In fact, according to the Center for Arts Education, a watchdog group, while the hiring of arts teachers has indeed inched up, spending on arts supplies, such as musical instruments, theater costumes, crayons and construction paper, decreased by 68 percent, or $7.2 million, since the start of the 2006-2007 school year. Spending on partnerships with cultural institutions has fallen by 31 percent. So while the number of arts teachers is up, the means for doing their job have been slashed.

Advocates for the arts argue that the decrease in spending is the result of a larger problem in the school system: increased (and understandable) pressure on principals to allocate resources for test prep and improving math and literacy scores, at the expense of a well-rounded education. Since 2007, when the Department of Education ended dedicated per-student arts funding, school principals have had discretion over how to spend monies earmarked for arts funding, according to Paul King, executive director for the Office of the Arts and Special Projects at the city's Department of Education. And some, indeed, some have spent it on arts: From 2004 to 2009, the number of arts teachers has increased by 14.5 percent. But nearly 20 percent of city's roughly 1,600 public schools still lack a certified arts teacher in even one of the four arts disciplines: art, music, theater and dance.

School principals "are getting a mixed message from the Department of Education," said Jerry Ross, dean of the School of Education at St. John's University. "The chancellor says, 'Don't forget about the arts. I gave you money for the arts'-but they're being evaluated on test scores." New York City schools get grades just like students do, from A through F. And "85 percent of the 'School Progress Report' [prepared annually for each school] is based on improvements of test scores," said Doug Israel, director of policy and research at the Center for Arts Education. "And this determines whether or not a school is going to stay open or closed. This determines principal bonuses and teacher bonuses."

Victoria Bousquet, whose teenage sons attend H.S. 590, Medgar Evers Preparatory School, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said she did a lot of research into what kind of commitment to the arts area schools made when she was picking the one her children would attend, and she found it varied drastically. "A lot of people regard arts as one of those by-the-way things, but it's an important part of having kids engaged in school," said Ms. Bousquet. "My younger son was in the marching band last year, and having to perform in front of people certainly made him more confident in himself."

Rose Greco, assistant principal at M.S. 421 in Manhattan, said, "Arts are literacy, too. They're another form of reading, writing and communicating. All the things we're trying to teach in literacy are also embedded in the arts."

The decision about whether, and to what degree, to offer the arts in public schools hasn't always been up to principals. In 1997, Mayor Giuliani and the Department of Education founded a program called Project ARTS (arts restoration throughout the schools), which allocated roughly $64 per pupil for the specific purpose of hiring new arts teachers, purchasing arts supplies and fostering partnerships with cultural institutions. The money had to be spent in one of these areas. The initiative was part of an attempt to restore funding for the arts in education to levels it had been before the 1970s, when the city faced a fiscal crisis and drastically cut spending, letting more than 14,000 teachers go-mainly arts and music instructors.

"In essence, a generation of city schoolchildren grew up with little or no exposure to the arts," reads a briefing paper prepared for the Committee on Education in 2009, referring to the generation from the 1970s through the founding of Project ARTS.

Today, the schools still receive more than $60 per pupil, technically earmarked for arts education. The allocated amount will be $61.85 in fiscal year 2011, according to Education Department spokesperson Matt Mittenthal, down from $63.44 in fiscal year 2007. But the money is now labeled "Supplemental Arts Funding"-a pretty phrase that comes with no requirements or restrictions on how the funds should be used, and each principal may spend it as he or she sees fit.

"The sad thing is that we're at a point where art is not a mandate in the school system," said Tom Cahill, executive director of Studio in a School, an organization founded in 1977 in response to the fiscal crisis that, in his words, "devastated city arts education."

Mr. Israel said he fears that without a guarantee that principals will devote resources to the arts, "more and more, students [will be] forced to cram and memorize for standardized tests. They're not being taught to think and understand, discuss and rationalize, be creative and innovative. They're being taught to be test-takers." He called the situation a "tale of two cities," where half of New York's public-school students receive art, music, dance and theater-and the other half may haphazardly receive the arts in one grade and not another, or not at all, according to the priorities of each principal. Inner-city schools, where test scores may be lower, are more likely to have the arts cut first.

"Convert a music room to a reading lab. That's the first step. Then you're asking a music teacher to deliver music by pushing a cart around to different rooms. And then the music program withers," Mr. Israel said.

For Celeste Douglas, principal at M.S. 57, Ron Brown Academy, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, that hypothetical became her reality. In 2006, Ms. Douglas had to convert a music practice room to a regular classroom, due to space and budget concerns. The school hasn't offered music instruction since.

