Growing The Guggenheim (Abroad) Things haven't been so good for the Guggenheim lately at home. No matter - director Thomas Krens has always had a global vision. So "yesterday he and Cesar Maia, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, signed an agreement to build a $130 million museum on Mauá Pier in Guanabara Bay. Rio will be the sixth city with Guggenheim museums and exhibition spaces, joining Berlin; Venice; Las Vegas; and Bilbao, Spain, as well as New York." The New York Times 05/01/03

• Previously: Is Rio Guggenheim A City's Dream Or A Disaster In The Making? Rio de Janeiro officials are hoping that a splashy new Guggenheim museum there will help the city. "Local officials are hailing the proposed museum project as part of a grand new vision of Rio, the South American capital of sun and samba that in the future also could be considered an art lover's tourist destination. But even as the project inches closer to final approval, the new Guggenheim branch's critics are growing in numbers, threatening to derail the city's plans. They say the museum should be subordinated to more pressing social needs such as roads, schools and health care..." Chicago Tribune 04/17/03

Museums - Jumbo Egos, Jumbo Falls Hilton Kramer is cranky about over-ambitious expansion plans of museums chasing glory (and money). "How are we to characterize the narrative of turbulence and disarray that has lately overtaken some of our local institutions? I suggest that we think of it as the Museum Expansion Follies, for it’s in the service of this muddled narrative that a lot of money is spent (and lost) these days without much regard for negative consequences. And not only money..." The New York Observer 04/30/03

Koons Goes Big "Artist Jeff Koons plans to erect a 360-foot tall sculpture in Hamburg - two cranes with outsize inner tubes dangling down - that he hopes will rival the effect of the Eiffel Tower." Nando Times (AP) 04/30/03

The Thieves' Childlike Note Who stole three paintings from a Manchester gallery last weekend and left them in the rain? "Police released a picture yesterday of the crude, water-stained note written in dark blue ink, in an effort to find the thieves who stole £4m of artwork by Picasso, Gauguin and Van Gogh from the Whitworth Art Gallery. They also revealed that the thieves had intimate knowledge of the gallery. " The Guardian (UK) 04/30/03

Desperation Tactics At The Auction Houses The big art houses must feel as if God himself is against them: a down economy, a nasty little war, and an uncertain national mood are combining to create one of the most dismal auction seasons in years. "When times are tough, however, distress sales are often what bolster the market. It is no wonder, then, that paintings, drawings and sculptures are being sold this year by troubled companies like Vivendi, Enron and Idemitsu Kosan, Japan's second-largest oil refiner." Still, catalogs are distinctly thin this spring, and everything in the art world seems to be on hold. The New York Times 04/30/03

Nazi Loot Suit Can Go Ahead Suing a foreign government is a tricky proposition, with all sorts of legal hurdles to be cleared before a filing can even take place. So Maria Altmann has learned in her battle to get back six Gustav Klimt paintings looted from her family's collection by Nazis in World War II and currently in the possession of the Austrian government. This week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Altmann's suit can go forward in a U.S. court, and closed the door on any further stalling tactics by the Austrians. Austria has one appeal still available to it - the U.S. Supreme Court - but no decision has been made on whether such an appeal will be filed. Los Angeles Times 04/30/03

A Bit Of Revisionism At The Gardner "Most museums celebrate centennials by trotting out their signature masterpieces, staging blockbusters, and campaigning for significant new acquisitions. [Boston's] Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum can't do any of those things. The masterpieces are already up, displayed in the permanent installation dictated by the founder. There's no room for a blockbuster. Mrs. Gardner's will prohibits the museum from adding to the collections. So the museum celebrates its 100th year with 'The Making of the Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner as Collector, Architect & Designer,' a show that attempts to rebrand her as a pioneer in the museum world, as opposed to a loose cannon in Brahmin society." Boston Globe 04/30/03

Why Selling Art Online Didn't Work With the closing of Sothebys.com this week, art selling on the internet is deemed a failed idea. "What happened? With other Internet sales skyrocketing, why did no one - not even the powerful Sotheby's - succeed in flogging enough Warhol paintings and Chippendale chairs on the World Wide Web to make a decent profit? Because it is a losing battle: Everything that makes art compelling is blunted by the virtual, one-click world of the Net." OpinionJournal.com 04/30/03

Why They Love Saatchi Charles Saatchi's new gallery is a big success. "More than 4,000 a day have passed through the wood-panelled monument to civic bureaucracy since it opened to the public on 17 April, turning one man's fancy into one of the must-sees on London's tourist map. It was always bound to be a hit. The Saatchi name is a bigger brand than any that Charles ever represented in his advertising days. The gallery is its latest, logical manifestation, embracing some of the most iconic objects of the end of the 20th century. All that remains to be resolved is whether it can live up to its own exquisite hype." London Evening Standard 04/29/03

Nashashibi Wins Beck's Prize Rosalind Nashashibi has become the first woman to win the Beck's Futures Prize - one of the art world's richest. Her entry was a black and white film of senior citizens rummaging through a jumble sale. "Her four 16mm films were billed as explorations of cultural displacement." BBC 04/29/03

Rijksmuseum Closed After Asbestos Scare Amsterdam's famous Rijksmuseum has been closed for an indefinite period after asbestos was found in the building during an inspection. BBC 04/29/03

Iraq Museum Director Describes "Crime Of The Century" The director of Iraq's National Museum goes to London to describe what happened to his museum. "The looting was the crime of the century, Dr Donny George told representatives from some of the world's leading museums at a meeting in London. The meeting, at the British Museum, saw photographs of the vandalism and heard that many of the 170,000 items in the collection had vanished. The aim of the London summit was to decide what can be done by the international community to restore Iraq's devastated heritage." BBC 04/29/03

• Recovering Iraqi Art Loot - What's Next... "Unesco is to send a team of eight experts to Iraq to make an assessment of the situation and devise a plan for the next stage in the salvage operation. It is also calling on the UN Security Council to pass a resolution which would place an immediate embargo on all Iraqi cultural goods. This would also include the return of goods to Iraq that may have already entered the market. The UN organisation will then compile a database with all the archives, lists and inventories relating to Iraqi heritage." BBC 04/29/03

Archaeologists Find Gilgamesh Tomb? A German team of archaeologists believe they have discovered the 2,500-year-old ancient tomb of Gilgamesh. The "expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King. 'I don't want to say definitely it was the grave of King Gilgamesh, but it looks very similar to that described in the epic'."
BBC 04/29/03

Smithsonian's Change Of Gallery - A Political Move? Did the Smithsonian move an exhibition of Arctic photographs to a less prominent gallery under political pressure? That's the contention of the photographer and a US Senator. "Last month, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) displayed the photographs and book as part of her argument against approving oil and gas leasing in the refuge. 'After Boxer spoke, I got a call [saying] that it was perceived by the Smithsonian that my work had a political side,' says the artist. A spokesman for the Natural History Museum, said there had been no political pressure to move the photographs. 'Our decision was not based on Senator Boxer, but it didn't help. We do not want to become involved in a debate over standing legislation'." Washington Post 04/29/03

A 9/11 Memorial - All Ideas Considered Guidelines are released for a memorial for 9/11. "The guidelines say that competitors may create a memorial 'of any type, shape, height or concept,' that includes five physical elements: a recognition of each victim of the attacks; an area for quiet contemplation; a separate area for visitation by the families of the victims; a 2,500-square-foot area for the unidentified human remains collected at the trade center site; and a way to make visible the footprints of the original twin towers." The New York Times 04/29/03

The Cultural Plunder Racket "Although it is difficult to track the extent of the black-market culture trade, several have tried to do so. According to Argos, a French insurance group, about US$10-billion worth of art treasures is stolen and traded around the world every year. It's become the fourth-largest illicit activity - behind drugs, guns and fraud. The history of modern conflict is the history of mass looting - and not just the garden-variety filching of electronic goods; an educated few leap on wars as opportunities to take a nation's cultural collections into private hands." National Post 04/26/03

Getting Iraq's Stolen Art Online "Working to locate those treasures - which reach back 7,000 years to the advent of civilization - archaeologists are building a comprehensive, searchable image database of the tens of thousands of objects that are missing and presumed to be in the hands of professional art thieves. The Lost Iraqi Heritage project is a joint effort of over 80 universities, museums and individuals working to create a tool that law enforcement, customs officials and art dealers can use to prevent the sale and export of stolen objects. The group, which is coordinated by professors at the University of Chicago, includes the Archaeological Institute of America, University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Archaeologists say they are motivated by what they see as an unprecedented, incalculable loss." Wired 04/28/03

Cleaning David - It Takes A Gentle Touch So the caretakers of Michelangelo's "David" and the woman hired to clean the statue are fighting over how to clean the sculpture. It's no small matter, writes James Beck. Too many great artworks have been damaged or altered during cleaning, and overzealousness in getting all the dirt off isn't a good thing. OpnionJournal.com 04/29/03

• Previously: Restorer Of Michelangelo's 'David' Walks Off Job In Protest The art restorer hired to clean Michelangelo's "David" for its 500th birthday, has walked off the job, protesting the "modern" cleaning technique chosen by the director of the statue's gallery. "The gallery director who led an 11-year health check of the statue before it was decided to go ahead with the restoration, wants it to be cleaned using a modern 'wet' technique involving small amounts of water. Agnese Parronchi, the restorer, believes that any method other than careful dry brushing to remove the engrained dirt could further erode the protective coating." The Guardian (UK) 04/21/03

Is London The World's Art Capital? Michael Kimmelman goes to London to look at art and is impressed with the level of buzz. "It's just possible that for now even New York doesn't rival London's appetite for new art, and I don't mean simply the local fixation on Charles Saatchi's heavily promoted gallery of aging Young British Artists..." The New York Times 04/29/03

