Saturday, March 26, 2005

Pope John Paul II, the most visible global Christian leader and head of the largest Christian denomination, Roman Catholicism, has for the first time been unable to lead traditional Good Friday services in Rome.

He appeared to worshippers via a video presentation from the Vatican.

The Catholic leader has been diagnosed with pulmonary illness and Parkinson’s disease.

Catholic services on this day are strictly liturgies of the word with an optional Eucharist, as the Mass cannot be celebrated on Good Friday.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Police in Britain have recovered a stolen Leonardo da Vinci painting worth, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), £65 million (US$133 million).

“Through careful investigations and intelligence-led police work we were able to locate the painting and make four arrests. We are extremely pleased to recover the ’Madonna of the Yarnwinder’ painting,” said Mickey Dalgleish, the chief Inspector for Scotland Yard.

The famous painting, Madonna of the Yarnwinder, painted by da Vinci in 1501, had been stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland, in August 2003, by two thieves who aimed to sell the painting in the future.

Police raided a house in Glasgow, Scotland and seized the painting, making four arrests. The FBI listed the theft of the painting as of one of the world’s top ten art crimes in recent years.

Thursday, April 11, 2019

In two studies presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Orlando, Florida in the United States, scientists have disclosed new steps toward using natural adhesives made by the dusky Arion slug (Arion subfuscus) in medical applications such as in closing skin wounds and reducing scarring.

When threatened, the dusky Arion slug secretes an unusual glue, making itself a difficult target for predators. This glue remains both sticky and flexible and works even when the surface the slug is on is wet. Previous studies have shown that, unlike many artificial adhesives, Arion slug glue is non-toxic to mammalian tissue.

Scientist Rebecca Falconer, an Ithaca College undergraduate who led one of the two studies, said “Typical sutures like staples and stitches often lead to scarring and create holes in the skin that could increase the chance of infection after surgery […] Understanding the roles of adhesive proteins in the slug glue would aid in the creation of a medical adhesive that can move and stretch yet still retain its strength and adhesiveness.”

In her set of experiments, Falconer observed eleven proteins found only in slug glue and used DNA recombination to produce usable amounts of each of these proteins. Specifically, she produced complementary DNA sequences (cDNA) for each protein, which are stretches of DNA with all the pieces not necessary for producing the protein removed. She then spliced these into circular DNA sequences called plasmids, which she inserted into bacteria, whose natural cellular machinery began to produce the proteins in quantity. She then analyzed the three-dimensional structures that the protein molecules form with each other and with other substances that make them work.

Christopher Gallego-Lazo, also an Ithaca undergrad, evaluated glue from the dusky Arion slug by focusing on the chemical bonds within the glue and the way they affect the glue’s deformability. Gallego-Lazo found that slight changes in these chemical bonds could alter the strength of the slug glue.

Gallego-Lazo said, “Few studies on biological adhesives have identified the exact nature of the bonds holding the glue together […] This knowledge can guide the development of an organic synthetic adhesive that would reduce the risk of infection and scarring compared to stitches and staples and could be applied rapidly and simply.”

Falconer and Gallego-Lazo both performed their research in the laboratory of Dr. Andrew Smith.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Two web sites purporting to sell tickets to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games due to open in Beijing, China on Friday have been the subject of lawsuits from the International Olympic Committee in United States courts in recent weeks. The web sites, beijingticketing.com and beijing-2008tickets.com, were designed to resemble official sites and often appeared above the official sites in Google searches, and scammed some victims out of up to US$50,000 each for tickets to events such as the Opening Ceremony and swimming, which were listed despite the official Beijing ticket web site stating that tickets to all events had sold out as of July 27. The sites are believed to have taken in millions of dollars in total.

