Displaying items by tag: associated press

How did Pablo Picasso celebrate his 80th birthday? Thanks to recent efforts by the Associated Press and British Movietone to make their newsreel archives more accessible to the public, we can now witness snippets of the occasion. The two companies announced a project to upload over one million minutes of digitized film footage to YouTube, comprising over 550,000 videos dating as far back as 1895. There are plenty of art-related clips to explore — watch New Yorkers in 1995 react to Christian Boltanski’s “LOST: New York Projects” in the subway or see Christo and Jeanne-Claude unwrap the Reichstag — but one of the greatest gems is the documentation of Picasso’s birthday.

One of the most famous portraits of George Washington will soon get a high-tech examination and face-lift of sorts with its first major conservation treatment in decades.

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has begun planning the conservation and digital analysis of the full-length "Lansdowne" portrait of the first president that was painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796, museum officials told The Associated Press. The 8-foot-by-5-foot picture is considered the definitive portrait of Washington as president after earlier images in military uniform.

To commemorate Pop artist Andy Warhol’s would-be 85^th birthday, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has teamed up with the video network EarthCam to stream live video feed from the artist’s grave. Warhol, who died in 1987 from complications stemming from a routine gallbladder surgery, would have been 85 on August 6, 2013.

The project, “Figment,” will be on view indefinitely and aims to connect Warhol to the museum’s global audience. The project’s title was pulled from a comment by Warhol:

“I never understood why when you died, you didn’t just vanish, and everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn’t be there. I always thought I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment.’”

Warhol’s tombstone, which is located in a Roman Catholic cemetery outside Pittsburgh, his hometown, is engraved with his name, the dates of his birth and death, and a cross. Warhol’s grave attracts many of the artist’s fans and the live feed shows his resting place adorned with flowers and balloons.

Eric Shiner, the director of the Andy Warhol Museum, told the Associated Press, “We believe that this will give Warhol the pleasure of knowing that he is still plugged in and turned on over 25 years after his death.”