June 3, 2002
CONTENTS:
- Buckingham Palace fire threatens jubilee party; Salvage team swoops to protect precious works
- Fund for reviving Afghanistan’s cultural heritage announced
- Experts decide not to re-create Afghan's smashed Buddha statues
- Art heist (Breitwieser and objects returned to Denmark)
- The not-so-fine art of stealing a masterpiece
- Turner's death mask missing, says Academy
- Coin detectors damaging archaeological sites in NWFP
- The Art Newspaper; this week's top stories
Palace fire threatens jubilee party
By Andrew Pierce
BUCKINGHAM PALACE was evacuated last night after fire broke out in a roof void in the East Gallery, 24 hours before the second Golden Jubilee concert was due to take place in the Palace grounds. A thick pall of smoke hung over the Palace as firefighters battled to bring the flames, which leapt out of the roof, under control. After 90 minutes the fire was brought under control. Buckingham Palace pledged that today’s pop concert, in the presence of the Queen and senior members of the Royal Family, would go ahead. Hundreds of people, including some of the biggest names in the music industry such as Phil Collins and the chart-topping group Atomic Kitten, were ordered by the police and security guards to abandon their rehearsals. No members of the Royal Family were in the Palace when the alarm was raised at 6.42pm. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, who were at Windsor Castle, were described by aides as “deeply concerned”. The Queen was kept fully informed by her officials as to the progress of the firefighting operation. The fire was discovered in the roof of the East Gallery, above a large corridor that leads from the ballroom to the State Room. The fire brought unhappy memories of the blaze at Windsor Castle in 1992, the year the Queen described as her “annus horriblis”. Initial reports of the Windsor fire described it as minor but damage costing £60 million was inflicted on the castle, which was only recently restored.
Concern was heightened last night because a large collection of fireworks was being kept at the 330-room palace in preparation for the finale of tonight’s concert starring Tom Jones, Sir Cliff Richard and The Corrs. Brian May, The Queen guitarist who will be playing, said that everyone had responded calmly to the order to leave. “There is an enormous crowd of extremely famous people chatting and on their mobile phones. Everybody seems very calm from what I can tell. Everybody seems to know that everything is in order,” he said. The authorities were unable to give any indication about the scale of the damage. Some reports suggested that the fire had damaged a storeroom containing valuable antiques and paintings. Penny Russell-Smith, the Queen's press secretary, described how the fire was discovered. She said: “Smoke was seen coming from the roof of the East Gallery, which is a large corridor which leads from the ballroom to the state room. The smoke had been coming from the roof for approximately 20 minutes. “The fire brigade has been called and is assessing the situation and the Palace has been evacuated as a precautionary measure.”
One Palace official said: “We hoped it looked worse than it actually was. Her Majesty was kept closely informed. Obviously, she was deeply concerned. We all were.” Jamie Theakston, the television and and radio presenter who was also evacuated, said: “It was extraordinary. I was standing here with the likes of Brian May and Atomic Kitten waiting to see if we could go back on stage.” Roger Clark, a BBC reporter, was interviewing Phil Collins about his role in the Golden Jubilee concert as the evacuation began shortly before 7pm. Mr Clark told BBC News 24: “Security staff and police officers walked around the grounds and ordered everyone to leave immediately by the Hyde Park gate at the back of Buckingham Palace. The rehearsals were due to have started around about that time so quite a lot of people were on the stage at the time, musicians and artists. They were all ordered off the stage and told to head towards the Hyde Park gate. “Hundreds of engineers and technicians are walking alongside me as we head out of the palace. The evacuation was very well organised. The police and security people were very calm but very firm in ordering everyone to leave the Palace grounds immediately. “You are absolutely talking hundreds of people. Throughout the day, we've had all the big- name artists appearing here, rehearsing. I was chatting to Phil Collins and we were halfway through the interview when a security guard came up and told myself, a colleague and Phil Collins that we had to leave immediately.
