Month: June 2017

Ariana Grande returned to the city to pay tribute with an energetic, all-star concert featuring Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Liam Gallagher two weeks after a suicide bombing killed 22 of her fans and injured dozens of others in Manchester, England.

Grande was emotional and teary-eyed throughout the One Love Manchester concert Sunday, which the British Red Cross said raised more than 10 million pounds ($13 million) for the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund, created for those affected by the attack at Grande’s May 22 show.  

She closed the three-hour-plus event with a cover of “Over the Rainbow,” crying onstage at the song’s end as the audience cheered her on.

“Manchester, I love you with all of my heart,” Grande said before the performance, and just after singing “One Last Time” with Miley Cyrus, Pharrell and more of the show’s performers standing behind her in solidarity.

Gallagher, formerly of Oasis, earned loud cheers from the audience as he emerged in his home town in surprise form. He sang and offered encouraging words to the crowd, who held inspirational signs in their hands.

One of the most powerful moments was when the Parrs Wood High School Choir performed Grande’s “My Everything” with the singer. The 23-year-old pop star held the young lead performer’s hand, both with tears in their eyes, as the rest of the singers joined in.

Perry also left a mark with her resilient performance: She sang a stripped down version of her hit, “Part of Me.” Backed by two singers and a guitarist, she delivered the song wearing all white, singing, “Throw your sticks and your stones, throw your bombs and your blows, but you’re not gonna break my soul.”

“I encourage you to choose love even when it’s difficult. Let no one take that away from you,” she said.

Bieber shared similar words onstage, even coming close to crying when he spoke about God and those who died at Grande’s show.

“[God] loves you and he’s here for you. I wanna take this moment to honor the people that were lost, that were taken,” he said. “To the families, we love you so much. … Everybody say, ‘We honor you, and we love you.’”

Coldplay were also a crowd favorite, performing well-known songs like “Viva La Vida” and “Fix You.”

Grande performed throughout the show, singing her hits from “Side to Side” to “Break Free.” She even collaborated with others onstage: She sang Fergie’s verse on the Black Eyed Peas hit, “Where Is the Love” along with the group; she performed a duet with Cyrus; and she sang her debut song, “The Way,” with rapper Mac Miller.

Cyrus said she was “so honored to be at this incredible event” and performed “Happy” alongside Pharrell, who also sang “Get Lucky.”

“I don’t feel or smell or hear or see any fear in this building. All we feel here tonight is love, resilience, positivity,” Williams said.

Take That, who are from Manchester, followed with fun energy that the crowd danced to.

“Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected by this,” singer Gary Barlow said. “We want everyone to stand strong.”

Robbie Williams also performed, changing some of his lyrics of “Strong” to honor the Manchester victims.

“Manchester we’re strong … we’re still singing our song,” he sang with the audience of 50,000.

The Manchester concert came the day after attackers targeted the heart of London, killing seven people. Authorities have said the attack started with a van plowing into pedestrians and then involved three men using large knives to attack people in bars and restaurants at a nearby market.

The One Love Manchester concert aired across the globe. Other performers included Little Mix, Niall Horan, Imogen Heap and Victoria Monet.
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A renowned gospel singer in Malawi has raised more than $20,000 in donations for the country’s only pediatric cancer ward. Patience Namadingo donated the money to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital during the event Saturday at the hospital in Blantyre.

Music by a Malawi police brass band graced the street march that gospel singer Patience Namadingo and his fans organized before the check presentation ceremony with hospital officials.

The event marked the end of Namadingo’s 40-day campaign known as “Song for a Penny” in which he was performing in people’s homes and work places for $4 a song, per person to meet the needs of the cancer ward.

At the final count, Namadingo raised $21,000. He said this is beyond his expectation.

“This is overwhelming. The feeling is just exciting. You do not see these things happening everyday, maybe in other people’s lives it does not happen at all. So it is a once in life time achievement, so I thank God.”

Initially Namadingo planned to raise $1,700 in 40 days, but he reached his target in just four days after big companies, like the National Bank of Malawi and Telecom Networks Malawi invited him to perform for their workers.

