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As an admirer of the late Hollywood actor, James Stewart, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know there was a museum dedicated to his memory.

It’s in Indiana, Pennsylvania and it’s struggling for money. The fear is that the museum could go out of business like those dedicated to Liberace and Roy Rogers.

“It’s touch and go right now,” the museum’s Executive Director, Timothy Harley, told MSNBC. “We need a cash influx to help us get through this challenging time.”

Mr Harley said attendances at the Jimmy Stewart Museum had steadily declined in the past three years in line with the struggling economy, and as Stewart’s contemporaries withdraw from bus tour participation. State funding has dropped from $5,500 (£3,500) a year to $1,400 (£890).

Penny Perman of the Indiana County Tourism Bureau says the museum adds about $407,000 (£258,000) in tourist dollars to the local economy.

Both she and Mr Harley remain optimistic that ageing baby boomers will soon begin strolling the halls to admire a man revered for his role as George Bailey in the perennial holiday classic, It’s a Wonderful Life.
“This museum’s not just about Jimmy Stewart — it’s about America,” said Museum host Pat Ward. “His life takes us through the life of The Greatest Generation.”

by Andy Moreton

Wax figures of Lady Gaga have been unveiled at Madame Tussauds in London – and at seven others worldwide.

As befitting the pop diva’s style, the wax figures feature her in eight different outrageous outfits. The London one has her in a Philip Treacy-designed telephone hat with ‘a Giorgio Armani Privé midnight blue outfit with pagoda-style shoulders and vertiginous heels’ (my fashion adviser tells me).

The other figures are in New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood, Amsterdam, Berlin, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

In Amsterdam, the wax Gaga sports a conical towering pink and white hairdo, teamed with a white boxy jacket, a nude bodysuit and huge platforms. In Shanghai, she is wearing thigh-high patent boots and a Bowie-esque black lightning stripe over one eye.

The Gaga-fest was kept strictly secret and kept under wraps until the moment all could be revealed. The General Manager of Madame Tussauds in London, Edward Fuller, said: “The demand to include Lady Gaga has been overwhelming and we are more than happy to oblige.”

by Andy Moreton

If you’re going Gaga, Luxique offers a selection of luxury hotels in each of the eight cities.

Not many people would associate Las Vegas with a museum, but when it’s dedicated to the king of bling, Liberace, where else could it possibly be situated?

But now, sadly, the Liberace Foundation is to close the building on 1775 E. Tropicana Avenue that has exhibited the entertainer’s extensive costumes, cars, pianos, candelabra and jewellery for the past 31 years.

Foundation chairman, Jeff Koep, says the reasons are a steady decline in attendance, the off-Strip location and a waning interest in the flamboyant entertainer, who came to TV fame in the 1950s. Attendance last year was down to 50,000 from 450,000 just 12 years ago, and even that number was inflated by two-for-one discounts, and free admission on Sundays for Las Vegas residents.

Gloria Kritzler, who’s in charge of sales and marketing for Grand Canyon Tour & Travel, conceded that the tour buses no longer rolled up to the museum on a daily basis, but, she said, “people still look for this place. It’s part of history.”

A small, but colourful group of protesters recently staged a lunchtime demonstration against the closure. They called for an investigation into the financial management of the museum, which will close its doors for the last time on October 17th.

by Andy Moreton

Heading for The Strip? Check out Luxique’s selection of three of the most impressive luxury hotels in Las Vegas.

The popular Pompidou arts centre in Paris now has a smaller cousin 170 miles to the east.

The Metz Pompidou will have no permanent collection of its own but will show, in six-month or yearly rotations, parts of the vast collection of 65,000 contemporary works held by the Pompidou in Paris, most of which are never displayed.

There are also spaces in the spectacular new building for other contemporary art forms, including cinema, modern music and dance.

Metz, the capital of the Lorraine region, is hoping to recreate the success of the European arm of New York’s Guggenheim museum, which has transformed the fortunes of Bilbao in northern Spain since 1997.

The director of the Metz Pompidou, Laurent Le Bon, said: “For us it’s a little French Revolution – yet it’s such a simple thing. We are just saying that the big collections are for everyone, not just for Paris.”

This is the first stage in a drive to decentralise the French state’s enormous art collection. A branch of the Louvre will follow in 2012 in Lens, a former coal town only an hour from the Channel Tunnel.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique has an extensive selection of luxury hotels in France – including some of the best that Paris has to offer.

The ancient wall painting fragments that caused a feud between Egypt and the Louvre Museum in Paris (see my article Luxor Relics Repatriated ) have been returned to Cairo.

The five frescoed pieces – believed to be from a 3,200-year-old tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor – arrived by air last week.

French officials had maintained that the Louvre had acquired the fragments, known as steles, in good faith. But Egypt’s antiquities department said the Louvre bought the fragments in 2000 and 2003 despite knowing they’d been stolen in the 1980s. It broke off ties with the museum in October, saying they would be restored only when the fragments had been returned.

