BERLIN (AFP) – A cleaning woman at a German museum who mistook a sculpture for an unsightly mess has destroyed the valuable artwork beyond recognition, a spokeswoman for the western city of Dortmund said Thursday.
The cleaner at the city’s Ostwall Museum went to work on the Martin Kippenberger installation titled When It Starts Dripping From the Ceiling, which was valued by insurers at 800,000 euros ($1.1 million), she said.
The late contemporary master had created a tower of wooden slats under which a rubber trough was placed with a thin beige layer of paint representing dried rain water.
Taking it for an actual stain, the cleaner scrubbed the surface until it gleamed.
“It is now impossible to return it to its original state,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the damage had been discovered late last month and that the work had been on loan to the museum from a private collector.
via $1.1M German museum piece falls victim to cleaning lady.
(Wikipedia) Ruhnama (The Book of the Soul), is a book written by Saparmurat Niyazov, late President for Life of Turkmenistan, combining spiritual/moral guidance, autobiography and revisionist history, much of it of dubious or disputed factuality and accuracy. The text includes many stories and poems, including those by Sufi poet Magtymguly Pyragy. It was intended as the “spiritual guidance of the nation” and the basis of the nation’s arts and literature, by creating a positive image of the Turkmen people, a heroic interpretation of its history, the review of Turkmen customs and the definition of “moral, family, social and religious norms for modern Turkmens”.
The Ruhnama was introduced to Turkmen culture in a gradual but eventually pervasive way. Niyazov first placed copies in the nation’s schools and libraries but eventually went as far as to make an exam on its teachings an element of the driving test. It was mandatory to read Ruhnama in schools, universities and governmental organizations. New governmental employees were tested on the book at job interviews.
In March 2006, Niyazov was recorded as saying that he had interceded with God to ensure that any student who read the book three times would automatically get into heaven. After the death of Niyazov, it didn’t lose its popularity. In December 2009, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov still strongly recommended the government to use Ruhnama as an instrument of youth education.
Knowledge of the Ruhnama is compulsory, imposed on religious communities and society generally. The work is the main component of education from primary school to university. Knowledge of the text (up to the ability to recite passages from it exactly) is required for passing education exams, holding any state employment and to qualify for a driving license. Official ceremonies have featured hundreds of singing Turkmens holding and performing choreography with the book.
Public criticism of or even insufficient reverence to the text was seen as the equivalent to showing disrespect to the former President himself, and harshly punished by dispossession, imprisonment or torture of the offender or the offender’s whole family if the violation were grave enough. Since the passing of Niyazov, punishment for disrespect of the book is in a questionable status.
There is an enormous mechanical statue of the book in Ashgabat, the country’s capital. Each evening at 8:00 pm, the cover opens and a recording of a passage from the book is played with accompanying video.
via Enormous copy of the Ruhnama in Independence park | Ashgabat | Turkmenistan.
By Victor H. (DesignersCouch.org) An idea for a series with honest logos, revealing the actual content of the company, what they really should be called.
via Honest logos by @Viktor | Designerscouch #thecritiquenetwork.
(Press Release) Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today welcomed a commitment by the Smithsonian Institution to sell only made-in-America products at a gift shop in the National Museum of American History.
Museum executives also told Sanders they will seek more American suppliers for the merchandise – everything from flags to coffee mugs to souvenir busts of American presidents – sold at gift shops at all of its popular museums along the National Mall.
After meeting with museum executives yesterday in Sanders’ office on Capitol Hill, the senator called the commitment to sell more American-made products a step in the right direction.
Museum executives said one history museum gift shop, called “The Price of Freedom,” will sell only merchandise manufactured in the United States. The new policy will take effect within three months, they said, in time for the busy summer vacation tourist season. More domestically-made items also will be sold at gift shops at the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum and the museums that house collections of art by American painters and artists from around the world.
If the Smithsonian does not follow through on its pledge, Sanders said he was prepared to introduce legislation that would make the taxpayer-supported museums sell more merchandise made in America.
Sanders in January first questioned why a history museum gift shop stocked bronze-colored busts of U.S. presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama that are “crafted in China.”
“Given the state of the American economy, I would urge the National Museum of American History to do its very best to find American companies to manufacture the products that it sells,” Sanders said in a letter to Brent D. Glass, the history museum director. Sanders asked why a museum owned by the people of the United States, celebrating the history of the United States, cannot find companies in this country employing American workers that are able to manufacture statues of our founding fathers.
Some 50,000 manufacturing plants in the U.S. were closed over the past decade, and more than 5.4 million good-paying manufacturing jobs were lost as companies took advantage of cheap labor overseas. “This clearly is one of the factors contributing to the substantial shrinking of the middle class that we have been seeing in the last several decades,” Sanders said.
The Last Supper recreated in laundry lint
ORLANDO, Fla. (Ripley) –Michigan artist Laura Bell is a little fuzzy about the details of her portrait -The Last Supper. That’s because she used fluffy dryer lint as the medium for her take on this famous work of art.
The massive masterpiece measures 14 feet long by 4 feet tall and has been acquired by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! It will eventually go on display at one of the company’s 32 odditoriums around the world.
Bell, an amateur artist from Roscommon, Michigan, was inspired by a laundry lint portrait she saw about 10 years ago at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Wisconsin Dells Odditorium. In 2009, with some encouragement from her husband and a handful of lint from her dryer, she began creating The Last Supper for the ArtPrize 2010.
via Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Acquires Laundry Lint Artwork of Biblical Proportions | Ripleys Newsroom.
