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

Grand Rapids museum shares the story behind Amway

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Grand Rapids is the home of Amway Corp. But what is Amway? Sure, Amway today is a household name around the world for health, beauty and home care products. But 50 years ago, it was just another of two local men's efforts to realize the American way of free enterprise. A new Grand Rapids Public Museum exhibit recounts how Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel peppered the marketplace with a wide range of products and services be

A Bigger, Bolder Lennon Tribute

Just because an event is in its 29th year doesn’t mean it can’t do anything new. Joe Raiola and his pals at Theatre Within have been staging a fund-raising John Lennon tribute every year since 1981 near the anniversary of Lennon’s death, and the roster of stars who have played it is getting pretty long. This year’s show, though, which is Friday at 7:30 at Symphony Space, features a number of first-timers, including David Bromberg, Joan Osborne, Lucy Kaplansky, Nicole Atkins and Bet

For Sesquicentennial, Cooper Union Puts Artifacts on View

An 1852 contract — a delicate sheet of paper, with tinges of yellow — outlined plans for the Cooper Union foundation building. On it are the signatures of the college’s founder, Peter Cooper, and the architects Frederick A. Petersen and F. H. Knevitt. Nearby, a letter and invoice show a lab director’s request for equipment totaling $7,407, which included steam engine thermometers and sewing machine motors. There is also a 1901 letter from an alumnus, John F. O’Rourke, w

A Monk Saves Threatened Manuscripts Using Ultramodern Means

Does the phrase "monks and manuscripts" conjure up an image of medieval scribes huddled over parchment in unheated cells? One Benedictine monk, the Rev. Columba Stewart of St. John's Abbey and University, in College­ville, Minn., keeps that historic involvement with manuscripts alive in a very modern way—by making digital images of them...

A Composer's Ties to Nazi Germany Come Under New Scrutiny

The composer Jean Sibelius is arguably as important to early 20th-century music as Ezra Pound was to literary modernism. Now, more than 50 years after the Finnish composer died, in 1957, at the age of 91, a musicologist in Texas is claiming that Sibelius was culpably entangled with Nazi Germany, and should join Pound, Richard Wagner, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the select group of artists who have been cast into anti-Semitic ignominy...

A Museum Hails Caesar, Even if Some Antiquarians Don’t Agree

ARLES, France — Dredged up from the murky depths of the Rhône River, beneath a heap of wrecked cars, rotting tires and more than 20 centuries of silt, the statue’s white marble visage was plain as day. “My God, it’s Caesar!” Luc Long remembers shouting after his team of archaeologists and divers discovered the statue in 2007. The Roman appears with little hair, a wrinkled forehead, a prominent Adam’s apple and features that, for Mr. Long, “seem carved in human flesh.” B

RI museums consider relocating 2nd century sarcophagus

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Gina Borromeo is well-versed in ancient artifacts, but one recent question from a museum curator caught her off-guard: "Do you want a sarcophagus?" And not just any sarcophagus. This was a white coffin with marble dating as far back as the 2nd century that depicted followers of the Greek wine god Dionysus. It was brought back from Europe by a wealthy Rhode Island couple who donated it to the Museum of Natural History and Planetarium in 1904. For years, t

History museum on the move: Denver diorama gets kid-glove care

As the Colorado History Museum prepares to move from its outdated home, curators and staff are going to extraordinary lengths to pack and protect the fragile displays and exhibits. Perhaps none are more fragile than the diorama. The 75-year-old model of early Denver is a 12-foot-square plaster depiction of the first settlement along Cherry Creek and the South Platte River in 1860. Some 350 tiny structures dot the display, complete with brown-resin troughs depicting the

800 Unpublished Drawings from the Venetian 19th-Century to Go on View

As part of the programme of developing the vast patrimony of its collections, the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia is presenting a vast exhibition of nineteenth century drawings at the Correr, most of which are on display for the very first time. It includes works by artists such as Caffi, Pividor, Guardi, Moro, Bosa, Vervloet and to name but a few. Coordinated by Giandomenico Romanelli, the exhibition is installed in the Hall of Honour and the Museum’s large exhibition area on t

Prague Museum Depicts Country's Communist Past

Glitzy new shops, fast food restaurants and trendy bars have replaced Prague's former monochrome socialist-era landscape but a museum dedicated to the country's communist past offers glimpses of the uglier times. The Museum of Communism, which focuses on politics, history, sport and other aspects of daily life in socialist Czechoslovakia, touts itself as the first of its kind in Prague exclusively devoted to the system that dominated the country for more than four decades following

