The police are hunting for Chagall's Study for Over Vitebsk
By Jane Standley in New York
A museum in New York is offering a $25,000 reward for the recovery of a work done in 1914 by the painter Marc Chagall which was stolen in June. Police are investigating a letter sent to the museum by a previously unheard of group which says it has the work and will return it only when there is peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Chagall's oil painting, "Study for Over Vitebsk", was discovered missing from Manhattan's Jewish Museum in June, after a cocktail party for 200 guests. It appeared at first to be an ordinary art theft - the work is valued at more than $1 million and was on loan from a private collector in Russia. But then the Jewish Museum received a letter saying the price for the painting's return was peace in the Middle East.
Political art
The letter was postmarked in New York's Bronx and signed by a group called the International Committee for Art and Peace, which is not familiar to the police or the FBI. It is still not clear if the letter is real or a hoax but it is believed to contain information which could only have come from someone with the painting in their possession. For now police are treating the incident as a highly unusual case of art being stolen for political purposes. Art historians say they can only remember two other similar cases - one a theft by the IRA of works from a private collection in Britain, the other in Norway six years ago, when the famous work "The Scream" by Edvard Munch was stolen from the National Gallery.
Both works were later recovered. http://news.bbc.co.uk/
From: IntlArtCop@aol.com Subject:
job available
I have posted information about a Director of Security position for a museum in the Washington D.C. area on our website. You can get contact information at http://www.stevekeller.com/jobs/available.htm . If you have bookmarked our website, don't click the link to the "Employment Available" button as it will not work for this posting. Go directly to the link above.
Steve Keller
Sofien Salon
Austrians Mourn Festival Hall
By William J. Kole Associated Press Writer Saturday, Aug. 18, 2001; 9:06 a.m. EDT
VIENNA, Austria -- Austrians mourned the destruction this week of a famed festival hall where composer Johann Strauss once staged concerts and the Viennese - including a young Adolf Hitler - gathered to waltz and mingle at masked balls. Firefighters were still dousing hundreds of glowing embers Saturday amid the charred remains of the Sofien Salon hall, gutted in a blaze that broke out on the roof early Thursday and raged out of control into Friday. The fire forced rehearsing musicians to flee and sent three firefighters and a hall employee to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation. Investigators were working to determine what caused the fire, which erupted as renovations were being done on the historic 19th century building in downtown Vienna. Officials said the heat was so intense it melted the steel beams and left only the outside walls standing. Many Viennese expressed shock that the fast-moving fire was able to devour the hall's famed parquet floors, gold-gilded balconies, Roman statues and giant crystal chandeliers so quickly despite the efforts of 150 firefighters. "This is a black day for Viennese cultural history," said Reingard Witzmann of Vienna's Historical Museum. Musicians who were inside rehearsing alerted firefighters after they noticed smoke pouring from the roof, and the players tried unsuccessfully to douse the flames with buckets of water before fleeing. None was injured. Authorities, who evacuated nearby homes as a precaution, estimated the damage at $6.6 million and declared the hall a total loss. The Sofien Salon was a Vienna landmark, a national monument and a state architectural treasure known for staging concerts, opera balls and lavish parties. Most recently, one of its larger rooms also doubled as a popular venue for rave and techno music. The building itself, which dates to 1826, was used as a bath house, a public swimming pool, a meeting hall and a theater before Strauss and others began using it as a concert venue. Its events drew thousands of members of high society as well as ordinary Viennese; a young Hitler, Austria's most infamous son, attended a concert there in 1912 - a rare treat at a time when he was jobless and homeless. Strauss the elder and Strauss the younger conducted waltzes and staged masked balls in the mid-1800s at the hall named for Duchess Sofie, the matriarch of Austria-Hungary's emperors. It was in the process of being renovated to include a hotel that was to be completed next year. "It was one of the most beautiful and traditional event venues in the world," said Hannes Jagerhofer, a prominent concert and ball organizer in the Austrian capital.
Money issues drove Ross to quit SFMOMA
Departure was months in making
David Bonetti, Chronicle Art Critic Tuesday, August 21, 2001
As precipitous as it may have seemed when it was announced Thursday that David Ross was leaving the directorship of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, his departure in fact had been brewing for several months, Ross said yesterday. The process started when he became a director of Eyestorm, a commercial Web site based in London that offers artworks for sale. The museum's board did not think Ross could keep that position and remain as director, since conflicts of interest would be unavoidable. Ross and the board began discussing how to handle the situation in May. The situation came to a head on Thursday.