From Guardian.co.uk: Alexander McQueen exhibition becomes New York's latest blockbuster
In life, Alexander McQueen sometimes struggled to reconcile his extraordinary creativity with the commercial needs of business. In death the British designer, who killed himself last year a month shy of his 41st birthday, has officially achieved mass popularity with the news that the retrospective of his work at New York's Metropolitan Museum, which closed on Sunday, was one of the 10 most-visited exhibitions in the museum's 141-year history.
Since opening on 4 May, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty has attracted 661,409 visitors in just three months, ranking it alongside other Met blockbusters such as Mona Lisa (1963) and Treasures of Tutankhamun (1978.)
The show proved so popular, startling even the museum, that the exhibition was extended by a week and extra morning and night-time hours were added as well as special Monday openings – "Mondays with McQueen" – when the rest of the museum was shut.
Despite tickets costing $50 on the Mondays, 17,000 visitors happily paid the price and 100,000 copies of the exhibition's $45 catalogue were also sold, a giant hardbacked book with a memento mori-style hologram cover that morphs McQueen's face with that of a skull.
This has not been the only hit McQueen show this summer. In London, the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress, which was designed by Sarah Burton – McQueen's right-hand woman in life and the head designer of the McQueen label in death – has been Buckingham Palace's main attraction since opening last month.
"We knew [the Met exhibition] would do well, but we didn't know how well," Anna Wintour, editor of US Vogue and now elective trustee of the Metropolitan Museum's board, told the New York Times. "One of the mailroom guys told me yesterday how much he enjoyed the show. It just shows you how fashion now reaches so many different people."
Despite that statement's decided ring of Marie Antoinette, McQueen, possibly more than any other designer, would have loved the sentiment. McQueen, whose real first name was Lee, the youngest son of a taxi driver and teacher who grew up in a tower block in Stratford, remained extremely proud of his working-class East End roots.
They became as inextricably part of his identity as his rebelliousness, morbidity and homosexuality, all of which made up his outward and possibly inward self-image as the "outsider on the inside" that was an integral part of his work.
The Met's show captured all this sensitively. Its themed rooms showcased McQueen's skills in tailoring, couture, and dresses that were more sculptural than strictly fashion. It also featured the attention-grabbing fashion pieces that often, to McQueen's frustration, received more attention than his actual fashion, such as the spray-painted dress and S&M jewellery. All of these factors have contributed to the enormous, if tragically posthumous interest in McQueen: his clothes were neither fashion nor art but a previously unseen hybrid of both, unshackled at last from the constraining expectations and ultimately niche appeal of either.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Stolen art turns up in Calif. church
From Boston.com: Stolen art turns up in Calif. church
MARINA DEL REY, Calif. - A stolen Rembrandt sketch was too hot to handle for thieves, and even the detective who held the 17th-century artwork in white-gloved hands yesterday admitted that he was nervous.
After all, it was only days earlier that the 350-year-old artwork worth $250,000 was swiped from the lobby of a seaside hotel.
The 11-by-6-inch pen-and-ink drawing was found in an unlocked public area of an Encino church Monday evening after a caller recognized it from news accounts of its weekend theft, said Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore.
It was verified as being the stolen piece shortly after midnight, he said.
However, experts will be asked to authenticate the work as a Rembrandt, and until then it will remain in an evidence locker, Whitmore said.
“It’s going to stay under lock and key until the detectives determine where to send it next,’’ he said.
The frame holding it will be fingerprinted and investigators will try to determine whether the church has any surveillance video, Detective Clarence Williams said yesterday as he held up the recovered artwork in a dark wood frame at a Marina del Rey news conference.
The Rembrandt was snatched from an easel on Saturday during a private art display in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey. A curator was momentarily distracted by someone who seemed interested in buying another piece.
The thieves apparently tore open brown paper covering the back of the frame, intending to remove the mounted sketch, but then got cold feet.
“They realized that . . . it’s going to be very hard to sell’’ because of the publicity and might not have had the know-how and connections to sell the sketch, Williams said. “It doesn’t appear to be damaged or touched.’’
It was abandoned, “we believe, because there was so much publicity,’’ Whitmore said. “How do you sell it? What do you do with it?’’
It was not immediately clear whether the thieves were professionals or amateur opportunists.
“I honestly can’t tell you if it was well thought-out, at this time,’’ Williams said.
