Free Republic

First Lady Michelle Obama has expanded her anti-obesity campaign to museums, enlisting them to offer “healthy food options,” and change their menus. Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative is now calling for museums, zoos, gardens, science and technology centers to “join the call to action,” to decrease obesity among children. The first lady is recruiting these institutions to join the “Let’s Move! Museums and Gardens” project because of their power to “influence real and sustained behavior change” on the eating habits of kids. “With their impressive reach and great potential for impact, museums and gardens can launch community efforts to create...

A 400-year-old painting of Christ is at the center of an investigation. The painting is at a museum in Tallahassee, but it's believed to have been stolen from its original owners by Nazi soldiers. The grandchildren of a Jewish man claim the painting was stolen from their grandfather in the 1930s, and now they want it back. The CEO of the museum got a call from the U.S. district attorney about the artwork. “She had information that indicated that it had been alleged that there was a family who claimed to have prior ownership of the painting and it had...

Today, NASA Director Charles Bolden will head up a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle's 1st launch. He will also announce where the 4 remaining shuttles will go. As I understand it, Discovery is already spoken for although I can't remember where it's going. The other 3 shuttle, Atlantis, Endeavour, and the test vehicle Enterprise will go to three lucky museums. The announcement will be carried on NASA TV, as well as on TV stations of cities all over the US who are vying for a Shuttle. Although NASA is headed in a direction it has no...

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces. What is the ‘Art Project’? A unique collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail. •Explore museums with Street View technology: virtually move around the museum’s galleries, selecting works of art that interest you, navigate though interactive floor plans and learn more about the museum and you explore. •Artwork View: discover featured artworks at high resolution...

In addition to her $877,000 compensation package, Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, lives rent free in a $5 million East Side apartment that the museum bought when she came aboard. he Metropolitan Museum of Art houses its director, Thomas P. Campbell, in a $4 million co-op that it owns across Fifth Avenue from the museum. The director of the Museum of Modern Art, Glenn D. Lowry, may have the best deal of all. In addition to the $2 million in salary and benefits he earned last year, he lives in a $6 million condo...

US museums are wasting no time in jostling to showcase the three retiring space shuttles after Atlantis touched down on Earth this week, capping the last scheduled mission of its 25-year career. "No doubt the competition is fierce," said Bill Moore, chief operating officer of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. His institution is among some 21 others competing to preserve and exhibit the Atlantis, Discovery or Endeavour space shuttles. The trio is being retired after President Barack Obama opted not to fund a successor program, deciding instead to encourage private spacecraft development. NASA has announced it would...

Want the ultimate space collectible? Consider a space shuttle. The orbiters have flown 29 years and have a few miles on them (tens of millions), but soon all three will be up for grabs. Some time this year—right now it looks like September 30—NASA plans to shut down the program. For all the shuttle’s successes in missions like deploying satellites, fixing the Hubble Space Telescope, and building the International Space Station, flying it was always risky. Two orbiters were lost, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, killing 14 astronauts. Now NASA says it will donate the ones remaining— Atlantis,...

On Tuesday, June 30, a young woman in what looked like an off-the-shoulder slinky black jumpsuit and tall patent leather heels drifted into a party at the New Museum celebrating "The Generation: Younger Than Jesus," the triennial exhibit featuring 50 international artists under the age of 33 that ended on Sunday, July 5. Other guests thought she was "nice" and "pretty" and "friendly." Then someone pointed out that the peroxide blonde in question, who was also wearing a fringed silver belt and gold hoop earrings, was Meghan McCain, the feisty blogger and daughter of former Republic presidential candidate John McCain....

El Marco's new photo essay exposes how the Denver Art Museum is promoting LSD and radical revolution to today's generation of children. This in-depth study uncovers how a public institution is undermining the city it is supposed to serve. The shocking history of the Psychedelic Movement in San Francisco is juxtaposed with real tragedy in today's recovery community in Denver. http://www.lookingattheleft.com/2009/06/drugs-and-revolution-to-children-at-dam/

I received an e-mail from Sun-ae Evans, a Korean staff member at the Smithsonian who had been my guide during a visit to U.S. libraries and other institutions. "With the Smithsonian extremely busy in preparation for the Lincoln bicentennial, I came to think about Korea. The gun that was used to assassinate president Park Chung-hee, the clothes he wore that day, the bottles of liquor and glasses, and the other miscellaneous items -- are they being well preserved?" What we safeguard now can become important in the way the items related to Lincoln have. Korea is changing very quickly, and...

