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

Who are today's gatekeepers of history?

Holocaust: 1. great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire 2. the genocide of European Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II. 3. a massive slaughter. It's difficult to imagine how anyone could find anything humorous about the Holocaust of World War II. It was the systematic murder of 6 million European Jews and several million more "undesirables and dissidents," as Germany's Nazi regime defined those who did not meet their standa

Queen Nefertiti rules again in Berlin's reborn museum

For sixty-six years, much of the historic Neues Museum, Berlin's equivalent to the Louvre, was a bombed-out ruin in the heart of the city. Today it will reopen for visitors with a bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti taking pride of place, after a €212m (£193m) restoration masterminded by leading British architect David Chipperfield. The museum was officially reinaugurated yesterday by Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, who lives opposite the cultural complex in the city's revamped

'John Brown's Body' Exhumed

In the foyer of the John Brown Museum hangs a large-lettered quote from Stephen Vincent Benét: "You can weigh John Brown's body well enough/But how and in what balance weigh John Brown?" It's one of the first things visitors see when they walk through the entrance doors. It's also one of the last things they see when they leave. The same quote hangs in another room, beside the exit. The words come from Benét's long poem, "John Brown's Body," published in 1928. Th

Exhibition marks the 150th anniversary of the epoch-making raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia

New York, NY, September 15, 2009 – When John Brown led his now-legendary raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, hoping to secure weapons for a slave insurrection, he failed in his immediate goal but succeeded in raising tensions to a fever pitch between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. The conflict he had intensified, and which he had now come to symbolize, would lead by 1861 to secession and civil war. One hundred and fifty years after John Brown’s rai

Tribute to honor photographer Jack T. Franklin

In more than 400,000 photographs taken over more than 60 years, Jack T. Franklin recorded the luminaries and seminal events of the civil rights movement in Philadelphia, and by extension the African American experience during a turbulent time in the nation. He did so, beginning in the late 1940s, by capturing the lives of common folk, activists, and icons of the black community in a distinctive style that was meant to be viewed for generations to come. His legacy includ

'Beatles to Bowie: The 60s Exposed' opens at the National Portrait Gallery, London

‘Beatles to Bowie: The 60s Exposed’ opens tomorrow at the National Portrait Gallery to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of the 60s, next year. Showcasing over 150 portraits of the leading pop personalities of the 1960s and a range of memorabilia including record covers and magazines, the exhibition explores the pop scene of ‘Swinging London’. The display is divided into ten sections covering each year of the decade and includes classic images of bands such as The Beatles, the Rolling Stone

Shakespeare Wrote It? Computer Says Yes

When not being used to bust cheating college students, a computer program that detects plagiarism may have helped show that Shakespeare, below, was an author of an unattributed play about Edward III, The Times of London reported. Brian Vickers, a professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, told the newspaper that a comparison of the language in “The Reign of King Edward III,” published anonymously in 1596, with that of other works by Shakespeare published before it

Battle of Agincourt gets The Tudors' treatment from filmmaker Michael Hirst

He reimagined Elizabeth I as a flirtatious young princess and upset David Starkey with a hedonistic Henry VIII who looks more like a male model than Holbein’s florid monarch. Now the creator of the hit television series The Tudors is training his gaze on another English ruler: Henry V. Michael Hirst, who also wrote Elizabeth, the film that made a star of Cate Blanchett, has signed up to write the screenplay for Agincourt. This €30 million (£28 million) Brit

Mad Men nails its history with help from UH

WhenMad Men rang, Mark Young answered. Writers from the ultrastylish AMC series called the University of Houston historian in February, looking for specifics on Conrad Hilton and his hotel chain, circa 1963. “They wanted to know, was Connie Hilton a milquetoast, or was he charismatic and gregarious,” said Young, who runs the Hospitality Industry Archives at UH's Hilton College of Hotel & Restaurant Management. They also asked for Hilton ads from the ear

Rare WW1 medal returns to Liverpool Museum

A rare piece of World War One history has been donated to the new Museum of Liverpool, to commemorate the role of brave Liverpool soldiers in the conflict. The Victoria Cross (VC), is the highest order of military decoration awarded to members of the British armed forces for gallantry and bravery. This example of the medal was presented to Sergeant David Jones of the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment on 3 September 1916 for his actions at the Battle of the Somme.