Stolen Paintings Recovered, Damaged Paintings stolen from a Manchester gallery were recovered damaged, but can be repaired. "The paintings - Van Gogh's The Fortification of Paris with Houses, Picasso's Poverty and Gauguin's Tahitian Landscape - were found the next day crammed into a tube behind a public toilet. A spokeswoman for Manchester University, of which the gallery is a part, said the paintings had suffered weather damage, and the Van Gogh had suffered a tear in the fabric, but added that all could be repaired. A note was attached to the paintings claiming the motive of the thieves was to highlight poor security at the gallery." BBC 04/28/03

• Making A Point About Security? Is security lax at the Manchester gallery where three paintings were stolen this weekend? That's the contention of the thieves who stole the paintings and left a note to that effect. “The person who is trying to make this point has shown total irresponsibility if they have left them outside a public toilet not properly wrapped, and not protected from the elements. I would tar them with the same brush as a common thief.” The Times (UK) 04/29/03

• Stolen Van Gogh, Others Recovered...Maybe Damaged Detectives investigating the theft of £1 million of artwork from the Manchester art gallery recovered three paintings after an anonymous phone call. "The Whitworth Gallery's three paintings, works by Picasso, Gauguin and Van Gogh, are thought to have been damaged by heavy overnight rain. The extent of the damage, and the authenticity of the works, is still being assessed by experts." The Guardian (UK) 04/28/03

• Theft Was Meticulously Executed The theft of three paintings from the Manchester gallery was meticulously planned and executed. "With no noise, no fuss and no suspicion, thieves had entered overnight and coolly strolled out with £1m worth of work. The only sign of the drawings by Gauguin, Picasso and Van Gogh were the blank spaces left on the white wall of a ground-floor gallery, where the frames had hung side by side." The Guardian (UK) 04/28/03

Thieves Steal Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh... Thieves stole a Van Gogh, Picasso and Gauguin valued at an estimated £1 million from a Manchester (England) gallery over the weekend.
The robbery was discovered at noon yesterday when staff at the Whitworth art gallery arrived for work. It is thought that the paintings were taken overnight." The Guardian (UK) 04/28/03

The Cult Of Frank Lloyd Wright Was architect Frank Lloyd immortal, as he declared? "More than 50 years later, it would seem the flamboyant, self-promoting genius heralded by himself and others as the "greatest architect" may have been right. Of the more than 500 buildings he designed, 400 are still standing. His legacy as both an architect and interior designer is such that each May thousands of devoted fans line up for the privilege of standing in a Frank Lloyd Wright 'space' for just a few minutes." National Post (Canada) 04/26/03

The Barnes - A Unique Art School The Barnes Collection outside Philadelphia is a great museum yes. But it's also an extraordinary art school. "There probably isn't another art school, anywhere, in which students are immersed week after week in one of the world's great collections. They sit on folding metal chairs in the foundation's galleries as the instructors teach from celebrated paintings by Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso, and dozens of other modern masters. It's hard to overstate the value of such exposure." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/27/03

Zagreb - City Of Art The city of Zagreb claims to have more museums and galleries per square foot than any other city. "One of the oddities of Zagreb is that although there's an amazing abundance of museums and galleries, there's no national art gallery. Instead, several of the leading galleries are named after prominent collectors who left their treasures to the nation." The Telegraph (UK) 04/26/03

Mesopotamian Studies - A Changed Landscape Clearly, after the looting of the Iraq National Museum, Mesopotamian studies will never be the same again. In Chicago "at one of the leading global centers for the study of ancient Mesopotamia, the personalities vary but the mood is a mix of anger and mourning, seasoned by the bitterness of personal betrayal. And it's clear that the recent events in Baghdad already have provoked both internal and external soul-searching about the role of this composite museum-research institute in a harsh new world for near-Eastern scholarship." Chicago Tribune 04/27/03

• What Means Mesopotamia Mesopotamia isn't just some long-ago land that doesn't have resonance today. "Mesopotamia was the 'cradle of civilization' that gave us the wheel, the 60-minute hour and, probably, the earliest system of writing. And then, too, it is a place in human consciousness - the land of the Garden of Eden and the birthplace of Abraham from which descended such biblical stories as those of Noah, the Tower of Babel and Moses." Chicago Tribune 04/27/03

United Arab Emirates Modernizes Its Biennale "The five previous editions of the Sharjah biennale had focused mainly on the local and traditional art scene and were aimed at an exclusively local public; this year, however, 117 artists from 25 different countries have been invited and the biennale has taken on an international aspect. It is an ambitious project, entirely the effort of the emirate government led by Sheikh Bin Mohammed al Qasimi. His aim is to show Sharjah as the cultural capital of the United Arab Emirates, and indeed of the entire Persian Gulf." The Art Newspaper 04/25/03

Venice To Build Protective Barriers Venice's government has voted to build mobile barriers for the city's lagoon to protect the city from flooding. The barriers "will consist of 78 hollow, hinged steel flaps, each 18-28 metres high and 20 metres wide, at the three entrances from the sea into the lagoon. In normal conditions they will lie on the sea bed, but when there is the threat of a tide higher than 110 cm above mean sea level, air will force water out of the flaps, which then rise up to hold back the water. The €6 billion (£4.1 billion; $6.4 billion) project, which is expected to be completed by 2011 (to put this cost in proportion: the road works in the centre of Boston have cost $14.6 billion)." The Art Newspaper 04/25/03

Prosecuting Iraq Art Thieves - Closing Loopholes A British MP is trying to close a loophole in the law that would make prosecuting those trying to sell stolen Iraqi art possible. "At the moment if somebody tries to sell an artefact that has been stolen and you can prove who it was stolen from they can be prosecuted for handling stolen goods. But if it can't be tracked back to the original owner then they can't be prosecuted. That's the loophole we're trying to plug." BBC 04/25/03

Saving Chicago's Buildings Acknowledging the destruction of hundreds of architecturally important buildings in Chicago over the past decade, Chicago city officials say they'll find new ways to protect the buildings. "Citing the damaging impact of such cases on Chicago's physical appearance and cultural legacy, preservationists praised the city's policy shift but said they were waiting to see the details of whatever programs result." Chicago Tribune 04/25/03

• A Record Of Destruction Chicago Tribune reporters drive 1000 miles on Chicago streets documenting architecturally important buildings that have been torn down. The reporters counted 704 structures that had been demolished... Chicago Tribune 04/25/03

Close Call - Museums Shut While Building For Future A number of big American museums are closed or closing (sometimes for a couple of years) while major additions/renovations are undertaken. "The spate of temporary closings represents a new phase in the building boom that began in the go-go 90's, when institutions found it relatively easy to raise large sums. Some museums are refurbishing old buildings; some are commissioning new ones. Others, like the Corcoran and the Aldrich, are doing both. For directors who shut down their institutions, consequences go beyond the obvious loss of revenue and the danger that the museum's support will erode. The impact is felt most keenly by employees who are laid off, but also extends to scholars who are dependent on easy access to artworks." The New York Times 04/23/03

Libeskind's Spiral Now Seems Inspired Choice For V&A When it was first proposed, architect Daniel Libeskind's post-modernist "spiral" addition to the Victoria & Albert Museum was derided as symbolizing all that is wrong with contemporary architecture. But now Libeskind's been embraced in New York for the World Trade Center site, his idea for the V&A is seen as inspired. And now the fundraising gets going in a big way... London Evening Standard 04/24/03

Berliners Stand Mute As Past Is Ripped Down Over the past ten years half of Berlin has been thoroughly transformed. Do Berliners have any feelings for their older buildings? If so, they "never even raised their voices when a precious building was torn down by the wrecking ball to make room for a new one. There also was no outcry, just some rather quiet outrage, when the city senate approved the demolition of Admiralspalast, the last building on Friedrichstrasse - across the street from the train station - which still recalls the 1920s, when this street was home to one of the capital's entertainment districts." What is the point? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 04/25/03

Open Art Bazaar - Trying To Protect Italy's Artifacts There are about 6000 archaeological sites in Italy. And artifacts are stolen every day. Combatting the ever-growing trade in stolen art is a special squad of Italian police. "In more than 30 years of activity, the squad has retrieved about 185,000 works of art and 456,000 archaeological objects. The original force of a few dozen police officers has grown to 300, with branches throughout Italy and liaisons throughout the world. Its database of stolen art, called Leonardo, catalogs more than two million objects." The New York Times 04/23/03

Stolen Iraqi Art Turning Up Some of the art stolen from Iraq's National Museum is beginning to turn up after appeals in Baghdad. "Officials are using tips from citizens to hunt down stolen items, and trying to prevail on thieves to turn them in voluntarily. Muslim clerics, at the officials' urging, have announced over mosque loudspeakers that anyone with looted items should return them to museum curators, no questions asked. U.S. reconstruction officials said they plan to air similar messages on Iraqi radio stations starting tonight. 'It's already working. I've heard from our friends that a number of objects were collected in mosques in the neighborhood after appeals from the imams of the mosques'." Washington Post 04/24/03

Save Antiquities By Letting The Free Market Work? Andre Emmerich wonders why museums like Iraq's National Museum have such a high concentration of available artifacts in one place. Wouldn't it be better for the preservation of the art if it were spread between many museums and collections? "Contrary to what some believe, trade in ancient objects is not the enemy of preservation. The great contribution the art market makes to this cause is to endow works of art with value. As a practical matter, the objects yielded by excavating tombs are generally quite repetitive within each culture. An obvious solution would be to deaccession the masses of such repetitive minor objects now stored in deplorable conditions." OpinionJournal.com 04/24/03