This forced him to increase his target to $7,000. He reached this target six days later.

Namadingo says the response to the initiative has given him motivation to do more charity work.

“This is just the beginning. It has proven that Malawians are warm hearted people. So this is not the only problem Malawi is facing. Malawi is facing a lot of problems. So we are going back on the table and we plan on where is the next solution.”

More than 300 children with cancer seek treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital every year.

The ward has just a 25-bed capacity.

Hospital officials say the facility lacks sheets, needles and other supplies.

Linley Chewere, the Deputy Director for the hospital, told VOA the donation will also help meet other pediatric needs.

“The donation will not only assist the cancer ward, but it will extend to other children’s ward. We are planning to rehabilitate the Higher Dependency Unit for children where very sick children are admitted. From there, they move to different wards.”

Namadingo enlivened the occasion with a live performance to fans and well-wishers who patronized the two-hour event.

 
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Chef Majed cracks eggs into a mixer and blends mayonnaise when we meet in Washington. He tosses fresh greens in a food processor, and he seasons the mix. It’s part of a thick, yellow sauce he’ll use to coat chunks of chicken skewered for kabobs, just like his mom used to make.

“The kitchen plays a big role for every family in Syria,” he tells me. “My mother is an excellent cook. I used to help her and learn from her. … I haven’t seen her in five years. I wish I can see her and taste her cooking, because I consider her the greatest.”

Majed, who asked VOA not to use his last name, began his journey to America when his parents urged him to leave Syria amid constant war.

Watch: Aspiring Chefs Thrive at Washington Restaurant Incubator

First stop, Jordan

He found refuge in Jordan where he stayed for three years. But social media reminded him of why he fled.

“My hometown was subject to shelling and strikes. We weren’t able to see or go back to our house. I … started to see my city and my home in pictures on Facebook and on the internet. I saw pictures of my home in ruins. … It hurts me to think about it now.”

Meanwhile, he struggled to find a job.

“The Jordanian police prohibited me from working, and there was no help from the government. I was living in a house, and I had to pay rent.”

When he ultimately found work, he found new challenges.

“I had to keep it a secret. In a secret place. In any moment I could have been taken away by the police, deported back to Syria or taken to a camp.”

Love and marriage

But as in many great stories, love happened, and Majed got married.

“I wasn’t able to prove my marriage for eight months in the Jordanian court,” he says with a smile. “It was problematic yet comical at the same time. My wife was pregnant and about to give birth at any moment, and we weren’t married by law. And in our countries this is a very big problem.”

But then his phone rang, and his life was again about to change. He and his fledgling family, he now had two daughters, were going to the U.S. as refugees.

“I was so happy,” he says.

Foodhini

Chef Majed now cooks for an online restaurant called Foodhini that works with immigrant and refugee chefs who prepare traditional dishes from the lands they fled.

Owner Noobstaa Philip Vang is a refugee from Laos who came to the U.S. with his parents after the Vietnam War.

“I … was just really missing some of my mom’s home cooking and wished I could just go to auntie or grandma in the neighborhood and just buy some of their food,” he says.

And so, Foodhini was born. It’s one of 70 food businesses growing at Union Kitchen in what’s called a “food incubator,” where fledgling businesses without the means for a brick-and-mortar operation rent space in a professional kitchen.

And while the kitchen, the country and the language are new, Majed’s cooking transports him back to the old life that he knew.

“Any dish I make reminds me of Syria. Reminds me of my country, my family, my mother. Every dish is a reminder.”

Seemingly worlds away from the ravages of war back home, Majed now optimistically looks toward the future.

“Like any father I have a dream for my girls that they have a bright future. I have worked to give them a generous life so that they wouldn’t be in need of anything … whether it be schools, university, or anything. When they told me I would be coming to America, I dreamed like anybody else that I would live with my wife and kids a bountiful life. And God willing, life will be good and I will be able to provide.”
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Fans of the Juventus team watching the Champions League soccer final rushed out of a Turin piazza in panic Saturday after witnesses reported being spooked by a loud sound.