But "principals have to be savvy," she said. Ms. Douglas partnered with a program called Broadway Junior, which is supported by the Schubert Foundation, to bring musical theater to her school, and she also received a School Arts Support Initiative grant. The impact was immediately visible, she said.

"The arts revived my school community. I've seen increased attendance ... behavior problems have really decreased. And I've seen increased parent involvement," said Ms. Douglas. Going forward, "our children will never love school if we don't give them something else. You'll find kids checking out of school in the second grade ... because they think school is all about reading and math," she argued. "You've got to find a hook," she said. With the help of Broadway Junior and the grant funding, her students put on a production of Thoroughly Modern Millie this year. Over a hundred parents attended the show, said Ms. Douglas-turnout only matched by the school's academic awards ceremony and barbecue. "You hear them saying, 'I didn't think my child could do this."

A resolution currently before the City Council would endorse a measure calling for school principals to spend more than $60 per student on the arts. But it's been in limbo since it was first introduced, in 2007, and would still have to be made policy by the mayor even if passed; the Center for Arts Education does not expect the resolution to pass under the current administration. They have had some Democratic mayoral hopefuls commit to it, and are optimistic for action at a later date, said Mr. Israel.

Of course, the Department of Education and the Mayor may choose to restore dedicated funding whenever they see fit. For now, however, it remains up to principals to determine what k
ind of arts education this generation of city schoolchildren receive.

editorial@observer.com

"When they're trying to figure out what made our civilization kick, Elvis will be thought of," said Doug Norwine, a specialist in music and entertainment memorabilia at Heritage Galleries. On Aug. 14, in Memphis, Heritage will auction off 270 items owned by or related to the singer, including the white piano that graced Elvis' Graceland home.

Estimated at a cool $1 million, the William Knabe & Co. grand piano comes with its original white vinyl-cushioned bench on gold legs (make that gold-colored metal). The sale also includes a pair of 14-karat lightning-bolt-design sunglasses he favored (bidding starts at $10,000), consigned by his optician, one of the many rings off his fingers, and a number of belts. Elvis's address and phone book, dating back to the 1950s, can be bought, plus a love letter he wrote his girlfriend, Anita Wood, when he was at war. In it, he writes, ever the romantic, that it will be a "blue Christmas."

Held in a ballroom in the Peabody Hotel, the same Memphis hotel that housed Elvis's preferred haberdasher, the auction is expected to draw fans from all over the world. As the singer (allegedly) died on Aug. 16, 1977, many fans traditionally come to Memphis that week for vigils and other events.

Authenticity is always a tricky issue with celebrity items. Pieces like the piano are being sold with letters of authenticity from a piano technician and from two of Elvis' friends. But Heritage also matched photographs of Elvis in front of the piano to the instrument (serial number 70545) to verify it was the correct piece, according to Mr. Norwine. "We never take the word of the consigner," he said. "In the Elvis world, the top collectors know everything."

A generation or two ago, the windows of most travel agencies or airline offices were lined, top to bottom, with tempting images of faraway places designed to lure the would-be traveler inside. But since the invention or widespread acceptance of television, glossy magazines and later the Internet, travel posters have been on the decline. Airlines, railroads, hotels and tourist boards found they could rely on flashier sources of advertising and stopped hiring artists to create paper windows to coveted destinations. Now those posters have turned into a historical record of their times-and into art.

On Aug. 4, Swann will auction off more than 400 posters, many of them travel images. This summer sale came about when the company realized it could expand on its annual winter success at selling ski-resort posters, said Glen Lowry, head of the company's poster division. (Ski posters for the Sun Valley Resort, a place essentially fabricated by a railroad company in the 1930s, were particularly popular.) The posters for sale next week mainly depict beachy, summer escapes: Bermuda, Los Angeles and Hawaii, for instance, are peopled with tan, happy vacationers exercising or relaxing on sandy, umbrella-shaded shores.

Travel posters related to golf and surfing are among the biggest sellers, given the popularity of those sports, but the real deals are in the colorful airline advertisements. An American Airlines poster, circa 1960, sells the viewer on Los Angeles with all its cluttered, cosmopolitan splendor and nearby ocean (suggested bid: $400), and a British Air poster depicting Bermuda shows off the candy-colored carriages that once dotted the island ($600).

One United Airlines poster, featuring Hawaii and three adventurous kayakers, subtly includes a small representation of Diamond Head, an outcropping on the island near Honolulu. That kind of understated detail will set a poster apart, said Mr. Lowry. It's estimated at $800, with its designer unknown.

How to choose? Typically, travel-poster collectors will pick a location for personal reasons: One took a honeymoon there, or another's dad worked at the airline featured in the poster. But many bidders, surprisingly, don't travel far from home. Mr. Lowry said their best seller is images of New York.