Booming Aboriginal Art Market Australian aboriginal art is hot. "Thirty years ago Aboriginal work was hardly recognized as art. Painted tree bark and ritual stone and wood objects, spears and clubs tended to be lumped together with stuffed koalas and wallabies in the ethnographic sections of Australian museums; Aboriginal art was never displayed in the same spaces as work by white artists. Less than 20 years ago you could barely give it away. People just didn't take art made by Aboriginal painters seriously. But at our sales in July we'll have people from all over the world bidding hundreds of thousands of dollars for art you could have bought for hundreds in the 1970's. We're estimating a total sale value of more than $3 million." The New York Times 04/24/03

Working The Crowds With revenues, donations and endowments down, museums are working harder than ever to lure visitors - meditation, singles nights, special membership offers... the marketing is only limited by imagination (and taste?) The New York Times 04/23/03

Museums: Coping With The Crowd Problem "Museums love blockbusters and, judging by the lines, so does the public. But the lines themselves signify the difficulty museums have solving the blockbuster math: let too few people in and the show becomes impossible for everyone to see; let too many people in and the art becomes impossible to see. To some extent, museum officials regard gallery traffic as a problem to be coped with, not cured." The New York Times 04/23/03

Art Anxiety: What If I Don't Get It? The democratization of the American art museum has in some ways increased the visual insecurity of viewers. You're standing there judging the work, but instead it feels like the work is judging you. If you're stumped, you are less likely to blame the artist than yourself. You may even assume you are an indolent person who has failed to make the requisite intellectual effort, which in turn can unleash a chain of negative thoughts about straying from your diet, neglecting to send a sympathy card and other unforgivable failures of will." The New York Times 04/23/03

Reform Needed For UK's National Trust The UK's National Trust has a management problem, says a new report. "The report says it is unrealistic to expect a body of 52 council members, meeting only four times a year for three hours at a time, to run an organisation with an annual expenditure of £251m, hundreds of properties, land holdings of 248,000 hectares (612,808 acres), 3 million members and a staff of 6000." The Guardian (UK) 04/24/03

Repairing Cultural Bosnia Bosnia's National Museum was at the center of heavy fighting during the civil war. "The National Museum, a quadrangle of four Italian Renaissance buildings surrounding a quiet botanical garden, is wedged between what was the war's front line and the broad avenue that became a target for snipers. But the staff that stayed on during the war stood guard at night. They hauled exhibitions to the basements and bulwarked bigger pieces with planks and sandbags. Ultimately, the museum was among the few cultural institutions in Bosnia to survive relatively intact. Now, more than seven years after the war's end, the museum is struggling to reclaim its position as a showcase of Bosnia's history." The New York Times 04/23/03

The Iraq Museum Autopsy Who let Iraq's National Museum get ransacked? What's missing, and how did it happen? Time 04/21/03

Back To The Bamiyan Buddhas Two years ago the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the ancient Bamiyan Buddhas. So what's become of the site? "Earlier this year, the United Nations' cultural arm, Unesco, persuaded the Afghan government to reject proposals to install replicas of the ancient Buddhas in the towering cliff niches in which they used to stand." But repairs to the niches - "which have begun to crumble as rain has seeped into cracks left by the explosions" - have been slow to get underway. "Unesco officials said that that project would get under way when security conditions improve, using $1.8 million given by Japan and special scaffolding from the Messerschmitt Foundation of Germany." The New York Times 04/23/03

ARTSJOURNAL'S ARCHIVE OF STORIES ABOUT THE DESTRUCTION OF IRAQ'S ART

Iraq Art - Where's The Loot? Two weeks after Iraq's National Museum was looted, some observers are wondering where all the art ended up. "Despite scattered rumors of artifacts turning up from Tehran to Paris, not a single one of the 90,000 or 120,000 or 170,000 plundered artifacts - no one knows for sure how many - is known to have been offered for sale anywhere in the world. And investigators and legitimate art dealers think they know why." Washington Post 04/23/03

Toledo Museum Cuts The Toledo Museum in Ohio, is cutting $1.3 million from its budget, and reducing staff by 14. "Our income from our endowments is down and annual giving, both corporate and individual, is down. Grants are harder to get, and our Ohio Arts Council grant - usually about $200,000 - has been cut twice since it was announced a few months ago." Toledo Blade 04/23/03

Museum Expansions A Go In Boston While big museums such as the Guggenheim, Whitney and Los Angeles County Museum have cancelled or postponed plans for big expansions, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Institute of Contemporary Art are going ahead with their plans. "The MFA is looking to raise $425 million for the project, the first phase of which is projected to be complete in the spring of 2007. With that phase, the museum will grow from 531,000 to 677,000 square feet, according to the MFA. The ICA's new building, designed for Fan Pier on the South Boston Waterfront, has been featured in an article in Newsweek and a sketch in The New Yorker. ICA officials say they've raised about $17 million of the $60 million they're looking to bring in for the project; an additional $7.5 million to $8 million should be available when the ICA sells its Boylston Street building." Boston Globe 04/23/03

Dia Beacon - A Major New Showplace For Art The Dia Foundation is opening a new home in the Hudson Valley town of Beacon, about an hour north of New York City. "The Dia:Beacon is on 31 acres along the Hudson and is a five-minute walk from a Metro North train station. Its 240,000 square feet of exhibition space is more than four times the exhibition space of the Whitney Museum of American Art and not quite twice the size of the Tate Modern in London." The New York Times 04/23/03

Guards Needed For Iraq's Museum Is Baghdad's National Museum secured? "Expressing frustration that Iraq's National Museum, archives and library in Baghdad were not secured against looters and organized art thieves, the director of Berlin's Near East museum collection, Beata Salje, said Iraqi guards could be hired for as little as $3 a day. 'Immediate help is necessary,' Salje said at a news conference with other German experts. 'It is important that the money is given as quickly as possible to our Iraqi colleagues so they can organize this'." Miami Herald (AP) 04/22/03

• Rumsfeld: Looting Exaggerated? Last week, trying to deflect reports of looting of the Iraq National Museum, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared: "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over. And it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase. And you see it 20 times. And you think, my goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?" ABCNews 04/22/03

Facing The Blues - Saddam's Picture-Makers Out Of Work Iraq's official portraitists are out of work. "In a good year, 20 portraits of Saddam Hussein could earn an artist £1,200 - a small fortune in a country crippled by two decades of war and economic sanctions. But now that the best-paying customer in town is fresh out of commissions, his absence is leading to a plummeting market in presidential iconography; what is a Saddam portraitist to do?" The Scotsman 04/22/03

The Ambivalent Flag Waver? "In the past two years - as flying the flag on homes, public buildings, opera houses and (momentarily) central Baghdad has become an American enthusiasm - Johns has emerged as the last hope, or maybe the fig leaf, of the ambivalent flag-waver. When a video of the concert for New York after the World Trade Centre attacks was released in this country, Johns's Flag was on the cover. When New York museums wanted to match the patriotic mood, they displayed not just any flag, but Johns's flag: Three Flags (1958), a version owned by the Whitney. Ambivalence is his thing. There are few works of art quite so uncertain, so confounding - not just in its values and meaning, but even in its status as an object or a sign - as Jasper Johns's Flag, made in its most famous version in 1954-55." The Guardian (UK) 04/22/03

The "Bring Back Painting" Prize Proves Popular The new Lexmark European art prize has had more than 2000 entries in its first year. "The contest - equal in prize money to the Turner - has been set up to overthrow the influence of conceptual and installation art and 'bring back painting'." The Guardian (UK) 04/22/03

Restorer Of Michelangelo's 'David' Walks Off Job In Protest The art restorer hired to clean Michelangelo's "David" for its 500th birthday, has walked off the job, protesting the "modern" cleaning technique chosen by the director of the statue's gallery. "The gallery director who led an 11-year health check of the statue before it was decided to go ahead with the restoration, wants it to be cleaned using a modern 'wet' technique involving small amounts of water. Agnese Parronchi, the restorer, believes that any method other than careful dry brushing to remove the engrained dirt could further erode the protective coating." The Guardian (UK) 04/21/03

Looted Iraqi Art Beginning To Turn Up A"rt collectors and dealers say they are already getting queries about artifacts looted from Iraq's museums, and the FBI said today at least one suspected piece had been seized at an American airport." The Age (AP) (Melbourne) 04/22/03

When Vandalism Is Art? Why? Why shouldn't Jake and Dinos Chapman’s much publicised modifications - or defacements, depending on your point of view - to a £25,000 set of prints of Goya's 'The Disasters' be considered vandalism? "There’s no reason why they should work on the real thing apart from vanity on their part. I find it objectionable that they should, as they have consistently done, compare themselves to Goya, because he was a deeply serious artist and The Disasters of War is one of the most powerful commentaries on war ever created." The Scotsman 04/21/03

Iraq Art - Failure To Act During the Second World War, Allied governments made protecting Europe's art treasures a priority. It was a policy that paid many benefits. So why did the Americans not have a similar policy to help protect Iraq's culture? Chicago Tribune 04/21/03

Appreciating The Barnes Collection The Barnes Collection, outside Philadelphia, is one of the America's great collections. "The Barnes collection, all 8,000 pieces of it, is like a multilayer cake. The masterpiece paintings that traveled around the world between 1993 and 1995 are the creamy, highly visible icing. Underneath, less readily noticed, other specialized groups of objects produce a fascinating and incomparable texture. These subcollections are themselves of splendid quality and variety. Not only are they aesthetically stimulating, but they also help to create the distinctive displays, called 'ensembles,' that make the Barnes unique." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/20/03

US Combat Artist Corps US forces in Iraq include two "combat artists," "part of a tradition dating back to the American Revolution, charged with going into war to capture its 'essence'. Unlike war photographers today, combat artists are in no way restricted by the military. Their orders: Go forth and do good. That's it. Absolutely nothing is dictated, from the medium to the subject to the tone." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 04/18/03

