NAPLES, Fla. - Judy and Steve Allman, owners of Allman Productions LLC, have acquired all of the shows previously managed by Yvonne and Jim Tucker of Antique Shows of Florida. The acquisition will provide the Allmans an extended seasonal Florida base in conjunction with their newly organized Old Naples Antiques Show to premiere Jan. 30-31.

The Allmans have been in the antiques show promotion and management business for more than 30 years having acquired the Holliston (Mass.) Antiques Show in 1978. They currently operate the Syracuse Thanksgiving Antiques Show in Syracuse, N.Y., Nov. 28-29; the Holliston show in Holliston, Mass., Feb. 20-21; the Greater Syracuse Antiques Expo, March 13-14; the Round Lake Antiques Festival in Round Lake Village, N.Y., June 26-27; and the Great American Antiquefest in Long Branch Park, Onondaga Lake Parks, just west of Syracuse, July 23-25.

Having been residents of Naples for nine years, the Allmans decided to add their hometown to their schedule in 2010 by organizing the Old Naples Antiques Show for Jan. 30-31, one week after the Miami Beach Antique Show.

The Allmans said they plan to make the show convenient and pleasurable for the 50 or more participating dealers. Discounted lodging will be available in close proximity to the show for participating exhibitors and visiting show guests. The immediate show area abounds with world-class restaurants and shopping, making a trip to Naples a double pleasure, they said.

The show will be held in the new Jubilee Center of St Ann's School, 542 Eighth Ave. South, which is close to the classic shopping areas of Fifth Avenue South and Third Street in the heart of Old Naples.

The previously scheduled Naples show of Antique Shows of Florida, also set for Jan. 30-31, will be combined with the new show of the same date.

“The Florida market reminds me of when we started in the business – smaller shows with less pressure but with strong attendance and good dealer participation,” said Steve Allman. The Allmans say they have always maintained a low key, dealer-friendly approach to shows and are sure they will fit well with the pattern established by the Tuckers. Allman says they have a successful track record because they value the dealers and have proven dates and locations reinforced with advertising. Allman says many of their northern dealers, especially those from New York, have already signed up for some of the Florida shows.

The previous schedule of shows set up by Antiques Shows of Florida will remain unchanged for the 2010 season under Allman Promotions. The shows are Crystal River, Jan. 9-10 and March 20-21; Venice, Jan. 16-17 and February 20-21; Punta Gorda, Jan. 23-24 and March 13-14; Inverness, Feb. 13-14; and Tampa, Feb. 27-28.

For details call Allman Promotions at 315-686-5789, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit the Web site at www.allmanpromotions.com for complete schedule and venues.

NEW YORK (AP) - Roy DeCarava, a photographer whose black and white images captured Harlem's everyday life and the jazz greats who performed there, has died. He was 89.

DeCarava died in Manhattan of natural causes on Tuesday, said his daughter, Susan DeCarava. He had been teaching an advance photography course at Hunter College, where he joined the faculty in 1975.

Born in Harlem, DeCarava was considered to be among the first to give serious photographic attention to the black experience in America.

Trained as a painter, DeCarava relied on ambient light, infusing his images with shadows and shades of gray and black - a style that invited the viewer to look closer.

"He photographed for himself, and ultimately produced a body of work that enshrined the social contradictions of the '50s, the explosion of improvisational jazz music in the '60s, the struggle for social equity, the bold faced stridency of the '70s and '80s, only to turn to even more contemplative realities during the later years of his life," his wife, art historian Sherry Turner DeCarava, said in a statement.

"His contribution to American photography and culture is manifold," she added.

Using a 35 mm camera, he chronicled black Americans doing ordinary things: A family watching the Harlem River; a couple dancing in their kitchen; a girl standing on a desolate street in a white graduation dress.

DeCarava worked at a time of enormous creative energy in Harlem, whose many residents included prominent writers, artists and musicians. He spent years capturing candid shots of Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane and other jazz musicians - many taken in smoke-filled nightclubs.

"The Sound I Saw," published in 2001 and reprinted in 2003, is a collection of his jazz photography.

In 1951, he became the first black photographer to win the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in the arts.