“A lot of well-known people are on the way out of Buckingham Palace as we speak. Everybody is walking along very calmly and it's all very well organised.” All senior members of the Royal Family, in addition to Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, are due to attend the concert along with 12,000 people who secured tickets for the concert — only the second to be staged in the grounds of the palace. Tomorrow the Queen is due to lead a carriage procession down The Mall for a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral. The police estimate that up to one million people will travel to London tomorrow for the celebrations.
Salvage team swoops to protect precious works
By Alan Hamilton
WITHIN minutes of firefighters being called to Buckingham Palace last night, a salvage team had been assembled to rescue works of art should the need arise, just as they were at the disastrous Windsor Castle fire of 1992. On that occasion the team, composed largely of castle staff and directed by the Duke of York, managed to remove all the castle’s art treasures within an hour, leaving only one large painting and one item of furniture to be consumed by the flames. Last night’s fire was potentially as serious. It began in the roof void of the East Gallery, which links the Grand Staircase to the Ballroom, a route well known to anyone who has attended an investiture or a Palace reception, and is at the heart of the state rooms. The Gallery overlooks the quadrangle within John Nash’s 1820 reconstruction of the Palace,one of the most luxurious examples of Regency architecture. It is not normally visible to those looking at the Palace from The Mall, from which it is hidden by the early 20th- century frontage erected as a memorial to Edward VII. Priceless paintings hang on every wall in that central area of the building. The Gallery, on the first floor of the Palace, is a grand corridor remodelled in 1841 when Victoria, the Palace’s first royal resident, added the Ballroom, the building’s largest and grandest apartment.
In recent days the Palace roof has been covered by miles of cabling, installed in preparation for tonight’s firework display at the end of the pop concert in the Palace garden, when the Queen will light the first of a nationwide chain of beacons. The guitarist Brian May is scheduled to play a version of the national anthem from the Palace roof. It was unclear last night what had caused the fire, but roof voids were again suspected. In the Windsor fire a spotlight in an art restoration studio ignited a curtain, and the resulting fire raced through the castle’s roof voids, causing over £30 million worth of damage to the state apartments. Following the Windsor blaze a major fire prevention programme was put into effect in all the occupied royal palaces which, according to last year’s annual report and accounts for palace maintenance, has been completed. The report, published last summer, said: “Improvements to the means of escape are complete in the principal buildings and fire certificates have been issued for office accommodation at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and St James’s Palace. It is considered that the occupied Royal Palaces have fire precaution, protection and prevention measures, which are at least equal to those in any other heritage buildings in the United Kingdom.”
The report also says that since the Windsor fire, £6.7 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent on fire prevention measures throughout the Royal Palaces. Last night’s fire was the most serious incident that has caused damage to Buckingham Palace since a Luftwaffe pilot dropped a stick of bombs on it in 1941, causing severe damage to the chapel and almost killing George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The ruined chapel is now the newly opened Queen’s Gallery and exhibits treasures from the Royal Collection. After the raid Queen Elizabeth famously remarked that at least she could now look the East End in the face.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
Fund for reviving Afghanistan’s cultural heritage announced
F.P. Report
ISLAMABAD: Representatives of several governments and NGOs have announced that they would finance the safeguarding of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, large part of which has been destroyed or damaged during 23 years of war and violence. This was stated by Assistant Director General UNESCO Mounir Bouchenaki while addressing a press briefing at United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) here on Friday. He said that the restoration work on the Museum of Kabul will be started from next month and the world community has promised a handsome amount of US $ 7 million in this regard. At the same time, numerous archaeological sites will receive emergency assistance in the coming months, he added. Mounir said from the cliffs of Bamiyan to the Minaret of Jam, the Museum of Kabul, Herat and Balkh, numerous endangered archaeological sites and monuments will be consolidated, rehabilitated or protected. He further said that with the help of Greek government, the Kabul Museum will soon regain a roof, its windows and will give the look it had been giving before it was ravaged by war.