The difficulty of War Art Art about war is difficult. Passions of artist and viewer have to be negotiated, and the symbolism can be complicated. "With so few works considered truly enduring, is it possible that the power, ugliness and odd beauty of war is simply inexpressible, even in art? If it can be expressed, then who is qualified? Do artists have to see first-hand what they translate into art?" Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 04/18/03

Stolen Iraqi Art Seized At Jordanian Border "Jordanian customs authorities have seized 42 paintings believed to have been looted from Iraq's National Museum, government officials said Saturday." Nando Times (AP) 04/20/03

Iraq Museum Looting Overstated? Was the extent of the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad overstated? "Thanks to Iraqi preparations before the war, it seems the worst has been avoided. Donny George, the director-general of restoration at the Iraqi Antiquities Department, Wednesday said his staff had preserved the museum's most important treasures, including the kings' graves of Ur and the Assyrian bulls. These objects were hidden in vaults that haven't been violated by looters. Most of the things were removed. 'We knew a war was coming, so it was our duty to protect everything. We thought there would be some sort of bombing at the museum. We never thought it could be looted'." Wall Street Journal 04/17/03

Is National Mall Being Memorialized To death? The National Mall in Washington DC is one of America's most important public spaces. And space is the key, writes Christopher Knight. But Congress seems intent on cluttering it up with ever more memorials and tributes, which will certainly ruin a grand place. "Approved or proposed Mall additions now include memorials to President Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr., terrorist victims, Native Americans and soldiers lost in peacekeeping missions. Then there's the network of tunnels, underground security checkpoints and surveillance cameras newly suggested for the Washington Monument. Like other burgeoning examples of a post-Sept. 11 'architecture of fear,' these schemes would destroy the monument in order to save it." Los Angeles Times 04/19/03

What Happened To Warnings About Iraq Museums? Before the war on Iraq, warnings were sent to the Britsh and American governments about protecting Iraq's cultural treasures. "They were completely ignored by the British government, who failed to acknowledge letters sent to them. That was unspeakably terrible. But meetings did take place with the Pentagon, who were given lists of endangered sites. They made contact with some of the appropriate experts, and assurances were given. But I think they were not prepared for what happened in Baghdad - for any of it. The looting of hospitals, for instance - just the scale of it all. I don't think anybody foresaw that there would be a disaster on this scale. The letters that were written were not very specific. They probably did not mention possible looting in the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad. It hadn't crossed my mind that that would even be possible." The Telegraph (UK) 04/19/03

Andre Breton's Estate Broken Up, Sold Surrealist André Breton's personal art collection has been sold at auction. It brought in €46m (£31.8m), twice the pre-sale estimate. "The auctions, which went on late into the night to accommodate telephone bidders from the US, were disturbed by opponents of the state's refusal to buy Breton's rented flat near Pigalle, in the north of Paris, where the surrealist manifesto was drawn up in 1924." The Guardian (UK) 04/19/03

The Dictator And His (Bad) Art "In light of the atrocities committed against the Iraqi people and other unfortunates over the past 30 years, it is undoubtedly beside the point to criticize Saddam Hussein for his aesthetics. Still, one of the more tantalizing discoveries of the last few days, as we peel back the onion layers of his regime, has been the revelation of the dictator's taste is art..." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/19/03

Bush Advisers Resign Over Iraq Looting "Three White House cultural advisers have resigned in protest at the failure of US forces to prevent the looting of Iraq's national museum." The advisers were all members of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property. The three advisers had sharp words for the Bush administration's failure to have in place any sort of contingency plan for dealing with such foreseeable problems, and committee chair Martin Sullivan, who is one of those resigning, added that the looting was doubly preventable, since the United States was the nation in control of the timetable of the war. "In a pre-emptive war that's the kind of thing you should have planned for," he said. BBC 04/18/03

• The Fog Of Washington Arrogance "Let's be serious. Is anybody really surprised that Baghdad's great civic art museum didn't rate a measly tank? That the treasures of ancient Mesopotamia sat unguarded and exposed, ripe for the picking by local scavengers either amateur or professional? The horrendous event was not, after all, a dire outcome of 'the fog of war.' It was instead a routine example of the fog of the Bush administration, when it comes to matters cultural." Los Angeles Times 04/18/03

• Museum Looters Were Pros The looting of Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities was no mere grab-and-go act by a desperate citizenry. According to UNESCO, the vast majority of the museum thefts were perpetrated by professional art thieves who knew exactly what to take, and where to find it. "Museum officials in Baghdad told UNESCO that one group of thieves had keys to an underground vault where the most valuable artifacts were stored. The thefts were probably the work of international gangs who hired Iraqis for the job, and who have been active in recent years doing illegal excavations at Iraqi archaeological digs." Washington Post 04/18/03

• The Real Cost of the Baghdad Looting Although Americans may find it convenient to think of the Middle East as a land of barbaric, uncultured souls prone to unstoppable violence, the recent horrific and systematic destruction of Iraq's cultural firmament points up how wrong these misconceptions truly are. When Baghdad's central library burned to the ground last week, centuries of irreplacable cultural scholarship were lost to the world. Iraq has always taken great pride in its culture and its history, and has catalogued both with a meticulousness which 'cultured' Americans have never matched. "Since 1967, the country has had stringent laws preventing the export of antiquities. One of the saddest ironies of the destruction is that Iraq's defense of its cultural heritage was considered a model for the region." Washington Post 04/18/03

• Cultural History Theft - An Organized Racket "Stealing a country’s physical history, its archaeological remains, has become the world’s third biggest organised racket, after drugs and guns. There are those who argue that it shouldn’t need to be illegal at all. There are those who say, look, the free market should operate here. Why shouldn’t a private collector be allowed to buy an antiquity and keep it in his bathroom, maybe next to the bidet, or as a tasteful holder for the Toilet Duck, if he wishes to do so, and if both he and the seller are happy with the price? You will not be surprised to hear that many of those who argue this way are American. You may not be surprised, either, that shortly before the invasion of Iraq, and with the spoils of war on their mind, some of these people formed themselves into a lobbying organisation called the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP)." The Spectator 04/17/03

• America's Contempt For History (Other Than Its Own) Allowing the destruction of Iraq's art shows the contempt the United States has for other cultures. "The notion that Iraq even has history - let alone that 7,000 years ago this land was the cradle of civilization - is not likely to occur to the neocolonialists running a brawny young nation barely more than 200 years old. The United States' earnest innocence is the charm that our entertainment industry markets so successfully around the world, but it is also the perennial seed of disaster as we blithely rearrange corners of the planet we only pretend to understand." The Nation 04/16/03

• British Museum Reaches Out To Iraq British Museum director Neil MacGregor expresses his dismay over the looting of Iraq's National Museum. "The human aspect is as vital as the artistic and cultural. These museum people in Baghdad, MacGregor points out, are friends, close associates, with whom his staff have been in regular contact over long-term shared projects. Only weeks ago, while the coalition plotted air attacks, British Museum scholars were still exchanging prized information on the decipherment of precious cuneiform tablets. Many of these writings on clay, having survived 5,000 years, now lie smashed." London Evening Standard 04/17/03

Winnipeg To Build Human Rights Museum Winnipeg Canada is planning to build a $270 million international museum of human rights. About $130 million has been raised so far for the first $200-million phase, to be built on vacant land at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in downtown Winnipeg. Canoe.com 04/17/03

Choosing Destruction For Iraqi Art Why did the Bush administration choose not to protect Iraq's cultural treasures? "Only two of the thousands of pieces of art that were stolen after the first Gulf War were recovered. Even if a sculpture of a bronze Akkadian king isn't important to the Bush administration, you'd think its own self-interest would be: In the eyes of the world, the war's success will be measured as much by what happens now and over the coming months as by the shock and awe campaign." Slate 04/17/03

How Iraq's National Museum Was Looted "Museum guard, Abdulk Rahman, tried to stop the first pillagers breaking through security gates at the rear of the compound, but he was forced to give up. Once inside, guards and curators were powerless to resist. A few hours later, US troops answered a desperate call from a curator, Raid Abdul Ridha Mohammed. Tanks were brought to the entrance, which dispersed the looters, but the Americans stayed for only half an hour. Immediately after their departure, the looters returned. The main ransacking seems to have occurred the next day, when hundreds of looters quickly gained access to the 28 public galleries." The Art Newspaper 04/17/03

• What Was Stolen Or Destroyed The Art Newspaper has put illustrations of artwork lost in Iraq's National Museum online. The drawings come from the museum's catalog. "We should stress that at this stage there is no detailed information on what objects have been looted, what have been damaged and what are safe. Nevertheless, the images in the Treasures of the Iraq Museum represent many of the most important objects from the collection, which numbers some 170,000 pieces." The Art Newspaper 04/17/03

• An International Tragedy "The tragedy has provoked international uproar. Western museums have launched an urgent rescue mission to trace and return the missing treasures. Downing Street has demanded a list of the antiquities that can be circulated to British troops in Iraq. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, has promised a military guard on remaining museums and important archaeological sites. And Unesco is to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to prepare an action plan. For many, it is too late. Shards of antique pottery, smashed stone sculptures and scattered bits of parchment abandoned in the museum galleries make clear that little care will be taken with the stolen antiquities." The Art Newspaper 04/17/03

• Art Destruction - Questions And A Few Facts The Art Newspaper asks eight important questions about the destruction of Iraq's museums and what happens next. The Art Newspaper 04/17/03

• Iraqi Culpability In Art Destruction? Jim Hoagland writes that while Americans should have done something to protect Iraqi art, "the rush to condemn Americans for looting and destruction committed by Iraqis obscures fundamental questions about social responsibility and accountability in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. The debate about responsibility for the museum's losses goes to the heart of the need for urgent moral and psychological change in the greater Middle East. An important question is going unasked in the rush to condemn: If looting was so predictable, what did the Iraqis - and particularly the staff of the museum - do to protect the museum's valuable antiquities?" Washington Post 04/17/03

