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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.

LONDON, Sept. 11 - An early reference to Alexander of Macedon is the first hint of where the British Museum is heading in its new exhibition, "Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia." After all, to Persians then and Iranians now, there was nothing great about the Alexander who crushed the largest empire the world had yet known. Indeed, his burning of Persepolis in 331 B.C. was considered an act of vandalism. But the show, which runs through Jan. 8, goes further, challenging the version of history that ancient Greece, starting with Herodotus, bequeathed to the West. Put simply, in...

The wife and I are heading down to Memphis, TN for a short trip. What else is there to do besides tour Graceland? I heard there was a cool shopping district not far from Graceland. Where is the best barbecue in town and where is the best place to find a safe economical motel that is close by to attractions? Also heading on to Baton Rouge, LA. Where is a decent but economical place to stay in that town? A pool would be a plus. Is everything off of I-10 in BR? I appreciate all your help and responses. TIA....

A government report has found that many of the institution’s buildings have fallen into disrepairWASHINGTON, DC. A report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the Smithsonian Institution requires urgent funding if it is to maintain its 660 buildings and care for the millions of objects, documents, and photographs in its collections over the next decade. The study describes “a broad decline” in the Smithsonian’s aging empire of 18 museums, 10 science centres and zoos, and other facilities, many of which have suffered “structural deterioration” and “chronic leaks” so severe that they have limited access to their...

Microprobe makeover for museum's mummy Selina Mitchell JUNE 28, 2005 THE CSIRO has teamed up with the National Gallery of Victoria to reconstruct and conserve the last resting place of a teenage Egyptian priestess who died around 700BC. The coffin lid, one of the first major Egyptian antiquities to arrive in Australia, is in a fragile state. About 60 per cent of the wood, and even more of its painted surface, are lost, but the original bright colours on the remaining pieces survive under layers of dirt – gallery officials think. "It's good that it's in many pieces, because unlike...

MOSCOW, May 16 - A week ago, on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Vladimir V. Putin appeared together in Red Square in a symbolic nod to the historical reconciliation between Germany and Russia. But a few blocks away, a museum exhibition showed how the war's dark legacies continue to divide the two countries. Shortly before Victory Day, as it is known here, the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts put on display 552 ancient works of art, including Greek bronzes, vases and amphorae, Etruscan figures, fragments of Roman wall paintings...

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 14 -- One of the nation's richest troves of impressionist and post-impressionist art is moving to downtown Philadelphia now that its trustees have won court permission to leave their hard-to-visit suburban gallery, a legacy of the collection's eccentric founder. Trustees of the Barnes Foundation had argued for two years that they should be allowed to move the collection of Renoirs, Cezannes, Matisses and Picassos because decades of limited attendance and high costs in Lower Merion Township have nearly bankrupted the foundation

The Benevento Missal is to be returned to Italy, as a result of a claim submitted following an investigation by The Art Newspaper. On 23 March the UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel recommended that the British Library should restitute the 12th century manuscript to Benevento cathedral. This will be the first time that a UK national institution has returned an artwork or manuscript looted during the Nazi era. A change in the law will be required, since the British Library is legally barred from deaccessioning the manuscript. The Art Newspaper heard rumours about the questionable status of the Benevento Missal in...

Many a visitor to New York's Museum of Modern Art has probably thought, "I could do that," but a graffiti artist has gone one step further. A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" smuggled in his own picture of a soup can and hung it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed. The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single day. The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum, was an oil painting, 61centimetres...

OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 5 - Even as the presidential campaign remains steeped in a debate about John Kerry's military service in Vietnam, another highly charged dispute over the Vietnam War has been resolved - albeit imperfectly - between Vietnamese-Americans and a prominent museum here. An exhibit, "What's Going On? California in the Era of Vietnam," opened late last month at the Oakland Museum of California and is scheduled to run through February before traveling to Los Angeles and Chicago. Five years in the making, it tells the wartime story of California during the 1960's and 70's, ripping at wounds among...