He said that this is a good sign that world community wants to rebuild Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. Assistant Director General of UNESCO said that they are concerned over the reports of illicit trafficking of cultural property from Afghanistan to various parts of the world through Pakistan. Pakistan has become the “main passage” of this illicit trafficking and we held talks with Pakistani Cultural Minister S K Tressler and he was committed to investigate into the matter, he said. He said that there are reports that precious monuments were stolen from Afghanistan and also from Pakistan. UNESCO is holding talks with authorities to find and take back these important monunents.
Experts decide not to re-create Afghan's smashed Buddha statues
Islamabad, May 31, IRNA - Archaeological experts in Afghanistan have decided not to re-build the two giant Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban last year, UNESCO's assistant director general for culture, Mounir Bouchenaki, said at a press conference in Islamabad on Friday. However, Bouchenaki said the cave complex at the former site of the statues and the murals there would protected. Through a Japanese funded project, worth 70,000 dollars, a small museum would be set up and new excavations undertaken in Bamian, a valley on whose mountain cliffs the giant Buddha statues were built. The decision not to re-create the Buddhas was also taken at a onference of archaeological experts in the Afghan capital Kabul earlier this week. "After a spirited debate, the conference decided that the Bamian Buddhas should not be rebuilt," Martin Hadlow, UNESCO's director in Kabul has said. The giant Buddha statues stood near the village of Bamian 200 kilometers west of Kabul since the 8th century until the Taliban destroyed them. However, the cliffs of Bamian and the many caves surrounding the two giant structures would be protected and restored, the UNESCO official said. The Buddhas were dynamited by the Taliban in March last year, considering them against Islam. Afghanistan's interim minister of culture and information, Mukhdoom Raheen alleged that "We believe that Al-Qaeda and other Taliban sympathizers were involved in the destruction." As part of Afghanistan's reconstruction effort, about 50 international and local experts at the conference debated ways to restore Afghanistan's cultural heritage, which was devastated by yearsof looting, illegal excavation and arbitrary vandalism. The conference decided to restore Kabul's museum, once the best in the region but currently a shell with just a few vandalized exhibits to show for thousands of years of diverse human civilization in the region. From the cliffs of Bamian in central Afghanistan to the Minaret of Jam in western Afghanistan, to the Museum of Kabul, Herat and Balk,numerous endangered archaeological sites and monuments are going to beconsolidated, rehabilitated or protected. With the help of Greece, work on restoring Kabul museum, ravaged by factional fighting in early 90's, would begin as early as next week. However, the decision to reconstruct Bamian Buddha was delayed for the time being leaving the ultimate decision to the Afghan people. UNESCO goodwill ambassador, Ikuo Hirayama suggested he would prefer the statues left in ruins, a memorial to "human barbarity." Built in 12th century, the Minaret of Jam, the second highest in the world, will become a World Heritage site in June. "The committee's next meeting in Budapest, Hungary will take up the issue," Hadlow said. If included, the minaret would be the first Afghan site to make it to the prestigious global list. Also debated was the issue of putting an end to the smuggling and illegal excavation of Afghanistan's cultural heritage. This concern was echoed by interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai when he hosted a reception for visiting dignitaries. "We have requested UNESCO members and our neighbors particularly to look into the transportation of our archaeological artifacts," Raheen said. The smuggling and sale of Afghan artifacts is a multi-million-dollar business in Pakistan and other countries. With the rehabilitation of Afghanistan's cultural heritage, hopes have been raised about the revival of the county's tourism industry. "There is no real infrastructure such as transport and accommodation to support tourism in the country," Hadlow maintained. Experts believe that with the advent of stability, hosting foreign visitors could be a growth industry in this land where so many of the world's ancient cultures and religions met centuries ago.
http://www.irna.com/
Art heist
Stephane Breitwieser, the French waiter suspected in billion of dollars' worth of art thefts across the European continent, stole from two Copenhagen museums, Interpol's Copenhagen office reported last week. Director of the Museum of Decorative Art Bodil Bush, confirmed to Berlingske Tidende that a collection of priceless Renaissance jewels, stolen in 1999, had been recovered from Breitwieser's home in France. Copenhagen's Music Historical Museum was also targeted by the thief in 1999, where pricey instruments and books were stolen. Three of the missing artefacts from the Music Historical Museum have since been recovered from Breitwieser's home.
