New website window into two world wars
Wartime Canada is an online database that preserves historical Canadian documents from those wars and makes them accessible to the public

What Happened at Those Happenings?
It is now known as the first Happening, a mythical event that knocked painting and sculpture from their previously unassailable perches and paved the way for performance art

Baghdad wax museum offers window to Iraq’s eventful past
Baghdad’s wax museum features famous historical figures from Iraq’s past, but it remains unclear whether the facility will include a replica of Saddam Hussein

Springsteen gets museum exhibition
Fans of The Boss can view archival performance footage, personal artifacts such as his 1952 Fender guitar, iconic jeans and T-shirts, his Harley Davidson motorcycle, lyric sheets, notebooks, handbills and posters from tours over his 40-year career

Holocaust museum tries to keep major exhibition
In the late 1980s, when organizers of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum were searching for Nazi-era artifacts, they sought to tell a story that was industrial in its magnitude and horrifying in its detail

French police investigate allegedly fake early photographs
At issue is a catalogue of 83 lots that supposedly came from the family of Charles Edouard de Crespy Le Prince (1784-1850), a minor painter and engraver (the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Museum in Montmorency has one of his works)

Acropolis of forgotten kingdom uncovered
Numerous archaeological excavations are underway at a huge site in Anatolia which will uncover an ancient and rich yet forgotten kingdom known as Tuwana from the darkness of history, which will be featured in an open-air museum

This Week's Horoscopes
Taurus - While you admire his technical execution and admit he had a nice gimmick going, you have no idea who Michelangelo's target market was supposed to be

British artist Damien Hirst to build 500 eco-homes
The properties are meant to set the standard for Britain's eco-blueprint, featuring green touches such as hidden rooftop wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels and state-of-the-art insulation

From Mars to London, With a Few Stops Along the Way
The biggest chunk of the meteorite flew from Morocco to Paris to New York, where the collector who bought it bicycled around town with it in his backpack

Making snakes less scary
The Venomous Reptile Museum opened its doors this month inside the House of Reptiles pet store on Pacific Highway, offering visitors the chance to see something they’ve likely never seen before

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Museum’s Vachon Collection of outstanding significance
The Canadian Museum of Civilization has earned a prestigious certification for its Vachon Collection of heraldic objects. The Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board has designated the Museum’s Vachon Collection as of "outstanding significance and national importance”.
Auguste Vachon, retired archivist and Herald Emeritus at the Canadian Heraldic Authority (Rideau Hall), and his wife Paula Gornescu-Vachon, a former museum cataloguer, donated their vast personal collection to the Museum of Civilization in 2010. It comprises 1,123 objects, such as plates, bowls and many ceramic pieces, each featuring Canadian coats of arms, armorial bearings, insignia or other heraldic symbols representing Canadian provinces, municipalities and national as well as local institutions.
The Vachons built up their collection over a period of 20 years, meticulously photographing and documenting the artifacts, recording each one’s name, date, manufacturer, country of origin and material, along with descriptive, historical and bibliographical notes. The oldest heraldic object dates from 1810, and a large number are from 1900 to 1914. Most were manufactured in England, while others are from Austria and Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), Germany, Canada, France and elsewhere.
“Thanks to this vast range of coats of arms and other symbols, we have gained an incredible visual, tangible survey of our country’s political history and identity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” said Dr. Xavier Gélinas, the Museum of Civilization’s Curator, Canadian Political History, and Assistant Director, Archaeology and History. “The collection represents the entire spectrum of Canadian heraldry, from the Crown, governors general and the federal government to provinces, municipalities, universities and military regiments.”
This political and symbolic significance is what makes the Vachon Collection truly valuable in the eyes of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board, an independent tribunal of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Yet many of the colourful and beautifully illustrated artifacts are interesting as individual objects, and lend themselves very well to both physical and virtual exhibitions. Some will be presented this summer as part of the exhibition Queen and Country: Elizabeth II and Canada, 1952–2012.

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