Most of the historic works of art and cultural landmarks in Prague and Dresden appear to have been saved from the floodwaters that have devastated the cities. The torrents have raged through parts of the historic centres of both cities, which contain numerous galleries, museums and theatres. Many important pieces of art in Prague were moved out of harm's way before the waters arrived, according to Alfredo Azula, managing editor of English language newspaper the Prague Post.
"It looks like we've been lucky. We had a lot of warning that the water was coming, so that stuff was moved to higher ground," he told BBC News Online. The city's historic National Theatre, a landmark that dates from 1881 and became a symbol of Czech national renaissance in the 19th century, had been under threat of collapse. But is expected to survive now that water levels are dropping, Mr Azula said. "The basement was flooded and there was some concern that the building might collapse because it sits right on the river bank and it's not very stable ground. "But they've drained all the water out of there and it's looking good."
At the National Library, valuable volumes were taken to upper floors.
But some plaster casts of 20th Century sculptures kept in the basement of the Zbraslav Chateau, which houses the national collection of Asian art, were destroyed.
In Dresden, one of Europe's greatest art collections, in the ornate Zwinger Palace, was threatened as water rushed through the building's vaults. But up to 8,000 works of art were moved to higher levels in two days by curators, soldiers and volunteers. Martin Roth, director general of the city's art collections, said the water levels were "totally unexpected". "We had to move at the last minute when the water started coming in," he said. "Everyone was running through knee- high water with torches, passing works of art to each other. The vaults are ruined. They will take a long time to restore."
Evacuation
Firefighters are pumping clear the cellars of the Zwinger Palace and the neighbouring Semper Oper opera house, which was only reopened in 1985 after repair from World War II bomb damage. "I have photos of the Zwinger under water in 1896 but I have never experienced anything like it," said Hans Nadler, 92, who offered to help in the evacuation despite being in a wheelchair. But water levels in Dresden are expected to rise further, and cities including the Slovak capital, Bratislava, and Salzburg in Austria are still under threat. Dozens of people have been killed across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria and Russia. Pictures of flood chaos: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2193167.stm
Flooded German Museum Saves Art
Fri Aug 16, 5:01 PM ET By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer-
Masterworks in gilded frames lay stacked against the wall on the top floor of Dresden's famed Zwinger Palace as floodwater lapped at the walls outside — but they were safe, thanks to volunteers who carried thousands of paintings and sculptures out of basement storage rooms to rescue the Baroque city's cultural heritage. As the rain-swollen Elbe River burst its ramparts Friday, Martin Roth, head of state art collections in Dresden, surveyed the hodgepodge of artwork in the nearby Albertinum museum. "It was close," said Roth, standing among rows of Greek statues, placed incongruously alongside Egyptian hieroglyphic tablets and Roman busts. "We took out the last painting and went to sit in my office and someone came and said 'The water's coming,' and it was really coming — surging in," he told The Associated Press, recalling the hectic rescue operation this week. The rescue was particularly poignant for a city that was nearly wiped out by Allied bombers in World War II and has spent the last 12 years since the demise of communism restoring the splendor of landmarks like the Zwinger, the 19th-century Semper Opera and the Church of Our Lady. When the European floods that also devastated Prague churned toward Dresden this week, Roth rushed to mobilize 200 museum workers, volunteers and soldiers who worked by candlelight to move about 4,000 artworks to the upper floor of the 18th-century palace. Others moved 11,000 statues to the first and second floor of the Albertinum museum. At the Zwinger, rescued paintings now line the upstairs gallery, stacked 10-deep leaning against Raphaels, Rubens, Van Dycks and Rembrandts hanging on the walls.
Miraculously, in the chaos of evacuation, not a statue was dropped nor a painting torn. "It's quite incredible we saved everything," Roth said. "Next week, everybody will start to collapse."
The Zwinger's grassy courtyard was a murky pool of yard-deep water Friday. Pumps pushed thousands of gallons of water every minute from beneath both the Albertinum and the Zwinger, home to famous masterworks like Raphael's Sistine Madonna. The pumps were particularly important to the Zwinger, where six paintings too big to bring out — mostly by Italian Baroque masters — were lashed to the cellar ceiling to keep them from the rising water. Perhaps worst hit by the flooding was the Semper Opera, adjacent to the huge Zwinger Palace. The opera was forced to cancel its season-opening performance of the Swan Lake ballet on Tuesday when water started pouring into the basement, which houses stage machinery that was expensively overhauled in 1994, as well as electronics and the air conditioning system. "We got all of the costumes out, but our workshop and all of the expensive materials and all of the shoes are still down there," said technical director Volker Butzmann, pointing into the gloomy depths of the opera basement. "It happened so fast, we didn't have time to get them out." One bright spot: The water level was far enough below the lowest part of the theater itself — the orchestra pit — that Butzmann was hopeful the damage would not spread. "It's horrible," he said, sitting on a bench and staring at water in the opera's courtyard. "I just wish I could do something." Though Dresden was partly rebuilt by communist East Germany after World War II, the push to restore the city's prewar glory as the "Florence of the Elbe" of prewar years took off only after the Iron Curtain opened and East and West Germany reunited in 1990. With its cultural landmarks, Dresden became a focus of the massive reconstruction of former East Germany. Residents now are devastated to see 12 years of work under water. "It's really a shame. They put so much money, so much time, so much love into rebuilding the area, and now nature destroys it," said Thea May, 36, a lifetime Dresden resident. "This is really terrible for the people who put their hearts into the rebuilding." Matthias Roessler, Saxony's minister of culture, estimated it would cost at least $49 million merely to repair the museums in Dresden. "It's a catastrophe for the city," he said in an interview. "All of our infrastructure is destroyed. We invested billions in the last 12 years." "But at least now everything is safe — only the underground is destroyed," he said. http://story.news.yahoo.com/