In his scholarship application, he wrote: "I want to show the strength, the wisdom, the dignity of the Negro people. Not the famous and the well known, but the unknown and the unnamed, thus revealing the roots from which spring the greatness of all human beings. ... I do not want a documentary or sociological statement, I want a creative expression, the kind of penetrating insight and understanding of Negroes which I believe only a Negro photographer can interpret."

In 1955, he collaborated with poet Langston Hughes on the best-selling pictorial narrative on 20th century African-American life titled "The Sweet Flypaper of Life."

Some of his works were featured in the 1950 New York exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, "The Family of Man," that was curated by renowned photographer Edward Steichen.

Jennifer J. Raab, president of Hunter College, called DeCarava a beloved colleague and teacher who "will long be remembered for his inspiring contributions to the arts and for enriching the lives of generations of students."
MoMA mounted a retrospective of DeCarava's work in 1996.

His works are in the collections of major museums, including the National Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

In addition to his wife and daughter Susan, he is also survived by daughters Wendy and Laura DeCarava.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (ACNI) - Hopi silversmith, painter and sculptor Michael Kabotie has died of complications from H1N1 swine flu. Kabotie's 22-year-old daughter, Meg Adakai, said her father became ill several weeks ago and died Friday, Oct. 23, 2009, at a Flagstaff hospital. Michael Kabotie was 67 years old.

The son of the famous Hopi artist Fred Kabotie, Michael grew up in the village of Shungopavi. He graduated from Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas in 1961. While in his junior year, he was invited to spend the summer at the Southwest Indian Art Project at the University of Arizona. Participants included Fritz Scholder, Helen Hardin, Charles Loloma, and Joe Hererra (who became a lifelong friend and his primary artistic mentor).

Kabotie was active as an artist for nearly 50 years, learning and adopting many of the overlay techniques his father had developed in creating fine-quality Hopi silverwork. He began to paint shortly after completing high school and had a one-man show at the Heard Museum in Phoenix soon after dropping out of college.

In the early 1970s, Kabotie founded a group of painters called Artist Hopid, which was dedicated to new interpretation of traditional Hopi art forms. After that, Kabotie painted, made jewelry, wrote poetry and essays, and lectured around the country. Kabotie's paintings and silverwork have an organic graffiti-like quality with dynamic motion and symbolism, with a rich color palette on canvas and an added dimension when rendered in silver.

Michael Kabotie lectured across America, in New Zealand, Germany and Switzerland. His works are held in several prestigious institutions, including the Heard Museum, the Museum of Mankind in London, and the Gallery Calumet-Neuzzinger in Germany.

Earlier this year, Kabotie was a winner of a juried competition at the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Until the time of his death, Kabotie lived in Second Mesa, a community on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, where he was raised.

Associated Press and Wikipedia contributed to this report.

# # #

MIAMI - Aaron Podhurst, chairman of the Miami Art Museum (MAM) Board of Trustees, today announced that Terry Riley has resigned as director of the museum, effective immediately. Riley will be resuming his role as partner at Keenen/Riley Architects, with various design and consulting projects in New York, Spain and Mexico, and will continue to work with MAM as a consultant through June 30, 2010 on the creation of their new home in downtown Miami, the final design of which was unveiled this past week.

"We engaged Terry with the dual goals of focusing MAM's mission and creating a clear vision for the development of the museum's new building, and he has done a superb job on both," said Podhurst. "On behalf of the board of trustees and the people of Miami I'd like to thank Terry for placing the institution on a solid footing as it moves towards establishing its new home. We look forward to our continuing work with him."

Riley commented: "Since becoming director of MAM, I have worked closely with the trustees and staff to energize the museum's programming, build its collections, and design a new home of remarkable distinction that has garnered the broad endorsement of Miami's civic leaders and citizens. We are now ready to break ground on a building that is poised to be one of the greenest art museums ever built in the Americas. As such, this is the right moment for me to pursue other interests and for MAM to smoothly transition to a new leader who will see this project to its fruition."

The new building, designed by Herzog and de Meuron of Basel, Switzerland, is scheduled to break ground in spring 2010 and to open in 2013. The museum's capital campaign is ahead of its goal and funding is in place for construction.

Since Terry Riley joined MAM in 2006, the museum has organized a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions, including the current retrospective of the work of Guillermo Kuitca, and its permanent collection has grown significantly. The museum is also South Florida's largest provider of arts education outside of the Miami Dade Public Schools.

