Residents at a luxury TriBeCa apartment block in Lower Manhattan are very furious after discovering that artist Arne Svenson, who is their neighbor at a nearby building, has secretly been taking their photographs to exhibit and sell. Arne Svenson freely admits to secretly photographing his neighbors at the exclusive 475 Greenwich St apartment block in [...]
Earlier this year Vladimir Tretchikoff’s portrait Chinese Girl, often referred to as The Green Lady, was sold for almost £1 million ($1.5 million) at auction in London. This is the story of Monika Pon-su-san (born Sing-Lee), who modeled for one of the most popular prints ever made: One day in 1950, a curly-haired stranger [...]
Guitarist and ethnomusicologist Bob Brozman was found dead aged 59 at his home in Ben Lomond, Santa Cruz County, CA, on April 23. Bob Brozman’s death was ruled a suicide, according to the coroner’s office of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department and no more details were released up to now. The American virtuoso guitarist [...]
Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has sued literary agent Samuel Pinkus, who she says tricked her into assigning him the copyright on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Harper Lee, 87, says Samuel Pinkus took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer the rights and has failed to respond to license requests. [...]
A century-old US five-cent coin, once branded a fake, has been sold for $3.17 million at a Heritage auction in Chicago. The 1913 Liberty Head nickel, one of only five such coins, had a pre-sale estimated price of $2.5 million. The coin’s intriguing provenance – it was illegally cast, found in a car crash, deemed [...]
Author Iain Banks has said the messages of support he has received from fans since announcing he has terminal cancer have been “astounding”. On 3 April, the 59-year-old Scottish writer announced he was suffering from gall bladder cancer, saying it was “extremely unlikely I’ll live beyond a year”. Writing on Banksophilia, a website set up [...]
The minaret of Umayyad Mosque, one of Syria’s most famous, has been destroyed during clashes in the northern city of Aleppo. The state news agency Sana accused rebels of blowing up the 11th-Century minaret of the Umayyad Mosque. However, activists say the minaret was hit by Syrian army tank fire. The mosque, which is a [...]
Storm Thorgerson, who designed Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon album cover, has died aged 69, the band’s management has confirmed. A childhood friend of Pink Floyd’s founding members of the band, Storm Thorgerson became their designer-in-chief, fashioning a string of eye-catching creations. Storm Thorgerson designed the cover showing a prism spreading a [...]
The Bay Psalm Book – the first book printed in America – is expected to fetch up to $30 million when it goes under the hammer in New York on November 26. The Bay Psalm Book, which was printed in Massachusetts in 1640, is one of 11 remaining copies of a translated version of the [...]
Princie, one of the largest pink diamonds in the world, has been sold at Christie’s auction in New York for more than $39.3 million. The Princie Diamond was purchased by an anonymous collector bidding by phone, Christie’s said. The 34.65 carat diamond’s origin can be traced back to the ancient diamond mines of Golconda in [...]
Author Adam Johnson has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel based in North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son. In 2012, judges failed to select a winner of the award for fiction for the first time in 35 years. Adam Johnson, who teaches creative writing at Stanford University, spent time in North Korea [...]
A never-seen-before picture of Angelina Jolie posing with a white horse will lead a sale of photographs at London auction house Christie’s in May. The image by celebrated photographer David LaChapelle is expected to fetch between £25,000 ($39,000) and £35,000 ($55,000) when it goes under the hammer as part of The Wild Side of Photography [...]
A giant statue of Pope John Paul II is to be unveiled on a hill above the city of Czestochowa in southern Poland. The statue is said to be the tallest of the former pontiff anywhere in the world. Weighing five tonnes, the 13.8 m (45-ft) white fibreglass statue shows Pope John Paul II standing [...]
Maria Tallchief, one of America’s first great prima ballerinas who gave life to such works as The Nutcracker and Firebird, has died at the age 88. Her daughter, Elise Paschen, revealed today that her mother had passed away in Chicago on Thursday. Maria Tallchief danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo from 1942 to [...]