Ken Gamble, a private investigator from Sydney, Australia, believes the sites are operated by Terance Shepherd, whom Gamble has been tracking for several years in relation to other fraudulent web sites selling tickets to events such as the FIFA World Cup. According to Gamble, Shepherd’s modus operandi involves setting up the fake web sites, overselling the tickets, and then failing to produce the tickets. “The story’s always the same,” Gamble said, “it’s an ‘unfortunate mistake’ or someone has ‘let them down’. They promise a refund, which never happens, and the credit companies end up paying all the refunds.” Shepherd owns a home in the London suburb of Blackheath, although authorities believe he is currently hiding in Barbados.

On Monday, beijingticketing.com customers received an email from someone named “Alan Scott”, claiming that the site’s ticket supplier had filed for bankruptcy. The email recommended that customers should contact their credit card companies to seek refunds “immediately”, and said that the company would set up a call centre to provide assistance to its customers. However, the site has been shut down and a phone number previously listed on it has been disconnected. The company’s address, in Phoenix, Arizona, was found to be an empty office space. Visa International has stated that victims who used their Visa card to pay should be able to get their money back, but it is not yet clear whether the same will apply to all customers.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

At a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island a cat is reported to be able to sense when elderly individuals are about to die.

The cat, known as ‘Oscar‘ is reported to have sensed the deaths of at least 25 elderly people. According to nursing home employees, Oscar has been living at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center for two years and seems to sense the deaths at least two to four hours before they happen, and he is rarely wrong.

“It’s not that the cat is consistently there first. But the cat always does manage to make an appearance, and it always seems to be in the last two hours,” said professor of community health at the home, Dr. Joan Teno.

Oscar would go from room to room on a daily basis to watch and smell the patients, eventually curling up next to one that dies within a few hours, but since most of the patients he visits are too ill they do not notice his presence.

One veterinarian and expert on cats says that cats and dogs sense things that humans are not able to sense.

“It’s such a cat thing to do. Those things are hard to study. I think probably dogs and cats can sense things we can’t,” said University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, chief of veterinarian medicine at the college, Thomas Graves who also added that he does not believe it has anything to do with being a ‘psychic cat’ saying “there’s probably a biochemical explanation.”

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A Scottish lawyer today denied reports that Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi had died, after it was reported on Sky News earlier today that “unidentified sources” had said that he was dead.

The reports came onto Sky News at around 16.00 BST today. The information could not be confirmed, and it was not immediately clear where Sky News had obtained their information. Megrahi is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice Kenny MacAskill MSP decided on 20 August 2009 to grant Megrahi compassionate release from Greenock Prison in Glasgow, Scotland and to allow him to return to Libya, after medical advisers reported that he was likely to die in just three months.

On Wednesday, Megrahi’s lawyer, Tony Kelly, responded to the claims made, saying that “it’s absolutely untrue. He’s definitely not dead. I’m not saying anything about his health condition other than the fact he is alive and breathing.” He declined to release any information about Abdelbaset’s current health condition. Following these comments, Sky News removed the information from their website.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), a record number of banks for a calendar month have failed in the United States in February. A total of 10 banks failed in February, more than any other month since October of 2000. A total of 16 banks have closed this year so far, with 24 closing in 2008. If the current trend continues, the total number of failed banks will more than double in March, as compared to the total number of failed banks in 2008.

The list grew after the FDIC took over the funds from the Security Savings Bank of Henderson, Nevada and the Heritage Community Bank in Glenwood, Illinois on February 27. The FDIC issued press releases for both institutions.

The four branches of the Heritage Community Bank reopened on February 28 “as branches of MB Financial Bank,” stated the FDIC. The bank’s assets were worth nearly US$233 million and had customer deposits worth nearly $220 million. MB is expected to purchase $230 million of the bank’s assets and the FDIC will “retain the remaining assets for later disposition.”

“The two Security Savings Bank branches will reopen on Monday (March 2) as branches of Bank of Nevada,” stated the FDIC. The bank held assets worth approximately $238.3 million with customer deposits of nearly $180 million. Bank of Nevada will purchase approximately $111 million of the bank’s assets while the FDIC will retain the remaining balance, also “for later disposition.”

