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

California returns 'looted art'

The US state of California has returned three Renaissance paintings that were confiscated from Jewish art dealers in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. The 16th-Century paintings were returned to the heirs of their former owners, Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer, who died during the Holocaust. After World War II, the paintings ended up in the collection of US newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst. They have been on display at a California museum for over 30 ye

Photo exhibition shows life in China in 1870s

A remarkable set of photographs portraying life in China in the late Qing Dynasty is to go on public display for the first time. Taken between 1870 and 1871 by the Scottish photographer John "China" Thomson, the images reveal with often startling intimacy a cast of characters from orphans and street gamblers, to beautiful peasant girls and their high-born ladies. Hailed as a pioneer of photojournalism, Thomson spent two years travelling more than 5,000 miles

Where Culture Is Another Casualty (Italy/earthquake)

In the aftermath, tending to the injured and the dead comes first. But local residents as well as teams of officials have already begun to assess the cultural damage. The earthquake 12 years ago that ravaged Umbria wasn’t nearly as severe but it made headlines abroad because it damaged tourist sites like the famous basilica in Assisi. Less glamorous, Abruzzo is rich in its own heritage, which is priceless to the people here. “I lived in Latin America and South America for many years

Photo exhibition shows life in China in 1870s (Beijing)

Taken between 1870 and 1871 by the Scottish photographer John "China" Thomson, the images reveal with often startling intimacy a cast of characters from orphans and street gamblers, to beautiful peasant girls and their high-born ladies. Hailed as a pioneer of photojournalism, Thomson spent two years travelling more than 5,000 miles in pursuit of the images that historians say are unique in their empathy towards their subjects. As well as shooting traditional,

California returns 'looted art'

The 16th-Century paintings were returned to the heirs of their former owners, Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer, who died during the Holocaust. After World War II, the paintings ended up in the collection of US newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst. They have been on display at a California museum for over 30 years. Copies of two of the paintings will stay on display at Hearst Castle along with the original of the third painting belonging to the couple...

Simon Schama's new documentary on America is hopeful

The revolution in America is finally over, asserts historian Simon Schama in this documentary series, but the quantum cultural change has coincided with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Much of Schama's four-part snapshot on modern American life was filmed in the months leading up to Barack Obama's election as U.S. president, which marked "a historic shift in America's self-perception." Even a decade before, believes Schama, it would have been inconcei

Germany to stage Mel Brooks's Nazi-themed musical for the first time

The controversial Mel Brooks musical The Producers is to be staged in Germany for the first time amid a debate over whether the country is ready to laugh at its Nazi past. Berlin's Admiralspalast theatre is putting on the first-ever production of the show which features tap-dancing storm troopers and jokes about the invasion of Poland. The move comes as part of a rise in the number of films and documentaries revisiting the Third Reich in recent years.

Eisa Davis’s play is a rhythmic collage of scenes, songs and reminiscences about the life of Angela Davis, the scholar and activist.

“Wake up,” Mom says. “It’s time to go to the demonstration.” So dawns another politically engaged morning in the unorthodox Berkeley, Calif., household that was home to Eisa Davis, the actress (“Passing Strange”) and author of the engaging new free-form autobiographical show, “Angela’s Mixtape,” that opened on Thursday night at the Ohio Theater, a co-production of New Georges and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival. Ms. Davis’s full name is Angela Eisa Davis. Leapfrog the midd

Germany Says Art Restitution Will Continue

Germany’s culture minister said that ending the nation’s longstanding practice of restoring artwork stolen by Nazis to Holocaust victims and their descendants was “out of the question,” Bloomberg News reported. The minister, Bernd Neumann, was responding to remarks made in Der Spiegel by Norman Rosenthal, the former exhibitions secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, who said that such restitutions should end.