Investigators had several leads, Whitmore said.
MARINA DEL REY, Calif. - A stolen Rembrandt sketch was too hot to handle for thieves, and even the detective who held the 17th-century artwork in white-gloved hands yesterday admitted that he was nervous.
After all, it was only days earlier that the 350-year-old artwork worth $250,000 was swiped from the lobby of a seaside hotel.
The 11-by-6-inch pen-and-ink drawing was found in an unlocked public area of an Encino church Monday evening after a caller recognized it from news accounts of its weekend theft, said Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore.
It was verified as being the stolen piece shortly after midnight, he said.
However, experts will be asked to authenticate the work as a Rembrandt, and until then it will remain in an evidence locker, Whitmore said.
“It’s going to stay under lock and key until the detectives determine where to send it next,’’ he said.
The frame holding it will be fingerprinted and investigators will try to determine whether the church has any surveillance video, Detective Clarence Williams said yesterday as he held up the recovered artwork in a dark wood frame at a Marina del Rey news conference.
The Rembrandt was snatched from an easel on Saturday during a private art display in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey. A curator was momentarily distracted by someone who seemed interested in buying another piece.
The thieves apparently tore open brown paper covering the back of the frame, intending to remove the mounted sketch, but then got cold feet.
“They realized that . . . it’s going to be very hard to sell’’ because of the publicity and might not have had the know-how and connections to sell the sketch, Williams said. “It doesn’t appear to be damaged or touched.’’
It was abandoned, “we believe, because there was so much publicity,’’ Whitmore said. “How do you sell it? What do you do with it?’’
It was not immediately clear whether the thieves were professionals or amateur opportunists.
“I honestly can’t tell you if it was well thought-out, at this time,’’ Williams said.
Investigators had several leads, Whitmore said.
UK: Miró, Van Gogh and Tate St Ives – the week in art
From The Guardian: Miró, Van Gogh and Tate St Ives – the week in art
Joan Miró
The art of Joan Miró is part of the history of abstraction, as well as a highlight of the surrealist movement to which he belonged. His early dream paintings have much in common with the contemporary abstract works of Arp, while late works offer a European answer to the freedom of Pollock and the American abstract expressionists. A truly important modern painter.
• At Tate Modern, London SE1, until 11 September
Ron Arad's Curtain Call
Artists including Mat Collishaw and Christian Marclay project films on a giant silicone curtain created by designer Arad in a multimedia summer spectacle at the venue legendary for its association with 1960s psychedelic lightshows.
• At Roundhouse, London NW1, until 29 August
Tate St Ives Summer Exhibition
There is a minimalist tone to some of the art in this year's eclectic summer show at the Cornish Tate by the sea, as the restrained and passionate works of Agnes Martin are juxtaposed with Martin Creed's gallery half-filled with balloons. Two excellent reasons to include modern art in your British beach holiday, and the surf is amazing, too.
• At Tate St Ives until 25 September
Twombly and Poussin
You can get a very good notion of why the late American painter mattered so much in this excellent selection of mostly smaller works by him. It also features Poussin's majestic Arcadian Shepherds. Eerily, some of Twombly's works are funereally displayed in the mausoleum built into this gallery, while a film by Tacita Dean offers a portrait of the artist near the end of his life.
• At Dulwich Picture Gallery, London SE21, until 25 September
Thomas Struth
Panoramic photographs of resonant, spectacular places, and unsettling juxapositions of modern people with historical cultural landmarks, make Struth a distinctly thought-provoking artist.
• At Whitechapel Gallery, London E1, until 16 September
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888
Sometimes this painting fills you with happiness. At other times, if the light on it is a little less bright, it can appear desperately melancholy. It is a modern version of religious art: where a medieval street corner might display a statue of the Virgin Mary to console people in their everyday lives, Vincent's flowers, in a faithless age, find hints of spiritual meaning in nature and offers evidence of earth's beauty to strengthen the soul. And yet the unease shows through.
• At National Gallery, London WC2
Giovanni Bellini, The Agony in the Garden, c1465
Bellini's rosy-fingered dawn creeping over a north Italian hillside, brightly illuminating a little town whose people are still asleep, is one of the most beautiful homages to the sun ever painted. Earth's star has not yet appeared in the sky, but the pink fiery promise of its coming that spreads through sharp blue is a miracle of natural observation.