Podhurst said the museum will be forming a search committee to secure a new director to replace Riley.

# # #

DENVER, Pa. - One of the country's most respected dealers of early gambling and mechanical slot machines, Bob Levy, has joined Dan Morphy Auctions' team of specialists and will head a new department specifically for coin-operated gambling machines and related devices.

Widely regarded as a top expert in his field, Levy continues to operate his long-established business - The Unique One - from a showroom in Pennsauken, N.J., and through a Web site he has maintained since 1997, antiqueslotmachines.com. He will now also be managing all aspects of the consignment, cataloging and sale of coin-operated gambling devices auctioned through Morphy's.

"I'm thrilled to be associated with Morphy's," Levy said. "I just turned 65 and was looking toward the next phase of working and enjoying life when Dan presented the perfect transition to me. I'll be doing less moving of heavy items, now, but still working with wonderful things, through someone I admire. In the past, I had bought at all of Dan's auctions and visited his Adamstown Antique Gallery every time I was in south-central Pennsylvania. Dan impressed me as the person I would want to have handling my own collection if I were to sell. Now I'll be representing him, and I couldn't be happier."

Bob Levy was born in Philadelphia, graduated from Atlantic City High School in New Jersey, and went on to earn bachelor of arts degrees in both Business Management and Economics from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Following a career in sales in the wholesale tea and coffee business, and after having founded his own successful company called "Coffee One," Levy became enamored of antiques and started selling through co-ops and group shops in Smithville, Rancocas and Medford, N.J.

In 1989, an unexpected opportunity presented itself and changed the course of Levy's career in antiques. "I had traveled to Arizona to look at an old Lincoln automobile I was thinking about buying, and happened to notice a slot machine in a pawn shop window. It was a 1964 Art Deco-style Harrah's Club machine," Levy recalled. "I had never seen an antique slot machine before but loved the look of it, so I bought it and shipped it home."

Shortly thereafter, Levy learned of an auction of pinballs, jukeboxes and slot machines that was to take place at a firehouse in Skippack, Pa. "I went and bought three slot machines and put them in my booth at the group shop," Levy said. "That started me on the path to buying and collecting slot machines, and to become focused on just that one specialty."

Levy - who is known within the trade as "the slot machine guy" - has sold to customers throughout the United States as well as France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. He sets up his slot machines at eight to 10 major antique shows per year and has crossed the country many times in pursuit of rare examples.

"It would be the exception rather than the rule to encounter a serious collector of gambling machines who has not either met or transacted business with Bob Levy," said Dan Morphy Auctions' CEO, Dan Morphy. "I have known Bob for over 20 years, and he is not only one of the most knowledgeable dealers in his specialty but also one of the nicest and most ethical individuals I have ever met. He brings to Morphy Auctions a reputation of honesty and integrity that is an exact fit for our business model. He is a tremendous asset to our team of specialists, and I'm extremely pleased about his decision to join us."

To contact Bob Levy, call 856-663-2554 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Visit Dan Morphy Auctions online at www.morphyauctions.com. View Morphy's archived sale catalogs, with prices realized, online at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

# # #

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A robe worn by Barbra Streisand in the 1973 movie The Way We Were sold for nearly $6,000 and an outfit from Meet the Fockers (2004) went for $3,500 at an auction of hundreds of the entertainer's personal items.

A Stickley china cabinet brought in $15,000 and a wig worn by Streisand in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) sold for $3,500.

More than 400 of Streisand's dresses and suits, books, designer furniture, paintings and vintage collectibles were on the block at the weekend sale conducted by Julien's Auctions.

All proceeds go to Streisand's favorite charities, including City Year, the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and the Cedars-Sinai Women's Heart Health Center.
___

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-10-18-09 1631EDT

The time period here is mostly the 1920s to the early 1950s, when radios were the centerpiece of home entertainment and broadcast news.

Nearly 200 sets - tall consoles, hulking tabletop models and a few suitcase-sized portables, along with metal horn-style speakers standing alone - line walls and form rows in a crowded display.

Other radios rest on their sides or backs in an adjacent workshop, waiting for parts or refinishing.

Since the 1950s, Frank has been searching rummage sales, barns and flea markets for neglected radios that he can bring back to life.