Egypt is stepping up demands for the restitution of many relics, including the Rosetta Stone, on display in the British Museum, and the bust of Queen Nefertiti in the Neues Museum in Berlin.

“Everything which was stolen from us should be given back,” said Zawi Hawass, the head of the antiquities department.

by Andy Moreton

If you’re travelling to Luxor to see the wonders of the Valley of the Kings, take a look at Luxique’s two selected luxury hotels: the Old Winter Palace and the Hotel La Moudira.

Some of the most important museums in Paris have been hit by strike action. Parts of the Louvre, as well as the Pompidou Centre and the Musée d’Orsay, were closed on Wednesday.

The strikers are upset about a government policy to replace only one in two of retiring public servants. After first being applied to government ministries, it’s now being extended to organisations owned by the state, including museums. There’s a fear that this will cripple French museums.

The work stoppage began at the Pompidou modern art museum on November 23rd and unions had warned that the strike could spread.

The Louvre welcomes 8.5 million visitors a year, the Pompidou Centre 5.5 million.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique has a super selection of luxury Paris hotels – both classic and modern.

A waxworks museum in a popular tourist area of Thailand has been forced to cover up a roadside billboard featuring a saluting Adolf Hitler.

The poster, put up on the main road into the seaside resort town of Pattaya, was condemned by the country’s Israeli and German ambassadors as ‘utterly tasteless’ and ‘totally unacceptable’.

The billboard reading in the Thai language ‘Hitler Is Not Dead,’ was part of an advertising campaign to promote the opening next month of the Louis Tussaud waxworks museum.

The manager, Somporn Naksuetrong, apologised. He said the idea had come from an advertising agency and was neither meant to cause offence nor to celebrate Hitler, merely to point out the infamy of an historic figure.

by Andy Moreton

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A new exhibition which opened last week at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris celebrates the life of Louis XIV, the Sun King.

The exhibition explores the paintings, sculptures, furniture and jewellery that helped France’s most famous and flamboyant monarch shape his all-powerful image. Some of the 300 pieces have not been seen publicly since the French Revolution in 1789.

Born in 1638, Louis ascended to the throne at the age of four and reigned for 72 years until his death in 1715.

It was Louis who decided to turn his father’s hunting lodge at Versailles into the dazzling centre of his universe, moving his court, government and military command there. The exhibition includes a 17th century painting of the reconstruction of Versailles, which has been loaned by Queen Elizabeth II.

Perhaps the most surprising portrait of Louis is a profile made from a wax mask of his face, dating from around 1705. He’s seen toothless and frail at the age of about 66.

Louis XIV, the Man and the King runs until February 7. Details are on the Versailles website.

by Andy Moreton

Versailles is about 12 miles south-west of the centre of Paris and a visit there is a pleasant way to spend a day while staying in the city. Luxique can offer the pick of the luxury hotels in Paris, as well as the elegant and newly refurbished Trianon Palace, which nestles in woodland less than a mile from the Palace of Versailles.

France has said it will return to Egypt five relics stolen from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor and sold to the Louvre museum in Paris.

A special commission of the French museums agency decided unanimously to give back the five painted wall fragments from the 3,200-year-old tomb. They were taken in the 1980s and ended up at the Louvre in 2000 and 2003.

Egypt’s antiquities authority had accused Louvre officials of knowing the pieces had been illegally imported when they bought them. The museum insists they were acquired in good faith.

Relations had become so strained that the Egyptians announced that they would suspend co-operation with the Louvre, which would have stopped work on an archaeological dig on the necropolis of Saqqara, south of the capital, Cairo.

by Andy Moreton

If you’re travelling to Luxor to see the wonders of the Valley of the Kings, check out Luxique’s two selected luxury hotels: the Old Winter Palace and the Hotel La Moudira.

The next time you visit the Louvre in Paris, you might feast your eyes on the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo … and the quarter pounder with cheese.

Yes, the ancient museum is to get its own McDonald’s – not actually inside the building, but among other retail outlets in the stone-walled underground approach called the Carrousel du Louvre.

Inevitably, there have been protests – just as there were when another American chain, Starbucks, opened a café close to the museum’s entrance last year.

“This is the last straw,” said one art historian at the Louvre, who declined to be named.

“This is the pinnacle of exhausting consumerism, deficient gastronomy and very unpleasant odours.”

The museum said in a statement that it welcomed the fact that visitors could enjoy ‘such a rich and varied restaurant offer’.

While Gallic gastronomes might wring their hands at this pervasion of (junk food), the ordinary French seem to beg to differ. While business in brasseries and bistros has been in freefall, McDonald’s opened 30 outlets in France last year and welcomed some 450 million customers – up 11 per cent on the previous year.

by Andy Moreton

The Louvre is just one of the wonderful places to visit in France’s romantic capital. Let Luxique help you book rooms at a luxury hotel in Paris.