Museum displays Gen. Lee’s sword
Museum displays Gen. Lee’s sword
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The sword Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had at his side when he surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant is returning to Appomattox as the centerpiece of a new museum examining the post-Civil War struggle to heal the nation.
The uniform Lee wore that day in 1865 will also be on display March 31 when the Museum of the Confederacy opens an 11,700-square-foot museum within a mile of where the war effectively ended.
The Appomattox museum is the first in a regional system planned by the Museum of the Confederacy to make its vast collection of Confederate artifacts and manuscripts more accessible.
Only about 10 percent of its holdings are on display at any one time at the Richmond museum, located next to the former Confederate White House. The other museums are planned for the Fredericksburg area and Hampton Roads, perhaps Fort Monroe.
All told, 454 uniforms, muskets, swords, documents, flags and other artifacts will be displayed at the Museum of the Confederacy-Appomattox. The town of Appomattox kicked in $350,000 for the $10 million project.
Natural history museum offers peek
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Academy of Natural Sciences has never been one to brag.
Its 225,000 annual visitors may associate the nation’s oldest natural history museum solely with dioramas and dinosaurs, but behind the scenes there is groundbreaking research conducted by world-renowned scientists and an enviable collection of some 18 million specimens representing all manner of animal, vegetable and mineral.
In celebration of its bicentennial this year, the museum has finally decided that it’s OK to boast a little. For what’s believed to be the first time in 200 years, curators will bring the public into the labyrinthine museum’s normally off-limits nooks and crannies for daily tours.
“This is a rare opportunity to get a firsthand look at some of the most stunning, and sometimes bizarre, creatures you’ve ever seen,” said Academy president and chief executive officer George Gephart Jr.
The Academy will highlight a different part of its collection starting with minerals in April and ending with fossils in February 2013. Other months will focus on birds, fish, insects, mollusks, amphibians and reptiles, plants and mammals.
Laurent retrospective coming to Denver
DENVER (AP) — Paris. New York. Denver?
The Mile High City is not what most people think about when it comes to high fashion. But today, the Denver Art Museum is hosting the only U.S. showing of “Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective,” a sweeping look at 40 years of design from the late influential French designer best known for his tuxedo suit for women, Le Smoking.
Why Denver? Museum director Christoph Heinrich was the first to ask for it after seeing the exhibit, which originated in Paris in 2010.
“The fabulous thing about this country is you have major events everywhere, all over the country,” said Heinrich, who is from Germany. “It’s not only everything happening in New York and Los Angeles.”
The retrospective consists of 200 mannequins dressed in mostly haute-couture ensembles spanning Saint Laurent’s career.