Arab American National Museum examines legacy of 9/11

by Sean McLachlan on

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 just two days away, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, is examining how the Arab-American community has been affected by the terrorist attacks.

U.S. Rising: Emerging Voices in post-9/11 America runs from September 8-11 and is a series of forums and events both in Detroit and Dearborn. On the actual anniversary of September 11, the museum will offer free entry all day.

In an interview with Art Daily, museum director Anan Ameri said the attacks were a “wake-up call” that showed just how little most people knew about the Arab-American community and how many bad stereotypes were out there. One response has been the virtual exhibit Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes. This looks at the origins of various stereotypes and compares them to the reality.

Starting on Veterans Day, November 11, the museum will host the exhibition Patriots & Peacemakers: Arab Americans in Service to our Country. This exhibit will focus on the community’s role in the U.S. army, Peace Corps, and diplomatic service.

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Getting Weird Where Time Stands Still: Marfa, Texas

by Paul Brady on


“I’ve been here about a year and a half,” says my tour guide, a young yoga instructor who also works at this art museum on the grounds of a former army base in Marfa, Texas. “It feels longer.”

Marfa is like that. Pulled from obscurity by the Chinati Foundation, an art museum started by contemporary sculptor Donald Judd, it’s now a tiny raft of a town in the sea of the high desert of West Texas, an island of civilization where you can buy feed for your livestock around the block from a gourmet grilled cheese shop.

This October will be the 25th anniversary of the creation of Chinati. With the occasion comes some perspective on what’s changed and what remains the same here in Marfa, where time seems to move more slowly than the puffy cotton clouds dotting the deep blue canvas of the giant Texas sky.

Traveling the American Road – Marfa, Texas


Marfa continues to boom. El Cosmico is the second hotel from the owner of Thunderbird, if you can really call it a hotel. It’s more a hippie RV park, with refurbed trailers for rent, yurts and teepees and, when those sell out, space for tents. There’s a hammock grove, in the shade, where architects play euchre, weighing down the cards with wooden pieces from a chess set. (Chess is too cerebral, I think, for people hanging out in hammock groves.) The showers and toilets are open to the air.

Miniature Rooster is a new restaurant along the main drag of Highway 90, with fantastic curry, steak and chicken and waffles. Run by two business partners who met at The Inn at Little Washington–another awesome kitchen in the middle of nowhere–Uday Huja moved to Marfa from Las Vegas to open with his friend Rocky Barnette, a native of Asheville who’d already staked a claim in West Texas.

Anagrammatically named coffee shop Frama is next to the only laundromat in town, Tumbleweed, a small operation just around the corner from Padre’s, a dark bar set in a former feed store with an outstanding game selection, everything from air hockey to Pac Man, and an old-time juke box with rock and funk hits for the times when live acts aren’t in the house.

But it’s not all hip spots here: Marfa Burritos is a small kitchen where Border Patrol agents, plumbers and travel writers sit around tables protected by clear plastic tablecloths to devour tortillas filled with beans, steak and hot sauce for $4 a pop.

On a Friday night, “everyone” is out, hitting bars like Padres and Planet Marfa, catching bands, playing pool and ladder golf. A 24-hour play festival is on, too, with teams working through the night to conceive, write, rehearse and execute seven-minute productions. They’ll hit the stage on Saturday night, after I’ve already left for points west.

In the morning, I see the weekend thespians out by the rail tracks, practicing lines under the farmer’s market canopy, just a short walk from the grain elevator, the Paisano Hotel and the silver water tower, looking like stage dressing from a backlot parked here to lend the authentic feel of a West Texas whistle stop. The tower, stamped with MARFA in black, is the tallest building in town.