At least one person was carried away on a stretcher, and ambulances and firefighters were at the scene.

Thousands of people had gathered at Piazza San Carlo to watch the match pitting Juventus against Real Madrid on giant TV screens. At a certain point, hundreds ran in a near-stampede from the square’s center. Witnesses reported hearing a loud sound that sparked the alarm.

Within minutes, dazed fans in Juve’s trademark black-and-white jerseys returned and milled about amid the broken bottles and garbage littering the cobblestones.

The ANSA news agency said it was a false alarm.

Real Madrid won 4-1 in the match, played in Cardiff, Wales.
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Jack O’Neill, the legendary promoter of the neoprene wetsuit that makes it possible for surfers and divers to withstand cold water temperatures, has died at age 94.

O’Neill, known for his black leather eyepatch and bushy beard, was surrounded by family and friends when he died Friday in the small coastal community of Pleasure Point, California, according to the executive director of his nonprofit organization, O’Neill Sea Odyssey.

A spokesman for the company called O’Neill “an absolute titan of the surf industry.”

O’Neill started one of California’s first surf shops in a garage on the Great Highway in San Francisco in 1952. He is one of several people who claimed credit for inventing the wetsuit. Historians say Berkeley physicist Hugh Bradner was most likely the original designer.

O’Neill started a surf gear company that marketed surfboards and wetsuits when the industry was still in its early stages. He is so closely identified with the sport, and with the Santa Cruz area where he lived, that his image appears on a 16-meter outdoor mural near the site of his first surf shop. The site of the shop, now the home of a cocktail lounge, is marked with a commemorative plaque.

O’Neill acquired his signature eye patch in the 1970s when a surfboard hit him in the face. The patch, combined with short, bushy hair and a spiky beard, made his image an unforgettable part of Santa Cruz surf culture.

His business turned into a family venture, with his son Pat claiming to have invented the surfboard leash (which attaches to the ankle to keep the board from washing away in the ocean waves) and his son Tim taking charge of O’Neill Sea Odyssey, which teaches marine and environmental care to young people.

O’Neill’s death was the second blow to the California surfing community in less than a week. John Severson, founder of Surfer magazine, died last week at age 83. Severson’s magazine blossomed in the 1960s along with the popularity of the sport and helped turn a tightly woven surf culture into a glamorous symbol of “the good life” in sunny California.
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U.S. pop singer Ariana Grande has paid a surprise visit to young fans who were injured in a suicide attack on a concert she gave in Manchester last month, posing with them for selfies and signing t-shirts.

Grande returned to Britain on Friday to lead an all-star benefit concert on Sunday and quickly headed for a hospital in the northern English city where many of the injured are being treated.

The Manchester Evening News newspaper said she brought presents and chatted with young fans, including 10-year-old Jaden Farrell-Mann, who suffered fractures to both legs and shrapnel wounds and has undergone two operations.

“Jaden was just sat there watching TV and she walked in. She was absolutely amazed! It was a complete surprise,” her mother, Sharon, told the newspaper. “She’d met Prince William earlier today and then Ariana walked in.”

Adam Harrison told the BBC his daughter Lily “felt like a rock star” after meeting her idol late on Friday and was “chomping at the bit” to attend the concert.

The “One Love Manchester” concert will also feature Coldplay, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, Take That and the Black Eyed Peas.

It will take place at the Emirates Old Trafford Cricket Ground.

Fans who attended Grande’s show that was targeted by the bomber are being offered free tickets to the concert which will be broadcast on British television. Proceeds from tickets sold will go to the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund set up to aid grieving families and victims of the attack.

The attack by suicide bomber Salman Abedi on May 22 killed 22 people and wounded 116. Eleven people are in police custody as part of the police investigation into the attack.

 
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National parks traveler Mikah Meyer left Texas and headed to southern New Mexico, just in time to celebrate a milestone; he’s exactly one-third of the way through his 3-year journey to visit all 417 sites within the U.S. National Park Service.

