Claremont institutions get $4-million ceramics gift

$4-million ceramics gift

Thanks to a grateful alumna from the class of 1949, Scripps College and the affiliated Claremont Graduate University are getting $4 million in dough to benefit art students learning to work with clay.

The gift for ceramic art programs at the two institutions in Claremont comes from Joan Lincoln and her husband, David, who live in Paradise Valley, Ariz. It includes a $3.5-million pledge to Scripps, funding a new, 3,000-square-foot ceramics building and an endowment for various ceramic art studies programs and exhibitions, and $500,000 to establish an endowment for graduate student scholarships at Claremont Graduate University.

With the gift comes a chance for the two institutions “to recapture their place as preeminent educators of ceramic artists,” the Scripps College president, Lori Bettison-Varga, said in a prepared statement.

-- Mike Boehm 48 million watch Obama

More than 48 million people tuned in for President Obama’s first State of the Union speech Wednesday night, 4 million less than watched his first joint address to Congress in February 2009, shortly after taking office.

Obama’s 70-minute speech, which aired on 11 networks, drew a larger audience than all but two of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses, according to Nielsen. More than 51 million tuned in for Bush’s first official State of the Union in 2002, shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and 62 million watched in 2003.

President Bill Clinton’s first official State of the Union in 1994 drew 45.8 million viewers.

-- Matea Gold Berlin court rules on posters

A poster collection looted by the Gestapo should stay in the Deutsches Historisches Museum even though the legal owner is the American son of a dentist forced to flee Germany before World War II, a Berlin court ruled Thursday.

A panel of three judges upheld an earlier ruling that Peter Sachs, the son and heir of Hans Sachs, is the rightful owner of the collection, which is valued at $6.3 million.

Yet the appeals court overturned a decision that Sachs is entitled to demand the return of the posters from the German government, which owns the museum together with Berlin state.

Sachs, a retired airline pilot from Sarasota, Fla., filed a lawsuit for the posters in 2008 after a German government panel rebuffed his claim.

“The German government now has to ask whether it wants to hold property that legally belongs to the heirs of Holocaust victims,” said Matthias Druba, Sachs’ Berlin lawyer. “I can’t imagine them saying, ‘It doesn’t belong to me but I can keep it.’ This decision is no excuse not to do the right thing.”

-- bloomberg news ‘Fockers’ moves to December

Universal is going to spend Christmas with the “Fockers.”

The studio has delayed the release of “Little Fockers,” the kid-focused sequel to its hugely successful “Meet the Parents” and “Meet the Fockers” comedies, to Dec. 22 from July 30.

The move gives Universal more time for post-production and tweaks to its big-budget comedy and also plugs a major hole in its holiday schedule. Universal had no films scheduled to come out during the lucrative Christmas season this year.

Last year, the studio’s romantic comedy “It’s Complicated” opened on Christmas Day. It has sold about $100 million in tickets in the U.S. and Canada so far despite competing against “Avatar,” “Sherlock Holmes” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.”

Christmas this year will be crowded as well. Other movies already scheduled to open between Wednesday, Dec. 22, and Friday, Dec. 24, include 20th Century Fox’s adaptation of “Gulliver’s Travels” starring Jack Black, Sony Pictures’ action flick “The Green Hornet” starring Seth Rogen, and the Katherine Heigl romantic comedy “Life as We Know It.”

-- Ben Fritz West End has a record turnout

London’s West End theaters enjoyed a record year in 2009, shaking off the recession and earning more than $800 million for the first time.

Attendance reached 14.3 million last year, a rise of 5.5% from 2008, and overall box-office revenue was up 7.6%. The figures were compiled from 52 major theaters in central London.

-- reuters Finally

Play it again: Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will be reprised at Disney Hall on April 25 when he again leads the orchestra in a performance of John Adams’ “City Noir” and Mahler’s First Symphony. Tickets go on sale Feb. 6.