The coolest museum in the world

by Sean McLachlan on


Oxford is full of things to see such as medieval colleges and a lovely stretch of the Thames. Of course, you can find similar sights in other parts of England, although not in such a dense concentration that makes Oxford a perfect day trip from London. The one thing Oxford has that is truly unique is the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The Pitt Rivers is laid out the way museums used to be: cabinets packed with artifacts and the walls and even the ceiling adorned with totem poles, statues, shields, spears, and canoes. Even when it opened in the 1880s it was a bit different from other museums, though. Instead of the displays being organized by region and period, they’re organized by use. For example, one case has fire-making equipment, ranging from simple wooden tools used by Australian Aborigines to matches from 19th century Europe to rather dangerous-looking lighters from a hundred years ago.

The collection started with a donation in 1884 of 20,000 objects collected by anthropologist Lt.-Gen. Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers. He was interested in how different cultures solved the same problems, such as lighting a fire, creating currency, or dealing with the dead. The collection has now grown to half a million artifacts from pretty much every culture and time period.

You name it, they have it. Egyptian mummy? Check. Inuit snow goggles? Check. Witch in a bottle? Check. Helmet made from a blowfish? Check. They even have a nice collection of shrunken heads.

%Gallery-131982%My five-year-old son loves this place. All kids love this place. In fact, it regularly gets chosen as Britain’s favorite museum. At the door they give you a flashlight so you can shine it into the dimly lit cases and pretend to be an explorer. Under the cases are drawers you can open to reveal more stuff.

It never ends. We’ve been in there dozens of times and each time we discover something new. A guard who has been working there for ten years told me the same thing. My kid has never gotten bored at the Pitt Rivers and often asks to go there when we’re in Oxford. Unlike in a lot of museums, you hear more kids complaining that they’re leaving than that they’re going in.

And if that doesn’t make it the coolest museum in the world, I don’t know what does.

Mona Lisa mob marvels Miami

by Sean McLachlan on

It’s the most iconic painting ever made. The Mona Lisa, painted in the early 16th century by Leonardo Da Vinci, has inspired a whole genre of painting. Perhaps the first imitation was this one by Gian Giacomo Caprotti, Da Vinci’s favorite pupil.

Since then the Mona Lisa has been reproduced on countless coffee mugs, handbags, t-shirts, mousepads, even toothpaste.

Now the Freedom Tower at Miami Dade College is examining this artistic obsession with Mona Lisa Unveiled, an exhibition that traces the influence of Mona Lisa on subsequent artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jean Margat, and Salvador Dalì.

The painting inspired thieves too. The exhibition marks the 100th anniversary of the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. An Italian named Vincenzo Peruggia hid in a broom closet until the museum closed, and then made off with the painting. He later claimed he wanted it returned to its native Italy. He fled to Florence and kept it in his apartment for two years before trying to sell it to a local gallery. The art dealer did the right thing and called the cops. Peruggia was hailed as an Italian hero and only did a few months in prison.

Mona Lisa Unveiled runs through October 7.

[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Museum of Socialist Art to open in Bulgaria

by Sean McLachlan on

A Museum of Socialist Art is opening next month in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. The museum exhibits statues of Lenin, paintings of Bulgarian Communist Party leaders, and other artwork from Soviet times.

The former Eastern Bloc country is the last such nation to open a museum to its totalitarian past. The socialist government fell in 1989 and Bulgaria had its first free elections the following year.

Not all vestiges of the past are sitting in museums. Many of Bulgaria’s current ruling elite were members of the old regime, and the last-minute name change from “Museum of Totalitarian Art” to “Museum of Socialist Art” is making some Bulgarians question just what the purpose of the museum is.

I worked in Bulgaria as an archaeologist in 1994, and the country was full of Soviet art. With the economy bottoming out, grannies set up stalls in the streets to sell old medals, uniforms, and busts of Marx for next to nothing. If only I had bought more than a few mementos, I could make a bundle on eBay! Most people were glad the old regime was gone, but the dire state of the economy had many people questioning the value of a free market system. I haven’t been back in more than a decade. Can anybody out there tell me how the majority of Bulgarians feel about the transition more than a decade on?

[Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This Soviet stamp from 1969 commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Socialist Revolution in Bulgaria. The text says, “The friendship between the Soviet and the Bulgarian people- indestructible for eternity.”]