He didn’t realize what spectacular beauty awaited him at his first two sites.

Geological wonders

While in Texas, Mikah had explored the natural beauty among the mountains and canyons of the Chihuahuan Desert, but he soon discovered other natural gems, this time hidden beneath the desert in southeastern New Mexico: the 119 limestone caves in Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

They were formed millions of years ago, when sulfuric acid dissolved the limestone along fractures and folds in the rock, leaving behind caves of all sizes.

Land of enchantment

As he explored one of the largest, Mikah said it was like looking up at the sky. “And in this case the sky that you’re looking at is full of stalactites. It’s basically this incredibly filled cave with stalactites and stalagmites everywhere, in crazy designs.”

Stalactites hang like icicles from the roof of a cave. They are made up of calcium salts and other minerals deposited by water seeping from cracks in the roof. Stalagmites form in the same way, rising up from water that drips to the floor of a cave. The two often meet and fuse into a single column, creating a picturesque form.

WATCH: White Sands, Mystical Caves Mesmerize Parks Traveler

“I have a picture of one that looks like Jabba the Hutt; it looks like a Star Wars character with nasty teeth,” Mikah said. “There is other one that looks like a bunch of spider webs hanging from the ceiling and others that look like chandeliers.”

Outside of the cave, Mikah noticed a huge flock of birds flying around. Come evening, the skies fill with thousands of bats — specifically, Brazilian (or Mexican) free-tailed bats. The 9-centimeter long creatures are among the most abundant North American mammals and reported to be the fastest flyer in the animal kingdom.

Experiencing the wonders of the cave helped Mikah understand why New Mexico’s nickname is the Land of Enchantment. “It’s one of the most otherworldly places I’ve been to on this entire journey so far,” he said.

Desert snow?

Heading north from the ethereal world of the caves, Mikah found himself in another surreal place… driving on a road covered with something that looked like snow…

“Growing up in Nebraska, this is what it looks like after a really heavy snow,” he noted.  

Except he wasn’t in Nebraska… he was in the middle of a desert. And what he was driving on, wasn’t snow.

It was white sand. Lots and lots of white gypsum sand, covering 712 square kilometers of desert, the largest gypsum dunefield in the world. White Sands National Monument preserves a major portion of this unique dunefield, along with the plants and animals that live there.

“The reason this white sand exists is partially because there used to be a lake,” Mikah explained. As the ancient lake dried up, it left behind the sand. “And because the sand is in between two mountain ranges, that’s what’s helped allow it to stay there,” he added. “So it’s a very, very unique opportunity to see a different ecosystem.”

Ocean of sand

Mikah had fun exploring those dunes, running up and down the glistening white sand in the white hot sun. At one point, he even swapped his sneakers for a snow saucer, using it to sled down the dune as he would have on a snowy hill.

Mikah also enjoyed a hike on the Alkali Flat Trail, a strenuous, 8 kilometer round trip. Despite its name, the trail isn’t flat, the National Park Service warns. Mikah hiked up and down dunes the entire way, with no shady refuge from the sun.

“When you’re in the main part of the park where you’re driving around, the sands have some bushes and green trees in them, so it’s not just like this pure field of sand,” Mikah said. “But when you go on the Flats Trail it really becomes nothing but basically an ocean of white sand.”  

“White Sands was a really big place for me because it was my 139th park site which marked exactly one third of the way through this journey,” Mikah said. He stamped his National Park Service “Passport” with a cancellation stamp to commemorate the milestone.

He ended his day at the site with a fitting tribute.

“I made it a goal to get there for sunset because I’d heard the sunsets there were magical, and I’m proud to say I made it… it was really just another otherworldly place.”