• At National Gallery, London WC2
John Michael Rysbrack, Sunna, about 1728 -1730
Statues of Greek and Roman gods and heroes were the convention in 18th-century landscaped gardens, but Lord Cobham decided to be different in his garden at Stowe. He commissioned Rysbrack to carve marble figures of the pagan Saxon gods, a savage English pantheon. This deity with flaming hair hewn from stone is Sunna, the Saxon god of the sun, as imagined by 18th-century antiquarians.
• At V&A, London SW7
Sculptures from east pediment of the Parthenon, about 438-432BC
The wine god Dionysus reclines to watch the rising of the sun's chariot in the mythological representation of day and night that ancient Athenian sculptors carved on their city's greatest temple. Colossal marble figures of gods, fragmentary but overwhelmingly powerful, convey the titanic authority of Greek myth. While the sun chariot rises on the left side of the group, at the right of the scene one of the horses of the moon goddess rolls its eye.
• At British Museum, London WC1
Maeshowe, about 2700BC
Visitors to the Orkneys in summer are there at the wrong time of the year to see the winter solstice light penetrate this cairned chamber. But at any time of the year it is a fascinating testimony to ancient humanity's adoration of the sun. Just like ancient Egyptians and Aztecs, the neolithic builders of this camera-like stone structure aligned their architecture, and presumably their lives, to the cycles of the sun.
• At Stenness, Orkney Mainland
Joan Miró
The art of Joan Miró is part of the history of abstraction, as well as a highlight of the surrealist movement to which he belonged. His early dream paintings have much in common with the contemporary abstract works of Arp, while late works offer a European answer to the freedom of Pollock and the American abstract expressionists. A truly important modern painter.
• At Tate Modern, London SE1, until 11 September
Ron Arad's Curtain Call
Artists including Mat Collishaw and Christian Marclay project films on a giant silicone curtain created by designer Arad in a multimedia summer spectacle at the venue legendary for its association with 1960s psychedelic lightshows.
• At Roundhouse, London NW1, until 29 August
Tate St Ives Summer Exhibition
There is a minimalist tone to some of the art in this year's eclectic summer show at the Cornish Tate by the sea, as the restrained and passionate works of Agnes Martin are juxtaposed with Martin Creed's gallery half-filled with balloons. Two excellent reasons to include modern art in your British beach holiday, and the surf is amazing, too.
• At Tate St Ives until 25 September
Twombly and Poussin
You can get a very good notion of why the late American painter mattered so much in this excellent selection of mostly smaller works by him. It also features Poussin's majestic Arcadian Shepherds. Eerily, some of Twombly's works are funereally displayed in the mausoleum built into this gallery, while a film by Tacita Dean offers a portrait of the artist near the end of his life.
• At Dulwich Picture Gallery, London SE21, until 25 September
Thomas Struth
Panoramic photographs of resonant, spectacular places, and unsettling juxapositions of modern people with historical cultural landmarks, make Struth a distinctly thought-provoking artist.
• At Whitechapel Gallery, London E1, until 16 September
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888
Sometimes this painting fills you with happiness. At other times, if the light on it is a little less bright, it can appear desperately melancholy. It is a modern version of religious art: where a medieval street corner might display a statue of the Virgin Mary to console people in their everyday lives, Vincent's flowers, in a faithless age, find hints of spiritual meaning in nature and offers evidence of earth's beauty to strengthen the soul. And yet the unease shows through.
• At National Gallery, London WC2
Giovanni Bellini, The Agony in the Garden, c1465
Bellini's rosy-fingered dawn creeping over a north Italian hillside, brightly illuminating a little town whose people are still asleep, is one of the most beautiful homages to the sun ever painted. Earth's star has not yet appeared in the sky, but the pink fiery promise of its coming that spreads through sharp blue is a miracle of natural observation.
• At National Gallery, London WC2
John Michael Rysbrack, Sunna, about 1728 -1730
Statues of Greek and Roman gods and heroes were the convention in 18th-century landscaped gardens, but Lord Cobham decided to be different in his garden at Stowe. He commissioned Rysbrack to carve marble figures of the pagan Saxon gods, a savage English pantheon. This deity with flaming hair hewn from stone is Sunna, the Saxon god of the sun, as imagined by 18th-century antiquarians.
