Lego admits 'mistake' in Ai Weiwei bricks row

Lego bricks are poured through the sunroof of a BMW 5 series car, used as a receptacle for donations of Lego bricks in the courtyard of the Royal Academy in central London on October 30, 2015. The collection has been organised by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei who, after having his official request for Lego bricks refused by the manufacturer, has called on the public to donate their bricks as part of his next project. AFP PHOTO / LEON NEAL.

COPENHAGEN (AFP).- Lego billionaire Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen has admitted that the Danish toymaker's refusal to sell bricks to dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was a "mistake". The company found itself at the centre of a social media storm last year after Ai said Lego had refused his order of the famous children's building blocks as they would be "used for political works". Lego's deputy chairman, the grandson of the company's founder, said the decision to deny the artist a bulk order had been due to "an internal mistake." The order, which Ai planned to use for a show in Australia, had been rejected "very low in the organisation by our consumer service department," Kirk Kristiansen told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Thursday.

In January, Lego said it would no longer ask what its bricks would be used for when making bulk sales, and that customers displaying their Lego creations in public would instead be asked to make it clear "that the Lego Group does not support or endorse the specific projects". Ai has been targeted by Chinese authorities for his advocacy of democracy and human rights as well as other criticisms of the government.

Meanwhile, the family-owned Lego group moved to hand over more power to fourth-generation heir Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, who will take over from his father Kjeld as deputy chairman. "I am very pleased to say that we are now ready to take certain important steps toward the smooth generational handover that will continue to maintain active family ownership of the Lego Group," Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen said in a statement Wednesday.

His 37-year-old son will also replace him as chairman of the Lego Foundation, which owns 25 percent of the Lego Group, but he will remain chairman of family holding company and majority owner Kirkbi. Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen is ranked the world's 65th richest man according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated fortune of about 11.4 billion euros ($13.1 billion).

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Gallery of fake paintings seized in a raid organized by Interpol opens in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES (AFP).- The paintings in Buenos Aires' newest gallery may look like the work of great artists, but they are actually rip-offs -- and the exhibition's organizers want you to know it. One of the works doesn't even look the part -- it is supposed to be a masterpiece by the late Argentine painter Antonio Berni, but the main figure's head is cut off by the frame. The 40 canvases on display at the exhibition in the Argentine capital were seized in a raid organized by cross-border police agency Interpol on a band of forgers.

Police got hold of 240 works overall, fake versions of works by renowned South American artists, ready to be sold complete with fake certification. "Some of the copies are clumsily executed, but others are very good," said the show's curator Mario Naranjo, an official from the Argentine finance ministry. He says they are worth $600,000 overall -- a fraction of the market, but an important example for raising awareness of art fraud. "This kind of crime makes millions of dollars. It is considered the biggest racket in the world after arms and drug-trafficking," Naranjo said. Some of the works have been faked in minute detail, with the forgers even adding holes to make the canvas look moth-eaten. The exhibition runs until mid-May at the finance ministry in Buenos Aires, after which the works will be returned to the court handling the case against the forgers and eventually destroyed.

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Nazi-pillaged "Portrait of a Man" by Bartholomeus van der Helst pulled from Vienna auction

"We pulled the sale following a request from the French culture ministry, which pointed out to us that the work was subject to a suit from the Schloss collection," Ernst Ploil of the auction house Im Kinsky told AFP.

VIENNA (AFP).- A Vienna auction house has cancelled the planned sale of a 17th century Dutch Master painting after France complained the work had been stolen by the Nazis, its co-manager said Monday. "We pulled the sale following a request from the French culture ministry, which pointed out to us that the work was subject to a suit from the Schloss collection," Ernst Ploil of the auction house Im Kinsky told AFP. "Portrait of a Man" by Bartholomeus van der Helst, which had been due to go under the hammer on Tuesday, was part of a major art collection amassed by Adolphe Schloss, who was Jewish and died in Paris in 1910. In 1943 as the Nazis ransacked occupied Europe and looted its art collections, they helped themselves to 333 of the works. "Portrait of a Man" was one of 167 from the Schloss collection, and many others, that vanished after 1945.