• Iraq Art Destruction Makes New Enemies For America That Americans allowed the destruction of Iraqi culture while they stood by and watched has ignited rage among those Iraqis who might have been expected to support the Americans. "Somewhere, in the cacophony of bombs and the orgy of looting that followed, Baghdad's cultural elite became angry about the war, seeing in its destruction a vulgarity that only pushed the country deeper into degradation. Even today, even in Baghdad, there are people unused to chaos, and chaos now it is." The New York Times 04/17/03

• American Cutural Property Commission Official Resigns In Protest Citing "the wanton and preventable destruction" of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities, the chairman of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property has submitted his resignation to President Bush. Washington Post 04/17/03

• Iraq Art - A Forseeable Tragedy That Iraq's museums would be pillaged was a forseeable thing, writes Kenneth Baker. "We have to wonder how the Pentagon and the State Department could fail to see the cultural calamity coming, such a predictable consequence of urban war chaos. Weeks before the invasion, the Archaeological Institute of America published an 'Open Declaration on Cultural Heritage at Risk in Iraq,' signed by hundreds of scholars from around the world." San Francisco Chronicle 04/17/03

• Did Americans Allow Iraq Museum Looting Because Of A Lack Of Appreciation For Art? Is the fact that American troops protected oil fields but not museums significant? Caroline Abels writes that "we might never know why the looting continued unchecked despite strong early warnings from the world art community that Iraq's treasures required protection. But the cynic in me wonders whether the American military would have done more to protect the museums had we been a country that better recognized the value of art." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/17/03

Is Rio Guggenheim A City's Dream Or A Disaster In The Making? Rio de Janeiro officials are hoping that a splashy new Guggenheim museum there will help the city. "Local officials are hailing the proposed museum project as part of a grand new vision of Rio, the South American capital of sun and samba that in the future also could be considered an art lover's tourist destination. But even as the project inches closer to final approval, the new Guggenheim branch's critics are growing in numbers, threatening to derail the city's plans. They say the museum should be subordinated to more pressing social needs such as roads, schools and health care..." Chicago Tribune 04/17/03

Debunking The Guernica-At-The-UN Story A big story before the war on Iraq began this spring had the United Nations covering up a copy of Picasso's "Guernica" that hangs outside the Security Council. Were US officials skittish about being shown on TV talking about war in front of a powerful anti-war work? No, writes Claudia Winkler. Here's what really happened: As the Iraq drama was playing out at the United Nations, the press corps covering the Security Council swelled. The usual press stakeout, where ambassadors routinely take reporters' questions outside the Security Council, simply couldn't hold the numbers - expected to reach 800 for Powell's address on February 5. So the Secretariat moved the stakeout down the hallway. As over 200 cameramen were setting up, they complained that the background at the new location didn't work for them." They asked for a plain background... Weekly Standard 04/16/03

Edinburgh Museums Get Money To Tell People What They've Got Edinburgh museums have been given £117,000 by the government to "train community education workers in how to access the full range of cultural resources available to them through museums, libraries and archives." The Scotsman 04/16/03

Enron Art On The Block A judge has authorized the sale of the Enron art collection. The company had a budget of $20 million for art, and reportedly spent $4 million. But "the collection is expected to bring $1.3 million to $1.8 million" at auction. "Enron creditors have filed 23,000 claims worth $400 billion." Nando Times (AP) 04/16/03

Don't Buy Iraqi Antiquities World museum leaders suggest a moratorium on Iraqi antiquity sales as well as offering rewards for the return of art looted from Iraq's museums. "I feel very strongly that we have to mobilize a reaction and make people aware that it's not going to be easy to get the looted stuff out on the market." The New York Times 04/16/03

Artist, Heal Thyself The economic slump has spread through galleries and museums, and is now hitting individual artists who make their living selling paintings to the public. James Auer thinks that part of the problem is that most artists don't actually buy any art themselves. "It's very difficult to persuade someone to do something you haven't done yourself. And that includes the act of acquiring a fairly costly artwork - and paying off the debt, if necessary, on the installment plan. Collecting fine art can be a creative act, too. Indeed, it's the other, essential end of a vital continuum." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 04/16/03

Denver Museum May Get Permanent Home "A Denver developer has offered to donate one-third of an acre in the Central Platte Valley to the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver as the site for a $3.6 million to $4 million permanent home... If it is realized, the free-standing, 18,000- to 20,000-square-foot structure would be part of a proposed development that would include 60 units of affordable housing and 11 luxury townhomes." Denver Post 04/16/03

Assessing Blame In Iraq Looting Who will be blamed for allowing the looting of Iraq's museums? "Many Iraqis already believe that allied forces targeted ancient sites during the first Gulf War out of malice; this new destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage may soon be attributed not to Iraqi criminals but to coalition intentions. In this war US commanders were already provided with a list of the most important of an estimated 10,000 ancient sites in Iraq. The Americans claim that they took great care to avoid hitting these but say that Saddam Hussein deliberately sited many of his defences near such places to give them cover." The Times (UK) 04/16/03

• Protection From Bombs, Not Looters Iraqi curators thought the biggest threat to their art was American bombs. They weren't prepared for looting... The Times (UK) 04/16/03

• Who Will Buy Looted Iraqi Art? There won't be many buyers. "The major salerooms greatly restrict their sales of antiquities, most of which have no commercial value unless they carry with them what effectively amounts to a passport. The history of any major piece must be well known to make that piece saleable." The Times (UK) 04/16/03

When Is It Okay To Deface Art? "In Paradise Square, Baghdad, tearing down a giant bronze Saddam is seen as moving, heroic and symbolic. Bad art about bad people deserves all the abuse it gets, we might argue, but where do the lines of acceptability lie when an artist wilfully wrecks another artist's work? Jake and Dinos Chapman are in trouble again for defacing a complete set of Goya's 80 Disasters of War etchings. Goya worked on the series for a decade from 1810 and never saw it printed in his lifetime." But strangely, the defacement is moving... London Evening Standard 04/15/03

The Art Saddam Liked "The art in Saddam's palaces is very emphatically the embodiment of ideas and appetites, and as such, it is not really that funny. The erotic art is particularly recognisable as the sort of thing you'd see in Hitler's private collection - right down to the Aryan types. But Saddam is less elevated in his taste than Hitler. The Fuhrer was more pretentious. By contrast, there are no high cultural allusions whatsoever in the Saddamite paintings. They are from the universal cultural gutter - pure dreck. They look spraypainted, in a rampant hyperbolic style where all men are muscular, all women have giant breasts and missiles are metal cocks. These are art for the barely literate, or the barely sentient, dredged from some red-lit back alley of the brain."
The Guardian (UK) 04/15/03

Lascaux Cave Painting Threatened The cave paintings at Lascaux in central France survived 20,000 years. But the prehistoric wall paintings are threatened with irreparable damage by modern man's attempts to save them. The Guardian (UK) 04/15/03

Is Museum's Destruction So Bad? The destruction of the Iraq Museum is a disaster. "Some objects will doubtless be recovered, and a few of the most remarkable may turn out to have been hidden away. Even so, when the news about the museum emerged some people over here began talking about how the Iraqi people had 'lost their past'. A museum like the one in Baghdad, they argued, gives a people a sense of who they are, and where they come from. Is this true? There is a lot of sentimentality attached to archaeology by outsiders." The Guardian (UK) 04/15/03

British Art Experts To Iraq Britain is sending a team of art experts to Iraq to try to help pick up the pieces after the smashing and looting of the National Museum of Antiquities. "Officials from Unesco, the UN cultural agency, will meet staff from the British Museum on Thursday to discuss tactics for Iraq. 'There will be a large conservation task to be done, extending over many years and requiring the widest possible international co-operation'."
BBC 04/15/03

• British Museum Offers Iraqis Help The British Museum is offering to help the Iraq Museum. "The museum is considering the unprecedented move of arranging extended loans or gifts from its vast stores to help recreate the shattered displays when Iraqi museums reopen. It has the world's greatest Mesopotamian collection outside Iraq." The Guardian (UK) 04/16/03

Saatchi's Gallery Opening Party More than 1000 guests turned up for the opening of Charles Saatchi's new gallery in London. The crowd was full of artists and celebrities and "they were treated to a nude happening by Spencer Tunick. Following the 35-year-old artist's directions, 160 naked volunteers, some giggling with embarrassment, posed in several positions - to the delight of tourists on the adjacent London Eye." BBC 04/15/03

The Symbolism Of Toppling Statues The images of Saddam's statues being pulled down in Iraq were compelling. "What is it about a dead and really poor statue - a boring one indeed - that rouses such personal antipathy? And why did we who were not there stay so gripped throughout the whole business? All of us are aware of the symbolic freight of statues like this one. Their toppling clearly symbolizes the end of the overthrown regime. Often the pent-up resentments against a now-absent leader are taken out on his images. The history of art and the history of all images is punctuated by events of this kind..." OpinionJournal.com 04/16/03

Saddam Liked Fantasy Raunch In His Art An American artist named Rowena was surprised to discover that two of her oil paintings hung in Saddam Husein's personal quarters. The paintings are fantasy raunch, and "Rowena, 58, said she did the oil paintings that hung in the dictator's den about 15 years ago as covers for bodice-ripper paperbacks with titles such as 'King Dragon' and 'Shadows Out of Hell'." Oh, and she'd like them back... New York Daily News 04/15/03

Tracking Down Iraq's Treasures Archaeologists are trying to track down items plundered from Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities. "They can't put the sculptures, statues, and coins back on the shelves from which they were wrested. But they can put together a database of what was lost in the looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. By gathering as much detailed information as possible, they hope to render unsellable the thousands of artifacts stolen from Iraq's largest museum, one of the region's most important. The more that is known about the lost pieces, the less likely they will be able to pass into private hands on the black market, scholars and curators say." Boston Globe 04/15/03

US Says It Will Help "Restore" Baghdad Museum The United States says it will help restore the Iraq National Museum. "Secretary of State Colin Powell said the Baghdad museum was 'one of the great museums in the world' and that the US would take a leading role in restoring it. Coalition forces were criticised for not protecting the institution, which housed many treasures from 'the cradle of civilisation', when it was ransacked on Friday. But critics say it's too late. 'And it's gone, and it's lost. If Marines had started before, none of this would have happened. It's too late. It's no use. It's no use'."

