Culture
Latest stories
Museum Tells Story of Titanic Survivor Molly Brown

Thousands of miles (kilometers) from the ocean, a museum tells the story of a woman made famous by the Titanic. No, her name was not Rose, and a movie about her life, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," starring Debbie Reynolds as a plucky lifeboat survivor, was a hit decades before Kate Winslet's doomed romance in "Titanic."

Molly Brown was a real person, but the movie created a myth that the museum, located in Brown's Denver home, attempts to dispel.

W140 Full Story
Tests Show Aging of Leonardo Da Vinci Masterpiece

Bark beetles and old age have damaged Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century painting "Lady with an Ermine," but the masterpiece is still holding up well, according to a conservationist at the Polish museum where it is displayed.

Recent tests show the chestnut board on which Leonardo painted his masterpiece has weakened after being nibbled at by beetles over the centuries, and the painting has also suffered from a dense network of cracks, said Janusz Czop, the chief conservationist at the National Museum in Krakow.

W140 Full Story
Lost Lempicka Art Deco Painting to Be Sold in NYC

A New York City auction will feature a painting by art deco artist Tamara de Lempicka that vanished from public view after it was created in 1925.

Sotheby's says "Reclining Nude I" (one) is expected to sell for $3 million to $5 million on May 2.

W140 Full Story
Librairie El Bourj To Host Lebanon Launch Of Olives – A Violent Romance

One of Beirut’s most well-established bookshops, Librairie El Bourj, is to host the official launch of UAE-based writer, author and communicator Alexander McNabb’s Olives – A Violent Romance from 5pm on Thursday 29th March 2012 with a talk by the author followed by a reading and book signing.

The novel is set in Jordan, where British journalist Paul Stokes moves to live and work on a contract to produce a magazine for the Ministry of Natural Resources. The Israelis are competing for dwindling water resources as Jordan and Palestine face drought. Daoud Dajani has the solution to Jordan’s water problems and is bidding against the British for the privatisation of Jordan’s water network. When Paul befriends Dajani’s sister, Aisha, British intelligence agent Gerald Lynch realises Paul offers access to the man threatening to drain Israel’s water supply and snatch the bid from the British. Blackmailed by Lynch into spying on Dajani, his movements seemingly linked to a series of bombings, Paul is pitched into a terrifying fight for survival that forces him to betray everyone around him. Even the woman he comes to love.

W140 Full Story
250-Year-Old Japanese Paintings to Be Shown in DC

One of Japan's cultural treasures, a 30-scroll set of paintings from the 1700s, is being shown together outside of Japan for the first time in a rare display in Washington.

The paintings of birds and flowers on silk, created more than 250 years ago by artist Ito Jakuchu, will go on view Friday at the National Gallery of Art. The four-week exhibition marks the centennial of Japan's gift of 3,000 cherry trees to the U.S. as a symbol of friendship.

W140 Full Story
Previously Undisclosed Lockerbie Files Published

A Scottish newspaper on Sunday published previously undisclosed files on the 1988 Pan Am bombing that killed hundreds over Lockerbie, arguing it is in the public interest to ignore data protection laws that have kept the documents from the public.

The Sunday Herald newspaper posted an 800-page report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to its website. It said it had been authorized to publish the documents by Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted over the bombing that killed 270, mostly Americans, and who has long insisted he did not carry it out.

W140 Full Story
Danish Hippie Haven Struggles to Raise Cash to Survive

"Become a Christiania stockholder today!": on its Facebook page Copenhagen's "free city", long a refuge for hippies and artists and a popular tourist destination, pleas for help to save the 40-year-old enclave.

Following a court ruling, the self-governed hippie community needs to come up with 76 million kroner (10.2 million euros, $13.4 million) to buy the area at the heart of the Danish capital.

W140 Full Story
The Empire Smiles Back: Taiwan's Japanese Cherry Festival

Taiwan loves cherry blossoms. In fact, it loves almost everything Japanese. For a nation that ruled the island for 50 years, often with an iron fist, Japan has left a very favorable impression.

In the latest triumph of Japanese soft power in its former colony, tens of thousands of Taiwanese have taken up planting cherry trees to revel in their colorful bloom for a few precious moments each spring -- just like in Japan.

W140 Full Story
Louvre Unveils Da Vinci's 'Last Masterpiece'

The Louvre on Friday unveiled a newly-restored Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece, the "Saint Anne", hoping to lay to rest an art world row that saw the Paris museum accused of endangering the precious oil.

"The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne", which the Renaissance master left unfinished when he died in 1519, goes on display on Thursday as the star of a major exhibit exploring the work's genesis, and its place in art history.

W140 Full Story
From Camels to 4x4s: A History of The Tuareg Rebels

The coup against the Malian government was sparked by anger over its handling of an insurrection by Tuaregs, the impoverished Saharan nomads who were once known as the "masters of the desert."

Experts put the total number of Tuareg at between a million and 1.5 million, living on a territory nearly two million square kilometres (780,000 square miles) and comprising parts of Niger, Mali, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso.

W140 Full Story