Three months after devastating floods Dresden's famed Old Masters gallery and Semper Opera to reopen
The Associated Press
BERLIN (AP) -- Rembrandt will be back on display and a "Swan Lake" adaptation performed as cultural life in Dresden resumes with the reopening Saturday of the Zwinger Palace museum's Old Masters gallery and the Semper Opera, three months after they were inundated by floods. "Swan Lake -- Illusions," a John Neumeier rendition of the Tchaikovsky classic, was to premiere the season Aug. 13, the day floodwaters spilled over the banks of the Elbe River, flooding the cultural center of the Saxony capital. Now that workers have partially restored the lighting and other technical systems, the show will go on. At the nearby Zwinger Palace, Dresden state art collections director Martin Roth said his staff has worked furiously to reopen the museum to the public -- with the Old Masters gallery the last. "We reopened our doors at the earliest possible date as a demonstration of our will to take on the challenges presented by the flood disaster," Roth said in a letter to The Associated Press.
The priceless paintings were saved from the floods at literally the last minute, as museum workers, police and volunteers carried thousands of works from their basement storage areas to higher floors amid rising waters. Similarly, some 11,000 statues and artifacts were rescued at the nearby Albertinum Museum in the old city, which opened shortly after the waters receded in a gesture of resilience. Some important works did not escape damage. The worst harm came to six paintings, worth an estimated US$30 million, which were too big to move from the Zwinger's basement and lashed to the ceiling above the waters, where they were stained by condensation. Authorities have estimated it will take $70 million to fully restore the city's Baroque-style buildings, rebuilt after being destroyed by Allied bombs in World War II. Even more will have to be spent to refurbish damaged artifacts. The flood waters did not reach the Semper Opera's stage and seating areas, but damaged the building's technical systems -- like stage hydraulics and ventilation systems -- so badly that it has been unusable. Workers have been fixing the building day and night since the flooding, and it can now open with the ballet, and host its first opera -- Richard Strauss' "Elektra" on November 13 -- albeit without all the usual stage functions.
Performances will continue throughout November and December, and workers will be limited to day-shifts, then the building will be shut down again in January for the work to be finished. It is hoped that all repairs will be done by early 2003. During the months that the buildings were closed down, both the Old Masters gallery and the Semper Opera tried to maintain a sense of normalcy with performances and exhibitions elsewhere. The Semper Opera performed ballets and concerts at the city's communist-era Palace of Culture, and even performed Georges Bizet's "Carmen" at the local Volkswagen factory. Under the billing "Against the Current," a selection of paintings from the Zwinger Palace were taken on the road for exhibition in Hamburg and more are due to be shown in Berlin in December and in London's Royal Academy in March, Roth said.
From: Johanna Wellheiser jwellheiser@tpl.toronto.on.ca
Subject: Conference on disasters
Preliminary Announcement: Disaster Management Pre-Conference, IFLA Berlin 2003 Plan now to attend the pre-conference to the 69th International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) General Conference and Council, organized by the IFLA Preservation and Conservation Section. "Preparing for the Worst, Planning for the Best: Protecting our Cultural Heritage from Disaster", will be held July 30 to August 1, 2003 in Berlin.
The intensive 2-1/2 day program is designed to inform and enable library and archives administrators effectively to prepare for, react and respond to, and recover from disasters, both natural and man- made. Will cover traditional and contemporary materials--books, paper, photographs, film, tape and disks.
Johanna Wellheiser Information Coordinator IFLA Preservation and Conservation Section http://www.ifla.org/VII/s19/sconsv.htm jwellheiser@tpl.toronto.on.ca
Pair of paintings stolen from Art League storage
BRADENTON -- They weren't Renoirs or Rembrandts, but the theft of two paintings from the Manatee County Art League has local artists seeing red. The paintings, by Graciela Giles-Rose and Pat Robertson, were stolen sometime between Thursday and Monday, Art League officials said. "Someone was here over the weekend who knew where the key was and had the audacity to walk out of here with the paintings," said Heather O'Leary, the Art League's assistant director. "It's very mind- boggling."