One evening in 1645, while dining, Rembrandt van Rijn realized that there was no mustard on the table. Rembrandt, so the story goes, bet his friend Jan Six that he could complete a sketch in the time it would take a servant to fetch the condiment. The master, a swift draftsman, won handily.

The prolific artist, though best known for his portraits, made hundreds of drawings and mass-produced them, at least in the style of 17th-century mass production, into prints. On Wednesday, July 21, Christie's will auction two prints executed by the artist during his lifetime (in other words, not made posthumously from his printing plates), and the estimates are extremely modest: They start at $8,000. 

How is this possible? In part, the recession has dented even Rembrandt. But there's more to the story than that: Geography matters, too. "Most Old Master prints valued above a certain threshold are auctioned off in London," where there is more of a market for them, said Tudor Davies, head of the Prints Department for Christie's in New York. Buyers in America are more interested in collecting Modern and contemporary prints, he said. 

Of course, it takes some detective work to discover which prints were done by Rembrandt himself.

The Abraham entertaining the Angels print (below) on the block must have been done within his lifetime, Mr. Davies said, because after Rembrandt's death, the copper plate the artist used for the image is known to have disappeared. It didn't resurface until more than three centuries later, linked to another artist of the time who was using the flip side for his own prints.

The Entombment (above) is another print Rembrandt worked over with his own hands. The scene's dark, theatrical atmosphere is the result of significant whitening Rembrandt did to increase contrast and to highlight figures' faces in the mournful nighttime scene. This print bears two stamps on the reverse side identifying the particular collectors who owned it over the years. Condition, though, is a determinant of price in fine art, and this print has "some pale staining at the sheet edges and slight surface scuffing," according to its condition report.

At the Christie's prints and multiples auction, 11 other Rembrandt prints are also for sale, most executed after his death. Estimates on those begin at $1,500. Mr. Davies said, "It's a big surprise to those of us who sell Rembrandt prints that they don't fetch more than they do."

The team decided to spend this afternoon taking in Lady Liberty and exploring downtown Manhattan, as bureaucrats in England, America, and Canada determine whether to allow the team to travel to the International Lacrosse Championship, using sovereign passports from the Iroquois Confederacy. After the U.S. cleared the team for travel yesterday, the U.K. has refused to grant the players visas without U.S. or Canadian passports, and team representatives have been negotiating with them throughout the day.

“There is movement in our discussions with the U.K.," said Chief Oren Lyons in a statement. But he said that he doesn't know if the issues will be resolved in time for the team to make it to their next game. The team has already forfeited the first match.

Charles Jacobs, a defenseman , said that the team  remain optimistic. "We never give up hope. That's not our style," he said.

As it is for many of the Iroquois lacrosse players, this trip is the first time Jacobs has been to New York City, though he played lacrosse in Long Island in the past. After the Statue of Liberty, he said he hoped to see the Empire State Building and Ground Zero.

The team has been staying in shape by practicing at Wagner College on Staten Island and at an athletic facility in Oyster Bay, said Denise Waterman, a member of the Nationals' Board of Directors who is traveling with the team.

"Both communities have been really gracious about hosting us last minute," she said.

Team members said they found the extended delay in New York tiring, with all the publicity, but they were glad for the opportunity to see the city. One player slipped away to get a vanilla ice cream cone, and others listened to music on headphones as reporters tried to ask questions.

"Coach is trying to keep us out of it," said Jacobs.

The Nationals have been forced to forfeit the first match of the lacrosse championship in Manchester, England, and it remains to be seen if they will make it across the pond for game two.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has expressed her support for the team, as have other local politicians.

"Senator Gillibrand is disappointed that the matter was not resolved in time for the team to participate in the tournament, said Glen Caplin, a spokesperson for the Senator. She plans to ask the State Department to work with the Canadian government and British governments, so that this kind of situation doesn't happen again.

Initially, the team had been barred from leaving the country by the U.S. State Department, but yesterday the State Department granted the team a one-time waiver for travel, along with letters guaranteeing them the right to re-entry.

Now, the UK has refused to accept the waiver and letters, saying they will only allow the players into the country if they come up with U. S. or Canadian passports.

"Like all those seeking entry into the U.K., they must present a document that we recognize as valid to enable us to complete our immigration and other checks," said a spokesperson for the U.K. Border Agency.

The team has said that using passports of another nationality would undermine their sovereignty and identity.

Although American Indians have used the Haudenosaunee passport for travel since the 70's, modern border control and increased security at airports have made the document increasingly outdated. It doesn't include a microchip, hologram, or other computer-readable information, for example. The Iroquois Confederacy has been in the process of modernizing the credentials for over two years, according to Chief Oren Lyons. They have already spent more than $1.5 million on the project.