The not-so-fine art of stealing a masterpiece
Dashing, daring, refined -- that's how Hollywood portrays art thieves. But the real ones are just 'schmucks off the street,' experts say.
Ian MacLeod The Ottawa Citizen
The unmasking of one of the world's greatest art thieves has exposed Hollywood's portrait of the debonair master thief as an elaborate fake. News that Frenchman Stéphane Breitwieser pilfered as much as $2 billion worth of art from small European museums over six years and that his distraught mother destroyed much of it after his arrest has obscured the fact that Mr. Breitwieser is nothing like the gentlemanly art and jewelry thieves portrayed by Cary Grant, Steve McQueen and Pierce Brosnan. The real-life Thomas Crown, it turns out, is a restaurant waiter and kitchen-hand. He didn't scale buildings, dangle from ropes or stage daring raids. Mr. Breitwieser, 31, simply lifted pieces or cut them from frames when people weren't looking. He tucked them under his coat. There was nothing dashing about it. Yet piece by piece, Mr. Breitwieser built up a spectacular haul of masterpieces by Brueghel, Cranach, Matisse and others. In all, he took almost 200 paintings, statuettes and other works, which he stashed inside his mother's house near Strasbourg. His swansong came at a museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, after swiping a lowly bugle. "The image that the public has of the art thief is very different from the reality," says Anna Kisluk, who heads the New York City office of the Art Loss Register. "Convicted art thieves, they're schmucks off the street. There's nothing suave, sophisticated, chic or anything else about them." Mr. Breitwieser, who has reportedly confessed, differs in one respect: He is an art connoisseur who was building a private collection. Usually, fine art is stolen to be sold, not admired. "The image of Dr. No with his Persian pussycat and Goya's portrait of Wellington behind him is fantasy," says Ms. Kisluk. "Most of the time it's stolen to sell for a very small portion of the value ... maybe 10 cents on the dollar." Even so, there's an incredibly lucrative international trade in stolen art. Accurate figures are impossible to come by since not all thefts are reported and no one source keeps track of every known incident. And since many museums and major collectors don't insure all their works, many stolen pieces have no official value.
But based on what is known, insurance experts have estimated $3 billion to $9 billion worth of art, antiques and collectibles is stolen every year, much of it from the homes of private collectors. Only a fraction is recovered. In France, about 6,000 works of art, antiques and cultural treasures are stolen annually, according to Interpol, the international police agency. Another 2,000 pieces vanish every year in Italy. And there has been an explosion of art theft, religious icons in particular, in the former East Bloc. Poland reported 2,000 such thefts last year, many from churches. The Art Loss Register, the world's largest database of stolen and lost artworks, antiques and collectible, lists 115,000 items, and about 1,200 are added every month. Among the latest is a $2.4-million Stradivarius stolen from the workshop of a New York City violin maker in April. The ALR opened in 1991 through a partnership of leading auction houses, art trade associations, the insurance industry and the International Foundation for Art Research. ALR staff routinely screen pieces of art to be sold at major auction houses. Insurers, police, museums and galleries, including major Canadian institutions, also subscribe to the service. The global scope of art theft is "unbelievable," says RCMP Cpl. Guy Laberge, assigned to Interpol's Work of Art Unit in Lyon, France, where the agency maintains its own database of 20,000 "significant" pieces of art stolen since 1947. "And that is just what we know," says Cpl. Laberge. "If you go to Greece and start digging, you will find something (and) you are stealing a work of art, but nobody knows. South America is like that too." About 560 stolen Canadian works, dating back decades, are listed on Interpol's database. Among them are two abstracts by Quebec artist Jean-Paul Riopelle stolen from a Toronto gallery two years ago. In England, where there is believed to be more fine art per capita than anywhere on the planet, thieves steal an estimated $450 million to $900 million worth of art and jewelry annually, says Mark Dalrymple, one of London's leading fine art insurance adjusters. (He dealt with the 1994 theft of J.M.W. Turner's Light and Colour and Shade and Darkness from Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle Gallery. The paintings -- still missing -- are valued at $53 million, the largest- ever theft of insured paintings.)