• At V&A, London SW7
Sculptures from east pediment of the Parthenon, about 438-432BC
The wine god Dionysus reclines to watch the rising of the sun's chariot in the mythological representation of day and night that ancient Athenian sculptors carved on their city's greatest temple. Colossal marble figures of gods, fragmentary but overwhelmingly powerful, convey the titanic authority of Greek myth. While the sun chariot rises on the left side of the group, at the right of the scene one of the horses of the moon goddess rolls its eye.
• At British Museum, London WC1
Maeshowe, about 2700BC
Visitors to the Orkneys in summer are there at the wrong time of the year to see the winter solstice light penetrate this cairned chamber. But at any time of the year it is a fascinating testimony to ancient humanity's adoration of the sun. Just like ancient Egyptians and Aztecs, the neolithic builders of this camera-like stone structure aligned their architecture, and presumably their lives, to the cycles of the sun.
• At Stenness, Orkney Mainland
Monday, August 15, 2011
Fragile, don’t touch
From Boston.com: Fragile, don’t touch
CAIRO - In a smoky office a short drive from the Pyramids of Giza, Mohamed Saleh, once the director of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum and now the man in charge of the collections for a planned $550 million Grand Egyptian Museum, is asked how much he knows about the bust of Prince Ankhhaf. The precious 4,500-year-old statue, 20 inches tall, left Egypt decades ago and is now on prominent display at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Saleh nods, smiles, and opens his laptop.
Just a few clicks, and the stoic ancient face pops onto his screen.
Four words are all Saleh needs.
“It is a dream,’’ he says.
The dream is the idea of the Ankhhaf bust returning from Boston, where it has rested since 1927. The Egyptian government is demanding the statue’s return, and the MFA has refused.
But this conflict - one of many the MFA has faced over works in its permanent collection - has been further complicated by the recent tumult in the Egyptian government. And while some claims for ownership of works can be made on legal grounds, this one treads on murkier terrain. The bust of Ankhhaf was given to the MFA by a previous Egyptian government, so the current government has no legal case. Any appeal must be made on moral grounds: that the piece is part of Egypt’s patrimony, and belongs at home.
For now, Saleh, a soft-spoken cultural leader respected by both Egyptian and American curators, remains hopeful. He pulls out a thick document that shows the planned interior of the new museum, which is meant to hold 10,000 objects, range over more than a million square feet, and attract 5 million visitors a year when it opens in 2013, less than two miles from the Giza pyramids.
He points to a prominent spot at the top of a walkway leading visitors through the entrance. This is where he is planning to place the bust of Ankhhaf, a royal architect who is believed to have overseen the building of the Sphinx and the second pyramid of Giza. A glass wall will allow the new museum to display the bust in the shadow of that very pyramid.
Exceptional among treasures
There are countless treasures from Egypt, but only one bust of Ankhhaf.
The work is special, a limestone statue covered by a thin layer of reddish plaster. Artistically, what’s notable about the piece is the realistic depiction of the subject, not typical for works of the period. Ankhhaf’s hair is receding. His eyelids droop. There are muscles visible around his mouth.
It is the “most convincing example of individualized portraiture in the Pyramid Age,’’ Dows Dunham, MFA curator of Egyptian art, wrote in 1943, noting that the subject had the largest tomb in the royal cemetery in Giza.
But the piece is also incredibly delicate, which is why the MFA refuses to loan it to anyone, never mind send it permanently back to Egypt.
CAIRO - In a smoky office a short drive from the Pyramids of Giza, Mohamed Saleh, once the director of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum and now the man in charge of the collections for a planned $550 million Grand Egyptian Museum, is asked how much he knows about the bust of Prince Ankhhaf. The precious 4,500-year-old statue, 20 inches tall, left Egypt decades ago and is now on prominent display at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Saleh nods, smiles, and opens his laptop.
Just a few clicks, and the stoic ancient face pops onto his screen.
Four words are all Saleh needs.
“It is a dream,’’ he says.
The dream is the idea of the Ankhhaf bust returning from Boston, where it has rested since 1927. The Egyptian government is demanding the statue’s return, and the MFA has refused.
But this conflict - one of many the MFA has faced over works in its permanent collection - has been further complicated by the recent tumult in the Egyptian government. And while some claims for ownership of works can be made on legal grounds, this one treads on murkier terrain. The bust of Ankhhaf was given to the MFA by a previous Egyptian government, so the current government has no legal case. Any appeal must be made on moral grounds: that the piece is part of Egypt’s patrimony, and belongs at home.