See pictures of damage to the museum here BBC 04/14/03

Whitney Puts Off Expansion New York's Whitney Museum has decided to cancel plans for a $200 million expansion designed by Rem Koolhaas, a signal that there may be further belt-tightening for the institution. "We're feeling the pinch. A project like this would be a big challenge, and we're not in a position to proceed with it."
The New York Times 04/15/03

What Are They Teaching In Art Schools These Days? "It’s not easy sorting out how best to use the short time allotted to arts degrees; an undergraduate fine-arts major often spends only one of his four years in art classes—hardly enough time to learn the traditional skills of drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography, let alone today’s laundry list of new forms. Even a two-year master of fine arts (M.F.A.) program doesn’t provide much time for training, compared with the decades-long master-apprentice system of earlier centuries. Countless other challenges have art-school faculties reexamining their missions and values. The proliferation of programs and students; the embrace of diverse art forms and content; the professionalization of art practice; the rise of cultural theory; whether (and how) to teach the new technologies that have sprouted in the last decade." ArtNews 04/03

Defending American Expressionism "For decades, American Expressionism has been denigrated, if not ignored. Postwar conservative art critics and politicians derided the work as art by 'Reds and fellow travelers.' Contemporary critics are no kinder." But Bram Dijkstra says this is grossly unfair, and he's making a case for it in a new book on the subject. "This is not just art with a social content, it is great art with a social content." Chronicle of Higher Education 04/14/03

LA Museums Still Pursuing Dreams Southern California museums are facing money problems just like anywhere else. But though some high-profile building projects have been postponed or canceled, others continue. "For every local building plan that has gone awry, several others are shaping up. If all the major projects that are in the works materialize, by 2005 the museum landscape here will look dramatically different." Los Angeles Times 04/14/03

London - Going Up... This week there will be a vote on allowing the building of Europe's tallest skyscraper in London. "Nothing can avoid the fact that this massive building will transform the scale of London. St Paul's Cathedral still holds its own against tall buildings in the City, but London Bridge Tower is three times its height. At the moment, Tower 42, the former NatWest Tower, sets an unofficial 600ft height limit in central London. If London Bridge Tower gets the go-ahead, all developers will be aiming at 1,000ft, the limit imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority. London will become a high-rise city, with the dome of St Paul's slowly reduced to a pimple. Organised opposition to such a transformation has largely evaporated." The Telegraph (UK) 04/14/03

Destroying Iraq's Museum - One Tank Could Have Saved It The looting of the Iraq Museum is a loss for the world. "The losses will be felt worldwide, but its greatest impact will be on the Iraqi people themselves when it comes to rebuilding their sense of national identity. International cultural organisations had urged before the war that the cultural heritage of Iraq, which has more than 10,000 archaeological sites, be spared. US forces are making a belated attempt to protect the National Museum, calling on Iraqi policemen to turn up for duty. There is no pay, but 80 have given their services. 'The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened. I hold the American troops responsible. They know that this is a museum. They protect oil ministries but not the cultural heritage'." The Telegraph (UK) 04/13/03

Erasing The Story Of Civilization The looting of Iraq's museums is "a cultural catastrophe. Yesterday the museum's exhibition halls and security vaults were a barren mess - display cases smashed, offices ransacked and floors littered with hand-written index cards recording the timeless detail of more than 170,000 rare items that were pilfered. Worse, in their search for gold and gems, the looters got into the museum's underground vaults, where they smashed the contents of the thousands of tin trunks. It was here that staff had painstakingly packed priceless ceramics that tell the story of life from one civilisation to the next through 9000 fabled years in Mesopotamia." The Age (Melbourne) 04/14/03

Iraq Museum Destroyed Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad has been destroyed. "Once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters. The full extent of the disaster that befell the museum came to light only today, as the frenzied looting that swept much of the capital over the previous three days began to ebb." The New York Times 04/13/03

• Calls To Protect Iraqi Art "Concerned archaeologists urged United States military leaders to take more forceful steps to protect Iraqi's cultural treasures and to restore control of them to the local Department of Antiquities. For weeks before the war, archaeologists and other scholars had alerted military planners to the risks of combat, particularly postwar pillage of the country's antiquities. These include 10,000 sites of ruins with such resonating names as Babylon, Nineveh, Nimrud and Ur." The New York Times 04/13/03

When Ideas Overwhelm Art Trickle-down festivalism, which is largely supported by institutions and foundations, is influencing artists and curators alike. It has generated a parallel art world inhabited foremost by curators who talk mostly to one another and look mostly at one another's shows, always focusing on the same coterie of artists. The prevailing artistic strategy is to emphasize topical subject matter — the urban infrastructure, globalization, cultural identity — while relying on all-but-exhausted international styles, like Post-Minimal installation or Conceptual Art. The prevailing curatorial strategy is a big, catch-all idea about the present condition of life on earth approached with multidisciplinary intent. A result is the repeated substitution of good intentions for good art, unmanageable agendas for focus and shows that, between the art, the labels and the catalogs, are largely talk. For the most part, the viewer is left with next to nothing, other than a depressing hollowness." The New York Times 04/13/03

Looters Clean Out Iraqi Museum The Mosul Museum in Iraq has been looted. "The looters knew what they were looking for, and in less than 10 minutes had walked off with several million dollars worth of Parthian sculpture. "Iraq has a great history," said the museum's curator. "It's just been wrecked. I'm extremely angry. We used to have American and British tourists who visited this museum. I want to know whether the Americans accept this." The Guardian (UK) 04/12/03

Mona Lisa At 500 The Mona Lisa turns 500 this year. "Over the centuries, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has been denounced as a femme fatale, celebrated as the paragon of womanhood, inspired three suicides, and survived a theft. Yet that serene smile staring at us behind bulletproof glass in Paris's Louvre museum remains mysterious." And yet, some of her mysteries have been solved... The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/12/03

Some Fear Archaeological Looting In Iraq Many in the art world are concerned that Iraq's cultural treasures will be looted after the war ends. "After the last gulf war a lot of treasures disappeared onto the black market and archaeologists in Britain and the US are concerned this will be repeated on a much larger scale in the power vacuum after the fall of Saddam Hussein, as happened in Afghanistan. For poor Iraqis the temptation to sell stolen antiquities will be greatly increased if it is known there is a ready market in the west. Alarm bells had been set ringing by reports of a meeting between a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), with US defence and state department officials before the start of the war. The group offered help in preserving Iraq's invaluable archaeological collections, but archaeologists fear there is a hidden agenda to ease the way for exports post-Saddam." The Guardian (UK) 04/11/03

Bones To Dust "There is a growing feeling amongst many in the museum profession that old human remains should be returned to where they were originally found." But "the bones are evidence from the past that speak to us about life from between one century to many thousands of years ago. Under scrutiny they reveal patterns of migration, the effect of environment upon body form, and the relationship between different populations. We can learn who lived where and when, about patterns in health, origin, gene flow and microevolutionary change. When the law changes, large and significant collections could be broken up and sent away." Butterflies and Wheels 04/03

The Greatest Generation The American artists who came of age in the 60s and 70s are the country's greatest generation of artists. "They are men mostly, with big egos and big ideas. They were the first Americans to influence Europeans. The work these artists made changed, or at least questioned, the nature of art: what it looked like, its size, its materials, its attitude toward the places where it was shown, its relation to architecture, light and space and to the land. The artists even questioned whether art needed to be a tangible object. Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, Earth art, video art, Conceptualism - suddenly art could be nothing more than an idea, a thought on a piece of paper that played in your head. It could be ephemeral or atmospheric, like the experience of a room illuminated by colored fluorescent tubes." The New York Times 04/06/03

Commercial Interests Picking Apart Libeskind's WTC Plans Stakeholders in the process to build on the site of the World Trade Center are already starting to pick apart the Daniel Libeskind design that had been chosen for the site. The owner of a retail mall that had been in the base of the World Trade Center doesn't like the design: 'We don’t think [the Libeskind plan] works. So why don’t we sit down and fix it? Why not have a meeting? It’s not that difficult. We think we can help and make it better.' Westfield’s unhappiness is significant because the company and the Port Authority will have to renegotiate Westfield’s lease at the site." New York Oberver 04/09/03

Stolen Schiele Painting To Be Sold An Egon Schiele painting that spent half a century in an museum in Austria before being returned to the heirs of the Jewish collectors from whom it was stolen by the Nazis is expected to bring in £7 million at Sotheby's in London in June. The Telegraph (UK) 04/11/03

Greece's Acropolis Museum - Now All It Needs Is The Art "Greece is rushing to build the $100 million New Acropolis Museum to house the Marbles for the 2004 Summer Olympics, locating it next to the rocky citadel in the heart of ancient Athens. The three-level museum will be topped with a glass-walled Parthenon Gallery to display the carvings in brilliant sunlight, just 800 feet from, and slightly below, the temple they once adorned. Innovative and earthquake-proof, the museum aims to rebut longtime British objections to the Elgin Marbles' return - that Greece lacked first-rate display space to assure the safety of the 480-foot-long section of the Parthenon frieze. British officials are also worried that a repatriation of the Marbles, even on loan, could set a precedent for other claims on antiquities removed from original sites." CNN.com 04/10/03