"Whereas in the past many ordinary thieves have simply gone for a television or a videorecorder, many have found it more lucrative to pinch a clock or a small painting," he says. "Even if it's only worth ($1,000), they can actually sell it for more money, more easily, for cash, no questions asked, because the marketplace, at the lower end, is traditionally a cash market. "Most thieves steal it and get rid of it within a few hours."
Not so with masterpieces.
Lloyd's insurance has retained Mr. Dalrymple to help find The Swing by Francisco de Goya and Child with Hat by Japan's Tsuguharu Foujita. They were among 20 paintings stolen by an organized gang of robbers last August from the luxury Madrid apartment of construction tycoon Ester Koplowitz, Spain's richest woman. The missing art, including some sculptures, is estimated to be worth almost $100 million. Lloyd's is offering a $400,000 U.S. reward for the safe return of the collection's only two insured pieces. Mr. Dalrymple believes The Swing, which is worth millions, is too hot to sell. "It always strikes me as being odd that thieves continue to target very important or very high-value, well-known paintings because they can't actually realize much value in them and, if they do, it tends to be a very significant time later," he says. "Even then, it's not for very much because it's an almost unsaleable commodity. "There are a number of criminals that I've come across personally who have this sort of vague notion that if they go and steal something very important and very valuable that their status is raised amongst their own group of people and they sometimes do it for that reason. "But then, of course, they're not quite intelligent enough to realize that they can't actually do anything with the picture afterwards. So what they tend to do is to strike little deals between themselves and swap them for drugs or put them up as collateral on other criminal dealings." The Donkey's Fall, another Goya among the stolen Koplowitz collection, is featured on Interpol's Most Wanted Art bulletin, a bi- annual alert sent to police around the world that highlights a handful of recent major international thefts. The bulletin also features what is becoming one of the world's most infamous paintings, Madame Baccelli: Dancer, an oil-on-canvas portrait of Italian ballerina Giovanna Zanerini, whose stage name was Baccelli, by 18th- century English Master Thomas Gainsborough. At lunchtime one day last June, a gang of armed, masked men rammed a Jeep through the front door of Russborough House, a stately mansion south of Dublin containing the collection of the late Sir Alfred Beit, a former Irish MP and member of the de Beers diamond family. The crooks made off with Madame Baccelli and View of Florence Looking Towards the Ponte Vecchio by Bernardo Bellotto. It is the third time the Gainsborough, worth more than $2 million, has been pinched.
In 1974, it was among 19 paintings taken (and later recovered) from the house by an IRA gang. In 1986, a Dublin gang headed by arch- criminal Martin Cahill stole it from Russborough House again along with several other works by Goya, Rubens and Vermeer's Woman Reading a Letter. The robbery inspired the award-winning John Boorman film The General, about Cahill's criminal exploits. In 1994, Cahill was executed by the IRA after selling Madame Baccelli to a Protestant paramilitary group, presumably to be resold to buy weapons. All but three of the paintings stolen by his mob turned up over the years in locations from London to Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. "She's a well-travelled lady," Ms. Kisluk says of Madame Baccelli. One man has been charged with the latest theft and charges are pending against seven others. But there's no sign of either masterpiece. If it has been sold, police suspect Madame Baccelli has gone to an overseas buyer. "Being a very small country and the painting being so well-known and so high-profile, it would be very difficult for anybody in this country to buy it and keep it," says Det.-Supt. John O'Mahoney of the Garda, Ireland's national police. With hundreds of thousands of other art works missing worldwide, the big question is -- where are they all? "They end up being owned by private individuals who have no idea that it's stolen because he's bought it from X who bought it from Y who bought it from A who bought it from B," explains Ms. Kisluk. As a work is sold and circulates from country to country, two things happen: The initial discounted price for which the thief probably sold it moves closer to a market value, eliminating suspicion about a deal too good to be true; and, the piece develops a history of legitimate ownership, which may help conceal its criminal past. An art buyer then purchases it in good faith, perhaps at one of the many open-air art fairs popular in Europe, says Mr. Dalrymple. "He takes it home and sticks it on his mantelpiece and it sits there for 30 years."