James Cameron, the director of Avatar, has also taken up the Nationals' cause, donating $50,000 towards the team's expenses as they remain in the city. Since working on Avatar, he has become more engaged with the challenges facing indigenous peoples.

Chief Oren Lyons, of the Onondaga nation, is not surprised that once again his people have run into bureaucratic snafus from the U.S. government.

"The Onondaga have the first treaty with the United States," he said. "This is nothing new. We've been around a long time."

In addition to acting as faithkeeper and Chief of one of the six Indian nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy, Mr. Lyons is also the Chairman of the Iroquois National lacrosse team. The team has been grounded in New York since Monday, unable to travel to England for the International Lacrosse Championship games, because of security concerns surrounding their documentation.

The sovereign passports, which are issued by the Confederacy, may look suspect because of their hand-lettering and old-fashioned paper, but Native Americans have been using them for travel since the 1970's, according to Mr. Lyons.

"They're full of stamps, and re-entries," he said. "Why this came up at the last minute, we have no idea."

Under federal law, originating from the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, the sovereign passports may no longer fall under the heading of "acceptable."

But the U.S. State Department agreed today, after a three-day delay, to allow the team to travel to the UK for the championship games, using a "one-time waiver" for travel. The State Department still has not officially recognized the sovereign passports, but originally offered to grant the team members expedited U.S. passports for travel instead. The team refused this offer, saying it would undermine their national identity.

"The easy way out definitely would have been to take the [U.S.] passport that was offered to us by the State Department," said Percy Abrams, the Executive Director of the team. "This is our nationality. When we go to England, and when we present our credentials at the players' table, we're laying down the Haudenosaunee passport."

Now, according to Mr. Lyons, the UK has refused to accept the waiver, and the team has yet to take off for Manchester. They are scheduled to play at 7 pm tomorrow, for the first match in the championship, but it's unlikely that the game will now take place.

Each day the team has remained in New York has cost them $25,000 Mr. Lyons estimated - for food, housing, and other fees. The lacrosse players have also lost precious training time, while their opponents have spent these days gearing up on practice fields in Manchester.

"Our team has been under high stress," said Lyons. "This is not the best preparation for a world tournament. They've been good statespeople. They've kept themselves in good shape and good condition."

 A violet crocodile Birkin bag sold for $55,726 hours ago, well above its pre-sale estimate, breaking no records, but adding a vivid hue to the collection of one buyer. While not every bag sold, a miel (honey) colored crocodile Birkin went for $59,316 and a matte paille (straw) alligator Birkin was sold at $59,316. A Brighton blue lizard Kelly realized $22,440.

The handbag that sold for the least amount (a measly $1,309) was a box calf Kelly bag in noir - boring old black.

Ever since, the "Kelly" bag has remained one of the most popular items at Hermès, sometimes with a waiting list, according to the company, particularly for versions made of more exotic materials-such as crocodile, ostrich and lizard skin. Later, the French fashion house added the larger Birkin bag, designed for the British actress and Jane Birkin. According to Hermès lore, in the early '80s, Ms. Birkin was placing her purse in the overhead compartment on a plane traveling across Europe when some of her possessions fell out. She complained out loud, wishing for a bag to be large but still stylish. The adjacent passenger was the chief executive of Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas, and he complied with a purse in her name.

On Wednesday, July 14, Christie's will auction off, in London, 78 Hermès bags, including 36 Kellys and 27 Birkins (they were consigned by various different sellers). The auction-online bidding is available, Christie's notes-also includes the lesser-known "Constance" bag. While sometimes carried by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, it was never renamed the "Jackie."

Pat Frost, head of the Textiles Department for Christie's in London, said Hermès doesn't need to rely on celebrities to bolster its reputation. Each bag, she said, is the result of considerable craftsmanship-diagonal stitching, perfectly aligned locks and metalware and feet cast in brass.

Time has proven there's an established auction market for vintage Hermès. And more unusual colors, such as vermillion and violet, fetch higher prices. The most expensive lot to go on the block in London, a violet ostrich Birkin, is estimated at £30,000 to £32,000, or $45,480 to $48,512. (A new Birkin would be about $8,800 at the store on Madison Avenue.)

In the past, people have paid even more. In 2005, William Doyle Galleries fetched $64,800 for a Birkin. 

— Actress Connie Fisher Stevens, who was once married to the singer Eddie Fisher, sold her 2,500-square-foot penthouse at Millenium Park for $7 million, The Real Deal reports.

— Make-up magnate William Lauder, CEO of Estée Lauder, has sold his apartment at 730 Park Avenue to his former wife, Karen Lauder, for $15 million.

clewis@observer.com