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A massive art museum that is home to an Egyptian stone temple, King Henry VIII’s field armour and a fascinating medieval sculpture hall has been named the best museum in the world by tourists. New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – the largest art museum in the US – edged top attractions in Paris and London for top spot in TripAdvisor’s travellers’ choice awards. Home to some of the greatest artefacts, sculptures or paintings, these are the 10 most popular museums in the world based on TripAdvisor reviews from the last year.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said a vote to begin debate on a massive highway bill he is pitching is "an important first step" toward solving a transportation funding shortfall that has bedeviled Congress for a decade.  "There are lot of tired cliches about not giving up after an initial set back," McConnell said, referencing a failed test vote on Tuesday that placed the Senate's ability to pass a long-term highway bill in doubt.  "I won't subject our colleagues to any of those this morning, but I will say that last night's vote represents an important first step toward...

t’s a Guggen-crime. The Upper East Side museum banned a Brooklyn high school for life after its students were deemed too rowdy on a recent visit — a move that some call discipline and others discrimination. A group of about 80 kids from Downtown Brooklyn’s Science Skills Center HS were kicked out after just 20 minutes after a student allegedly spat off the museum’s swirling rotunda lobby and another threw a penny off its winding walkway. The coin was rumored to have hit a security guard. It was only a handful of troublemakers, but the whole group of ninth- and...

Are art museums welcoming enough to minorities? While it’s probably a question that never occurred to you since, if you are so inclined, you simply pay the admission and enter, it it apparently a pressing issue to some people. One of those people to whom this though has occurred is first lady Michelle Obama. At the opening of the new $420 million Whitney Museum in New York City, the first lady spoke of a “feeling of not belonging” in museums when she was a growing up on the south side of Chicago.

First lady Michelle Obama used a speech Monday that was supposed to be celebrating the opening of a new museum to instead dig deeper the racial divide that’s been growing ever wider during her husband’s presidency. “Museums and concert halls,” she said, just don’t welcome non-white visitors – especially children – the way they welcome whites. Speaking at the new Whitney museum in New York City’s meat packing district last week, Obama said she grew up thinking that museums were not places “for someone who looks like me.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday brought home a 2,700-year-old Persian artifact the US administration gave him as "a special gift" to Iranians, media reports said. "The Americans contacted us on Thursday and said 'we have a gift for you'," Rouhani told reporters upon arrival at the airport in Tehran, the ILNA news agency reported. "They gave it back as a special gift to the Iranian nation." Rouhani was speaking of a 7th century BC silver Persian drinking cup in the shape of a winged Griffin, a legendary creature with the head of an eagle and body of a lion....

(AFP) — At the Maldives’ National Museum, smashed Buddhist statues are testament to the rise of Islamic extremism and Taliban-style intolerance in a country famous as a laid-back holiday destination. On Tuesday, as protesters backed by mutinous police toppled president Mohamed Nasheed, a handful of men stormed the Chinese-built museum and destroyed its display of priceless artifacts from the nation’s pre-Islamic era. “They have effectively erased all evidence of our Buddhist past,” a senior museum official told AFP at the now shuttered building in the capital Male, asking not to be named out of fear for his own safety. “We...

The Newseum is becoming a breaking news-eum this month as it prepares to exhibit artifacts from the protests and news coverage in Ferguson, Mo., while that story continues to unfold. Sharon Shahid, the Newseum’s online managing editor — call her a deadline curator — was on the ground in the simmering St. Louis suburb shortly before the announcement last week that the grand jury would not indict officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown on Aug. 9. Shahid collected a press pass and two rubber pellet balls from a police stun grenade donated by Stephanie Lecci, a...

Fans of singer Olivia Newton-John who are hopelessly devoted to the singer can now catch her live in Las Vegas -- where her new wax figure is on display. The Grammy Award winner did a double-take in Sin City as she stood next to her freshly unveiled Madame Tussauds wax figure....

UNION CITY, Tenn. — The gleaming white building with curved exteriors and a spaceship-like tower emerges from the flat landscape of West Tennessee like something out of science fiction, but it’s not a villain’s lair or superhero’s headquarters. It’s Discovery Park of America, a new museum, education center and tourist attraction that opened last Friday in Union City, Tenn...

ST. LOUIS • One summer day several years ago, the St. Louis Science Center sent a dozen staffers to ride the museum’s two-wheeled Segways in the city’s Fourth of July parade downtown. They waved at the crowd. They handed out fliers. Later, back at the museum, officials estimated 20,000 people saw them in the parade. Then they added the figure to their attendance. It boosted the museum’s visitor tally that day to more than 24,000 from about 4,000. The region’s five tax-supported cultural institutions all count attendance differently. The Missouri History Museum includes the thousands that flock to its summertime...

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/