Wax Museum

WASHINGTON - Education and outreach programs at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in East Baltimore got a boost last night when the U.S. Senate, as expected, approved a measure that would pour $5 million into the cultural center's coffers. The House approved this week an identical bill to help expand civil rights and violence-prevention initiatives at the nation's first wax museum honoring African-Americans. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings introduced the National Great Black Americans Commemoration Act of 2003, which would add Justice Department money to state, city and private funds aimed at expanding exhibits, facilities and programs at the Baltimore museum, which drew 220,000 visitors last year.

Visitors to Robert Moton Elementary School this evening should easily find the school's "wax museum" exhibit. It's in the classroom with the castle walls. Fifth-grade pupils at the Westminster school are showing off their knowledge of the medieval period with costumes, sets and scripts emulating the people, places and events that defined the Middle Ages. "It is really interesting to see the clothes and how different everything was," said pupil Jane Sussman -- who, dressed in vibrant velvet robes that denoted royalty and wealth, portrays Eleanor of Aquitaine.

A major expansion of a museum that honors African-American history and, in part, celebrates tearing down the walls of segregation began yesterday when the first crumbly wall came down to make way for construction. Sitting in the seat of a piece of heavy construction equipment, Mayor Martin O'Malley operated a giant metal arm that took a bite out of the first of 48 East Baltimore buildings that are being torn down to make way for the expansion of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum. The museum attracts a quarter-million visitors a year with its wax figures of great leaders, inventors and religious figures, as well as scenes from the slavery and segregation eras.

Facing serious financial problems, the Contemporary Museum has closed the exhibition space at its Centre Street headquarters and is beginning a new fund-raising campaign to save the institution. The museum's staff will remain in the building, however. Nonetheless, board chairman Michael Salcman vigorously insisted upon the institution's continuing viability. "As Mark Twain once said, reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated," he said, adding that he hopes the gallery will re-open in a year.

Vivat! St. Petersburg and Black History Month converge this evening in celebration of Alexander Pushkin, the nonpareil Russian poet, at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum. Pushkin (1799-1837), a world literary figure considered comparable to Shakespeare, was the great-grandson of an African slave named Abram Hannibal, who was brought to Imperial Russia as a boy from Turkey. Hannibal became a favorite of Czar Peter the Great, a brilliant engineer and an illustrious general. Peter's daughter, Empress Elizabeth, granted him vast estates and thousands of serfs.

Take a walk with the Wanderers Start off the new year on a good foot by taking a walk with the Freestate Happy Wanderers. You have your choice of a 10K (6.2 miles) or a 5K (3.1 miles) on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Both begin at the Owen Brown Community Center, 6800 Cradlerock Way in Columbia. Start anytime between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. and finish by 4 p.m. Along the way, take a Harry Potter trivia quiz, if you're so inclined. After the trek, return to the center for refreshments, including homemade soup, bratwurst, hot dogs and beverages.

True, the glasses are goofy-looking, and the strain on your eyes can be a bit much. But when 3-D movies are good, they're worth the headaches. Like when the evil henchman from House of Wax jumps out of the audience and onto the screen. Or when a desperate Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder lunges for your hand while she's being strangled. Or when the eyeball in Friday the 13th Part 3 lands in your lap. Ladies and gents, that's entertainment: the kind of good time only a 3-D movie can provide.

Malcolm Kalp, 63, a former U.S. Embassy worker in Iran who survived 444 days of captivity after he was taken hostage in 1979, died in Boston on Sunday in a two-car accident allegedly caused by a drunken driver. Mr. Kalp was the embassy's commercial officer when he and 51 others were taken hostage Nov. 4, 1979. He said he tried to escape three times, and was beaten and held in solitary confinement for 374 days as a result. His captors accused him of being a CIA spy. Raven Chanticleer, 72, the flamboyant founder of the Harlem African-American Wax and History Museum, died of lung cancer March 31 in New York.

A wax figure of Bea Gaddy -- a woman called by many the "Mother Teresa of Baltimore" -- was last seen gracing the second floor of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, rubbing shoulders with the likes of civil rights leader Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., singer Billie Holiday and impeccably dressed ragtime composer Eubie Blake. But in recent weeks, a vacant patch of carpet is the only sign that Gaddy was part of the Baltimore museum's exhibit showcasing famous Marylanders. That will change Wednesday, when the museum unveils a new wax rendering of Gaddy on what would have been the Baltimorean's 69th birthday.