For now, Saleh, a soft-spoken cultural leader respected by both Egyptian and American curators, remains hopeful. He pulls out a thick document that shows the planned interior of the new museum, which is meant to hold 10,000 objects, range over more than a million square feet, and attract 5 million visitors a year when it opens in 2013, less than two miles from the Giza pyramids.
He points to a prominent spot at the top of a walkway leading visitors through the entrance. This is where he is planning to place the bust of Ankhhaf, a royal architect who is believed to have overseen the building of the Sphinx and the second pyramid of Giza. A glass wall will allow the new museum to display the bust in the shadow of that very pyramid.
Exceptional among treasures
There are countless treasures from Egypt, but only one bust of Ankhhaf.
The work is special, a limestone statue covered by a thin layer of reddish plaster. Artistically, what’s notable about the piece is the realistic depiction of the subject, not typical for works of the period. Ankhhaf’s hair is receding. His eyelids droop. There are muscles visible around his mouth.
It is the “most convincing example of individualized portraiture in the Pyramid Age,’’ Dows Dunham, MFA curator of Egyptian art, wrote in 1943, noting that the subject had the largest tomb in the royal cemetery in Giza.
But the piece is also incredibly delicate, which is why the MFA refuses to loan it to anyone, never mind send it permanently back to Egypt.
Rembrandt drawing stolen from California hotel
From Forbes.com: Rembrandt drawing stolen from California hotel
LOS ANGELES -- A 17th Century drawing by Rembrandt was snatched from a private art display at a California luxury hotel while a curator was momentarily distracted, officials said Monday.
The theft of the $250,000 sketch from the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the upmarket seaside community of Marina del Rey happened around 10:30 p.m. Saturday night while someone who seemed interested in buying another piece held the curator's attention for a few minutes.
"When the curator turned back to the Rembrandt, it was gone," Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said. It was not clear whether the person talking to the curator was connected to the theft, though Whitman said a team of at least two people was involved.
The sketch, called "The Judgment," was completed around 1655 and is signed on the back by the Dutch master. Rembrandt von Rijn is widely regarded as one of the finest painters in European art history and his worldwide name recognition has made his work a common target for thieves.
"Rembrandt is a name that criminals know or should know," said Chris Marinello, executive director of the London-based Art Loss Register, an international database of stolen artworks. "When they come across one, they see dollar signs."
Marinello said the theft was likely a crime of opportunity and not an operation carried at the command of a mysterious criminal with a private art collection, as is often depicted in movies.
"Hollywood would love us to believe there are paintings being ordered stolen," he said. "We have yet to find that."
Artworks tend to surface either very quickly after they are stolen or else disappear into the underworld where they are traded between criminals at a fraction of their value for drugs and other illicit materials, Marinello said.
The sketch was being displayed on an easel or wooden stand and was apparently not fastened down in any way, Whitmore said.
He described the theft as well-executed, "but not executed well enough to get away with," adding that investigators had several strong leads and that detectives were looking at video surveillance from the hotel.
Ritz-Carlton spokeswoman Vivian Deuschl said she could not comment because the theft was a police matter.
A sketch artist was putting together a suspect composite drawing based on witness accounts. It will be released at the end of the week.
The drawing was part of an exhibit at the hotel sponsored by the Linearis Institute based in the San Francisco Bay area community of Hercules. Messages left Monday weren't returned.
The stolen sketch was drawn with a quill pen and depicts what appears to be a court scene with a man prostrating himself before a judge.
Marinello said the artist thieves most commonly target is Picasso because of the volume of the Spanish painter's work and his name recognition.
In 1990, the criminals posing as police officers robbed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum during the St. Patrick's Day parade in Boston. Marinello said the works, which included Rembrandt's only seascape, had a combined worth of as much as $500,000. Those paintings are still missing.
Anthony Amore, chief investigator at the museum and co-author of the book "Stealing Rembrandts," told the Los Angeles Times there have been 81 documented thefts of the artist's work in the past 100 years.
Marina del Rey is a sprawling community and small-boat harbor on Santa Monica Bay, less than 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES -- A 17th Century drawing by Rembrandt was snatched from a private art display at a California luxury hotel while a curator was momentarily distracted, officials said Monday.