“The FDIC insures deposits at the nation’s 8,305 banks and savings associations and it promotes the safety and soundness of these institutions by identifying, monitoring and addressing risks to which they are exposed,” added the FDIC.

Both banks, when reopened, will immediately become members of the FDIC.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Early on Sunday morning, Amtrak’s passenger train number 91, the Silver Star, bound for Miami from New York, slammed into a stationary CSX freight train in Cayce, about ten miles (16 km) south of Columbia, capital of the US state of South Carolina. Two Amtrak employees were killed and at least 116 were injured, some seriously.

The two killed were 54-year-old engineer Michael Kempf of Savannah, Georgia, and 36-year-old conductor Michael Cella of Orange Park, Florida. Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a press conference the passenger train had been diverted into a siding by a switch left “literally locked, with a padlock” in that position.

The collision happened at about 2:35 am local time (0735 UTC) at a switching yard in the small city of Cayce. The Amtrak train, with reportedly 139 passengers and eight employees aboard, collided head on with the freight train, which was parked with no one on board. The Amtrak locomotive and the leading locomotive on the freight train were destroyed; the Amtrak locomotive and some of its passenger cars derailed, and one of those cars was folded in half. Several freight cars were crumpled, Reuters reported. In a press conference, the state governor, Henry McMaster, said the Amtrak locomotive was “barely recognizable” and described it as “a horrible thing to see, to understand the force involved”.

Harrison Cahill, a spokesman for Lexington County, gave a count of 116 injured, up from an initial report of 70; according to Derrec Becker, public information officer for the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, injuries ranged “from cuts and bruises to severe broken bones”. On Monday a Palmetto Health spokesperson said two patients were in serious and two in critical condition at their facilities. A spill of approximately 5,000 gallons of fuel from the freight train posed no safety hazard, according to officials.

Passenger Derek Pettaway told the CNN network that like most others, he had been sleeping when the collision happened. He said Amtrak staff cleared the passengers from the train rapidly, and there was no panic; “I think people were more in shock than anything else”, he said.

“Key to this investigation is learning why the switch was lined that way”, Sumwalt said. Amtrak’s CEO, Richard Anderson, speaking to reporters on Sunday, held CSX responsible; he stated the track in that area is operated by CSX and the signals, which CSX operates, were not working at the time of the collision and a CSX dispatcher was therefore directing the Amtrak train’s movements. Sumwalt noted an automatic monitoring and braking system called positive train control, which was not in use on the stretch of line, could have forestalled the collision.

Several fatal incidents involving Amtrak trains have occurred in the past three months. On December 18, the inaugural train on a new route in Washington state derailed at high speed while crossing above a highway, killing three; on January 31, the driver of a garbage truck was killed in Virginia when he collided with an Amtrak train chartered to take Republican lawmakers to a retreat.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Due to an Oakland housing official’s acts of fraud, 34 poor families face eviction from Lockwood Gardens, by order of the Oakland Housing Authority.

Fear and panic have set in at some of East Oakland’s public housing units, as police agents from the Oakland Housing Authority have been making late-night visits to tenants, and demanding that the families pack up and move within a five-day period.

After refusing to pack up and run, more than 30 families are facing mass eviction by the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) from their public housing units at Lockwood Gardens, a Hope VI Project on 65th Avenue in East Oakland.

The OHA is claiming that at least 34 families currently facing eviction from Lockwood Gardens are unlawful occupants (squatters) who have illegally gained possession of the housing units. OHA officials have served them 30-day, forcible-detainer eviction notices in an effort to remove them.

On April 28, the first three cases out of 34 families facing eviction were headed for Alameda County Superior Court, but the court hearings have been delayed repeatedly as Judge Winifred Smith moves to consolidate all the cases.

