While in Israel at the invitation of the Peres Center for Peace, Hollywood star Sharon Stone visited Jewish National Fund's only project dedicated to an American President, the John F.  Kennedy Memorial, where she planted an olive tree in the name of peace.  "I was born on a farm and I know about planting with my own hands," she said as she removed her sandals, gently scraped the clod of earth off the sapling and ensured that it was correctly covered and watered...Read full article

Photo: Bonnie McElveen-Hunter

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, saluted the American Red Cross recently by presenting its Chairman of the Board of Governors, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, with a plaque in appreciation for “its steadfast leadership and unwavering support of Magen David Adom of Israel in its quest for admission to the Federation of the International Red Cross...Read full article

Photo: Agnes Adachi.

Photo:  Chief Executive Harriett Rossetto,  creator and Director of Beit T’Shuvah.

Rossetto, always a woman in search of her “calling”,  knew she had found it 15 years ago when a small want ad in the Los Angeles Times caught her eye. Person of Jewish background and culture to work with Jewish criminal offenders. Masters in Social Work required. Harriet soon realized that the majority of Jews behind bars were there as a by-product of addictive/compulsive behaviors...Read full article

Photo: The 33-year-old is adamant her London home is haunted and wants to create a good energy before she gives birth to her second child .

Gwyneth Paltrow is planning to have her home exorcised, it has been reported. The 33-year-old is adamant her London house is haunted and wants to create a good energy before she gives birth to her second child...Read full article

Muslim head says gays 'harmful'

 

A British Muslim leader has told the BBC he believes homosexuality is "not acceptable" and denounced new same-sex civil partnerships as "harmful". Head of the Muslim Council of Britain Sir Iqbal Sacranie said introducing the partnerships did "not augur well" for building the foundations of society...Read full article

SKIP THE STEREOTYPES. THE CHALLAH JEWISH MOTHERS WELCOME HERE. At San Francisco's Congregation Sherith Israel, you won't find young women rejecting the title of "Jewish Mother". Instead, here they embrace it. Just ask the young mothers who make up the Sherith Israel Mamas, a support group designed to help women create a Jewish home for their families...Read full article

The Guggenheim Museum’s Russia! is an inspiring example of how harmony and accord is alive and well, even when displaying art that can be 800 years old. It took the cooperation of an international team of like-minded experts to make an exhibit of this magnitude come to life. Russia! was also made possible by the Potanin Fund, with major sponsorship by Alcoa Foundation and Sintez. Read full article by Paulette Attie.

Atrocious art. Decadent and expensive. Some investment bankers lead a varied life. If 35-year-old Emma Chan is not clinching deals at her desk, or snowboarding in Switzerland, she can be found chatting to celebrities on London's South Bank - in the nude. Chan, from Twickenham, and her boyfriend Rob, who is also an investment banker, spent months upstaging Nigella Lawson, Stephen Fry and Hugh Grant at the opening of the Saatchi Gallery in County Hall. She was one of 160 'extra ordinary, ordinary' people who volunteered to take their clothes off in public for the American artist Spencer Tunick. 'It was so liberating.  Read full article

The Louvre Museum in Paris had a record number of visitors in 2005, with successful soirees for young people, crowd-pleasing exhibitions and promotion from "The Da Vinci Code," a top administrator said. About 7.3 million people visited the art museum in 2005, up from 6.7 million in 2004 -- the previous record -- general administrator Didier Selles told The Associated Press. Definitive 2005 figures are expected in coming weeks...Read full article

Photo: Paul Gauguin, Nude Study (Woman Sewing), 1880, oil on canvas. NY Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen .

This winter the Kimbell Art Museum presents Gauguin and Impressionism, the first-ever comprehensive survey of Paul Gauguin’s early career.  The exhibition will be on view at the Kimbell—its only American venue—from December 18, 2005, to March 26, 2006. All of the great French artists normally known as Post-Impressionists exhibited with the Impressionists, but the involvement of Cézanne and Seurat in the movement was slight compared to that of Gauguin. He contributed to five of the eight Impressionist exhibitions—more than either Renoir or Sisley—and was the most active artist-collector of Impressionist paintings after Caillebotte.  Gauguin and Impressionism demonstrates both that he was an Impressionist and that he was a brilliant and highly original one... Read full article

Joseph Nechvatal: Artist's digital exhibit at Butler Institute proves provocative,  innovative...

We know what a virus is. You catch one, you come down with a cold, or as the medical practitioners would have it, an upper respiratory infection. Most of us know what another kind of virus is -- the kind you can get on your computer that can wipe out all your data, what computer programmers call hell on Earth. There's a great deal of similarity between the two types of viruses -- the biological one and the virtual one -- and it's nothing to sneeze at. So if you thought that the term ``computer virus'' was just a metaphor, think again. Better yet, go to the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown and see Joseph Nechvatal: Contaminations, a digital art exhibit on view through April 23 in its new Beecher wing... Read full article

Julian Dashper: Future Call and Untitled (CV)
On view until April 15, 2006 at the Esso Gallery, New York, NY.  Jennifer and Filippo Fossati are  presenting the first solo show in New York by New Zealand based artist Julian Dashper in their project room at Esso Gallery opening March 10 through April 15, 2006. For his show at Esso, Julian Dashper will present two works; the first titled Future Call 1994-2006 and the second Untitled (C.V.) 1979-2006. Read full article

Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul
On view at MoMA until May 8, 2006. This is the first retrospective devoted to the work of the internationally renowned Norwegian painter, printmaker, and draftsman to be held in an American museum in almost three decades. Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul surveys Munch’s career in its entirety, from 1880 to 1944, showcasing his artistic achievement in its true richness and diversity. Read full article

John Szarkowski: Photographs On View at MOMA until May 15, 2006. John Szarkowski: Photographs is the first retrospective of the esteemed photographer’s work. The exhibition features Szarkowski’s early photographs—beginning with pictures of his native Midwest dating from 1943 and continuing through his acceptance of a curatorial post at The Museum of Modern Art in 1962—as well as his later works, many of which were made around his farm in upstate New York. Read full article

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