An auction of masks originating from Native American Hopi tribe in Arizona has begun in Paris, after a legal challenge to stop the sale failed. Lawyers for the Hopi tribe had asked for the auction to be cancelled on the grounds that the 70 masks must have been stolen from the tribe. It considers them [...]
The Louvre Museum in Paris did not open on Wednesday due to a strike organized by staff protesting over pickpockets. Staff at one of the world’s most visited museums said thieves, some of them children, were targeting both employees and tourists. Two hundred workers took part in a strike organized by the SUD union, according [...]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has received a $1 billion donation of Cubist art from Estee Lauder heir, Leonard Lauder. Leonard Lauder, 80, has pledged 78 works – considered one of the foremost collections of Cubism in the world. The collection includes pieces from Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand [...]
Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s remains are to be exhumed, forensic experts have announced. Chilean authorities want to establish whether Pablo Neruda died of cancer or was poisoned on the orders of country’s former military ruler General Augusto Pinochet. Pablo Neruda, a Nobel Prize winner who died in 1973, was a member of the Communist Party [...]
Movie Star News Collection, one of the largest collections of old Hollywood photographs, has been gone up for auction this week. Guernsey’s auction house in New York is holding a two day sale from April 6-7 to sell the Movie Star News Collection of 3 million photographs and negatives that capture the history of Tinseltown. [...]
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will officially re-open the Rijksmuseum next week, marking the end of a painful restoration project. The work at the Dutch state museum in the heart of Amsterdam ran five years over schedule and millions of euros over budget. The Rijksmuseum has been closed since 2003. Renovation was delayed by flooding, [...]
Novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, whose scripts for Howards End and A Room With A View earned her two Oscars, has died at home in New York at the age of 85. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala made more than 20 films with producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory over 40 years. The writer also won the [...]
Scottish author Iain Banks has revealed today that he has late stage gallbladder cancer and is unlikely to live for more than a year. Iain Banks, 59, posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year, would be his last. The writer’s novels include [...]
An ancient gold ring thought to have inspired JRR Tolkien to write The Hobbit is being exhibited for the first time at The Vyne, in Hampshire, UK. The ring, which is inscribed in Latin, has been linked to a Roman curse tablet. Archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler is believed to have discussed the ring with JRR [...]
Musical director of the Vienna State Opera Franz Welser-Moest was treated in hospital after collapsing with back pain while conducting a Wagner opera on Sunday. Franz Welser-Moest collapsed into his podium at the end of the first act of the 4-and-a-half-hour long Parsifal. The conductor suffered a severe attack of lumbago when he raised his [...]
Amazon has announced it will buy Goodreads, a book discovery and recommendation website. San Francisco-based Goodreads was founded in 2007, has 16 million members and is one of the most prominent online communities for readers. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it is expected to be completed in the next quarter. [...]
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Ariel Castro's three dogs found in better health than his victimsTwo dogs found by police at Ariel Castro's home and another one in his car could have served as pets for his three captives and were apparently in better condition than the…
US Airways flight makes belly landing at Newark AirportA US Airways flight operated by Piedmont Airlines with 34 people aboard made a belly landing at Newark International Airport last night after its landing gear failed to…
Connecticut head-on train crash injures at least 60 people near New York CityAt least 60 people have been injured, five critically, after a head-on, rush-hour collision between two commuter trains near New York City, officials say. Some 250 people…
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Michelle Knight was Ariel Castro's punching bagA family friend of one of the Cleveland victims has revealed that Michelle Knight, the first of three women to be kidnapped off the street who suffered more than a decade of…
Arne Svenson: TriBeCa residents threaten to sue artist for secretly photographed them in their own apartmentsResidents at a luxury TriBeCa apartment block in Lower Manhattan are very furious after discovering that artist Arne Svenson, who is their neighbor at a nearby building, has…