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THE BAXTER GALLERY’S LAST GASP

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Caltech’s Baxter Art Gallery will close July 31 with its final exhibition, “25 Years of Space Photography,” a collection from the school’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that includes 140 black-and-white and color photographs taken during NASA’s unmanned space missions.

Explaining the gallery closure, Caltech’s public relations director Tom Branigan paraphrased the words of president Marvin L. Goldberger, who ordered the closure last June for fiscal reasons. “The gallery does not affect the life of enough students to justify its existence here,” Branigan said.

Campus art courses will continue, Branigan said, as will exchange programs, now in progress with the Pasadena Art Center College of Design.

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“There is also still hope that the gallery may be relocated within the community,” he commented.

“Off the Street,” the urban-inspired multimedia exhibit housed in the old city print shop, (corner of First Street and Central Avenue) will remain on the street for an additional month.

The Cultural Affairs Department has announced that a $3,000 grant from Dr. Guenther Joetze, the Los Angeles Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, will extend the show’s closing date to June 30. The exhibit was originally scheduled to close today.

“We are pleased with the success of ‘Off the Street,’ ” said Fred Croton, Cultural Affairs’ general manager. “We are especially grateful to Dr. Joetze for the funding allowing us to extend the exhibit.”

The J. Paul Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities has announced the first group of scholars to take residence at the Santa Monica center. The 11 international scholars are Janet Cox-Rearick, Hunter College; Thomas Gaehtgens, Free University of Berlin; H. Wiley Hitchcock, Brooklyn College; Jan Kott, State University of New York at Stony Brook; Hans Luthy, Swiss Institute for Art Research; William L. MacDonald, formerly of Yale University and Smith College; John Onians, University of East Anglia at Norwich, England; Stephen E. Toulmin, University of Chicago; W. Wesley Trimpi, Stanford University, and Catherine Wilkinson Zerner, Brown University.

The scholars, whose fields range from Roman architectural to American musical history, will form the core of the center’s Visiting Scholars and Conferences Program, designed to further its goal of fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue between art historians and scholars. The group will reside at the center during the 1985-86 academic year.

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Armand Hammer has given New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art $1 million to renovate its Equestrian Court, the centerpiece of its Arms and Armor Department which houses a large collection of European, Islamic and Japanese weaponry.

First installed in 1956, many of the 1,300 objects in the comprehensive exhibit are still in storage. The gift will kick off a fund drive for the renovation (scheduled to begin early next year) that will enable expansion and modernization of existing gallery space.

The collection, which includes the cavalcade of “Knights in Shining Armor,” is “one of our most popular,” said Helmut Nickel, museum curator of Arms and Armor. Until now, he noted, “We have never been able to shut down the exhibit, even for a short time, because of heavy visitor traffic.

“It will probably take us a couple of years to get the galleries in the shape we want them,” Nickel said, but added that closure for renovation will “only be for a very short time.”

Presenting the gift to the museum in mid-May, a press release quoted Hammer saying, “At a time when we are threatened by the most destructive weapons of all times, we should forever keep in mind these historical artifacts, which for centuries have been used in man’s battle against man.”

“The Jacaranda Festival,” a two-day celebration of children, art, and the blue-blossomed Jacaranda trees, begins Saturday at noon at Barnsdall Art Park, 4814 Hollywood Blvd. The event culminates a participatory exhibition at the Park’s Junior Arts Center designed and created, as is the festival, by artist George Herms.

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Children’s races, parades and workshops are planned, along with a production of “Jacaranda Follies” (Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m.), starring Llyn Foulkes and his “Music Machine.” Poetry readings and Andy Scheuss’ sculpture round out the affair, and on Sunday, at 2 p.m., a “Sunday Open Sunday” program will offer free art workshops for children and their parents. Herms, a sculptor, painter and poet, has produced the festival and exhibit for the city’s Cultural Affairs Department as artist-in-residence at Barnsdall. For further information and necessary reservations to the free “Jacaranda Follies,” call (213) 485-4474.

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