Bruce Ferrini, an international expert and dealer in Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts and other rare documents, this weekend became victim of a bizarre theft. The complete valuables locker was stolen from his room in the prestigious Château St. Gerlach Hotel near Maastricht, The Netherlands. Mr Ferrini was one of the participants of this year's European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF). The hotel management refused to comment on this theft, but admitted it's occurrence. At this point the scope of the damage Mr. Ferrini experienced is not yet known.
TC
Art Gallery Owner Accused of Tax Evasion
Thu Mar 20,10:33 AM ET
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - The federal government accused an art gallery owner and three other men of cheating the government out of $26.5 million by failing to pay sales taxes on a 1990 transaction. The civil lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, turned up the heat on the gallery owner, Lawrence Gagosian, who is already under government scrutiny for his dealings with ImClone Systems founder Sam Waksal. Waksal pleaded guilty this month to avoiding $1.2 million in sales taxes on art purchased from a New York gallery reportedly run by Gagosian. The new suit concerned a 1990 sale that allegedly produced a tax burden of more than $6 million — an amount they said has grown to more than $26.5 million with interest and penalties. Besides Gagosian, the suit named the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan and Jay I. Gordon, Peter M. Brant and Geoffrey J.W. Kent. Prosecutors said Gagosian, Gordon and Brant formed Contemporary Art Holding Corp. to buy and sell art, and later sold shares to Kent. Steven G. Storch, a lawyer for Gagosian, said he had not seen the government's lawsuit yet and could not comment. Bob Gaffey, a lawyer for Brant, said it appeared prosecutors were trying to hold his client accountable for the actions of a "corporation in which he has not been involved in 13 years." Michael Conway, who represents Kent, a British citizen, said the government's action Wednesday was "a little bit of overkill" because the government had already sued Kent over the tax issue in Chicago. A message left with a lawyer for Gordon was not immediately returned. ___ On the Net:
http://www.gagosian.com
http://story.news.yahoo.com/
Museum exhibits stolen as they arrived
By Darren Goodsir March 21 2003
The investigation into the theft of tens of thousands of exhibits from the Australian Museum has widened into allegations that precious gifts from international galleries were routinely stolen from the mail room before they could be displayed. The Independent Commission Against Corruption, which has recovered a "substantial amount" of items pilfered from the mammals collection, is looking at the possibility that a steal-to-order racket, with foreign links, has been operating at the museum and some zoos for years. Most of the retrieved exhibits are in good condition, although laborious checks are still being undertaken. Insiders have claimed ICAC has also been told of a thriving black market trade in animal carcasses. It is understood ICAC is examining what happened as a result of a "discontinued" police investigation in 1997 when detectives were first alerted to irregularities in collation practices. The president of the museum trust, Brian Sherman, said he was caught completely by surprise when he received a report about unresolved complaints in October. Sources close to the case say that, despite the matter being first reported in 1997 - prompting a widespread security upgrade - there was no real effort to find the culprit, or to determine the full extent of the missing items. The trail soon went cold, but pilfering allegedly continued until last year. Mr Sherman repeated yesterday that he alerted fellow trust members, the Ministry of Arts and ICAC as soon as he became aware of the missing exhibits. He said almost all of the missing items were stolen before 1998. "It's true there was a report to the police, and nothing came of it. But, as I now understand it, that report itself saw a huge upgrade in security." The ICAC commissioner, Irene Moss, yesterday confirmed a report in the Herald that raids in western Sydney and Newcastle in the past week had resulted in the repossession of "a substantial amount of property reasonably believed to belong to the museum".
"This property includes rare specimens of great significance to Australian and regional natural history," Ms Moss said. "Given the amount of property seized, it will take some time to properly identify and establish ownership of all the property. I am pleased that the ICAC has been able to return what appear to be irreplaceable treasures." Four search warrants were executed by ICAC officers at separate properties and "a number of people have been questioned", Ms Moss said. Although thousands of skeletons, skulls and animals preserved in jars of formaldehyde have been returned to the museum as a result of the raids, no charges have been laid. One of those quizzed over the thefts is a former museum worker. It is believed a file is being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions about the appropriateness of charges. The thief had a discerning taste in museum artefacts, targeting "only the jewels in the crown" of the mammals collection, one source said. Among the prized items that went missing were skeletons of now-extinct animals and several skulls of Tasmanian tigers.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/20/1047749879696.html
Raiders of the lost art
Why would anybody steal a stuffed gorilla from the Australian Museum?