"I've always liked to take a junker and get it fixed up," he said.

The radios he acquired often were carried in several pieces downstairs to the basement workshop.

"Some were full of spider eggs and mouse droppings when I found them," Frank said.

"Here's one that serenaded cows in a barn just outside Cedarburg," he said, pointing to a 1939 RCA model. The local farmer was convinced that cows calmed by music gave more milk, Frank said.

He has spent uncounted thousands of hours preserving a technology based on vacuum tubes. As he walks past his radios, Frank's hand frequently rests atop his work.

One set is the restored mahogany-and-walnut cabinet of a 1930 Edison R7. "Works good," says a white tag hanging from a small handle.

Frank describes one other as a "three-dialer."

A person scanning the airwaves for a signal with this 1924 Atwater Kent had to twist three separate knobs, one at a time, in sequence - and then go back and twist them again for fine tuning, Frank said.

Glowing tubes powered the radios and delivered voices of variety shows and comedy or mystery series to families gathered around the sets. This was the era before transistors and microchips yielded smaller personal entertainment devices.

It's not that he dislikes transistors. "They do a fine job," Frank said. Even so, none are allowed in the basement.

"I'd like to have kids today know about this old stuff," he said. He does not want future generations to lose track of this technology or its once-dominant role in everyday life.

"It would be a shame to just forget about it," Frank said. By recalling tubes and telling the story of his collection, Frank hopes to attract the interest of young people.

Transistors came on the scene in the mid-1950s. Tubes hung on for another decade or so.

Frank's newest tube radio is a 1964 GE that came inside a wide wood console with a record player and television in the lower compartment.

He is refinishing the mahogany cabinet of a Sparton Model 10 originally purchased at a Schuster's store in Milwaukee sometime in the early 1930s. Sparton marketed its models as "Radio's Richest Voice Since 1926."

The company, based in Michigan and Canada, started just a few years after the first commercial radio broadcast in the United States. That came on Nov. 2, 1920, from KDKA in Pittsburgh, said Tom Mittelstaedt, associate director of the Museum of Broadcasting in St. Louis Park, Minn.

Station 9XM at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, later known as WHA, is credited with the earliest regularly scheduled educational broadcasts in 1919.

Frank's interest in tube-driven radios started with his father, Joe, an electrical contractor and owner of the former Cedarburg Electric on Washington Avenue. His father sold Philco radios in the 1930s.

Frank enlisted in the Navy in 1946. After military service, Frank worked for his father before starting his own electrical contracting business. He closed H.J. Frank Electric 20 years ago.

His private radio museum has never been open to the public. But now that the basement is full, Frank is considering selling the collection at auction.

He is not certain of its value.

His wife of 60 years, LaVerne, is encouraging a sale.

"I'm running out of room here," he said. "And I'm 81. That's old. I've got to do something with all of these."

___

Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
http://www.jsonline.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-10-16-09 0038EDT

PITTSFIELD, Mass. - Donald Kaufman, who co-founded K-B (Kaufman Brothers) Toys and was widely acknowledged as one of the world's great collectors of antique toys, died of a heart attack at his home on Oct. 12, 2009. He was 79.

Donald Lewis Kaufman was born in Pittsfield, Mass., on Oct. 8, 1930, the son of Harry and Ruth Klein Kaufman. He grew up in Pittsfield, where his family had owned a wholesale candy and toy "sundries" business since 1922. Donald attended public schools in Pittsfield and graduated from the Wilbraham Munson Academy, after which he attended North Adams State College. From there he joined the U.S. Army and served in the Korean Conflict.

After the war, Donald helped parlay the family business into what would become known as K-B Toys, a nationwide chain of retail toy stores. With his natural business acumen, Donald was responsible in part for the company's revolutionary volume buying and discount pricing; the establishment of toy stores in the newly emerging indoor shopping malls of the late 1950s, and the advertising of toys such as Chatty Cathy and Robert the Robot directly to children through the fast-growing medium of television. The Kaufman family sold K-B Toys in 1981 to Melville Corporation, later known as CVS Corporation.

