On July 4, 1902, Henry Clay Frick, one of America's greatest industrialists and art collectors, hosted President Theodore Roosevelt and 20 other gentlemen at a luncheon at Clayton, the Frick family home in Pittsburgh's East End. The president visited Pittsburgh for a day-long celebration that included a parade, a speech in Schenley Park, a lavish dinner, and fireworks in the evening. This exciting day in Pittsburgh history is being commemorated at the Frick Art & Historical Center this summer with a special tour of Clayton, the immaculately restored house museum on the Frick’s 5.5-acre museum site.

Offered through October 4, 2009, Entertaining the President: A Household at Work is a docentled tour of Clayton that highlights behind-the-scenes preparations undertaken by the Frick family’s domestic staff in anticipation of President Roosevelt’s historic 1902 visit.

Henry Clay Frick was part of an executive committee that invited President Roosevelt to come...

Oliver Stone is making his most ambitious stab at American history yet. The controversial director is creating a 10-part documentary series for Showtime titled"Secret History of America." Narrated by Stone, the series promises to focus on events that"at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America's unique and complex history of the last 60 years," according to Showtime. Subjects will include President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, to"the fierce struggle between war and peace in America's national security complex." The project includes"newly discovered facts and accounts" from the Kennedy administration, the Vietnam War and the great changes in America's role in the world since the fall of Communism in the 1980s"through this epic 10-hour series, which I feel is the deepest contribution I could ever make in film to my children and the next generation, I can only hope a change in our...

The Hope Diamond is going bare to celebrate a half-century at the Smithsonian.

The mysterious blue gem was donated to the National Museum of Natural History more than 50 years ago and the museum is celebrating by having a new setting designed.

Starting in September, the 45.52 carat diamond will be exhibited as a stand-alone gem with no setting...

... "This is a rare and exciting opportunity for people to see the Hope Diamond as it has never been seen before," said museum director Cristian Samper...

A New Orleans movie buff is putting the spotlight on the memorabilia he has collected from some of the more than 400 major motion pictures, documentaries and television series that have been produced using Louisiana as the backdrop.

Jeffrey Pipes Guice's Louisiana Film Museum is starting small. When it opens Sept. 1, it will occupy a 300-square-foot room in the existing Southern Food and Beverage Museum at the Riverwalk mall in New Orleans...

... The collection now includes posters from 1951's "A Streetcar Named Desire" starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, 1958's "King Creole" starring Elvis Presley and 1969's "Easy Rider" starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson.

"Louisiana has contributed tremendously to the history of film," Guice said. "I can't believe somebody hasn't done this sooner."

INTERPOL has established direct online access to authorized users via a secure website to its international database on stolen works as part of its fight against the illicit trade of stolen cultural property.

Online access will not be limited to the law enforcement community but will be open to all interested users who first have to apply for access to the database, which features the latest information on some 34,000 works of art stolen worldwide. Interested parties wishing to access the database will first have to complete an application form in order to obtain an individual password for database access.

With direct access to the database, which will be continuously updated as and when the INTERPOL General Secretariat headquarters in Lyon receives new information on stolen works of art worldwide, authorized users of the database will be provided with real-time access to the latest information recorded in the database. The available information will not...

The Baltimore Museum of Art presents the first comprehensive exhibition on the printmaking of the great French artist Henri Matisse. On view October 25, 2009 – January 3, 2010, Matisse as Printmaker unites the BMA’s extraordinary collection of Matisse prints with a traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts, a non-profit arts organization, and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. The BMA’s exhibition features approximately 170 works of art spanning 50 years of Matisse’s career. More than 150 prints, as well as a selection of related paintings, sculpture, drawings, and books are included, providing compelling evidence of the important role printmaking played in the evolution of Matisse’s visual ideas.

Matisse as Printmaker loosely follows the chronology of Matisse’s career, from the artist’s earliest print in 1900 to the last in 1951. Examples of every printmaking technique used by Matisse—etchings, monotypes, lithographs, linocuts, aquatints,...

Liverpool University has acquired a rare first edition of an influential science fiction novel telling the story of an American soldier’s journey to Mars.

The book, Lieut Gullivar Jones: His Vacation was so poorly received upon publication in 1905, it was the last book its author wrote before he died.

But years later, after gaining popularity, the tale of romance on a distant planet has earned a reputation as one of the most important works of 20th-century science fiction...

Tarzan of the Apes, an Englishman who becomes king of the jungle, was
created by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs a century ago. Now, the
comic book hero is the subject of an exhibition at a new museum in Paris.
Rice Burroughs wrote 24 Tarzan stories and there have been 42 Tarzan films.
Clearly an icon if ever there was, Tarzan is now the star attraction at
Paris's new and rather magnificent ethnological museum, the Quai Branly. The
show brings together comic books, film extracts, stuffed animals and African
artefacts that tell us a bit about Tarzan and a lot about the way westerners
see - or used to see - Africa...

...In the books he gets back to England, attends Oxford University and learns
12 languages including Latin before returning to the jungle. A far cry from
the films where Tarzan is depicted as someone who can barely speak at all,
save for a few varied grunts.

Tarzan was also a...

Works about the Sichuan earthquake and other sensitive issues have been banned from a Beijing art show that was to involve controversial figures, its artistic director said today.

The group exhibition at the 798 space, a former electronics factory in the Dashanzi art district, north-east of central Beijing, covered themes including the death of children in schools that collapsed in the quake. The show, the centrepiece of the Beijing 798 Biennale, reopened today but without some of the contentious works.

Zhu Qi, the artistic director of the Biennale, said he told the exhibition's deputy director not to include performance art involving people likely to stir up controversy. They included "Runner Fan", a teacher who became notorious after posting an article on the web saying he fled his school ahead of his pupils during the earthquake; Liu Xiaoyuan, a prominent blogger and lawyer; and the owners of the Chongqing nailhouse who became famous for refusing...