Jefferson’s Blind Spots and Ideals, in Brick and Mortar

— Stand in the garden of Monticello here and look back at the home Thomas Jefferson designed, a view made famous by the United States nickel, and you get some hint of how this founding father thought about the new nation taking shape around him. The building invokes reason, proportion and balance, but you stand on a man-made plateau that seems to hover in space, open to the sweep of clouds and the distant mountains. Veneration for antiquity and revolutionary daring are brought together. The home

Hundreds of Afghan antiquities repatriated from Britain

Fifteen hundred pieces of this country's history are sitting in crates in the Afghanistan National Museum. Half of the relics date to the time before Islam arrived in Afghanistan in 642 AD. The rest cover the Muslim period up to and including the 20th century. But they did not come directly from archeological sites in Afghanistan. They came instead from Heathrow Airport in London, where they were confiscated over a period of six years. British authorities returned the o

Art in Israel

This article follows a number of artistic movements and events anchored in Israeli ideology, politics, and content. It offers a selective, partial panorama of art in Israel from 1948 through the first decade of the twenty-first century. The article presents a sequence of synchronic historical pictures defined by the specific context of each decade, in which each work is representative of an idea or artistic concept in local Israeli artistic discourse. ### The conjunctio

An End to Restitution of Nazi Looted Art?

For years, it has been widely accepted that artworks looted by the Nazis should be returned to their rightful owners. But now a prominent British expert has called for a stop to restitution -- and triggered protests in the art world. The art connoisseur Sir Norman Rosenthal may be a British institution, but the equanimity often attributed to his compatriots is not one of his distinguishing features. Rosenthal, the son of Jewish refugees from Germany and Slovakia, called

'The Producers' debuts in Germany

Adolf Hitler is returning to the Berlin theater where he watched "The Merry Widow" during World War II, but this time he'll be on stage, singing "Heil Myself," swinging his hips and fluttering his eyelashes in Germany's first production of Mel Brooks's celebrated musical comedy "The Producers." Some reviewers are saying the city's historic Admiralspalast theater, which until recently had a Führer's Box specifically built for Hitler, is taking a risk by

'To thee we sing': Historic Marian Anderson concert will be re-created on Independence Mall

ON EASTER SUNDAY, April 9, 1939, Marian Anderson stepped up to a battery of microphones in front of Washington, D.C.'s, Lincoln Memorial, sang "America," and altered American history. Wearing a mink coat and an orange-and-yellow scarf on that chilly afternoon, she changed the final phrase from "Of thee I sing" to "TO thee WE sing." This modest African-American contralto had taken the train from her South Philadelphia rowhouse that day with

Getty to return Roman fresco fragment to Italy

In its latest effort to return wayward ancient artworks to their rightful owners, the J. Paul Getty Museum will send a Roman fresco fragment to Italy. The fragmentary panel, a roughly 36-by-32-inch section of a wall painting made in the third quarter of the 1st century BC, joined the museum's collection in 1996 as a gift of New York collectors Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman. The museum --- which has returned 39 antiquities to Italy since 2007 -- listed the fragment as "at some

3 Hearst Castle paintings to be returned to heirs of Nazi era owners

SAN SIMEON, Calif. -- Three 16th century oil paintings that have been hanging in William Randolph Hearst's famous castle at San Simeon belonged to a Jewish couple who were forced to give them up during the Nazi reign in Germany, authorities said Tuesday. Two of the three paintings, visible to guests and millions of tourists at Hearst Castle since 1935, will be returned Friday to the heirs of the rightful owners, both of whom died during the war, one in the death camp at Auschwitz.

Chambers in 'bent' pyramid to be opened

CAIRO – Travelers to Egypt will soon be able to explore the inner chambers of the 4,500-year-old "bent" pyramid, known for its oddly shaped profile, and other nearby ancient tombs. The increased access to the pyramids south of Cairo is part of a new sustainable development campaign that Egypt hopes will attract more visitors but also to avoid some of the problems of the urban sprawl that have plagued the famed pyramids of Giza... Dahshur's bent pyramid is famo

Rules of engagement: Can you pack the bloody history of Afghanistan into a dozen half-hour plays? (UK)

Were one to measure the extent of controversy aroused by a piece of theatre against the time taken to perform it, Caryl Churchill's recent 10-minute offering at London's Royal Court must have set some kind of record. Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza was staged as the Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip was still going on, and one review read more like a rebuttal drawn up by the Israeli information ministry than a serious attempt at theatrical criticism. But whatever its

Rare Spitfire may fetch £1.5m

Peter Tuplin, managing director of Classic Aero Engineering, after touching down at Truxton airfield near Andover, Hampshire, in a rare two-seat Mk IX Spitfire, which auction firm Bonhams believes could fetch a record £1.5m when it is sold on 20 April. Retrieved from a junkyard in South Africa 30 years ago, the plane is now certified to fly after being restored by Tuplin's company. Bonhams and Goodman's sold a 1945 Mk XVI in New Zealand for £1.22m in September, reportedly the recor