In defense of some of the evictees, Oakland’s Eviction Defense Center has teamed up with attorney Bob Salinas, of Sundeen Salinas & Pyle, to file a demurrer seeking dismissal of evictions on behalf of the first three families that were served forcible-detainereviction notices. Lockwood Gardens has 372 units; and it is part of a revitalization project of East Oakland’s public housing properties, and a partial recipient of $26,510,020 in grant funding from the Hope Vl program administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The revitalization funds were divided between three public housing projects in 1994 and 1996, and renovations have since taken place to demolish and rebuild the three locations into modern housing units in Oakland’s eastside neighborhoods.

Laura Lane, an attorney with the East Bay Community Law Center, is also representing a number of the families facing eviction at Lockwood Gardens and those cases will head to court at a later date.

Currently, out of the 34 families facing eviction, the Eviction Defense Center (EDC) is representing nine families in court, and the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) is representing 12 families. One family has already been frightened into moving away fromtheir public housing unit by the OHA; no one seems to know if the remaining seven families facing eviction have moved away or are seeking legal representation elsewhere.

Jennifer Bell of Goldfarb and Lipman is the General Counsel for the Oakland Housing Authority, and is leading the charge in court to evict the 34 families from their housing units in East Oakland.

During an April 24th interview with David Lipsetz, a Senior Policy Analyst with the Oakland Housing Authority, he blamed the tenants for what is occurring and accused all the families of committing fraud to move into public housing. At first, 29 families facedeviction, although that number has slowly risen to 34 as new families are served with eviction notices.

“The OHA has served eviction notices to 29 families at Lockwood Gardens because none of the families applied for, or got onto the waiting list to move into their public housing units,” said Lipsetc. “The tenants worked with a former clerk to gain access to theunits. The OHA does not have any files on the families, and the OHA does not believe that any of the families signed a lease before moving into those units. Forcible detainers are standard procedure for those that have illegally moved into the OHA’s public housing units.”

Lipsetz said that the OHA just recently discovered that the 29 families who are now living in those housing units did not match the names of the clients on the OHA list waiting to move into those units.

“As far as we can tell,” said Lipsetz, “there were no signed leases, no files established for these families, no security deposits have been paid before moving in, and those families got ahead of all the other families on the waiting list to move in.”

Contrary to what Lipsetz stated on behalf of the Oakland Housing Authority, the facts reveal that the families have all signed Leases, Tenant Agreements To Maintain A Drug-Free Environment, Occupant’s Responsibility statements, Lease Compliance forms anda host of other documents before moving in otheir public housing units. Those documents were all counter-signed by a host of clerks and managers working for the OHA. The soon-to-be-evicted tenants’ Billing Summaries, Tenant Leases and Notices have a host of names on them, such as Kim Boyd, an OHA Supervisor; Donald McShane, an OHA Manager; and Alice Ferguson, another OHA Manager.

In addition, as important as it may be that low-income tenants should not jump in line ahead of one another to move into this much-needed subsidized housing, most housing authorities across the nation recently have said the hell with their waiting lists, and allowed Hurricane Katrina’s victims to jump in ahead of all of those already waiting in line for housing.

A web page called “HUD’s Public Housing Program” has a section titled “WHEN WILL I BE NOTIFIED?” HUD’s website states: “If the HA determines that you are eligible, your name will be put on a waiting list, unless the HA is able to assist you immediately.” Theweb page may be found at http://www.hud.gov/renting/phprog.cfm

After discovering that the families facing eviction did indeed sign leases and other documents before moving into Lockwood Gardens, suddenly no one at the OHA would go on record to comment about the signed documents that contradicted the accusations of OHA spokesman David Lipsetz.

The documents clearly reveal that the 34 families facing eviction at Lockwood Gardens have all beenchecked out, and qualified as being eligible to move into those units, regardless of what the OHA may say at this point.

The entire controversy appears to have been triggered by acts of deception and fraud on the part of an official of the Oakland Housing Authority, Carolyn Wilson. “The police have been looking for Carolyn Wilson of the Oakland Housing Authority ever since shedisappeared recently,” said Ms. Kelly, a resident of Lockwood Gardens who prefers to use only her last name for this story.