That may be one of the reasons the site is one of Mikah’s top four favorite parks so far.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park and White Sands National Monument are just two of 15 national park sites in New Mexico. Mikah, invites you to learn more about his journey through those enchanted lands by visiting him on his website, Facebook and Instagram.
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National parks traveler Mikah Meyer recently celebrated a milestone. He’s exactly one-third of the way through his three-year journey to visit all 417 sites within the U.S. National Park Service. He spent it exploring white sand dunes and mystical caves at two of New Mexico’s many national park sites. He shared highlights of his visits with VOA’s JulieTaboh.
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One year ago today, Muhammad Ali — arguably the greatest and most unforgettable athlete of the 20th century — lost his decades-long fight with Parkinson’s disease, dying at age 74.

‘I am the greatest’

Originally named Cassius Clay, Ali was in Kentucky during an era of harsh segregation, and confronted its indignities from the start, carrying himself with confidence and pride despite the racist world around him.

He learned to box at the age of 12, motivated by the theft of his red Schwinn bike, which left the skinny youth humiliated — and determined.

‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’

From the start, Clay — who would later change his name to Muhammad Ali after joining the Nation of Islam — was driven, creating a punishing gym routine that he rarely deviated from.

He was a natural.

The young athlete possessed unmatched speed, agility and physical power. His signature was a kind of mental strength or attitude that he used to outwit his opponents.

Outside the ring, Ali was witty, charismatic, even vain (of his opponents, he would often say ‘He isn’t as pretty as me!”), and often spoke like hyped up poet:

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see. Now you see me, now you don’t. George thinks he will, but I know he won’t. 

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.

I’ve wrestled with alligators. I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning. And throw thunder in jail.

Although he had already made a name for himself, his big moment came in 1964, when he stepped into the ring for his first title fight against then heavyweight champ Sonny Liston. Ali taunted the champion mercilessly, once appearing unexpectedly at his home to goad him into the ring.

Ali instantly became a worldwide star after knocking out Liston in just six rounds. 

​Despite his brash charm, originality in the ring and stunning physical prowess, not everyone took to Ali.  Many publicly expressed their hatred.

By joining Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam and adopting a Muslim name, he alienated many Americans who were not ready to accept a black Muslim boxing star. 

“He threatened a sense of the racial order; he was, in his refusal to conform to any type, as destabilizing to many Americans. … He was, for many years, a radical figure for many Americans,”  wrote David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker Magazine and author of the 1998 biography “Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero.” ​

By 1967, Ali had won 29 title fights in six and a half years, an extraordinary record. But an unexpected turn of events was to keep the champ out of the ring for the next three years. 

Vietnam

When he refused to be inducted into the armed forces during the Vietnam War, the state boxing commission suspended him, stripping him of his title.  

Ali would not fight the Vietcong in Vietnam.

That move endeared him to many, African-Americans in particular, who watched as the heavyweight champion of the world courageously gave up his hard-won heavyweight boxing title in exchange for principles.

Ali returned to the ring in 1970, after a federal court upheld his petition for a state license.

He would triumph over and over again in the years to come: reclaiming his title in 1974 in a fight with Joe Frazier; the famed “Rumble in the Jungle” in what was then the country of Zaire, where he won a masterful fight against George Foreman; losing his title and winning it back; and, finally, losing it for the last time in 1980 to Larry Holmes.

He retired a year later. By then, the early effects of Parkinson’s disease on Ali’s body were clearly evident in his slurred speech.

As he grew increasingly more ill, he was rarely seen in public, living out the rest of his life quietly with his family in Kentucky and Arizona.

 
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The private studio of glass artist Dale Chihuly reflects his long obsession with collecting. Sheets of stamps cover one table; pocket knives are marshaled on another. Carnival-prize figurines from the first half of the 20th century line shelves that reach the ceiling.

Amid the ordered clutter, some items hint at more than Chihuly’s eclectic tastes: a long row of Ernest Hemingway titles in one bookcase, and in another an entire wall devoted to Vincent van Gogh — homages to creative geniuses racked by depression.

Chihuly, too, has struggled with his mental health, by turns fragile and luminous like the art he makes. Now 75 and still in the thrall of a decades-long career, he discussed his bipolar disorder in detail for the first time publicly in an interview with The Associated Press. He and his wife, Leslie Chihuly, said they don’t want to omit from his legacy a large part of who he is.