The Highwaymen Ride On The South Florida artists known as the Highwaymen, who originally took up painting as a way to pick up a few extra dollars and perhaps find a way out of their poverty-stricken lives in the orange groves, are enjoying an unexpected renaissance. The artists, who focused almost exclusively on Florida landscapes as their subject matter, began painting in the late 1950s, and have turned out an astonishing volume of work over the years. Initially sold for $25-$30 apiece, a painting by one of the original Highwaymen can now sell for upwards of $10,000. Chicago Tribune 04/10/03

UK: Tax Breaks For Art Donations? Until now, people donating art to cultural institutions in the UK didn't get tax incentives. But the government has indicated it is rethinking the policy and might extend tax breaks to art. "Until now, philanthropists have been able to get tax relief on cash and share donations, but there was no incentive to give art or artefacts to museums." The Guardian (UK) 04/10/03

Enduring Themes... "For over 400 years, from the time of Giotto to Rembrandt, Western painting is inconceivable without the vision and the stories contained in the Bible, especially in the Gospels..." Artcyclopedia 04/03

A Museum Comes Into Focus Daniel Libeskind has been refining his design for the Royal Ontario Museum, and Lisa Rochon likes what she sees of the changes. "Only last month, the Berlin-based Studio Libeskind presented to its client the museum's northern façade rendered like a warrior's mask with eyes slashed into its steel face armour. It looked like an angry work of autonomous architecture. Now, however, the ROM is being unmasked to reveal a beguiling human face." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/09/03

Fighting Numbers With Numbers The Detroit Institute of the Arts, facing an uncertain financial future in the wake of a proposed 72% cut to Michigan arts funding, has released a study designed to hammer home the point that the arts give back more to the community than they take out in tax dollars. The study claims that the recent DIA exhibit "Degas and the Dance" brought $15 million into the local economy, but some economists are already saying that the study uses a flawed formula. Such arguments are commonplace among arts organizations facing governmental cuts, but few seem to think the economic-stimulus argument will cut much ice at the state legislature. Detroit Free Press 04/08/03

Scrambling To Assess Saatchi With the opening of Charles Saatchi's new gallery, critics are scrambling to pass judgment on his contributions to the art world. His name is "synonymous with the artists who became known as the Brit pack, who rose to fame in the early 1990s. This was the era when British contemporary art became world famous, when the Turner Prize was cooler than the Brits. Fashions change however. Although art is still hip, it has moved on. 'It was a really defining time. Lots of precedents were set then; some good, some bad. It was an important time, but it?s definitely a thing of the past'." The Scotsman 04/08/03

Beck's Futures - Pessimistic Chic For The Culturati? The UK's richest art prize for contemporary art has taken a turn for the serious. "Beck's Futures is experiencing the post-September 11 blues, and this year's selection reflects a darker, more critical mood now gripping many contemporary artists. Indeed, Beck's itself seems to be wracked with gloomy self-doubt, its poster campaign heckling you with the question, 'If corporate sponsorship is killing art, want to come to a funeral'?" The Telegraph (UK) 04/09/03

Saddam Palaces - What $2 Billion In Decorating Buys American soldiers entering Saddam Hussein's palaces see evidence of the reported $2 billion spent on decorating. But money doesn't equal taste. "With Saddam Hussein, it's not about taste, but size. The interiors are monumental, gilded and dreadful," and the palace interior "looks sad and corporate. It's too bad he turned his back on his own culture, which has amazing architecture and design, and his own people, who, politics aside, are wonderful artisans." Los Angeles Times 04/08/03

Stolen Pompeii Frescoes Recovered Two frescoes stolen from Pompeii last week have been recovered by Italian police. "The 1st Century frescoes were found at a construction site close to the historic city, after roadblocks were set up across the whole of Naples province. The authorities said they had already been packed, and that the aim may have been to smuggle them abroad. Both panels were damaged during the theft." BBC 04/08/03

Canada Stands Up For Greece The British Museum says it's a dead issue, but Canadian Greeks are applying all the pressure they can to the UK in an effort to force the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece. This month, the Canadian House of Commons passed a resolution calling on the British Museum to return the marbles, which have been in Britain for over 100 years. The Canadian push follows similar resolutions by other governments around the world, but the UK has repeatedly said that the marbles will stay right where they are. Montreal Gazette 04/08/03

Thieves Steal Pompeii Frescoes Thieves stole two frescoes from the ancient city of Pompeii over the weekend. "Selling such rare art on the open market would be almost impossible so the theft may have been commissioned. 'This is 1st-century Roman art from Pompeii. It is not something you can find in the window of an antique dealer'." Washington Post (AP) 04/07/03

Protesting Andre Breton Sale Protesters gathered outside the Paris auction house where the contents of Andre Breton's apartment were being auctioned off. "The flat was an expression of Surrealist thought. Selling it off piecemeal in 4,100 lots is like taking apart a Rimbaud poem word by word and scattering them to the winds. Once broken up, the collection has no meaning." The Guardian (UK) 04/08/03

Pritzker Winner's Sense Of Building As Art The Sydney Opera House is so perfect for its site, so right as a national symbol, it seems like it was inevitable. But before architect Joern Utzon's masterpiece was built, the design was the subject of national controversy. Certainly the opera house was the compelling reason Utzon won this year's Pritzker Prize, but the judges noted that Utzon's career demonstrates a succession of buildings infused with "a sense of architecture as art, and natural instinct for organic structures related to site conditions." Sydney Morning Herald 04/08/03

Seeking Solace At The Museum In New York, record crowds are turning out at blockbuster art exhibits, but not for the usual reasons. "The popularity of shows here ranging from Da Vinci to Manet - an unusual confluence of big-name artists even for New York - is partly a commentary on New Yorkers' magnetic attraction to anything with buzz. But in a city beset by budget cuts, rising homelessness, and a steady stream of war news, it's also about something more. To the crowds waiting in lines that spill out onto the streets here, these timeless masters offer timely beauty and insight to a world desperately in need of it." The Christian Science Monitor 04/07/03

London Tower - A Fight For The Soul Of A City The proposed London Bridge Tower skyscraper soars 1000 feet tall; it would be the tallest building in Europe. But London - which historically hasn't allowed giant buildings, is debating the wisdom of such a building. It's not just an argument about architecture but a fight over how development is determined. And it looks - at least for the moment - as though developers have the upper hand. "Until we have world peace, socialism triumphant and pigs with wings, we have chosen, in Britain especially, to have private capital gamble with our space. It's property developers who give us most of our architecture." The Times (UK) 04/08/03

Art That Defaces Is No "Art" Eric Gibson wonders why the art world accepts the altering - read "vandalism" - of important classic artworks. Tying string around a Rodin sculpture or defacing Goya prints isn't art, he writes, and it doesn't make sense to dignify these acts with serious consideration. "It says something that in our own time it has always been the lesser talents who have left their imprint on the works of their superiors. And you can be sure that, whatever motivated Rubens, it had to do with an artistic impulse far more profound than simply "thinking again about a familiar image." OpinionJournal.com 04/07/03

• Previously: But Does He Hate Conceptual Art Or Just Kissing? Police were called to the Tate Modern gallery in London this weekend, after a visitor to the museum reportedly "attacked" a statue. The statue in question was Auguste Rodin's classic marble sculpture The Kiss, which is in the Tate because conceptual artist Cornelia Parker has wrapped it in string to represent "the claustrophobic nature of relationships." The attacker broke free from a tour group, and used scissors to cut some of the twine before being subdued. He has been released on bail. BBC 04/06/03

Utzon Wins Pritzker Jorn Utzon has won this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's most prestigious international award. Utzon was the architect of the Sydney Opera House, "perhaps the world's most famous 20th-century building." Washington Post 04/07/03

A Clue To Who Mona Was Mona Lisa is a star. But who was she? "Over the past five centuries, that smile has been exploited and replicated in so many forms that the Mona Lisa has been transformed from a mere masterpiece into an international celebrity. And, like a Hollywood star, she now has to have her own bodyguards and lives behind triplex bullet-proof glass in a humidified, air-conditioned environment. Aside from the riddle of the smile, it's the mystery of Mona Lisa's identity that has inspired amateur art detectives all over the world. After centuries of uncertainty, a vitally important document has recently come to light in the Milan State Archive." It suggests Mona Lisa's identity. The Telegraph (UK) 04/07/03

Why Art Is Stolen Art is stolen for other reasons than the usual profit. "The theft of major paintings is essentially illogical. Contrary to popular belief, high-profile pictures are rarely stolen to order, and the resulting publicity means that they are impossible to sell on the open market. In reality, they pass through a number of hands fairly quickly, and for a variety of reasons..." The Telegraph (UK) 04/07/03

The Man Who Invented Photography "The world may not know who painted the first painting or who carved the first sculpture, but we do know who made the first photograph in a modern sense. And it wasn't Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, whose 1826 invention of a photomechanical printing plate was indeed epochal, or Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre." It was William Henry Fox Talbot. He's the man who "set certain basic terms by which photography operated for almost the last 150 years. He invented the photographic negative, the process by which light creates a negative image on a piece of chemically treated paper, which can then be reproduced - once or in great quantity - in a positive form." Los Angeles Times 04/05/03

Art Scam - Art For Drugs US prosecutors have charged a Connecticut art broker and two New York art dealers with money laundering in a scheme to exchange art for money. The art included a Degas and a Modigliani. The Art Newspaper 04/04/03

Thaw In French Government Attitude To Art The French government has for some time been deaf to concerns of the art market. But "last year saw the right wing get a resounding majority in Parliament, and the present government is no longer hostile to the arguments of the art market. The reform of auctioneering has shaken up the establishment and brought new players into the field." The Art Newspaper 04/06/03

