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London blockbuster show exploring the myth and reality of Babylon (Iraq)
Updated: November 14 2008, 12:11 CET
LONDON: Yesterday the British Museum in London was the last in a row to open the major blockbuster show ‘Babylon Myth and Reality’. With this major exhibition, the National Museums in Berlin, jointly with the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London, venture to explore the myth of Babel and the true facts surrounding the ancient city of Babylon. The Berlin exhibition attracted more than 500,000 people. The museum team that put together the exhibition, led by Irving Finkel, is hoping to also attract the large Iraqi community in Britain to the exhibition.For the British Museum, the exhibition is extremely timely. It gives the museum a chance to make more accessible its rich Assyrian collection, which has largely been overlooked. Furthermore the exhibition celebrates the ancient history of what is modern Iraq. It was thanks to the international outcry, led by the British Museum, that the world was alerted to the looting of Baghdad’s museum treasures in the chaos that followed the 2003 Iraq war. The British museum is still playing a key role in helping Iraq to recover its archaeological heritage. Today’s Iraq, however, has not contributed to this exhibition – partly because most of the treasures excavated by German archaeologists from the site of the ruined city at the end of the 19th century are in Berlin, and partly because conditions in Baghdad are still too dangerous to allow much interchange of scholars and artefacts. Irving Finkel, who secured the loan of treasures from museums in Paris and Berlin, told ‘The Independent Newspaper’ that when they began planning the show, they thought about borrowing from the recently 'liberated' Baghdad Museum. "But the museum was shut off and the collection wasn't accessible. When the world becomes sane again... we hope to stage an exhibition of works from Iraq," he says. The show does feature a set of playing cards for US troops inhabiting the original site of Babylon, with messages telling them its antiquities were "not for sale" and that: "Helicopter rotor wash can damage archaeological sites."
For some years now the British Museum collaborates with Iraq on a project to bring the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (669-631BC) at his magnificent palace in Nineveh, now Iraq, back to life. The Museum has some 25,000 clay tablets in its collection that were excavated from the Library by British archaeologists in the 19th century.
No city has been demonised quite like Babylon, nor any king so denounced as the incarnation of evil as Nebuchadnezzar (605–562BC). Neither the scriptures nor the myths have spared them: for more than 2,000 years Babylon has been a byword for vice, excess and well-deserved ruin while legend has created a ruler consumed by pride, folly and cruelty. Yet Babylon was once the cultured capital of a flourishing empire, majestic in its architecture, rich in works of art and peopled by thinkers who pioneered mathematical and astronomical concepts still valid today. Nebuchadnezzar, its greatest and most ambitious king, was a man who changed the course of world history from a capital whose ruins remain in the parched Iraqi desert.
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Edinburgh presents newly discovered work by Caravaggio
Updated: November 13 2008, 13:05 CET
EDINBURGH: Today two newly discovered paintings by the 17th Century Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, usually just known as Caravaggio, (1571-1610), will go on show in Scotland for the first time. The paintings are among several cleaned in a conservation studio for the exhibition ‘The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: The Baroque’ at the Queen’s Gallery at the Edinburgh’s Palace of Holyroodhouse.During the cleaning process, specialists found that the two paintings (‘The Calling of Saints Peter’ and ‘Andrew and Boy Peeling Fruit’) thought to be copies of lost originals had actually been painted by Caravaggio himself. The pieces are dated to 1592-93 and 1600-01 respectively and were by King Charles I from an art dealer in 1637. In recent years many art handbooks and guides had listed them as likely copies of the paintings by Caravaggio, who has most of his work displayed in his home country.
The exhibition highlights the passionate collecting of Italian art by the British court in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alongside Caravaggio’s work the show features 31 paintings and 43 drawings from artists such as Bernini, Poussin and Domenichino and a selection of notable books and bindings of the Baroque period from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Most of the Baroque paintings in this exhibition were acquired by Charles I (reigned 1625-49), some by artists he persuaded to work in England, such as Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter, Artemisia, who may have presented her Self-portrait to the King. Charles I assembled one of the greatest collections of paintings ever seen in Europe. His collection was sold after his execution, but his son Charles II (reigned 1660-85) reclaimed many paintings and also made new purchases. Charles II also collected Italian Renaissance drawings, a taste followed a century later by George III (reigned 1760-1820), who assembled a fine collection of Baroque drawings for his library.
The Queen's Gallery in Edinburgh was opened by Her Majesty on 29 November 2002 as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations. Built in the shell of the former Holyrood Free Church and Duchess of Gordon's School, the Gallery provides purpose-built, state-of-the-art facilities to enable exhibitions of the most delicate works of art from the Royal Collection to be shown in Scotland for the first time. The Gallery hosts a programme of changing exhibitions from the Royal Collection, focusing primarily on works from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.
The exhibition runs to 8 March.