“It’s a pretty remarkable moment to be able to have this conversation,” she said. “We really want to open our lives a little bit and share something more personal. … Dale’s a great example of somebody who can have a successful marriage and a successful family life and successful career — and suffer from a really debilitating, chronic disease. That might be helpful for other people.”

Chihuly, who began working with glass in the 1960s, is a pioneer of the glass art movement. Known for styles that include vibrant seashell-like shapes, baskets, chandeliers and ambitious installations in botanical gardens and museums, he has said that pushing the material to new forms, creating objects never before seen, fascinates him.

Even in the past year he has found a new way of working with glass — painting with glass enamel on glass panes, stacking the panes together and back-lighting them to give them a visual depth. He calls it “Glass on Glass,” and it’s featured for the first time in the new Chihuly Sanctuary at the Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha, Nebraska, and at an indoor-outdoor exhibit opening June 3 at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

But the flip side of that creativity has sometimes been dark. He began suffering from depression in his 20s, he said, and those spells began to alternate with manic periods beginning in his late 40s.

“I’m usually either up or down,” Chihuly said. “I don’t have neutral very much. When I’m up I’m usually working on several projects. A lot of times it’s about a six-month period. When I’m down, I kind of go in hibernation.”

He still works but doesn’t feel as good about it. His wife noted that if he only went into the studio when he was up, he “wouldn’t have had a career.”

Asked what his down periods are like, Chihuly took a long pause. “Just pretty tough,” he said. “I’m lucky that I like movies. If I don’t feel good, I’ll put on a movie.”

Leslie Chihuly, who runs his studio, is more loquacious about the difficulties his condition has posed in their 25-year relationship.

They’ve tried to manage it as a family with various types of counseling, medication and a 1-to-10 scale system that allows him to communicate how he’s feeling when he doesn’t want to talk about it, she said.

Chihuly gave up drinking 15 years ago, and it’s been more than a decade since he was “life-threateningly depressed,” she said, though he’s never been suicidal.

“Dale has an impeccable memory about certain things, but there have been certain periods of time when he’s been hypomanic, as we call it, or depressed, and I’ll be the keeper for our family and our business around those difficult times,” she said.

She met him in 1992 after a mutual friend set them up. He was in a near-manic period, talking about an idea for bringing glassblowers from around the world to Venice, Italy, to display their art in the city’s canals. He had no plan and no funding, but she was eager to help him realize his vision — one that would eventually be depicted in the public television documentary “Chihuly Over Venice.”

Six months later, they traveled to an exhibit opening at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

“It was like the lights went out,” she said, choking back a sob. “All of a sudden the guy who was interested in everything … that guy wasn’t there.”

Dale Chihuly remained quiet as his wife described that moment. A tear fell from beneath the recognizable eyepatch he has worn since he lost sight in his left eye in a 1976 car crash.

Though the mood swings were new to Leslie Chihuly at the time, they were familiar to the other artists Chihuly worked with. Joey Kirkpatrick met him in 1979, when she attended Pilchuck Glass School, which Chihuly founded in the woods north of Seattle in 1971. It was a small summer workshop; the students constructed their own shelter. She and her partner, Flora Mace, spent many hours watching movies with him during his down periods.

“What amazed me about it is his persistence at picking the thing, his creative life, that would pull him along or keep him going through those times,” she said. “When he was up, he could call you up at Pilchuck on a Sunday night and say, ‘Meet me at the airport at 10 tomorrow, we’ve got a flight to Pittsburgh to go to some demonstration.’ It was always exciting. When he was down, there wasn’t that. It was quieter.”

Chihuly said the message he’d have for others struggling with the condition would be to “see a good shrink” and to “try to live with it, to know that when they’re really depressed, it’s going to change, before too long. And to take advantage when they do feel up to get as much done as they can.”
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New York’s Museum of Modern Art is boldly expanding its midtown Manhattan home that draws more than 3 million visitors annually from around the world — including those who came Friday to see the first completed phase of the $450 million project.