The theft of the $250,000 sketch from the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the upmarket seaside community of Marina del Rey happened around 10:30 p.m. Saturday night while someone who seemed interested in buying another piece held the curator's attention for a few minutes.
"When the curator turned back to the Rembrandt, it was gone," Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said. It was not clear whether the person talking to the curator was connected to the theft, though Whitman said a team of at least two people was involved.
The sketch, called "The Judgment," was completed around 1655 and is signed on the back by the Dutch master. Rembrandt von Rijn is widely regarded as one of the finest painters in European art history and his worldwide name recognition has made his work a common target for thieves.
"Rembrandt is a name that criminals know or should know," said Chris Marinello, executive director of the London-based Art Loss Register, an international database of stolen artworks. "When they come across one, they see dollar signs."
Marinello said the theft was likely a crime of opportunity and not an operation carried at the command of a mysterious criminal with a private art collection, as is often depicted in movies.
"Hollywood would love us to believe there are paintings being ordered stolen," he said. "We have yet to find that."
Artworks tend to surface either very quickly after they are stolen or else disappear into the underworld where they are traded between criminals at a fraction of their value for drugs and other illicit materials, Marinello said.
The sketch was being displayed on an easel or wooden stand and was apparently not fastened down in any way, Whitmore said.
He described the theft as well-executed, "but not executed well enough to get away with," adding that investigators had several strong leads and that detectives were looking at video surveillance from the hotel.
Ritz-Carlton spokeswoman Vivian Deuschl said she could not comment because the theft was a police matter.
A sketch artist was putting together a suspect composite drawing based on witness accounts. It will be released at the end of the week.
The drawing was part of an exhibit at the hotel sponsored by the Linearis Institute based in the San Francisco Bay area community of Hercules. Messages left Monday weren't returned.
The stolen sketch was drawn with a quill pen and depicts what appears to be a court scene with a man prostrating himself before a judge.
Marinello said the artist thieves most commonly target is Picasso because of the volume of the Spanish painter's work and his name recognition.
In 1990, the criminals posing as police officers robbed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum during the St. Patrick's Day parade in Boston. Marinello said the works, which included Rembrandt's only seascape, had a combined worth of as much as $500,000. Those paintings are still missing.
Anthony Amore, chief investigator at the museum and co-author of the book "Stealing Rembrandts," told the Los Angeles Times there have been 81 documented thefts of the artist's work in the past 100 years.
Marina del Rey is a sprawling community and small-boat harbor on Santa Monica Bay, less than 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Underwater art, birding fest offer different looks at Florida Keys
From Orlando Sentinel: Underwater art, birding fest offer different looks at Florida Keys
Whether by sea or by air, there are plenty of natural diversions in coming months in the Florida Keys.
Let's start in the water, where an underwater art exhibit has debuted on a former Air Force missile-tracking ship sunk as an artificial reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary seven miles south of Key West.
Austrian art photographer Andreas Franke is exhibiting a dozen digitally composited images on the Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, scuttled in May 2009. The 4-by-5-foot photographs stretch along some 200 linear feet of the starboard side of the Vandenberg's weather deck, 93 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
One picture depicts a girl with a butterfly net trying to capture fish. In another, kickboxers compete next to one of Vandenberg's tracking dishes.
Raw video: Space Shuttle shuffle at NASA
The 20-square-foot images are encased in plexiglass and mounted in stainless steel frames sealed with silicone.
Joe Weatherby, the Key West resident who spearheaded the Vandenberg's sinking, hopes the exhibition can remain in place through the end of the year.
If you're not a diver, the skies will be the backdrop for the 13th annual Florida Keys Birding and Wildlife Festival, slated for Sept. 21-25 at the oceanfront preserve of Curry Hammock State Park at mile marker 56.2 in Marathon. The family event includes field trips and guided interpretive nature walks at sites throughout the Keys.
The festival's primary program starts on Sept. 22 at Key Largo's John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park (MM 100), with birder Kimberly Kaufman chatting about her experiences.
Eco-tours and activities on Sept. 24 include free admission to an environmental fair, wildlife art show and family day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Curry Hammock. All-day birding and wildlife photography excursions to Dry Tortugas National Park are set for Sunday, Sept. 25. Reservations are required and space is limited to 20 people per field trip. Festival admission fees haven't been set, but you can check keysbirdingfest.org for details.