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Toronto Museum’s focus on local visitors
Updated: November 12 2008, 10:37 CET
TORONTO: This Friday 14 November, the new Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto will reopen to the general public, expecting thousands of visitors for its first weekend and hundreds of thousands in the next couple of weeks. The gallery's administration predicts almost 400,000 visitors by the time its fiscal year ends on March 31, 2009, and as many as 800,000 in the first full year of operation. This is not just a wild guess, but, like Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the Art Gallery of Ontario has built the business plan for expanded premises around the assumption that more people will pay more money to see more art and artefacts. Arlene Madell, director of marketing and visitor services at the gallery, states at the Globe & Mail newspaper that thousands of people already streamed through the doors of the refurbished gallery last Sunday and Monday for a sneak preview. With extra visitors coming to see the renovation designed by international architect Frank Gehry, the annual attendance should settle at around 650,000, Madell said. Previously, the gallery only welcomed that many visitors in 2004-05 when it offered the Turner Whistler Monet exhibition. Average years stood around 550,000 and attendance dipped to 460,000 in 2003-04, the year Toronto suffered the SARS scare. ROM director William Thorsell said attendance will hit one million for 2008, and he expects it to reach the 1.3 million mark by 2010, as its five-stage renovation continues with more new spaces, including the Earth sciences galleries slated to open by Christmas.
Raising attendance was the principal motivation of the ROM renovation while, from the start, the AGO's $276-million expansion was less risky because it was driven instead by a donation of $70-million and an art collection. The AGO, however, gambled that it could risk a 13-month closing and not be forgotten by the public. Both institutions remain positive despite all the bad economic news, partly because they have already had to adjust their figures and their marketing to reflect big drops in American tourism. Paradoxically, a recession might make them more attractive to Ontario visitors now forgoing foreign trips. "I am not doing advertising in the United States. My marketing dollars are being spent in Ontario," Madell said to the Globe & Mail. "I don't think that's bad," Thorsell said of the ROM’s domestic focus. He has suggested his marketing department consider the slogan "great value close to home." So, while the new ROM targets visitors from Toronto bedroom communities such as Brampton and Mississauga, the new AGO is making a concerted effort to appear more approachable to the uninitiated and more accessible to those short of cash.
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Erasmus to strengthen Rotterdam city marketing
Updated: November 9 2008, 22:30 CET
ROTTERDAM: This weekend the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in the Dutch harbour of Rotterdam opened a major exhibition about the life and work of the Dutch Humanist Erasmus (Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus,1466-1536). The event is part of the ‘Holland Art Cities’ activities presenting top ten museums in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht to the world. ‘Holland Art Cities’ is a city marketing initiative taking place between 2008-2010, and starting with the theme ‘International Influences’ and consisting of least 25 exhibitions over the course of the two years. Amongst the highlights are the (re)opening of the Amsterdam museums the Hermitage Amsterdam and Stedelijk Museum. On show at the exhibition ‘Images of Erasmus’ are some 150 works of art brought together from all over the world, some of them have never been seen in the Netherlands before. They provide a picture of Erasmus’s importance and the influence his writings had on society and the arts. The exhibition focuses on four themes: Erasmus’s views on scholarship and education, war and peace and church and art, and his book The Praise of Folly. All themes are illustrated by works of art and objects. Among the highlights on show are the portraits made of Erasmus by several artists such as Quinten Massys (1466-1530), Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543) and Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). The exhibition explores the way Erasmus himself wanted to be seen by posterity and the way Erasmus himself carefully shaped our image of him. Erasmus was born in Rotterdam on October 28, 1466. Although associated closely with Rotterdam, he lived there for only four years, never to return.
The ‘Holland Art Cities’ event is being coordinated by the International Events Holland Foundation and brings together ten world-class museums, the four largest cities in the Netherlands and their marketing organisations (Amsterdam Tourism & Convention Board, Den Haag Marketing, Rotterdam Marketing, Utrecht Tourism & Recreation), two ministries and the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions in a collaborative effort, the goal of which is to attract at least 200,000 additional visitors to the Netherlands and the participating museums.
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CoBra celebrates her birthday in Brussels
Updated: November 7 2008, 14:30 CET
BRUSSELS: Tomorrow it is exactly sixty years ago that Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Joseph Noiret and Asger Jorn sealed the formation of the new international art movement (CoBrA: Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam). To celebrate this occasion the Brussels Royal Museums of Fine Arts/ Museum of Modern Art invites her visitors to the exhibition: “COBRA: at the 60th anniversary of the founding of CoBrA’. At November 8 1948 the artists sat together in In Café Notre Dame in Paris and decided start this new movement. In doing so, the Experimentele Groep in Holland entered into a co-operative association with the Danish 'experimentalists' and the Belgia. On show in Brussels are about 150 works concentrating primarily on the story behind the CoBrA movement, and placing this key episode in its historical and cultural context. The exhibition sketches a historical overview of the CoBrA movement in the period 1948-1951. It depicts the movement in broad contours that outline the situation in which art found itself just after the war, as well as the debates in which a genuine European consciousness began to develop.
Although both Christian Dotremont and Joseph Noiret lived in Brussels for a while, the Belgium capital has not much to remind us about CoBra. Maybe Dotremont’s poem about ‘10 Rue de la Paille’ is the best link to the city during the days of CoBra?
“Jorn peels patatoes
before painting the eyes
Atlan opens the wine
Noiret the discussion
Alechinsky paints the cupboard
Calonne sets the monocle”
Rue de la Paille was situated near the horse market at the Grand Sablon in Brussels. It was the street where the straw for the horses was stored. The members of the CoBra movement met at Dotremont’s house at number 10 Rue de la Paille in the early days.
Earlier this year two Dutch museums, the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen and the Municipal Museum in Schiedam, opened CoBra exhibitions celebrating the 60th anniversary of the international art movement.
The show runs until 15.02.2009
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