is still happening 120 years after the crimes took place. Medical records released from Broadmoor hospital caused a media frenzy last year after they shed “invaluable light” on Thomas Cutbush’s role in the killings. Proof, if it were needed, that over a century later the Ripper can still make headlines. The same could be said for documentaries. Two programm

Marble Head of Emperor Titus Found

Archaeologists have unearthed a hoard of ancient Roman treasures, including a marble head of the Roman emperor Titus, during an excavation outside the southern Italian city of Naples. The long-term digging effort in Rione Terra, a cliff in the port town of Pozzuoli, has yielded remains of 12 ancient statues, columns and fragments bearing inscriptions from what appear to be monuments from the Republican and Imperial periods of ancient Roman history. Among the most striki

NYT art critic loves the new Greek museum (from the inside!)

Not long before the new Acropolis Museum opened last weekend, the writer Christopher Hitchens hailed in this newspaper what he called the death of an argument. Britain used to say that Athens had no adequate place to put the Elgin Marbles, the more than half of the Parthenon frieze, metopes and pediments that Lord Elgin spirited off when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire two centuries ago. Since 1816 they have been prizes of the British Museum. Meanwhile, Greeks had to make do

Pissarro painting looted by Nazis withdrawn from auction

A £1.5 million painting by Camille Pissarro which was looted by the Nazis has been withdrawn from auction at the last minute because of infighting between the descendants of its original Jewish owners. Le Quai Malaquais et l'Institut, which features a view of the Seine from the French impressionist's hotel room on the third floor of the Hotel du Quai Voltaire, was due to be auctioned by Christie's in London on Tuesday. But lawyers representing various scions of the Fisc

Another suicide in American Indian artifacts looting case

A second defendant in the federal crackdown on archaeological looting in southern Utah has killed himself. Steven L. Shrader, 56, who faced two felonies in the antiquities case, shot himself twice in the chest late Thursday or early Friday behind an elementary school in the village of Shabbona, Ill., authorities said. The DeKalb County Sheriff's Office had been looking for a "despondent individual" after receiving a call Thursday at 10:41 p.m., said Chief Depu

A rare musical instrument of Goguryeo Kingdom found

A rare drum from the Goguryeo Kingdom has been excavated at an ancient fortress site in Yeoncheon-gun, Gyeonggi Province, the Land Museum of Korea said yesterday. The drum bears Chinese characters, "sang-go," which roughly translates into "drum" in Korean, adding to its historical value. The artifact is depicted in several ancient mural paintings, but it is the first time Korean researchers have discovered an actual drum. The ancient earthenware drum

'Maus' Creator & Historian Team Up for Wash. Post Cartoon About 1939 Refugees

The creator of the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, "Maus," has teamed up with a Holocaust historian to create a full-page cartoon in the Washington Post about the voyage of the 1939 Jewish refugee ship, the St. Louis. The cartoon feature, by Maus creator Art Spiegelman and Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, appears in today's Washington Post (June 21, 2009) and may be viewed at: Today ma

A new exhibit on the African American experience in post-colonial Philadelphia offers a largely untold perspective on the city's rich history

A new exhibit on the African American experience in post-colonial Philadelphia offers a largely untold perspective on the city's rich history. Opening today at the African American Museum at Seventh and Arch Streets, the exhibit marks a drastic turning point in how U.S. history is typically told. "Audacious Freedom: African Americans In Philadelphia, 1776-1876" is the first permanent exhibit at the museum narrating an epic sweep stretching from slavery to the

Lessons in Renaissance Cool in Urbino, Italy

IN March of 1507, in a lofty high-windowed room in a palace in Le Marche, a region of Italy northeast of Rome, the High Renaissance reached its pinnacle. For four successive nights, a company of poets, artists, scholars and nobles, assembled on the occasion of a papal visit, gathered around a table in Urbino’s magnificent Ducal Palace to chat about love, law, morals, manners, beauty, sex, seemliness, art, hats, cosmetics, tennis and whatever else most pressed the minds of Renaissance men