There are persistent rumours about "artnapping," in which thieves hold a work of art for ransom, and also about wealthy collectors ordering particular masterpieces to be stolen for their collections. But Mr. Dalrymple says much of it is hogwash, part of the glamorization of art theft by filmmakers and the media. "In 20-odd years of dealing with fine art theft, I've never, ever come across any legitimate, verifiable story relating to a supposed secret collector," he says. "It's nonsense, this idea of somebody ordering important paintings for their delectation in a secret hideaway. "I find it extraordinary that people would want to glamorize it. Part of the problem is that the public sometimes perceive art not to hurt very many people if it is stolen, especially public art, art in museums. It's a shame if good works of art are stolen from public places which are put there solely for the enjoyment of the public. You're in some small part disadvantaging everyone else and I think that's rather sad. They also tend to have a different attitude if an item is insured because, if it's insured, well, who cares? "I don't think whether it's insured or publicly owned or privately owned has got anything to do with it. It's just a matter of good old-fashioned respect for other people's property. "The simple fact of the matter is, it's wrong to go around nicking people's property." But based on the number of claims he handles for high-value pieces for Lloyd's underwriters and London market insurers, the number of cases has "increased dramatically" since 2000. Still, services such as the Art Loss Register and a similar intelligence firm called Invaluable have made it much more difficult for thieves to get away with selling art through auction houses. The ALR says it now finds about one stolen piece in every 5,000 lots of auction merchandise, up from about one in every 8,000 lots in 1996, but down from one in every 3,000 lots a decade ago. In all, Ms. Kisluk says the ALR has led to the recovery of about 1,000 pieces of art, valued at more than $100 million U.S., since 1991. "Progress has been made ... but it's never going to go away because you will always have greed, you will always have thieves. Put those two together and you'll always have stolen art."
Turner's death mask missing, says Academy
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
(Filed: 03/06/2002)
The Royal Academy of Arts confessed yesterday that it has lost or mislaid one of its most treasured possessions - one of two known casts of the death mask of J M W Turner, the great 19th-century landscape painter and one of the academy's most famous members. The plaster cast was last seen 17 years ago when it was recorded in a storeroom at the academy's headquarters at Burlington House in Piccadilly, London. Its disappearance came to light about four months ago after a request to borrow it. Turner, who died in 1851, is one of the Royal Academy's most illustrious members and was a strong supporter of the institution. A former pupil of the academy's schools, he went on to become a professor and played a full part in the life of the academy, exhibiting in the summer shows and donating a number of his paintings. On his death, aged 76, he left them the princely sum of £20,000. The disappearance of the mask has caused "a flap inside the academy", according to one senior academician yesterday.
The institution, however, is playing down the loss.
MaryAnne Stevens, the collections secretary, who is in charge of thousands of paintings and other objects held by the academy, says that she is "extremely confident" that the mask will soon be found. She believes that it has been borrowed by a member of the teaching staff for use in lessons and is lying forgotten in a drawer or corner at Burlington House where post-graduate art students are taught. Miss Stevens said: "I am absolutely certain that it has not been stolen. I do not see how that could have happened. Security in our storerooms is incredibly tight. "If I thought that theft was a serious possibility I would have been on to the police at once." The cast is one of several that were probably made from an original mould, now lost, of Turner's face before he was interred at St Paul's Cathedral. The cast shows Turner's face in a rather unflattering light. He has a large, beaky nose, and a sunken mouth, the result of losing most of his teeth.