Serenity Prayer Skeptic Now Credits Niebuhr

A Yale librarian who cast doubt last year on the origins of the Serenity Prayer, adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and reprinted on countless knickknacks, says new evidence has persuaded him to retain the famed Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as the author in the next edition of The Yale Book of Quotations. The provenance of the prayer, which begins, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” became a subject of controversy last year with the publication

Buyers are trolling for Romanov heirlooms

Russian oligarchs and bigwigs who buoyed, then fled, the local art market, are gingerly stepping back in. But rather than embracing the latest contemporary artists, they're chasing the collections of an earlier elite class—before the Revolution. London's chief auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's International plan to sell at least $36 million worth of Russian art, including a rediscovered trove of Fabergé cigarette cases owned by the younger son of Czar Alexander II. The series

First Book to Deal with Relationship Between Titanic Home Port of Liverpool Published

The first book to deal explicitly with the relationship between Titanic and her home port of Liverpool goes on sale this week. Titanic and Liverpool includes a number of sources and illustrations never published before. The 192-page volume by Dr Alan Scarth of Merseyside Maritime Museum puts the legendary White Star liner in the context of transatlantic migration from Liverpool to North America. If you had been behind the Titanic on that fateful night in 1912, the las

Discovering Jewish Music

Charles Krauthammer's office in Washington does not lack for artifacts. He obviously cherishes the snapshot of himself with a laughing Ronald Reagan and the board where he plays chess with Natan Sharansky. But the room's centerpiece is the sepia photograph of a serious-looking man in a fur hat. He was a chief rabbi of Krakow—and Mr. Krauthammer's great-great-grandfather. Mr. Krauthammer is not a believer, but the affinity across the generations is strong. "I consider myself a Shinto Jew,&qu

New Jackie Kennedy Dress on Display at John F. Kennedy Library

A deep pink silk dress worn by Jacqueline Kennedy for her second holiday season in the White House has gone on display at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. The first lady wore the dress to the White House staff Christmas reception on Dec. 12, 1962. The sleeveless dress by designer Hubert de Givenchy (oo-BARE' duh zhee-VAWN'-she) is simple in front, with twists of drapery and a bow on the back. The Marine Band and singing groups from the Ai

Leonardo's "Angel in the Flesh" to Make Appearance with Work by Bill Viola

The controversial drawing the “Angel in the Flesh” (c. 1513-1515), discovered in 1990, will appear in its unique splendor at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles) December 3-12, 2009. It is a truly historical moment as this is the first time ever that the “Angel in the Flesh” (formerly in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle) will be shown on the West coast before it returns to Europe. Under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic of Italy and

Reynolda to Feature Works of Mid- Nineteenth Century American Expatriates

Reynolda House Museum of American Art's exhibition "American Expatriates: Cassatt, Sargent, and Whistler" will open Dec. 5, 2009 and will remain on view through Apr. 25, 2010 in the Northeast Bedroom Gallery. "American Expatriates" focuses on the art of a group of young American artists in the mid-nineteenth century who moved to Europe to live, work and study. At some point in their budding careers, most professional artists felt the lure of the Old World and ch

Intimate Ella Fitzgerald, Rediscovered

WITH all the multi-disc jazz boxes that have come out in recent years — the complete Miles Davis on Columbia, the complete Charlie Parker on Savoy, the complete Duke Ellington on RCA and so on — it’s hard to believe that any significant tapes by any major musician might still be languishing undiscovered in a record company’s archives. Yet Verve has just released “Twelve Nights in Hollywood,” a four-CD boxed set of Ella Fitzgerald singing 76 songs at the Crescendo, a small jazz club

When a Bombastic Young Man Bestrode the Boards of the Mercury Theater ('Me and Orson Welles')

The action in “Me and Orson Welles” takes place in 1937 during a single hectic week bookended by two moments of relative tranquillity in which a boy (Zac Efron) meets a girl (Zoe Kazan). In the film’s final scene, as they stroll out of the New York Public Library, the girl, an aspiring writer, bubbles with enthusiasm about the world of music, art and literature that seems to be opening up all around them. So much is going on! So much to be part of! Though specific in its period refe

Review: The Beatles Go On Record in New History Channel Special

As time moves on, the world starts to repeat itself especially when it comes to television. Specifically, when it comes to Documentaries. Many have been made on the same subject over and over and over, creating this void of information as to what can be said that hasn’t been said before. It’s a black hole of history, that creates apathy towards a subject. There are few historical subjects in American History that can transcend that conundrum and become more than history and create interest no ma