Steve Meacham seeks an answer in the shady world of stolen art and artefacts, now a multi-billion dollar industry. March 22 2003
On December 22, 2000, three armed robbers strode into the lobby of Stockholm's National Museum as it was closing for the day and launched one of the most audacious art heists in history. In a crime that could have been choreographed in Hollywood, one thief stood in the lobby with a machine gun while the others ran to three specific paintings in different rooms - two Renoirs - Young Parisian and Conversation with the Gardener - and a 1630 Rembrandt self-portrait, together valued at $60 million. As if to complete The Thomas Crown Affair scenario, accomplices started two car fires, confusing police responding to security alarms. In the chaos, the three robbers made their escape from the waterfront museum in a powerful speedboat, which was later found abandoned. The supposed glamour and daring of the Swedish heist fits in neatly with our general view of art crime, shaped by scores of movies about the "gentleman thief". The truth is that such crimes are rarely glamorous or daring, the thieves seldom gentlemen. The Swedish culprits were caught through luck rather than detective work when they were raided by the drugs squad, who were surprised to find them in possession of Conversation with the Gardener. The thieves had already confronted one major problem with art theft - finding someone to buy such expensive and identifiable works. In desperation, they had sent the police a ransom demand.
But there was no such problem, apparently, when a $6 million Cezanne, Auvers-sur-Oise, was stolen from Oxford University's historic Ashmolean Museum on New Year's Eve, 1999. Police believe a buyer had been arranged before the theft. Every year about 10,000 works of art are reported stolen around the world, adding to the 100,000 art objects which the International Council of Museums believes have been stolen in the past two decades alone. There are 287 Picassos, 243 Miros and 210 Chagalls on the missing list. No wonder the FBI estimates the market in stolen art, illicit cultural artefacts and other collectables is worth somewhere between $US5-6 billion ($8.5- 10.1 billion) every year, making it third to drugs and gun trafficking in the league of international crime. Worryingly, as happened in the Swedish case, the same people who control the drugs empires are moving into art and collectables. After all, where there's a profit to be made, there's crime. The Australian Museum's hierarchy is convinced that the thousands of rare exhibits discovered stolen from the museum - including precious skulls, rare species in formaldehyde and a stuffed gorilla - were destined for the international black market. The president of the Museum Trust, Brian Sherman, has confirmed that most of the missing items were taken before 1998. Last week, officers of the Independent Commission against Corruption raided four properties in Sydney and Newcastle and recovered thousands of rare skeletons, skulls, and "things in jars". No charges have been laid, but a former museum worker is being questioned. Art crime is a global crime. Someone, somewhere wants to buy the skull of an extinct Tasmanian tiger or a stuffed gorilla. It exists, says Jane C.H. Jacob of the American Association of Museums, "because there is a market for it, because there are wars, and because it is relatively easy to transport and difficult to trace". Naturally, the headlines are dominated by thefts, frauds and fakes involving the names of world-famous artists - for example, the 1994 theft of Edvard Munch's masterpiece The Scream from the Norwegian National Gallery. (It was recovered.) But the vast bulk of the illicit art trade does not involve high-profile people or objects. Paintings, generally, are too readily identifiable. Either they end up in the hands of a private collector who knows they are stolen - a real-life Thomas Crown - or they have to pass through legitimate art dealers or auction houses.
According to Professor Ken Polk, of Melbourne University's department of criminology, art theft is much more complex than the trade in ordinary burgled goods, which can move rapidly from theft to point of sale through an informal network of friends or family willing to turn a blind eye. No one buys a painting from someone in the pub. Polk, a key speaker at an international conference on art crime organised by the Australian Institute of Criminology, is also concerned about the rising illicit traffic in the art and artefacts of the ancient world. "The complexity of this trade and the vast sums of money to be made assure ... that there is significant movement of illicit antiquities onto international art markets," he told the conference. "Great care must be taken, however, in the steps to restrict and control this traffic." Evidence shows drug dealers are increasingly involved in this trade, and Polk warned that poorer nations whose antiquities are being looted would suffer even greater harm if "premature restrictions were imposed", driving the petty thieves doing the looting to rely on the drug barons to disperse the goods. At the same conference, Dr Neil Brodie, of Cambridge University's Illicit Antiquities Research Centre, claimed that while tombs have been robbed since prehistoric times, "improvements in technology have greatly increased the efficiency of the tomb robber". The bulldozer has taken over from the pick, the metal detector from the probing rod. "The result is a disaster for the world's archaeological heritage as sites are emptied of their contents, which are sold to the booming markets of Europe and North America." Not only were archaeologists concerned because "holes in the ground do not preserve much information about past societies", but smuggled antiquities encouraged "the spread of corruption as documents are faked and officials are bribed". The trade is one-way, from poor to richer countries. Throughout South and South-East Asia, Hindu temples and Buddhist monasteries have been pillaged. On the north-west border of Pakistan, over half the Buddhist stupas and shrines surveyed have been badly damaged or destroyed by illegal excavation. In Thailand, prehistoric sites have been washed through for their beads.