In 1950, Donald acquired his first antique toy - an Arcade cast-iron truck purchased from a friend for $4. The transaction would begin a collecting odyssey of nearly 60 years. He relished combing through antique stores and shopping the first of the Brimfield shows - usually on a bicycle. He bid in countless auctions and cultivated relationships with toy dealers and enthusiasts worldwide who helped him amass an unrivaled collection of possibly as many as 10,000 toys.

In 2008, Donald made the decision to consign his collection to auction, telling the media, "It is time. I want to have as much fun selling the collection as I had in building it."

Because of the size of the collection, it was determined that it should be auctioned in semiannual sales over a two- to three-year period. Intensely publicized in the global print media and with national television crews on hand, the first two auction sessions were held at Bertoia Auctions in Vineland, N.J., on March 19-21 and Sept. 25-26 of this year. Donald and his wife and constant companion, Sally, were in attendance, signing auction catalogs and reuniting with old friends from the toy community.

"Don was in his element," recalled Jeanne Bertoia, owner of Bertoia Auctions. "It was very important for him to be able to see it being sold. He wanted the toys to be spread among all the collectors, and he was excited about seeing where the toys would end up. No wonder he was so beloved."

Donald and Sally approached the collection as a shared pursuit that took them to Europe and nearly every toy show in the Northeast. "It was a team effort," Donald once said. "It was one of my lifelong pleasures. When Sally came into my life 20 some years ago, she partnered in it and enjoyed what we did just as much as I did. I couldn't have done this without her."

Sally, in return, admired her husband's passion for the hobby. "He didn't just see a toy," she said. "He would look at that toy and think about the history. He thought about what it was made of, the design, the people who sat there and made it. He would hold it and say, ‘If only it could talk. I wonder who held it. I wonder how much joy this toy brought to kids.'"

Donald researched every toy he ever bought and was known as a "completist." According to Richard Bertoia, who cataloged the collection prior to auction, Donald owned "almost every known variation of every known automotive toy. No matter how subtle the difference in detail might be, you would find that variation in his collection. Among collectors, he has been clearly declared the most important force this hobby has ever seen. His name starts and ends toy conversations."

Donald Kaufman is survived by his wife Sally Kaufman, and his three daughters, Suzanne Meyerhoff Ascoti (husband Vinnie), Deborah Mager (husband David), and Judith Wortzel (husband Gary); as well as a sister, Joan Poultridge; and his former wife Faith. He will be deeply missed by his grandchildren Krista Meyerhoff, Sadie Mager, and Isaac and Zubin Wortzel. He is also mourned by his stepson Jack Roche (wife Barbara and their children Katie and Olivia) and stepdaughter Mary Ellen Simon (husband Harry); and stepgrandchildren Joseph Ascoti, and Rachelle and Roxanne Crocker-Mager. He is predeceased by his brother Richard and leaves behind a legion of loving nieces, nephews and cousins, as well as innumerable friends within the toy-collecting world.

A memorial service for family and friends will be held at 11 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009 at Berkshire Museum, 39 South Street, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent in Mr. Kaufman's memory to The Friends of Renal Dialysis Center, c/o the Dialysis Unit at Berkshire Medical Center, 725 North Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201.

Submitted by the Bertoia family.

# # #

The death was announced by his photo assistant, Roger Krueger.

"He never stopped working," said Peter MacGill, a longtime friend whose Pace-MacGill Galleries in Manhattan represented Penn's work. "He would go back to similar subjects and never see them the same way twice."

Penn, who constantly explored the photographic medium and its boundaries, typically preferred to isolate his subjects - from fashion models to Aborigine tribesmen - from their natural settings to photograph them in a studio against a stark background. He believed the studio could most closely capture their true natures.

Between 1964 and 1971, he completed seven such projects, his subjects ranging from New Guinea mud men to San Francisco hippies.

Penn also had a fascination with still life and produced a dramatic range of images that challenged the traditional idea of beauty, giving dignity to such subjects as cigarette butts, decaying fruit and discarded clothing. A 1977 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented prints of trash rescued from Manhattan streets and photographed, lovingly, against plain backgrounds.

"Photographing a cake can be art," he said at the 1953 opening of his studio, where he continued to produce commercial and gallery work into the 21st century.

Penn's most recent work was a series of still-life photos made of ceramics that he and his wife had collected in Europe. "They were as dynamic and as powerful as anything he had done in his 70-year career," MacGill said.