For more on the underwater art, visit fla-keys.com
Art attacker slams Matisse at National Gallery of Art
The Washington POst: Art attacker slams Matisse at National Gallery of Art
By Emily Wax, Friday, August 12, 6:13 PM
In her second alleged attack on a world-famous piece of art in the past four months, Susan Burns, 53, was arrested for attempting to rip a $2.5 million Henri Matisse oil painting off the wall of the National Gallery of Art and slamming the frame three times against the wall, police said.
Burns, 53, of Alexandria, was being held at D.C. Superior Court, but a court docket indicates that Burns was to be “transferred immediately” from a D.C. jail to St. Elizabeths Hospital “and to be monitored closely.”
Her recent past includes a highly publicized arrest on April 1 for allegedly trying to tear an $80 million Paul Gauguin painting off the wall of the National Gallery of Art. She pounded the painting, which was protected by a plexiglass shield, with her fists.
This time, with the museum surveillance cameras rolling, she walked over to Matisse’s “The Plumed Hat,” then “grabbed both sides of the frame holding said painting, damaging the antique original frame of the painting,” according to an arrest affidavit sworn by police Lt. Dexter Moten. “No damage to the painting itself was immediately apparent,” Moten said in the affidavit. Burns was charged with unlawful entry, contempt, destruction of property and attempted theft.
Annabeth Guthrie, a National Gallery of Art spokeswoman, declined to comment because “the case is being investigated.” But the attack raises questions about security at the museum and the protection of some of the world’s most famous works of art.
A condition of her release after her April arrest required that Burns sign a form June 24 agreeing to “stay away from all museums and art galleries in Washington D.C. including the National Gallery of Art.”
“The Plumed Hat,” was completed in 1919 and shows a pensive brunette wearing a head covering adorned with large white feathers.
After her alleged April attack, Burns told an investigator that she thinks the Gauguin painting “Two Tahitian Women,” completed in 1899, “is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be burned. I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head. I am going to kill you.”
The painting shows two women; one is bare-breasted, the other has a blue cloth covering one breast.
“What she did was strange,” said a police officer, who asked not to be named. “But when you think about all the homicides in this city, it’s really not so bad. Maybe she just really hates art.”
By Emily Wax, Friday, August 12, 6:13 PM
In her second alleged attack on a world-famous piece of art in the past four months, Susan Burns, 53, was arrested for attempting to rip a $2.5 million Henri Matisse oil painting off the wall of the National Gallery of Art and slamming the frame three times against the wall, police said.
Burns, 53, of Alexandria, was being held at D.C. Superior Court, but a court docket indicates that Burns was to be “transferred immediately” from a D.C. jail to St. Elizabeths Hospital “and to be monitored closely.”
Her recent past includes a highly publicized arrest on April 1 for allegedly trying to tear an $80 million Paul Gauguin painting off the wall of the National Gallery of Art. She pounded the painting, which was protected by a plexiglass shield, with her fists.
This time, with the museum surveillance cameras rolling, she walked over to Matisse’s “The Plumed Hat,” then “grabbed both sides of the frame holding said painting, damaging the antique original frame of the painting,” according to an arrest affidavit sworn by police Lt. Dexter Moten. “No damage to the painting itself was immediately apparent,” Moten said in the affidavit. Burns was charged with unlawful entry, contempt, destruction of property and attempted theft.
Annabeth Guthrie, a National Gallery of Art spokeswoman, declined to comment because “the case is being investigated.” But the attack raises questions about security at the museum and the protection of some of the world’s most famous works of art.
A condition of her release after her April arrest required that Burns sign a form June 24 agreeing to “stay away from all museums and art galleries in Washington D.C. including the National Gallery of Art.”
“The Plumed Hat,” was completed in 1919 and shows a pensive brunette wearing a head covering adorned with large white feathers.
After her alleged April attack, Burns told an investigator that she thinks the Gauguin painting “Two Tahitian Women,” completed in 1899, “is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be burned. I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head. I am going to kill you.”
The painting shows two women; one is bare-breasted, the other has a blue cloth covering one breast.
“What she did was strange,” said a police officer, who asked not to be named. “But when you think about all the homicides in this city, it’s really not so bad. Maybe she just really hates art.”
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