New Lincoln Exhibit Tells how New York City Shaped his Image

Abraham Lincoln visited New York City only five times in his life, and only once as president, yet the growing 19th-century metropolis played a central role in burnishing his enduring public image. That's the point of a new exhibition, "Lincoln and New York," that opened Friday at the New-York Historical Society on Manhattan's Upper West Side to celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. The exhibition runs through March 25. It begins with Lincoln's hist

A Man With a Mission to Modernize and Loosen Up the Louvre

IN a subterranean space far below the swarms of tourists crowding the Louvre’s famed pyramid are remnants of a medieval fortress. Here, along a 12th-century sandstone passage, the American artist Joseph Kosuth is about to suspend 15 sentences in giant white neon tubing. The show, “Neither Appearance Nor Illusion,” which opens this month, is a first for the 64-year-old Mr. Kosuth. “You only get to do something at the Louvre once in a lifetime,” he said, explaining that he picked the museum’s cata

A Man Obsessed by Anne Frank

A new play by Rinne Groff about a man’s obsession with the diary of Anne Frank will star Mandy Patinkin and have its premiere at the Yale Repertory Theater next year. On Wednesday the theater said the play, “Compulsion,” would star Mr. Patinkin, above, as a character based on Meyer Levin, the journalist and screenwriter who helped publicize the existence of the diary and came to believe that the opportunity to adapt it for the stage had been stolen from him. “Everything Anne Frank represents was

Babe Ruth Like You've Never Seen Him Before

SECAUCUS, N.J. — Babe Ruth has struck out looking. Displeased, he leans on his bat, right hand on his hip, and looks back at the umpire. He utters something that can only be imagined. Lou Gehrig, on deck, leans on his bat, too, as if he has seen this act before. Ruth finally shuffles away, head turned to the umpire, dragging his bat through the dirt. The scene, along with eight seconds of footage of Ruth playing the outfield, was found by a New Hampshire man in his grandfather’s hom

When Honest Abe Met This Querulous Metropolis

When Abraham Lincoln visited New York in February 1861, Walt Whitman noticed that an “ominous silence” greeted the president-elect as he arrived at the Astor House hotel. There was no overt hostility or shouted insult, Whitman wrote, but the “silence of the crowd was very significant,” compared with the “wild, tumultuous hurrahs” that typically greeted distinguished personages. Harold Holzer, the chief historian for the compellingly informative exhibition “Lincoln and New York,” ope

Mary Elizabeth Williams: Is blackface the new black?

Earlier this season on “Mad Men,” Roger Sterling decked his face in shoe polish and sang about “the darkies” to an amused crowd at a garden party. It was startling and uncomfortable in classic “Mad Men” fashion, an illustration of how far we’ve come since those less enlightened days of the early '60s. Or maybe not. This week, on the Australian variety show “Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday,” a group calling itself the Jackson Jive appeared in a “tribute to Michael Jackson.” Out

Japanese Samurai Exhibition on loan at the Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture (San Francisco Exhibit/Review)

[Barbara Bornet Stumph is a retired teacher, author, and painter. The international web site she manages for people who wish to learn about Chinese Brush Painting is: ChineseBrushPainting@yahoogroups.com.] “You may be a diamond,” says Master Esaka. “But you must polish your abilities all your life. Every day brings new studies and much to discover.” I am taking notes from a Master Japanese swordsman.

China: Reshooting History in 'Founding of a Republic'

It's early 1949, China's in the endgame of its civil war and Mao Zedong's communist forces are poised to take Beijing. Just south of the Yangtze, in Nanjing, Mao's archfoe, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, holds court as the leader of the Republic of China and its Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government. But Mao believes that winning Beijing first will deal a mortal blow to the morale of the KMT. En route to what will be the future People's Republic's capital, he and his top lieutenants pause in

Todd Boyd: Farewell, Ebony. You Earned Your Retirement

[Todd Boyd is the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture and Professor of Critical Studies in the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. His blog is “Notorious Ph.D.”] When word spread recently that the venerable magazines Ebony and Jet were up for sale, a palpable sense of depression could be felt throughout some segments of black America. This sense of depression would generally reside among those b

Hilary Mantel Wins Booker Prize for Novel Set During Reign of Henry VIII

LONDON -- A tale of political intrigue set during the reign of King Henry VIII won the prestigious Man Booker prize for fiction Tuesday. Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" scooped the £50,000 ($79,565) prize. Ms. Mantel's novel charts the upheaval caused by the king's desire to marry Anne Boleyn, as seen through the eyes of royal adviser Thomas Cromwell. The winning novel beat stiff competition from a shortlist that included previous Booker winners A.S. Byatt and J.M