The paintings were stolen from a locked storage room where Art League organizers keep paintings used during the league's outdoor exhibitions. Both were part of an exhibit in Lakewood Ranch on Oct. 25. One artist joked that she was able to find a bright spot from the theft. "This puts me into a whole other category of painter," said Robertson, whose scene of cypress trees was priced at about $1,200. Giles-Rose, who operates a studio in Bradenton's Village of the Arts, said she was going to make prints of her stolen watercolor portrait, "Flower Vendors." The painting, valued around $1,500, depicted women preparing to sell flowers from an outdoor stand. "It was a street scene such as one would imagine in a place like Mexico," she said.
"It was really lovely," Giles-Rose said. "I really loved that painting and it's still out there." Both paintings measured 40 inches by 30 inches, the artists said. "It's a shame that someone is going to look at those pieces and enjoy them when it's not even theirs," O'Leary said. http://www.heraldtribune.com/
Egypt tries to stop sale of bust by Charterhouse
The Egyptian government has intervened in an attempt to reverse the sale of a 3,000-year-old artefact after an auction of antiquities from a leading public school. The red granite Rameses II bust was sold by Charterhouse School for £182,000 at Sotheby's in London on Tuesday. But lawyers for the Egyptian cultural attache have been instructed to challenge the sale and are trying to prevent the statue's export to a museum in Geneva. The 19th-dynasty item was listed in the auction, which made £700,000, without the knowledge of the Egyptian government. Around 100 other lots were sold from Charterhouse Museum, in Godalming, Surrey, despite the opposition of its former curator, Dr Ian Blake, who described the sale as immoral and "greedy vandalism". Dr Nader Matter, the cultural attaché, said his government should have been given first refusal on the piece, which was the most expensive individual item. "We are hopeful that we will be able to put a hold on this sale," he said. The bust was donated by the Egypt Exploration Society 100 years ago. It sold for three times its reserve estimate to a private donor on behalf of the Geneva museum. Charterhouse has made more than £1 million by selling museum artefacts, including the auction in September of a carved wooden Buddha for £431,090, at Sotheby's in New York.
Dr Blake said he warned both Sotheby's and Charterhouse that they were "on dangerous ground" in selling the Egyptian bust. He wrote to Sotheby's on Oct 26, copying his letter to Charterhouse, suggesting that the item should be "given" to another museum. Nick Durking, the Charterhouse bursar, said yesterday that he knew "nothing" about the instruction of lawyers over the sale. "I can only say that our records indicate this was given to the school, without conditions," he said. James Miller, Sotheby's deputy chairman, said after the sale: "This is a fabulous success for Charterhouse school." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
The saga of the missing marbles Greece's hopes of forcing Britain to return the Parthenon Marbles by 2004 have hit a new snag
By Coral M. Davenport | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
ATHENS - Not long after Greece won the right to host the 2004 Olympics, organizers here began dreaming of another kind of victory. For almost two decades, Greece had been trying to force Britain to return its most cherished antiquities – statues and friezes that once adorned the Parthenon. What better way to pressure London, they reasoned, than to build a museum to showcase the Parthenon Marbles and open it just in time for the Games? But, in an ironic twist, the museum itself is being criticized as a threat to Greece's heritage. On the site where the New Acropolis Museum is being built, archaelogical ruins have been discovered, opening the latest chapter in an an epic cultural saga. "The ruins are very, very important.... There isn't anything like this anywhere in Athens," says Thanos Papathanassopoulos, a Culture Ministry official who has joined forces with a handful of local residents, historians and archaelogists to protest the museum's construction. Fearing that the ruins – of an early Christian settlement – will be sacrificed in the campaign to recover the lost marbles, they are filing suit against the government. The excavated museum site is packed with foundations of buildings and houses built between the 2nd and 7th century, a period archaelogists say is sparsely represented in Athens. The site also includes ancient roads, a circular marble fountain or well, and two nearly complete tiled floors. Acropolis Museum director Dimitrios Pantermalis the site is unusual because it contains ancient wells and water-reservoirs, rare in the parched city.