"Looting is often carried out by local villagers and the money gained from the sale of antiquities is a useful supplement to the family income," Brodie said. "But it is a paradox that when public order breaks down, then looting becomes more organised and, in the presence of well-armed soldiers, more destructive." War makes it even easier to loot, as we know from the Nazis. Through decades of political chaos in Afghanistan, Gandharan treasures were systematically smuggled out of the country. And when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait a decade ago, his troops stripped the Kuwaiti national museum of rare Islamic artefacts, rushing them across the desert back to Baghdad in a convoy of lorries. Some have never been seen again; others have reappeared, via Beirut, in London auction houses. "Once in Europe or North America, smuggled material is sold without provenance quite openly by so-called reputable auction houses or dealers," Brodie told the conference. "There is little chance that a victim country will recognise antiquities, be able to identify [them] conclusively as stolen or even be able to afford the cost of a court action for recovery." So, Brodie asked, were antiquities dealers, museums, galleries and collectors innocent? Naive? Or complicit? He cited the case of 100 Angkor objects looted from Cambodia during its civil wars, and subsequently listed by the International Council of Museums. One was found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which returned it. But, asked Brodie, why had the museum bought it in the first place? And how many other unprovenanced Asian pieces had the Met bought which would never show up as illicit, and so would never be returned? There is another view. The director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Edmund Capon, believes there is a great difference between "stolen art" and "illicit art". "When we are talking about stolen goods, the owner has every right to exercise every endeavour to recover it," he said, pointing to the treasures stolen by the Nazis. But illicit art often means "the trade in cultural artefacts and works of art being moved around when it has been decreed they belong in X, Y or Z place. That's very iffy territory to me. We know, for example, that an awful lot of stuff has left Afghanistan in recent years and found its way into Western collections. And it has become an absolute ambassador of the art and culture of Afghanistan." He said it was "very easy to be pious and overzealous" about the movement of rare artefacts across international borders. "But art is a great communicator. The more it travels, the more it is doing its job.
" Works of art are part of the trade between civilisations."
Focus on fraud
Six of the world's major art frauds, deceptions and thefts are the subject of a new BBC documentary series, Art Crime. Among them are:
·How in 1994 British Museum staff became suspicious when they were asked to translate some papyri which could only have come from Saqqara, Ancient Egypt's city of the dead. A Scotland Yard operation uncovered an international smuggling ring dealing in illicitly obtained relics from centuries-old tombs.
·How in the mid-1990s a former Japanese wrestler walked into the German embassy in Tokyo wishing to sell a collection of drawings for $A18 million. The pictures had been stolen from Bremen Museum and included Durer's 1494 masterpiece Women in a Bathhouse.
·How Dr John Drewe, an art researcher at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, worked with a forger, John Myatt, to create and then authenticate "masterpieces" which were then purchased through auctions by unsuspecting customers fooled by the pictures' false provenance. It's known they produced at least 200 forgeries using emulsion paint mixed with KY jelly. So far, only 73 have been located.
http://www.smh.com.au/
Feds mull charges in Bill of Rights case
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) --Federal authorities are weighing the possibility of criminal charges over an attempt to sell a copy of the Bill of Rights, missing since the Civil War, that was seized during an undercover sting. But proving criminality in the sale of government documents isn't always easy, especially if they were taken during wartime. "The problem for the government is to figure out whether the person had criminal intent, whether they knew they were stolen," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Goldman, a history buff who has prosecuted museum theft cases.