Spread over three floors of the art mecca off Fifth Avenue are 15,000 square-feet (about 1,400 square-meters) of reconfigured galleries, a new, second gift shop, a redesigned cafe and espresso bar and, facing the sculpture garden, two lounges graced with black marble quarried in France.

Still under construction are 50,000 square-feet (about 4,600 square-meters) of new galleries opening in 2019, bringing MoMA’s total art-filled space to 175,000 square-feet (about 16,000 square-meters) on six floors. The expansion will allow more of the museum’s collection of nearly 200,000 works to be displayed.

The project also will provide 25 percent more space for visitors to relax or have a sit-down meal.

The museum building, which opened in 1939, now nearly fills an entire city block and showcases works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, Vincent van Gogh and Frida Kahlo, to name just a few from the permanent collection. The complex fuses original architecture by Philip Goodwin and Edward Stone with Philip Johnson-designed additions in 1951 and 1964 and a new section by Argentine native Cesar Pelli in 1984, topped in 2004 by Yoshio Taniguchi’s $425 million expansion and renovation.

“We’re riffing off the DNA of MoMA’s history,” said Elizabeth Diller, whose Boston-based firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, was hired for the project, working with the Gensler firm in San Francisco. “This work has required the curiosity of an archaeologist and the skill of a surgeon.”

MoMA director Glenn Lowry wants to achieve much more than augmenting square footage. MoMA curators are embracing ethnic and cultural diversity that transcends established European artists through shows including, for instance, black and women artists. MoMA also is highlighting art tracing certain social periods — for example, female creativity in the decades after World War II that spawned feminism.

“The Museum of Modern Art’s renovation and expansion project will seek to reassure and surprise,” Lowry said.

Architecturally, he said, MoMA is “opening up, so you’re aware of the city” — by bringing the urban turf closer to visitors through an all-glass facade facing West 53rd Street, more window panels elsewhere and a rooftop lounge with a terrace.

Some galleries will be pliant, with partitions that can drop or be lifted, and ceilings of varying heights, depending on exhibition needs. Added studios and galleries will be set up for performances or film screenings.

The current, double-height entrance lobby will be reconfigured to ease visitor congestion that often results in lines reaching out onto the sidewalk. Demolition starts this month, and visitors will have to use alternative entrances.

Providing easier access inside is the historic Bauhaus staircase that was extended to reach down to the first floor.

The ongoing work includes some unseen improvements, with energy and water conservation that puts MoMA on track for the LEED Gold certification, a rating system that evaluates a building’s environmental performance.

MoMA has raised private funds for the nearly half-a-billion-dollar project; entertainment magnate David Geffen alone donated $100 million.

Admission is $25, but the ground level with its galleries is open to the public free of charge.

In the newly completed area, the first exhibition opens June 12. “Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive” will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the American architect’s birth.
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In the latest offering from the tourism industry, trips with a social or educational mission are now being offered to travelers who want more from a holiday than sea, sun and shopping.

This summer, vacationers can pair a visit to the colonial Colombian city of Cartagena with an program aimed at raising awareness about the modern slave trade.

“I have been asked whether the tour, given its theme, was ‘depressing,’ ” Karen Weiss, who took a similar trip to Thailand, wrote on the tour organizer Ecpat-USA’s website.

“I assure you that it was not,” she wrote. “It combines the excitement of visiting a fascinating country with a rare opportunity to broaden your understanding of the problem of human trafficking.”

Nearly 46 million people globally are living as slaves, trafficked into tourism, mining and farming, or sold for sex, trapped in debt bondage or born into servitude, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index by rights group Walk Free Foundation.

While public awareness has grown in recent years with new legislation, campaigning by NGOs and crackdowns in the private sector, campaigners say tourism can be a major force for change.

One-fifth of July’s Cartagena trip — organized by the anti-trafficking group Ecpat-USA and travel company Altruvistas — will be spent visiting typical tourist spots.

For the rest of the trip, the group will meet with NGOs and government representatives and learn about child trafficking.