ATHENS (Reuters Life!) - Greece welcomed home a small fragment of the Parthenon marbles on Wednesday and expressed hope the gesture by the Italian government would prompt Britain to return its own prized collection of Greek sculpture

PENSACOLA NAVAL AIR STATION, Florida (AP) -- Ed Ellis steps across the National Naval Aviation Museum into the aircraft that was Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Chester Nimitz's flying headquarters during World War II. "If this plane could talk," said the 67-year-old retired Navy captain, longing to hear the conversations that happened aboard the vintage PB2Y Coronado. "Nearly every Navy admiral in the Pacific was in here." The Coronado -- the first U.S. plane to land in Tokyo after the war -- is the latest restoration project undertaken by the museum's mostly volunteer staff of hundreds of military retirees. Located at...

Sssr ProductionsChief Vern Jacks, second from left, and his wife, Cora, at the American Museum of Natural History to accept the remains of tribe members. James Estrin/The New York Times“Our Journey Home” took Chief Vern Jacks and his wife, Cora, to the American Museum of Natural History on Monday. A hushed group of people, nearly four dozen strong, slipped into the American Museum of Natural History early Monday, ahead of the crowds. Their cheeks were smeared with rust-colored dye, red and white woven bands encircled their heads, snip... ...these 46 visitors were there for an altogether different purpose: to...

The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago has a new permanent exhibit of savagery and barbarism, "The Ancient Americas." The ancient Americans themselves are not portrayed as savage or barbarous. (How surprising. Knock me over with a feather.) The savages and barbarians are the museum's curators. They plunder history, ravage archaeology, do violence to intelligence, and lay waste to wisdom, faith, and common sense. At the Field Museum, the bygone aboriginal inhabitants of our hemisphere are shown to be regular folks, the same as you and me, although usually more naked and always more noble. Ancient Americans have attained...

A unique exhibition of 2,000-year-old paintings called Pompeian Red has opened at the National Museum of Rome.

MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee still loves beer. But arts, culture, museums and festivals are on tap, too. That's the image Milwaukee officials are trying to promote in an effort to attract more tourists. "In a sense we have it all," said Dave Fantle, spokesman for Visit Milwaukee, which markets the area. "We have it all in a neat package. It's a matter of getting our arms around that package and promoting it and letting the world know about all the attributes that are here in Milwaukee." New projects in Milwaukee in recent years have included the Midwest Airlines convention center; the...

National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Garfield lingered on his deathbed for 80 days, attended by doctors who disagreed on his treatment, and by his wife and daughter. Even Alexander Graham Bell tried to help locate the bullet that was lodged in the president. Correction Appended WASHINGTON — Three vertebrae, removed from the body of President James A. Garfield, sit on a stretch of blue satin. A red plastic probe running through them marks the path of his assassin’s bullet, fired on July 2, 1881. The vertebrae form the centerpiece of a new exhibit, commemorating...

ROME, MARCH 23, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Along with spring showers, March has brought a glorious reawakening of Roman art. Two new exhibits opened this week, one at the Vatican Museums and the other in the prestigious Scuderie del Quirinale, the former stables of the papal Quirinal residence, redesigned to hold the city's most important exhibitions. The Vatican Museums, as part of their 500th anniversary celebrations that will last all year, reorganized and reopened their Christian Museum. Complementing the Pio Christian Museum which contains ancient Christian sarcophagi, this collection displays hundreds of small objects found in the catacombs or in Christian sites...

Michael J. Mullen/Scranton Times-Tribune, via Associated PressEverhart Museum of Natural History, Science and Art in Scranton, Pa. Everhart Museum, via Associated Press"Winter in Springs," a drip painting attributed to Jackson Pollock. EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — Unlike the problem posed in 2003, when a cache of 32 supposed Jackson Pollocks was found in a storage bin on Long Island, this Pollock problem began when a painting attributed to the artist suddenly disappeared. About 2 a.m. on Nov. 18, 2005, "Winter in Springs," a 40-by-32-inch drip painting attributed to Pollock, was stolen from the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science and...

Visiting an art gallery may be the perfect antidote to stress, according to research. Analysis of 28 City high flyers who spent their lunch break viewing art found their stress levels fell by 45% after 40 minutes at the Guildhall art gallery in London.