Historians believe the handwritten Bill of Rights that surfaced last week was stolen from the North Carolina Statehouse by a Union soldier on April 14, 1865, as Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's army stormed through Raleigh. The soldier took it home to Ohio and sold it a year later, the document's last known transfer until Tuesday, when a broker acting for the anonymous seller sought $4 million from an undercover FBI agent. Archivists have estimated the value of the North Carolina copy at $20 million to $30 million. North Carolina officials twice refused to negotiate with the person who held the document, most recently in 1995, because they considered it ransom money, the FBI said. That could have been a dangerous decision, one expert said. "They might have been acting on principle, but that wasn't necessarily the best thing to do for the document," said New York document dealer Seth Kaller. The seller had threatened in 1995 to harm the document if his name became public, the FBI said. Kaller said he was approached about the document and contacted the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where officials deduced that it was the North Carolina copy and called authorities.
A lawyer for the current owner could argue that the document was a spoil of war. "It gets to be a very interesting and complex field, to sort all these competing interests," Goldman said. At least five of the original 13 states, including Pennsylvania, lost their copies of the Bill of Rights after the amendments were ratified in 1791. Pennsylvania's copy vanished shortly after it was logged into state custody in the 1790s.
Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/03/23/lost.history.ap
Two arrested in theft of statue fragments
Rome -- Fragments of an ancient Roman statue of Apollo, illegally excavated several years ago near the Italian capital, were recovered in London, police said this week. The most significant find was the face of the ivory statue, police said. The fragments were recovered after a six-year investigation that led authorities through Germany, Switzerland and Cyprus. Two people have been arrested in the theft of the fragments. Authorities said the fragments were recovered in February. They did not explain the delay between the find and the announcement.
The statue, originally about six feet tall, is estimated to be from the first century AD.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Archaeological-Protection Case Settled
SILVER CITY—A settlement has been reached in an archaeological- protection case that will require a welding company and a landowner to pay $80,000 for disturbing Gila National Forest archaeological sites while building an unauthorized road. The settlement, dated last month, requires Charles Cooksey and Spears Pipe and Welding to pay civil penalties. The amount is based on assessments of the scientific value of the information lost by the damage and disturbance to three archaeological sites. The Gila National Forest will use the money to retrieve scientific information from the sites, which are in a heavily forested canyon, and repair the damage from the road. All three of the sites are "lithic scatters," which means they have stone tools on them rather than the buildings or structures people associate with the later Mimbres culture of the area, said Gila forest archaeologist Gail Firebaugh-Smith. The sites from nomadic hunter-gatherer people contain remnants of stone tools and the manufacture of stone tools, grinding stones for grinding up seeds and a very few pieces of pottery, she said. "We think these sites are older than the Mimbres, dating to the period that we call archaic," Firebaugh-Smith said.
The sites might not be as impressive as those with pueblo ruins, but "these kinds of archaeological sites are just as important and just as valuable and tell us information about a different period in time, before people were building those big cliff dwellings," she said. A Forest Service investigation found Cooksey hired Spears to widen and grade a dirt road to his private property through the surrounding forest. Gila officials became aware in August 1999 that more than two miles of unauthorized road had been built in the Dark Canyon area of the Reserve ranger district in Catron County. Authorities who investigated found three prehistoric archaeological sites were damaged by the unauthorized road work, which disturbed more than 900 cubic yards of soil containing significant archaeological materials. Cooksey and Spears were cited for violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. The Forest Service also notified Spears that it intended to seek the forfeiture of a transport truck, trailer and two tractor-dozers used to build the road. The vehicles were not forfeited because the settlement was reached.
The Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 prohibits damage, disturbance or alteration of archaeological resources on federal land. It also prohibits buying, selling, trafficking or receiving goods taken from American Indian or federal land in violation of the law.
Loulan mausoleum remains lost
03/24/2003
Chinese archaeologists announced last Friday that a ransacked ancient tomb along the Silk Road in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was not the legendary royal mausoleum of Loulan (Kroraina), as some media reports suggested early last month. In the following report, Ma Zhefei, a journalist working with the Chinese newspaper, China Archaeology News, shares his experiences during a fact-finding investigation he participated in following media reports that the famed tomb had been raided. A century ago, Swedish explorer Sven Hedin discovered the ruins of the Loulan (Kroraina) Kingdom in the great Lop Nur. That set in motion a series of explorations along the ancient Silk Road, involving Ellsworth Huntington from the United States, Marc Aurel Stein from Britain and Hedin's compatriot Folke Bergman. Unfortunately, it also triggered a series of lootings by tomb raiders.