“I moved into Lockwood Gardens on October 27, and Carolyn Wilson’s name is on my lease,” said Kelly. “I first received a message from the OHA at my mother’s home, telling me that a unit was available at Lockwood Gardens, and I went to their office location on 65thAvenue to fill out the necessary forms to move in. I supplied birth certificates, photo IDs, Social Security numbers, income statements and everything else asked of me to qualify for moving in. There’s no way that I committed fraud by following through witheverything being asked of me by the Housing Authority.”

Kelley said she and her young child were disturbed by an unexpected, late-night arrival of OHA police at her door.

“I am a 41-year-old woman with an 11-year-old child, and I am very frightened by the way the OHA has been treating me,” she said. “I was terrified recently when the OHA Police showed up at my door around 10 p.m. at night, accusing my family of committing fraud to move into this townhouse; and they served me a five-day notice to surrender my home to the OHA, or else.”

Officer Jerold Coates, a 13-year employee of the OHA Police Department, and Officer Malcolm Williams are involved in the investigation taking place at Lockwood Gardens. According to Ms. Kelly, “Officer Coates told me that Carolyn Wilson was demanding that everyone must pay her $500 to $1,000 to move in, and he wanted to know how much I paid her before moving in. I denied payingMs. Wilson anything extra to move into Lockwood Gardens.”

Kelly added, “From what I am being told by others is that Carolyn Wilson of the OHA skipped town with everyone’s security deposits of $500 to $1,000 for each family involved in the scam, and that the OHA will not receive a subsidy from HUD for the familiesfacing eviction in those units, because the OHA believes that the wrong families are residing in those housing units.”

One of the families that moved into Lockwood Gardens, and is now facing eviction, moved away from another public housing location in Oakland in order to move into the Hope Vl project on 65th Avenue. It takes permission to move from one location to another in public housing, and managers or staff at the OHA had to give their blessings before this family was allowed to relocate to Lockwood Gardens.

Jorge Aguilar, an attorney for the Eviction Defense Center, has his own understanding of what is going on. “An agent of the Oakland Housing Authority defrauded nearly 30 families of the most vulnerable segment of the community,” he said. “They are now trying to cover their wrongful act by evicting those families. The OHA is trying to circumvent Measure EE [Oakland’s Just Cause for eviction measure]. The irony is that the OHA is using forcible detainers to evict, which have traditionally been used to defend tenants fromlandlords using self-help evictions.”

Aguilar recently witnessed the human suffering already caused by the OHA’s eviction threats and rough handling of the families involved. He said, “During a recent interview with one of the families facing eviction, a little boy started crying and stated thatthe police came by and tried to take my bedroom away from me.”

Another Lockwood Gardens tenant named Winou Wakeyo said, “I’m from Jimma, Ethiopa, and I moved into Lockwood Gardens on November 22, 2005. I work 12 hours a day on Sundays for a pastor who told me to come here to find housing, and I did everything the HousingAuthority asked of me before moving in. A big policeman came by recently late at night with a five-day notice telling me that I must surrender my home to the Housing Authority. There were two policemen. It scared me very much, and someone later told me to find a defender to save my housing, and I contacted the Eviction Defense Center for help.

“I do not understand the customs of this country, and I asked my defender what I did wrong, and I was told that someone stole some money. The Housing Authority stopped accepting my rent for April, and about two weeks ago, they suddenly sent back the rent that Ipaid for March, and I do not understand why they are doing this to me.”

Laura Lane, an attorney for the EBCLC, said, “The Oakland Housing Authority seems to be in a complete disarray. The management has failed to adequately screen, train or supervise its employees. But when the employees make mistakes or fail to follow the law, theOakland Housing Authority’s response is to blame the tenants, blame the attorneys, blame the federal government — blame anyone but the Oakland Housing Authority. There is an utter failure to accept personal responsibility.”

After it became apparent that many families were seeking legal help to fight the evictions, a meeting was held on March 20 at the East Bay Community Law Center for the victims of the housing scam. When the tenants started sharing what had occurred to them,most of the families involved suddenly realized that Carolyn Wilson of the OHA had stolen their security deposits, and skipped out of town.