Photo Of Einstein Nets $74K At Auction

NY Man Buys Iconic Photo From NH Auctioneer. An iconic photograph of Albert Einstein was sold by a New Hampshire auction company Friday for $74,324, making it the most expensive Einstein photograph ever sold at auction, according to the auctioneers. The photograph was taken in 1951 while Einstein was celebrating his birthday at Princeton University. Photographer Arthur Sasse tried to convince Einstein to pose with a smile for the photo, but Einstein instead stuck out hi

In Athens, Museum Is an Olympian Feat (NYT)

On Monday morning, forklifts nosed through a sprawl of antiquities in the second-floor gallery of the New Acropolis Museum here, bearing marble statues and steles. Technicians tugged at bulky black cables, laborers drilled and welded, and a cleaning crew — many of its members working on hands and knees — scraped mounds of white plaster off the floor. “My apologies,” said Antonis Samaras, Greece’s culture minister, who was overseeing the final preparations for the museum’s debut on S

Six Questions for Austin Ratner about the photographer Philippe Halsman

[Scott Horton is a Contributing Editor of Harper's Magazine and writes No Comment for Harper's online (Courtesy, Harper's).] Austin Ratner has just made his debut as a novelist with a remarkable work based on the tragedy-filled life of Philippe Halsman, the iconic American photographer of the post-war years. The work documents a triumph of human spirit over tremendous adversity. I put six questions to Austin Ratner about his book. 1. Your novel focuses on Philippe Halsman, a New

Inside Hemingway's Havana House

This Havana house is more than a home, it's a time capsule. The clock stopped in the summer of 1960, when Ernest Hemingway walked out for the last time. It's amazing to look inside these rooms and imagine him here, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella. That's what it's all about - getting inside here and looking through the open door - his collection of books, his objects. For 20 years Hemingway lounged in these seats, drank from these bottles, wrote one of h

Che's image

[Maurice Isserman was a big fan of Che Guevara circa 1967-68. He is James L. Ferguson Professor of History at Hamilton College and the author, with Michael Kazin, of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (third edition, 2007).] On October 9, 1967, a Bolivian army communiqué from La Paz announced that Ernesto"Che" Guevara, the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary comandante turned itinerant guerrilla, had been hunted down by soldiers and killed in battle. The New York

Saved from Lady Chatterley’s Lover (The 50th Anniversary of the Ban)

Here’s another anniversary that slipped by unnoticed: June 11 was the 50th for the decision by which Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield banned the novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence, from the United States mails. The book was declared to be pornographic, smutty, obscene, and filthy. (Obviously the order was drafted with the assistance of a lawyer, a species for which Roget’

Parthenon was once covered in colourful paint

The Parthenon temple in Athens was once painted with splashes of colour, according to a new study. New tests on the stone have found that the marble was once covered with shades of blue, while it also thought red, green and gold were used. By shining red light onto the marble, Dr Giovanni Verri identified an ancient pigment known as Egyptian blue, used until the year 800AD.

Holden Caulfield, a Ripe 76, Heads to Court Again

The author J. D. Salinger, known as much for his cloistered ways as for his skillful pen, has sued repeatedly over the years to protect his privacy and the sanctity of his work. So when a book that describes itself on its copyright page as “An Unauthorized Fictional Examination of the Relationship Between J. D. Salinger and his Most Famous Character” was published in Britain and scheduled for release in the Untied States, a detour to court was a safe bet. “60 Years Late

Naked Mona Lisa goes on show

A naked portrayal of the Mona Lisa, which was once attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, forms one of the highlights of the biggest exhibition ever held on the Renaissance genius. The mysterious portrait of a semi-nude woman, looking straight at the viewer with an enigmatic smile and with her hands crossed, bears a remarkable resemblance to Leonardo's world famous painting. Hidden for almost a century within the panelled walls of a library, the portrait appears to have been

Machu Picchu Is Mini Re-creation of a Mythic Landscape?

Peru's Machu Picchu was an Inca pilgrimage site and a scaled-down version of a mythic landscape, according to a controversial new study. The finding challenges the conventional view that Machu Picchu was a royal estate of the Inca ruler Pachacuti, who built it around A.D. 1460. "I believe that much of the sacred space of the Incas has still to be recognized as such," said study author Giulio Magli, an astrophysicist at the Polytechnic Institute in Milan, Italy