Protesters say it isn't worth destroying parts of the site to make way for the $100 million museum. But others say the new exhibition space is vital to efforts to bringing back the 2,500-year-old marbles. "I think the new museum is absolutely crucial because it takes away the last remaining argument about returning the marbles – the argument that the Greeks wouldn't take care of them, or that no one would see them, that they'd have nowhere to put them," says Anthony Snodgrass, a retired Cambridge archeologist who heads an international campaign for the marbles' return. In the new museum, which would also display other archeaological treasures, the space designed for the marbles would be left mostly bare, with labels marking the spots where the missing sculptures would be displayed. Greeks hope that,with thousands of visitors seeing those empty spaces during Athens' moment on the world stage, the pressure on Britain will reach a breaking point. Late last month, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis gave his British counterpart, Tony Blair, a letter outlining proposals for either returning the marbles permanently or sending them to Greece on a long-term loan. It was the first time Athens had taken the case directly to Downing Street. Italy, which also owns a fragment of the marbles, said last month that it plans to return part of a statue of Peitho, goddess of persuasion and seduction –to Greece in a 99-year loan. In Britain, the sculptures are known as the Elgin marbles, named after Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, who cut them off the temple 200 years ago and carted them back to England. While some pieces were dispersed among various European museums, most were sold to the British Museum, which resolutely refuses to return them.
The British Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport, however, has said that while no moves of the marbles are planned, it is now open to talks with Greece. Next week, just across the street from the British Museum, Greece is making an elaborate presentation on the New Acropolis Museum and the missing marbles to ratchet up the pressure on London. Britain has long claimed that it houses and displays the sculptures better than Greece ever could. Even Greeks admit this was justified: many Greek museums are overcrowded and poorly organized, and many art works were damaged during a 1999 earthquake in Athens. But Greece says the new museum answers these criticisms. Designed by Bernard Tschumi, an internationally renowned architect who recently retired as dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, it will be built mostly of glass, with a direct view to the Parthenon. The marbles would be displayed on the museum's top floor and arranged in the same order and proportions they had on the Parthenon, which would be clearly visible behind them. "We have restored the relationship in looking at the frieze as it would be while walking around the Parthenon itself," says Tschumi. "The same Attic light will shine on them." To protect the marbles, builders say glass will be treated with ultraviolet light filters, and foundations built with the same shock-absorbent earthquake-proof technology used in California museums.
Stumbling on ancient ruins amid new construction is commonplace in Greece – and becoming increasingly frequent as Athens scrambles to complete dozens of Olympic venues and modernize by 2004. Construction on a long-delayed metro system was slowed by the discovery of countless graves, pots and sculptures, for example. Protesters held up construction of an Olympic rowing center 19 miles outside Athens, where ancient ruins were found on what is believed to be the site of the 490 BC Battle of Marathon, where an army of 192 Athenians repulsed 6,000 Persians.An Olympic equestrian center was stalled after discovery of an ancient brothel on the site. In some cases, the government has attempted to preserve such finds. Pantermalis concedes that there's no way to build the new museum without destroying at least some of the site. But much of the site will be preserved: Plans for the museum now call for it to be elevated on columns, with glass floors, so visitors can peer down at remains below the building. Pottery and sculpture found on-site will be displayed in the museum. Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos has agreed to meet with the protesters and consider their arguments about the site. But for now, construction plans are moving forward. With the time constraints, "there is no other solution," says University of Crete archeologist Petros Themelis, who initially opposed the project. "The thing now is that we have to build this new museum. It has to be done."
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