During last month's Spring Festival period, the ruins of Loulan, under the jurisdiction of Ruoqiang (Qarkilik) in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, again became the focus of media and archaeological circles, when a local paper reported that some people had stumbled upon the legendary royal mausoleum of Loulan which had been looted. In late February, I had the opportunity to join a team of archaeologists from Xinjiang Cultural Heritage and Relics Institute on a fact-finding investigation to the historic site. The field trip had the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. Our mission was to examine the site of Loulan, about 1,000 kilometres from the region's capital, Urumqi, and to determine whether the looted tomb was the royal mausoleum.
Important find
On the night of February 20, our team reached the site, located 22 kilometres north of the ancient ruined city of Loulan. Following the footsteps of local archaeologists, we entered the tomb. After passing through a 10-metre long passage, we found ourselves looking at two burial chambers. There we saw, to our amazement, mural paintings on the walls, layers of wooden blocks for making coffins, textile pieces, human bones, wooden cups, leather bags and saddles, ivory and wooden combs. After careful examination of these items, Zhang Yuzhong, vice-president of the Xinjiang Cultural Heritage and Relics Institute and the head of our team, told us that the tomb must have been built around the 3rd century, between the late Han Dynasty and the Western and Eastern Jin dynasties (265-420 AD). Earlier last month, Lin Meicun, a professor with Peking University and a prestigious scholar on Loulan, had said that it was unlikely to be the mausoleum of the Loulan Kings. He said that Lop Nur was, in the third century, the border between the kingdom and regions under the direct jurisdiction of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). Royal mausoleums would have been built in Ruoqiang, the then Loulan capital, which is far from the Lop Nur. Lin's opinion is shared by Zhang who does not believe the looted tomb is the royal one of Loulan. Historic annals record that the Loulan Kingdom, which established itself around 2nd century BC, was renamed the Shanshan Kingdom in 77 BC, and lasted until about the 5th to the 6th centuries AD, explained Zhang. Despite this fact, Zhang and his colleagues consider the tomb to be highly significant and suggest it may have belonged to a noble family. The murals on the walls offer fresh clues and insights into the lives of the people of the area after the demise and disappearance of the Loulan Kingdom. Zhang paid particular interest to the tomb's long passage, explaining it was a characteristic of tombs which first appeared in the late Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24). The design later became popular in the East Han Dynasty. He said tombs of a similar layout have been found in the Turpan area of Xinjiang and in the Dunhuang areas of Northwest China's Gansu Province. The wooden coffins, with coloured decorations, were not new to Zhang and his colleagues, either. They had seen similar ones in the area five years ago, during an archaeological survey and trial excavation.
Daunting task
When we finished examining the looted tomb, we extended our inspections of the area, eventually covering a 50-kilometre radius around the ruined ancient city of Loulan. What we saw and found dismayed us. We found graves which had been unearthed, and some badly desecrated, with wooden coffins torn open exposing skeletons, and silk fragments scattered around. Some of the boards were charred, and we suspected that they had been gratuitously used to make campfires, possibly by the tomb raiders themselves. We entered two large tombs to find nothing but skeletons and broken coffins. Yin Baolin, from the local police authority in Bayingolin Mongolia Autonomous Prefecture, and his colleagues travelled with us. They had succesfully investigated a series of lootings in Loulan in 1998 and 2000 from which they accumulated a great deal of relevant experience. This time, however, Yin and his officers gleaned few clues from the site, making the solving of the case quite difficult. Around the pillaged tomb, we saw car tracks, some old, others new, which indicated that the tombs had been looted only a few days before we arrived. On the third day after we reached Lop Nur, we found charred wood, some of which was still smoldering - we had only just missed the tomb raiders. By following the car tracks, we captured a suspect three hours later. He confessed that he and three accomplices had robbed the tombs. Until a decade ago, the very name of Lop Nur was associated with death. A no-man's land, it was known as a lifeless area spanning nearly 1,000 square kilometres, with the only signs of habitation the occasional red willow and shrivelled reeds which might died years earlier. Anyone who had tried to enter the area alone was likely to lose their way and perish in the seemingly endless wilderness, whose landscape looks identical as far as the eye can see.