But It'll Be Real Pretty When It's Done! "The Denver Art Museum's new wing is like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle strewn on a table, waiting to be assembled. Some of the pieces: It's still unknown how much the 146,000-square-foot wing will cost, though money in hand would suggest a price of at least $70 million. Museum officials won't say how much they have raised (or want to raise) in a capital campaign to augment bond money approved by Denver voters in 1999. There isn't a precise start date for construction, other than late June or early July. The opening date - first 2004, then 2005 - now hovers in 2006." Rocky Mountain News (Denver) 04/05/03

But Does He Hate Conceptual Art Or Just Kissing? Police were called to the Tate Modern gallery in London this weekend, after a visitor to the museum reportedly "attacked" a statue. The statue in question was Auguste Rodin's classic marble sculpture The Kiss, which is in the Tate because conceptual artist Cornelia Parker has wrapped it in string to represent "the claustrophobic nature of relationships." The attacker broke free from a tour group, and used scissors to cut some of the twine before being subdued. He has been released on bail. BBC 04/06/03

A Graffiti Park? Lock 'Em Up And Throw Away The Key A Los Angeles group holds a graffiti party and want to build an "aerosol art park with an art supply store and big canvas panels. Once embraced by the mainstream and given a legal place to work, poor graffiti artists could stop risking their lives tagging freeway signs and start holding museum openings." But a Los Angeles Times editorial makes fun of the idea: "Please, hold the breathless praise for graffiti artists.' They have defaced the sides of too many elementary schools, scarred the trunks of beautiful old sycamores, destroyed sorely needed benches in already scarce parks. In neighborhoods used as canvases for graffiti, people tend to call it vandalism, not art. They don't throw a party; they call the police." Los Angeles Times 04/04/03

Security Concerns Strand Seattle Sculpture One of Seattle's most-loved sculptures - and the namesake for Seattle band Soundgarden - is on the grounds of a government facility - the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration campus. That means, since September 11, the public has not had access to it because of increased security. And the sculpture is degrading, because NOAA doesn't have a budget for upkeep. So what will happen to an important piece of public art? "We're not a museum. Taking care of art is not a priority. We're not going to let any of these sculptures fall over, but our mission is science and research, not art." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 04/04/03

Only In LA - Underground Parking Lot Art Three Los Angeles artists are "using military GPS technology to create a new kind of art form - the urban story space." They've staked out a patch of land in the city and "visitors to the site are given headphones, a handheld global positioning system (GPS) device, and a tablet PC with special software to help guide them around the industrial landscape, which was a vital area during the early to mid-20th century.The equipment works much like the headphones with wands that museums supply visitors for tours, but here, the GPS shows people the 'hot spots' of information on a digital map. When visitors stand near a hot spot, the software triggers a story about that site." Christian Science Monitor 04/04/03

Small French Auction Houses Beating The Big Players "When the French Parliament threw open the auction business to competition in 2001, ending a 500-year government monopoly, it seemed certain that the big winners would be Sotheby's and Christie's. The two giants dominate the global market, with more than $2 billion in annual sales each, and have been eager to establish a firm foothold in France. Yet to everyone's surprise, it's private local dealers such as CalmelsCohen, which was founded only last year, that are grabbing the lion's share of the spoils. And investors betting on the liberalization of the $600 million French market for fine arts are lining up to back these upstarts." BusinessWeek 04/07/03

Capitol Site For Black History Museum? A presidential commission recommends building the new Black History Museum on a Washington DC site near the Capitol. "As we did our town hall meetings around the country, we found that the overwhelming sentiment and expressions were that the museum should be on the Mall, should be associated and affiliated with the Smithsonian, and it should tell the whole story of African American history in this country from slavery to modern times. This advance in the development of the museum does not guarantee that it will be built. The backers of the project will have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from public and private sources. There are also legislative hurdles. But the recommendation by the presidential commission is an important step and gives supporters a more specific idea to sell." Washington Post 04/03/03

In Memoriam: Piecing Together The World Trade Center "Though New Yorkers have publicly, sometimes acrimoniously, debated how to build memorials to 9/11, people in communities from Fawnskin, Calif., to Franklin, N.J., quietly have been getting to work. Across the nation, they have incorporated World Trade Center steel into more than 250 tributes to the dead. Girders carefully stacked like Lincoln Logs have become the centerpieces of municipal gardens. Church bell towers display an incongruous mix of battered metal and smooth stone. Civic reflecting pools shimmer with wavy images of cold, hard steel." Los Angeles Times 04/02/03

The Saatchi Decade - What Did It Mean? The new Saatchi Gallery is provoking discussion of what all that art of the 90s meant. "In the past 10 years, as never before, art has been seeking attention, getting itself noticed, making it big. Once it was an elevated but hardly obtrusive feature of the landscape, dropping the occasional branch in the public road (those bricks, etc). But since the early 1990s art has arrived with a crash, become one of the fallen trees that block our streets, suddenly massive and unavoidable. Yes, it may have come down in the world a little. But heck, look at the visibility. We all know the names carved in the bark. Damien Hirst. Young British Artists. Sensation. The Turner prize. Tracey Emin. Tate Modern. Serota. Saatchi. What happened? What caused this spectacular arrival, that turned art into one of those things that are understood to be newsworthy with no further explanation, like pop, sport, soaps, supermodels?" The Independent (UK) 04/02/03

Iraq's Treasures - Inevitable Destruction Those hoping Iraq's archaeological treasures won't be destroyed By the American invasion will be disappointed. "There are so many archaeological sites in Iraq that it's like a dart game - wherever you throw a dart, you'll hit a site. Frankly, at this point, wherever the war's soldiers move, they will be doing damage to archaeological terrain." Fort Worth Star-Telegram 04/02/03

• A Record Of Destruction From the Acropolis to the Bamiyan Buddhas - the list of cultural wonders destroyed by war is a long one... Fort Worth Star-Telegrapm 04/02/03

That Shipping & Handling Charge Will Get You Every Time "In the past 18 months, museums' insurance rates have shot up as much as 50 percent, and in New York, where museums borrowing works from abroad have had to buy costly terrorism coverage, they've doubled. At the same time, the price of shipping art is rising, in part because of higher air freight costs and the increased demands of lenders reluctant to let their art travel at a time of global unrest... Those higher costs, coming at a time of budget cuts and drops in revenue, are causing some museums to scale back the number of big touring exhibitions they present and the shows they create with borrowed works." San Francisco Chronicle 04/02/03

Will The Real Bierstadt Please Stand Up? "Missing for nearly 140 years, a painting of the Yosemite Valley by the widely admired landscapist Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) has been found and put on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington — along with two curious copies that at first glance seem indistinguishable from the original." One of the copies is a chromolithographic print of the original, albeit a high-quality one. The other is an actual hand copy by an anonymous New York art student. The Corcoran doesn't go out of its way to point out which painting is the genuine article, but doesn't completely hide it either. The New York Times 04/02/03

Beck's Takes Turn For The Radical This year's Beck's Futures show opening Friday at London's ICA has taken a turn for the radical, writes Andrew Renton. "Just when the four-year-old award appeared to have been bedding in as the alternative Turner, it has reinvented itself with a streamlined short list of artists who are hardly visible outside the art world and hard to define within it..." London Evening Standard 04/01/03

• The Anti-Art Art Competition "This year’s Beck’s Futures, a sort of crazy teenage Turner Prize for grown-ups, is so angrily anti-artworld that most of the artists shortlisted didn’t bother taking any actual art to the exhibition space." The Times (UK) 04/02/03

Attack On Cradle Of Civilization "It may have only a single official Unesco listing but, with 1,000 acknowledged archaeological sites, Iraq is one huge world heritage zone. And on to this in the past few days have poured 740 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 8,000 smart bombs and an unknown number of stupid ones. One of the first acts of the war was an attack on the museum in Saddam's home town of Tikrit. To an Iraqi regime eager for ammunition for propaganda, this was proof of American and British barbarism. The allies preferred to see it as a symbolic strike at the personality cult of Saddam." The Guardian (UK) 04/02/03

Breton's Apartment Broken Up Despite impassioned protests, surrealist Andre Breton's flat in Paris has been emptied and its contents organized for auction. "Thousands of paintings, documents, photographs and personal souvenirs were carried away to warehouses, destroying what was seen as a surrealist work of art in itself." The Observer (UK) 03/30/03

Claim: Artworld Has Passed Saatchi By Is Charles Saatchi struck in the 90s? Some think so, after seeing his new gallery in London. "Art has moved on, declared Philip Dodd, director of the Institute for Contemporary Art, to internet sites that allow angry Iraqis in Baghdad to virtually bomb Washington and London, moaning one-eyed mummies, and performance artists who sew balsawood soles to their feet. I think Saatchi was about a time and a place. His gallery is a monument to the 90s, and a museum in some ways to a time when he dominated the scene." The Guardian (UK) 04/01/03

Defacing Goya Or "Rectifying" Him? Artists known as the Chapman brothers have "drawn demonic clown and puppy heads on each of the victims" on a rare set of prints of Goya's apocalyptic "Disasters of War". "Some experts believe that what the brothers call their 'rectification' of the prints is a fresh spin for the Manga generation. Others do not. Robert Hughes: Goya "will obviously survive these twerps, whose names will be forgotten a few years from now ... Maybe it's time they put Mickey Mouse heads on the Sistine Chapel." The Guardian (UK) 04/01/03

• Defacing Goya Prints "Two years ago, the Chapmans bought a complete set of what has become the most revered series of prints in existence, Goya's Disasters of War. It is a first-rate, mint condition set of 80 etchings printed from the artist's plates. In terms of print connoisseurship, in terms of art history, in any terms, this is a treasure - and they have vandalised it." The Guardian (UK) 03/31/03