Tenants at Lockwood Gardens believe that there may be another 40 families or more to face eviction, since they learned that OHA police are also investigating other public housing properties in Oakland that may be caught up in the housing scam.

As recently as April 22, OHA police were back at Lockwood Gardens pounding on the tenants’ doors, and demanding to know if the families have moved yet.

“This time the police were not satisfied to know if my family had moved yet,” said Kelly, “but they wanted to know if any of us noticed any other families moving out of here lately. Considering the way they have been treating us, I don’t think we have to tell them anything at this point, and they need to talk to my attorney if they have any further questions.”

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Evansville, Indiana, United States — This past week marked the opening night of an Andy Warhol exhibit at the University of Southern Indiana. USI’s art gallery, like 189 other educational galleries and museums around the country, is a recipient of a major Warhol donor program, and this program is cultivating new interest in Warhol’s photographic legacy. Wikinews reporters attended the opening and spoke to donors, exhibit organizers and patrons.

The USI art gallery celebrated the Thursday opening with its display of Warhol’s Polaroids, gelatin silver prints and several colored screen prints. USI’s exhibit, which is located in Evansville, Indiana, is to run from January 23 through March 9.

The McCutchan Art Center/Pace Galleries at USI bases its exhibit around roughly 100 Polaroids selected from its collection. The Polaroids were all donated by the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, according to Kristen Wilkins, assistant professor of photography and curator of the exhibit. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts made two donations to USI Art Collections, in 2007 and a second recently.

Kathryn Waters, director of the gallery, expressed interest in further donations from the foundation in the future.

Since 2007 the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program has seeded university art galleries throughout the United States with over 28,000 Andy Warhol photographs and other artifacts. The program takes a decentralized approach to Warhol’s photography collection and encourages university art galleries to regularly disseminate and educate audiences about Warhol’s artistic vision, especially in the area of photography.

Wikinews provides additional video, audio and photographs so our readers may learn more.

Wilkins observed that the 2007 starting date of the donation program, which is part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, coincided with the 20th anniversary of Andy Warhol’s death in 1987. USI was not alone in receiving a donation.

K.C. Maurer, chief financial officer and treasurer at the Andy Warhol Foundation, said 500 institutions received the initial invitation and currently 190 universities have accepted one or more donations. Institutional recipients, said Mauer, are required to exhibit their donated Warhol photographs every ten years as one stipulation.

While USI is holding its exhibit, there are also Warhol Polaroid exhibits at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York and an Edward Steichen and Andy Warhol exhibit at the Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. All have received Polaroids from the foundation.

University exhibits can reach out and attract large audiences. For example, the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro saw attendance levels reach 11,000 visitors when it exhibited its Warhol collection in 2010, according to curator Elaine Gustafon. That exhibit was part of a collaboration combining the collections from Duke University, located in Durham, North Carolina, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which also were recipients of donated items from the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program.

Each collection donated by the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program holds Polaroids of well-known celebrities. The successful UNC Greensboro exhibit included Polaroids of author Truman Capote and singer-songwriter Carly Simon.

“I think America’s obsession with celebrity culture is as strong today as it was when Warhol was living”, said Gustafon. “People are still intrigued by how stars live, dress and socialize, since it is so different from most people’s every day lives.”

Wilkins explained Warhol’s obsession with celebrities began when he first collected head shots as a kid and continued as a passion throughout his life. “He’s hanging out with the celebrities, and has kind of become the same sort of celebrity he was interested in documenting earlier in his career”, Wilkins said.

The exhibit at USI includes Polaroids of actor Dennis Hopper; musician Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran; publishers Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone Magazine and Carlo De Benedetti of Italy’s la Repubblica; disco club owner Steve Rubell of Studio 54; photographers Nat Finkelstein, Christopher Makos and Felice Quinto; and athletes Vitas Gerulaitis (tennis) and Jack Nicklaus (golf).