Thirteen of Penn's photographs were auctioned Thursday at Christie's, including Guedras in the Wind, a 1971 image of two Moroccan women, which sold within the estimate at $43,750, including the buyer's premium. A Penn photo, Cuzco Children, sold for $529,000 last year, including premium.

Penn's career began in the 1940s as a fashion photographer for Vogue, and he continued to contribute to the magazine for decades thereafter.

He stumbled into the job almost by accident, when he abandoned his early ambition to become a painter and took a position as a designer in the magazine's art department in 1943. Staff photographers balked at his unorthodox layout ideas, and a supervisor asked him to photograph a cover design.

The resulting image, on the Oct. 1, 1943, cover of Vogue, was a striking still-life showing a brown leather bag, a beige scarf, gloves, oranges and lemons arranged in the shape of a pyramid.

In subsequent photographs for the magazine, Penn further developed his austere style that placed models and fashion accessories against clean backdrops. It was a radical departure at a time when most fashion photographers posed their subjects with props and in busy settings that tended to draw attention from the clothes themselves.

The approach made him a star at the magazine, where his work eventually appeared on as many as 300 pages annually. Penn believed his success depended on keeping the reader - rather than the model - in mind.

"Many photographers feel their client is the subject," he explained in a 1991 interview in The New York Times. "My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. ... The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader."

He left the magazine in 1944 to join the military - serving with the American Field Service in Italy and then as a photographer in India - but returned to Vogue in 1946, taking travel assignments in addition to his fashion work.

Penn relished the chance to work in foreign locales, recalling in his 1974 book, Worlds in a Small Room, that he had often daydreamed "of being mysteriously deposited (with my ideal north-light studio) among the Aborigines in remote parts of the earth."

In the 1950s, Penn moved into portraiture. He photographed not only the famous - actors, musicians and politicians - but also ordinary people. He published a series of pictures in 1950-1951 featuring plumbers, salesmen and cleaning women in New York City, Paris and London. The Getty Center in Los Angeles currently is exhibiting some of the photos.

His celebrity portraits included closely cropped images of Miles Davis, Spencer Tracy, Georgia O'Keeffe and Pablo Picasso, the last peering apprehensively from beneath a wide-brimmed hat. He once said that his formula for capturing meaningful portraits was to photograph his subjects relentlessly, often over a period of several hours, until they were forced to let down their guard.

A 2000 exhibit organized by the Art Institute of Chicago on his portraiture work said, "Penn's manipulation of formal design elements such as light and shadow, and his ability to capture a significant gesture, expression, or mood, ultimately reveal something intriguing about his subjects."

An exhibit of 14 large prints of cigarette and cigar butts at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975 was more controversial. It was lauded by some critics as a powerful elevation of the banal to the monumental, but criticized by others as self-indulgent.

"A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page," he once said.

Accordingly, he spent countless hours in his studio creating prints with costly platinum salts - a process that had been mostly abandoned at the turn of the 20th century, but favored by Penn because of its glowing results. (Most photographic prints use a solution of silver on the paper rather than platinum.) He would paint the platinum solution on the paper himself to create the effects he sought.

"Over the years I must have spent thousands of hours silently brushing on the liquid coatings, preparing each sheet in anticipation of reaching the perfect print," Penn wrote in his 1991 book Passage: A Work Record.

Penn donated photographs to the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, and his archives are at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Born in Plainfield, N.J., in 1917, Penn studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art from 1934 to 1938, and worked as an assistant at Harper's Bazaar in 1939.

Penn married fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives in 1950, and for decades afterward she remained one of his favorite subjects. She died in 1992. One of his 1950 photos of her sold at auction in 2004 for more than $57,000.

Penn was the older brother of filmmaker Arthur Penn, who directed The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde and Night Moves.

He had a son, Tom, with Fonssagrives. His wife also had a daughter, Mia, from a previous marriage.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-ES-10-07-09 1642EDT

He was born Jan. 13, 1934 in Oklahoma City to Willard E. Johnson Sr. and Evelyn V. Mendenhall Johnson.

He grew up in Oklahoma City's Biltmore Hotel, where his father, Willard E. Johnson, moved the art gallery in 1939. The hotel's grand suite served as the gallery's main showroom and office until the father's death in 1960.