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/
Coin detectors damaging archaeological sites in NWFP
By Iqbal Hoti
MARDAN: The ruthless use of coin detectors by the smugglers is causing great damage to the archaeological sites in the province and if not checked it will harm the sequence of the history of various periods, said archaeologist Zainul Wahab. Talking to The News, he said the smugglers were engaged in illegal excavations in various parts of the province, which was a great loss to invaluable cultural and historical heritage. They had sophisticated detectors that detect coins and other metal antiquities four to six feet below the surface, he added. The world class detectors were purchased either from the local market or abroad for hardly over Rs 40,000, he said. Zain said that sometimes the smugglers recovered extremely rare coins and sold those to foreign dealers at nominal price at the cost of destroying the history of a site. He said the devastation could be judged from the fact that millions of historic coins of various periods were available both in the local and international markets, which had been recovered by the smugglers from various sites of the NWFP. There were thousands of sites of the Gandhara, Greeko-Bactrian, Hindu Shahi and early Muslim periods in the NWFP, including more than 700 sites officially located in Mardan, which were target of the illegal excavators, he said. The archaeologist said a large number of people were involved in the coin business due to negligence of the concerned authorities. He feared if the illegal coin extraction was not checked it might cause irreparable loss to the archaeological sites of the province.
http://www.jang.com.pk/
The Art Newspaper.com
This week's top stories:
PAKISTAN TO MOVE NATIONAL COLLECTIONS
ISLAMABAD. Pakistan has relocated staff from the National Museum in Karachi to Lahore. The government ultimately intends to move the museum to Islamabad, the national capital. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9577
VICENTE TODOLI APPOINTED NEW DIRECTOR FOR TATE MODERN
LONDON. The highest profile vacancy in the art world has finally been filled with the appointment of Vicente Todoli as the new director of Tate Modern. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9576
TURNER PRIZE SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED
LONDON. The shortlist for the 2002 Turner Prize has been announced this week. The exclusively British nominees this year are Catherine Yass, Fiona Banner, Liam Gillick and Keith Tyson. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9575 FATE OF NEO-GOTHIC MANSION IN THE BALANCE
LONDON. The National Trust is facing the deadline of 14 June to save Tyntesfield, the Victorian Gothic Revival mansion outside Bristol (The Art Newspaper, no. 125, May 2002, p. 7). Altogether over £32 million will be needed. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9574 SALE OF NEWBY HALL VENUS IS BREAKING UP A GREAT NEO-CLASSICAL UNITY
LONDON. The sale of the Newby Hall Venus, which takes place at Christie’s in London on 13 June, has so far gone almost unmentioned by the press. Since its discovery in the cellars of the Barberini Palace, for two and a quarter centuries this serene 1,900-year-old marble goddess has stood in the stuccoed niche designed for it, at the centre of an almost ridiculously pretty sculpture gallery added to Newby Hall in Yorkshire in the 1760s. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9573 A HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL SELL-OFF
LONDON. Royal Doulton's decision to sell off the cream of its historic collection of Minton ceramics (formerly housed in the Minton Museum in Minton House Stoke-On-Trent) at Bonhams on 23 July is proving hugely controversial. All the more so since the Ceramics Museum in Stoke-on-Trent has offered a fair market value for the entire collection, so it could have been kept together. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9572 HOW TO DO A CORONATION
It is rare to be able to fix the origins of a medieval work of art in time and place with as much precision as we can for the splendid illuminated manuscript that is the subject of Monarchy and consent: the coronation book of the kings of France. An autograph inscription by the bibliophile French king, Charles V, conveniently records not just his personal ownership of the manuscript, but that it had been “corrected, arranged, written and illustrated” at his command in the year 1365. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9571
A GOOD-LOOKING EVENT
NEW YORK. Art fairs have resumed, to everyone’s relief, at the Seventh Regiment Armory, which had been out of action after being commandeered by the National Guard after 11 September. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9570
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