“Our journey is made to create an advocate, so when they come home they’re very active on the issue, and inspire them to be involved,” Michelle Guelbart of Ecpat-USA told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Hotels sign ‘Code’

All hotels used sign up to “The Code,” an industry initiative to boost awareness and stop child sex exploitation.

Guelbart said this provides a double benefit: educating travelers and promoting responsible businesses.

From an individual trip fee of $2,050, Ecpat-USA gets a $500 direct payment. Guelbart said people who take the trips remain engaged, which is more valuable than a one-time donation.

Ecpat-USA and Altruvistas have run two similar anti-trafficking advocacy trips to Thailand, home to a vibrant sex market fed in large part by human trafficking.

Altruvistas CEO Malia Everette has worked in both travel and trafficking issues for about 15 years and says advocacy is a new form of tourism.

Her sustainable travel company runs about 80 trips annually, of which a handful focus on trafficking, with very different participants. She has taken school students to Ghana to learn firsthand about slavery and accompanied trafficking survivors to Peru to meet anti-slavery groups that help people like them.

Previous trends for ethical travel have included volunteering, ecotourism and travel that benefits local people.

Mark Watson of the Ethical Tourism group said advocacy tourism can help in raising awareness of the issues, but that the impact of people trying to help out locally was debatable.

“In most cases there’s not much you can do,” he said. “There’s professional people out there doing the proper stuff. What they need is resources and money. What they don’t really need is tourists turning up and getting in the way.”

Watson said the best way to help is to take ethical holidays and donate money to organizations on the ground rather than trying to do more while traveling.

Everette said the explosion of ecotourism in the 1970s and 1980s helped change mass travel for the better, but there was little emphasis on the people directly affected by tourism.

“As we saw tourism booming, we also saw the commodification of people in sex tourism, sex trafficking and cultures just being bought rather than respected,” she said.

‘Voluntourism’

Campaigners have long raised concerns about the impact of tourism, questioning the treatment of vulnerable people when travelers engage in so-called poverty tourism, and the real value of volunteering trips — or “voluntourism” — for locals.

James Sutherland of children’s charity Friends International said that “voluntourism” in Cambodia had encouraged the spread of unregistered orphanages that can house trafficked children.

“If we can continue to foster awareness that everyone can play a part by being a responsible tourist, we may begin to progress in ensuring tourism is not exacerbating issues, but is actually playing a positive role in ending them,” he said.

Ecpat-USA’s Guelbart said volunteering was altogether different from the advocacy trips she runs.

“When people are volunteering, it’s more for them and not actually for the people in the area,” she said — unlike her advocates, who “go home and create a project that lasts.”
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Black Eyed Peas leader will.i.am said in a recent interview that Fergie is no longer in the group, but later said the songstress “will always be a Pea.”

Will.i.am’s interview with Ahlan! magazine caused a frenzy online Thursday with the suggestion that Fergie was no longer a member of the pop group. A day later, will.i.am said in a statement: “Fergie is family and will always be a Pea. She is focused on her solo album which we fully support.”

In the interview, will.i.am said that “nobody is replacing Fergie” and that the Black Eyed Peas are working on a new project. He said former Pussycat Doll leader Nicole Scherzinger would be featured on the project but didn’t say how much involvement she would have (Scherzinger was offered a spot in the Peas before Fergie.)

Representatives for the Black Eyed Peas and Fergie didn’t immediately reply to emails seeking clarity about Fergie’s role in the group.

The Black Eyed Peas released its debut in 1998 as an eclectic hip-hop trio with will.i.am, apl.de.ap and Taboo. Fergie first appeared on the group’s third album, 2003’s “Elephunk,” helping them achieve mainstream success. The group went on to win Grammy Awards, sell millions of albums and top the pop charts with hits from “Where Is the Love” to “Boom Boom Pow.”

Fergie also had major success with her 2006 solo debut, which was heavily produced by will.i.am. She announced last week that she left Universal Music Group, the longtime label behind her and the Black Eyed Peas, to launch her own record label called Dutchess Music through BMG.

She plans to release her sophomore album, “Double Dutchess,” this year.
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