He was a sergeant in the U.S. Army.

A 1956 graduate of Oklahoma University School of Business and an art connoisseur, he followed his father in the family business. He also studied fine art restoration in San Francisco (1968-1969) followed by postgraduate studies in fine art at the Oklahoma City Art Museum (1970).

His father started the gallery in 1919 after seeing many Old Master and Impressionist paintings while serving in the military in Europe during World War I.

In 1954 Willard II married Margaret Joan Musick. Together they had two children, Pamela Margaret Johnson and Willard Elisha Johnson III. He is survived by his son, Willard; daughter, Pamela Johnson Kanaly; son-in-law, Mike Kanaly; and two granddaughters and three great-grandchildren.

He is preceded in death by his parents, Evelyn and Willard Johnson, and sister Mary Jane Johnson Coleman Stormark.

He kept the fine art scene in Oklahoma City alive and lively, sometimes dressing up for parties as Andy Warhol, Toulouse Lautrec or Salvador Dali.

His friendship with Aime Maeght of Galerie Maeght, Paris, became Oklahoma City's primary source for original lithographs by Picasso, Miro, Matisse and Chagall, to name a few.

A memorial service is Friday, Oct. 9, at 2 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church. In lieu of flowers or cards, the family asks that memorial gifts be made to: The National M.S. Society (4606 E. 67 St., Tulsa, OK 74136) or the First Presbyterian Church (1001 N.W. 25 St., Oklahoma City, OK 73106).

The Daily Oklahoman contributed.

COPENHAGEN (AP) - Denmark's National Gallery says it will exhibit some 100 works by Bob Dylan, including some of his newest acrylic paintings.

The museum says some 30 canvasses from Dylan's forthcoming Brazil Series have never been put on exhibit before.

Museum spokesman Jakob Fibiger Andreasen says Dylan was interested in displaying his work at the museum that has a large collection of paintings by French artist Henri Matisse.

Fibiger Andreasen says "there are clearly roots" to Matisse in Dylan's works.

He said Wednesday that Dylan would also be displaying watercolors from The Drawn Blank Series.

The Copenhagen exhibition opens in the September or October 2010.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-09-16-09 0945EDT

DOUGLASSVILLE, Pa. - Doll expert Marjorie Esther (Merritt) Darrah, of Douglassville, Pa., died of natural causes on Aug. 29, 2009. She was 81 years of age.

For 42 years, Mrs. Darrah was curator of the world-renowned Mary Merritt Doll & Toy Museum in Douglassville, whose contents were sold in a series of high-profile auctions in 2006 and 2007 Additionally, Marjorie Darrah was president of Merritt's Antiques Inc., also located in Douglassville.

Mrs. Darrah was a lifelong resident of Berks County, Pa., and was a daughter of the late Esther M. Riegel and Robert J. Merritt.

She was a past board member of the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County, a past president of the Letitia Penn Doll Club and a lifelong member of the Amity Fire Company. Mrs. Darrah also belonged to St. Paul's United Christian Church in Amityville, Pennsylvania.

"Marjorie was a delight to be around," said Auction Central News' editor, Catherine Saunders-Watson. "Her enthusiasm for antiques remained strong throughout her life. Two years ago I was helping out at the annual yard sale to benefit a local animal shelter and had brought along a few antiques as ‘sweeteners' to mix in amongst the more mundane items heaped onto the tables. One of the first ‘early birds' to arrive was Marjorie, and with that keen eye of hers, she zeroed right in on the antiques, scooping them up while everyone else was still sifting through the dime-a-dozen junk. She seemed thrilled with her discoveries, as though they were the first antiques she ever bought."

Auctioneer and antique toy and doll expert Andy Ourant worked closely with Marjorie Darrah during the 16-month cataloging period prior to the Mary Merritt Doll & Toy Museum sales. "By the end of it, I was calling her 'Mom.' She had a special quality about her. Yes, she was a pillar of the industry and was a natural at running a business, but above all else, you got that family vibe off her. Everyone I've spoken to has said the same thing - that they felt very close to Marge. She treated everyone like family. She was a rare individual, and we will miss her."