Things changed after petroleum exploration began in the mid-1990s. New roads have been built, and Lop Nur has somehow come alive. "One only needs a vehicle to travel in Lop Nur," said Yin. But the advent of technology and man has led to a rising spate of looting of Lop Nur's ancient ruins. The cash profits to be made are enormous with an intact coloured coffin fetching up to a 1 million yuan (US$120,000) in Urumqi, the regional capital, said Yin. The loss to the nation in terms of its cultural heritage is, however, incalculable. The local cultural relics protection authorities have been working hard to combat the raiders and those who deal in looted artifacts. Sheng Chunshou, the director of the Cultural Relics Protection Authority in Xinjiang, said he and his colleagues have pressed the regional People's Congress, the local legislature, to introduce new regulations concerning the protection of cultural relics. One of the important clauses is "Approval from the State and Xinjiang bureaux of cultural heritage is required before entering cultural relics sites which are not open to the public." Last year, the State Development Planning Commission and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage set up a 1-million yuan (US$120,000) special fund for the protection of Loulan. With the money the regional cultural heritage bureau has helped install satellite telephone systems in the nearby counties and check-points on the major roads. It also plans to build a permanent working station at Loulan. But as the authorities step up efforts to protect the nation's treasures, those intent on enriching themselves have resorted to subterfuge to enter the area by claiming to be involved in "environmental protection" and "wild life protection," revealed Sheng. Others have simply entered Loulan from Dunhuang, in neighbouring Gansu Province, roughly the same distance between Lop Nur and Urumqi. Archaeologists and local police have also found themselves battling evermore sophistically equipped and better financed tomb raiders.
"We have only got to a few sites, where ancient tombs are concentrated," Zhang said. "We have not even been able to go to some sites which Sven Hedin and Marc Aurel Stein visited 100 years ago." Racing against the tomb robbers, leading archaeologists in the region have worked out a salvage plan to conduct an extensive study of the cultural relics of Xinjiang. "Where we find we are unable to protect the relics, we may carry out archaeological excavations and salvage the relics before the robbers come," said Sheng. The plan is now being scrutinized by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. Zhang Bai, the administration's deputy director, said that the administration has given due priority to the western regions in its policy making, in line with the country's "go west" strategies. "Xinjiang comes first," Zhang Bai said.
NEW YORK. The US has filed a civil lawsuit against Larry Gagosian, of Gagosian Gallery, and others in a suit seeking to enforce federal tax liens and recover on a federal judgment against Contemporary Art Holding Corporation (CAHC) which the US says owes $26.5 million in taxes, interest and penalties. http://81.112.115.148/allemandi/TAN/news/article.asp?idart=10933
WHY THE ITALIANS WANT TO BE IN IRAQ
ROME. After months of preliminary study, a group of specialists from one of Italy’s top restoration centres, the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome, were due to travel to Mosul, in Iraq this month, but have cancelled because of the allied invasion. They were to start restoration of the bas-reliefs in the ancient royal palace of Sennacherib. http://81.112.115.148/allemandi/TAN/news/article.asp?idart=10931
MAASTRICHT: AFFORDABLE ART FOREMOST
MAASTRICHT. Everything seemed the same. The chic crowd, the rose- arcaded approach to the exhibits and the exhibits themselves in their usual immaculate perfection. The European Fine Art Fair—Maastricht—looked like its publicity: the greatest art and antiques fair in the world when it opened on 14 March. http://81.112.115.148/allemandi/TAN/news/article.asp?idart=10930
ARTISTS LEAD ANTI-WAR PROTESTS, BUT DOES THE PUBLIC CARE?
NEW YORK. Polls indicate that most Americans could not care less what actors or musicians think about foreign policy—as American artists and entertainers take centre stage among protesters condemning the invasion of Iraq. http://81.112.115.148/allemandi/TAN/news/article.asp?idart=10929
DRESDEN: AFTER THE FLOOD, A FRESH STORM IS BREWING
LONDON. The director-general of Dresden’s 12 museums, Martin Roth, is refusing to return Old Master paintings from the reserve collection to the refurbished store of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister which was flooded last August when the River Elbe and its tributaries broke their banks. http://81.112.115.148/allemandi/TAN/news/article.asp?idart=10928
Anna Somers Cocks, Editor contact@theartnewspaper.com
The Art Newspaper 70 South Lambeth Road London SW8 1RL UK tel +44(0)207 735 3331 fax +44(0)207 735 3332 http://81.112.115.148