Wikinews observed the USI exhibit identifies and features Polaroids of fashion designer Halston, a former resident of Evansville.

University collections across the United States also include Polaroids of “unknowns” who have not yet had their fifteen minutes of fame. Cynthia Thompson, curator and director of exhibits at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, said, “These images serve as documentation of people in his every day life and art — one which many of us enjoy a glimpse into.”

Warhol was close to important touchstones of the 1960s, including art, music, consumer culture, fashion, and celebrity worship, which were all buzzwords and images Wikinews observed at USI’s opening exhibit.

He was also an influential figure in the pop art movement. “Pop art was about what popular American culture really thought was important”, Kathryn Waters said. “That’s why he did the Campbell Soup cans or the Marilyn pictures, these iconic products of American culture whether they be in film, video or actually products we consumed. So even back in the sixties, he was very aware of this part of our culture. Which as we all know in 2014, has only increased probably a thousand fold.”

“I think everybody knows Andy Warhol’s name, even non-art people, that’s a name they might know because he was such a personality”, Water said.

Hilary Braysmith, USI associate professor of art history, said, “I think his photography is equally influential as his graphic works, his more famous pictures of Marilyn. In terms of the evolution of photography and experimentation, like painting on them or the celebrity fascination, I think he was really ground-breaking in that regard.”

The Polaroid format is not what made Warhol famous, however, he is in the company of other well-known photographers who used the camera, such as Ansel Adams, Chuck Close, Walker Evans, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Helmut Newton.

Wilkins said, “[Warhol] liked the way photo booths and the Polaroid’s front flash looked”. She explained how Warhol’s adoption of the Polaroid camera revealed his process. According to Wilkins, Warhol was able to reproduce the Polaroid photograph and create an enlargement of it, which he then could use to commit the image to the silk screen medium by applying paint or manipulating them further. One of the silk screens exhibited at USI this time was the Annie Oakley screen print called “Cowboys and Indians” from 1987.

Wilkins also said Warhol was both an artist and a businessperson. “As a way to commercialize his work, he would make a blue Marilyn and a pink Marilyn and a yellow Marilyn, and then you could pick your favorite color and buy that. It was a very practical salesman approach to his work. He was very prolific but very business minded about that.”

“He wanted to be rich and famous and he made lots of choices to go that way”, Wilkins said.

Kiara Perkins, a second year USI art major, admitted she was willing to skip class Thursday night to attend the opening exhibit but then circumstances allowed for her to attend the exhibit. Why did she so badly want to attend? “It’s Warhol. He is a legend.”

For Kevin Allton, a USI instructor in English, Warhol was also a legend. He said, “Andy Warhol was the center of the Zeitgeist for the 20th century and everything since. He is a post-modern diety.”

Allton said he had only seen the Silver Clouds installation before in film. The Silver Clouds installation were silver balloons blown up with helium, and those balloons filled one of the smaller rooms in the gallery. “I thought that in real life it was really kind of magical,” Allton said. “I smacked them around.”

Elements of the Zeitgeist were also playfully recreated on USI’s opening night. In her opening remarks for attendees, Waters pointed out those features to attendees, noting the touches of the Warhol Factory, or the studio where he worked, that were present around them. She pointed to the refreshment table with Campbell’s Soup served with “electric” Kool Aid and tables adorned with colorful gumball “pills”. The music in the background was from such bands as The Velvet Underground.

The big hit of the evening, Wikinews observed from the long line, was the Polaroid-room where attendees could wear a Warhol-like wig or don crazy glasses and have their own Polaroid taken. The Polaroids were ready in an instant and immediately displayed at the entry of the exhibit. Exhibit goers then became part of the very exhibit they had wanted to attend. In fact, many people Wikinews observed took out their mobiles as they left for the evening and used their own phone cameras to make one further record of the moment — a photo of a photo. Perhaps they had learned an important lesson from the Warhol exhibit that cultural events like these were ripe for use and reuse. We might even call these exit instant snap shots, the self selfie.