Marjorie Darrah is survived by a son, Paul L. Darrah Jr.; a daughter, Marjorie Anne Yocom; brothers Martin Merritt and Robert J. Merritt Jr., and a stepsister, Anne Darrah. She also leaves four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Funeral services were held on Sept. 5, 2009. Memorial contributions may be made to the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County, P.O. Box 245, Douglassville, PA 19518.

NEW YORK - Auctioneers know Scott Miles from his role as Sr. Vice President Sales at Manhattan-based LiveAuctioneers.com, but the 33-year-old executive is soon to fill different shoes, as a runner in the 2009 Bank of America Chicago Marathon.

A member of New York's Road Runners, Miles began running in earnest last year in preparation for a successful run in the ING New York City Marathon. He has stuck with the training and now plans to step up the pace by running the 26.2-mile Chicago Marathon on Sunday, Oct. 11. Monetary sponsorships from family, friends and colleagues at LiveAuctioneers.com will be donated in full to Miles' charity of choice: the David Wright Foundation.

The foundation, which was established by New York Mets superstar third baseman David Wright, provides aid and assistance toward the health, emotional development, and education of children in need in the New York metro and tri-state areas, as well as Wright's hometown of Norfolk, Virginia.

The 32nd edition of the Chicago Marathon will start and finish in Chicago's Grant Park, beginning at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11. In advance of the race, a two-day Health & Fitness Expo will be held at McCormick Place on Friday, Oct. 9 and Saturday, Oct. 10.

Miles is one of 45,000 athletes registered to take part in the Chicago Marathon. "They closed the race's open registration when it reached its maximum capacity, which means it's going to be a massive event and a very exciting one to experience firsthand," said Miles.

More than 100 charitable causes benefit from the $10 million raised on average by the Chicago Marathon's runners, and the economic benefit to the City of Chicago is estimated at $140 million.

"Many worthy charities are going to benefit from the sponsorship money raised by the runners, and with so many nonprofits struggling in the current economy, it makes me especially proud to be doing my part, even in a small way," Miles said.

Miles continues to seek sponsorship to help him reach his goal of $2,000. "No amount is too small, and every donation is greatly appreciated," he said. To donate online with a credit card through the secure site firstgiving.com, log on to http://www.firstgiving.com/scottmiles.

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NEW YORK (AP) - Oprah Winfrey is on board to host the annual gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute next spring, supporting an exhibit that focuses on the style of American women.

"American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity" will trace the archetypes of dress and femininity from 1890 to 1940, and then examine how they affect how women are perceived today.

"The ideal of the American woman evolved from a dependence on European, Old World ideas of elegance into an independent New World sensibility that reflected freedoms still associated with American women today," said curator Andrew Bolton in a statement.

"The show will look at fashion's role in defining how American women have been represented historically, and how fashion costumes women into archetypes that still persist in varying degrees of relevance."

Display items will come from the new Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Met, and there will be several multimedia elements in the exhibit. Featured designers include Charles Frederick Worth, Charles James, and Valentina and Madeleine Vionnet.

The May 3 gala is the Costume Institute's main fundraising event, and it will be co-chaired by Patrick Robinson, creative director at Gap, and, as has become tradition,

Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour. Kate Moss and Justin Timberlake hosted the event last year when the exhibit was about supermodels.

The exhibit is slated to run May 5-Aug. 15.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Romero was the author of the respected reference book Warman's Jewelry, which identifies and values 18th- through 20th-century jewelry. Her profound knowledge of the subject, combined with her personal passion for antique and collectible costume jewelry, made her a popular addition to the antiques lecture circuit. Romero traveled throughout the United States addressing students, collectors and fellow appraisers at institutions including Hofstra University, the Jewelry Design Department at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles, and the Northwest Gemological Institute in Bellevue, Washington. She also taught the Antique and Period Jewelry for the Gemology department at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, Calif.

She attained a national profile as an appraiser for WGBH/PBS Television's Antiques Roadshow. In her on-camera appearances, Christie never failed to wear favorite pieces from her own jewelry collection - always with her own unique flair.

Romero was also an instructor of jewelry history for the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers (NAJA) and Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts. She held memberships in the professional organizations the American Society of Jewelry Historians, the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts (ASJRA), the Society of Jewellery Historians (U.K.), the NAJA, and the Costume Society of America.

The family has requested that in lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.