Ancient tombs looted for antiques
By Philippe Coumarianos - Agence France-Presse
BAKHCHISARAI, Ukraine - Small-time tomb-raider Volodya shone his torch into the ancient terra-cotta amphora and swore. No gold. No precious stones. No documents. Nothing. Foiled, yet again. Night after night, Volodya and his band have combed the forests of southern Ukraine, tracking down one grave after another, in search of gold bracelets, rings and broaches commissioned by wealthy merchants but drawn a blank. Twelve burial sites, all dating back to the mists of time, have offered up a barrow-load of clay pottery but little that would flutter the hearts of the collectors and specialists who frequent the region’s illegal antiquities markets. “Hey, look over here,” hissed Sergei, an accomplice, as he bent over a stone slab he had uncovered at a depth of 3 meters (10 feet). “Another tomb.” Several hefty blows with a steel bar later, and Volodya is able to squeeze through a passage into the neighboring vault. This time the beam of his torch falls onto the scattered remains of a woman buried some 1,500 years ago. Scratching around among the bone fragments, he’s able to unearth a few bronze bits and pieces, some multicolor paste-glass necklaces, and some red earthenware jars, worth maybe a few hundred dollars at the Sevastopol flea market where Ukrainian and Russian collectors do their antiquity shopping. Every weekend in the season, the merchants and the adventurers gather on the hill overlooking the Black Sea port to negotiate their deals and commissions for the stolen historic treasures. Contacts are made by phone, or through trusted intermediaries for whom a nod is as good as a wink. The prize objects — gold artifacts, statuettes, glazed objects and vases from the Hellenic era — are sure of a rapid transfer to Moscow where they will change hands for a handsome profit. Some find their way onto the international antiquities market and to the auction houses where they can fetch tens of thousands of dollars. “It’s a disaster. Thousands of tombs have been looted in the past 10 years, and there’s no sign of it abating,” said Culture Ministry official Shukri Seytumerov. The Crimean peninsula, jutting into the Black Sea, forms a historic crossroads between the Mediterranean world and the Eurasian steppes. It has been home to numerous civilizations. The Scythians, among the earliest of the region’s known occupants, were followed from about the seventh century BC onward by the Greeks, to be succeeded by the legionnaires of Rome and the emperors of Byzantium. The burial sites, scattered over what is now wild and broken terrain, mostly date back to the period between the second century BC and the fourth century AD. Older Greek and Roman tombs are exceedingly rare. “Most of the tombs belonged to ordinary people. The objects buried with them usually have no commercial value but are extremely valuable historically,” said Seytumerov. During the winter, bands such as Volodya’s roam the region looking for possible sites and preparing for the spade work which they begin in the spring. They move in groups of three or four, communicating by cell phone and leaving men strategically posted to stand watch in case the police should show.
“Their leaders are specialists, often having extensive historical knowledge comparable with archaeological experts,” Seytumarov noted. “Unfortunately, Ukrainian law is not strict enough to stamp out the trade in antiquities and the police are inefficient,” he said. In most cases, he noted, the few tomb-raiders who fell into police clutches faced little more than a suspended sentence. http://www.ekathimerini.com/
Police seize 152 pre-Columbian artifacts in southern Mexico
Mexico City, Aug 15, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Mexican police seized 152 pre-Columbian artifacts and arrested a suspected antiquities smuggler, the Attorney General's Office (PGR) reported Thursday. Acting on an anonymous tip, authorities initiated an investigation that led them to the home of Ignacio Lopez, in Champoton, in the southeastern state of Campeche, where they found pieces dating from the late Post-Classical period (1200-1500 A.D.). Among the artifacts were mortars, obsidian pieces and arrowheads, flint arrowheads, stone sculptures and shells.
Authorities also discovered decorative fragments of censers decorated with different figures and pottery stands in the form of people and animals. http://www.efe.es The Art Newspaper.com
This week's top stories:
FLOODS DAMAGE IN DRESDEN AND PRAGUE GUESSED TO COST BILLIONS OF EURO
LONDON. Like most long anticipated meetings, a visit to Stonehenge is rather disappointing. It is difficult to be awed by the power of the rough cut standing stones, older than the pyramids and older than writing itself, while standing at the intersection between the A344 and A303. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9875
SHOULD STALINIST HOTEL BE SAVED?
MOSCOW. Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov and his government have announced plans to tear down the Moskva Hotel, a massive, lumbering, Stalin-era building that stands just a few feet away from the Kremlin and is described as oppressively totalitarian by some and as an important architectural monument by others. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9874
REDISCOVERING THE PETIT PALAIS
PARIS. With a budget of €68 million, the Beaux-Arts Petit Palais in Paris is gradually being remodelled by architects Chaix & Morel into a sleek modern museum. The first task, to strip out all the sub- divisions and layers that had been added, is now complete and the second phase, of remodelling, is soon to begin. When it is finished, at the end of 2004, the museum will finally be worthy of the display of the immense collections of the Ville de Paris. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9873
Even if Anthony Blunt had not been exposed as a Soviet spy, embarrassing an Establishment that had lionised him, his magisterial monograph on Nicolas Poussin, the centrepiece of his academic career, would by now have attracted critical attention from a younger generation of scholars employing new methodologies. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9871