According to Ploil, the small oil painting of an unsmiling, apparently middle-aged man thought to be worth up to 30,000 euros ($34,300), was acquired in 2004 by its current owner "in good faith". Antoine Comte, a French lawyer representing Schloss's descendants, said it is essential that the artwork be returned to its "legitimate owners" forthwith. "It is impossible to have 'good will' for a painting bought in 2004 that features in every database of stolen assets, as well as in the Interpol register," Compte told AFP. He said the French culture ministry wanted to take "a path of mediation" and "negotiate with the painting's current owner".

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Austria's Leopold Museum settles long-running feud over Nazi-looted Egon Schiele drawings

Egon Schiele (1890-1918), Self-Portrait with Striped Armlets, 1915. Pencil, gouache on paper 49 x 31,5 cm © Leopold Museum, Vienna.

VIENNA (AFP).- Vienna's famous Leopold Museum on Thursday settled a long-running feud over five Nazi-plundered drawings by Austrian painter Egon Schiele with the descendants of the works' Jewish former owner. The museum said it had agreed to return two of the watercolours -- including a self-portrait of Schiele -- to the New York-based heiress of Viennese art collector Karl Maylaender who was deported from Austria in 1941.

The remaining three drawings will stay in the possession of the museum, which is home to the world's largest permanent Schiele exhibition. Austrian Culture Minister Josef Ostermayer hailed the settlement as "a very happy day." "It puts an end to years of conflict while allowing both parties to save face," Ostermayer told reporters in Vienna. Maylaender's descendant, 95-year-old Eva Zirkl, spent nearly two decades trying to reclaim the drawings by Schiele, a leading figure of Austrian expressionism and protege of Gustav Klimt. Since Austria passed a law in 1998 covering the restitution of vast numbers of artworks stolen by the Nazis, thousands have been returned -- including major works worth millions of euros.

In 2010, the Leopold made worldwide headlines when it reached a $19-million settlement with a Jewish art dealer's estate in the United States over "Portrait of Wally", another Schiele masterpiece stolen by the Nazis. The same year, an art commission set up by the culture ministry recommended the museum hand back Schiele's watercolours to Zirkl. As a privately-funded institution, however, the museum was not obliged to follow the ruling. Austria's Jewish Community, which had represented Zirkl in the case, called Thursday's deal "tremendous". "I am so happy that the heiress can still enjoy these works," said community representative Erika Jakubovits. Austria's most famous restitution case in recent years concerned Maria Altmann, who after a lengthy legal battle secured the return of five Klimts in 2006. One of them, "Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I," sold for $135 million, a record at the time.

During the Third Reich, the Nazis carried out large-scale cultural looting across occupied Europe, with many stolen art works still unaccounted for today. One of the most spectacular finds occurred four years ago when more than 1,200 artworks, including pieces by Cezanne, Delacroix and Munch, were discovered in the Munich home of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a powerful Nazi-era dealer.

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Stolen Munch recovered in Norway, two arrested

The artwork, named 'Historien' or 'History' in Norwegian, was retrieved undamaged, a statement said.

OSLO (AFP).- Norwegian police on Wednesday announced the recovery of a valuable lithograph by Edvard Munch which was stolen in 2009, with two men arrested. The artwork, named 'Historien' or 'History' in Norwegian, was retrieved undamaged, a statement said. It shows an elderly bearded man speaking to a young boy and was valued at the time of its theft at 240,000 euros ($244,000), but art experts said it was too well-known to be put on the market. Police said two men had been arrested at the start of the week on suspicion of handling stolen goods but not for the theft itself.

The lithograph was stolen after one of the windows of Nyborg Kunst, a leading Oslo gallery, was smashed with a rock. "My client denies the charge," Oystein Storrvik, the lawyer of one of the arrested men, told Norway's NTB news agency. The works of Munch (1863-1944) have long been targeted by thieves. In 2004, two of his masterpieces -- "The Scream" and "Madonna", with a combined value of $100 million -- were stolen in a brazen afternoon raid on Oslo's Munch museum. Ten years before that, another version of "The Scream" was stolen from Oslo's national art gallery. All the works were later recovered.

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Russia's Hermitage Museum offers help to restore ancient Syrian city of Palmyra

A picture taken on April 2, 2016 shows a woman looking at exhibits in the Palmyra Hall at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. OLGA MALTSEVA / AFP.

SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP).- The director of Russia's renowned Hermitage Museum, which has an important collection of sculptures from Palmyra, has offered its expertise to help restore the ancient Syrian city retaken by President Bashar al-Assad's forces from the Islamic State group. "Restoring Palmyra is the responsibility of all of us," Mikhail Piotrovsky told AFP, surrounded by displays of tomb stones, sculptures and coins from Palmyra at the museum in Saint Petersburg. Following the IS campaign of destruction, "restoring Palmyra is a long-term task, and it's essential that we take our time," said Piotrovsky, estimating that up to 70 percent of the ancient historic site could have been damaged or destroyed by the jihadists. "We will have to record where every stone was found before taking a decision on how to restore these historic monuments," he said of the painstaking work required.

The Hermitage director insisted that only an "international association" including UNESCO member countries and Syria's Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums should carry out the restoration of Palmyra. Syria's antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim on Friday told AFP journalists at Palmyra that he was appealing for "archaeologists and experts everywhere to come work with us because this site is part of the heritage of all humanity." Among the highlights of the Hermitage's collection from Palmyra are four stone slabs, weighing a total of 15 tonnnes with inscriptions in Aramaic and Greek that show the customs tariffs in the 2nd century AD, when the city became an important crossroads for trading. The slabs were brought to Russia by an aristocrat who was an amateur archaeologist, Prince Abamelek-Lazarev after he travelled to Palmyra in 1882. The value of such intact treasures is now even greater after the destruction at the historic site. The Hermitage chief noted that Russia has "plenty of experience with restoring destroyed historic monuments", notably after World War II. He gave the example of Tsarskoye Selo, the tsars' summer palace outside the imperial city, which was almost entirely destroyed in fighting between Nazi and Soviet forces. Despite this, the palace was entirely restored to the tiniest detail and is now a major tourist attraction.

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Not-for-profit foundation Wikimedia art database breaks copyright law: Swedish court

Wikimedia Sweden expressed disappointment at the ruling.

STOCKHOLM.- Sweden's highest court on Monday found Wikimedia Sweden guilty of violating copyright laws by providing free access to its database of artwork photographs without the artists' consent. Wikimedia, part of the not-for-profit foundation which oversees Wikipedia among other online resources, has a database of royalty-free photographs that can be used by the public, for educational purposes or the tourism industry. The Visual Copyright Society in Sweden (BUS), which represents painters, photographers, illustrators and designers among others, had sued Wikimedia Sweden for making photographs of their artwork displayed in public places available in its database, without their consent. The Supreme Court found in favour of BUS, arguing that while individuals were permitted to photograph artwork on display in public spaces, it was "an entirely different matter" to make the photographs available in a database for free and unlimited use. "Such a database can be assumed to have a commercial value that is not insignificant. The court finds that the artists are entitled to that value," it wrote in a statement.

The amount of damages Wikimedia was to pay to BUS was to be determined by a Stockholm district court at a later date. Wikimedia Sweden expressed disappointment at the ruling. "The Supreme Court's decision shows that we have a copyright law that is behind the times and insufficient faced with the digital reality we all live in," it said in a statement. It noted that tourists who take selfies of themselves at famous landmarks and spread them on the Internet could be deemed in violation of copyright laws. BUS meanwhile recalled that Wikimedia had refused to sign a licensing agreement that "would have cost several thousand kronor per year" (several hundred euros/dollars) and had instead "chosen to spend hundreds of thousands of kronor on lawyers' fees."

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Swiss, German museums to show Nazi-era art hoard found in Cornelius Gurlitt's apartment

Christopher Marinello, lawyer representing the heirs of Paul Rosenberg, looking at Henri Matisse’s ‘Femme Assise’ ("Seated Woman") painting on May 15, 2015 in Munich, Germany. The painting, looted by the Nazis and found last year in a flat of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of a Nazi-era art dealer, was handed back to the Rosenberg family today. AFP PHOTO / ART RECOVERY / WOLF HEIDER-SAWALL.

GENEVA (AFP).- A Swiss museum is to exhibit works from a spectacular Nazi-era art hoard it inherited two years ago from a German recluse, gallery managers said Monday. The Museum of Fine Arts in Bern said the exhibit of works from the estate of Cornelius Gurlitt would run through the 2016-2017 winter season, in parallel with a similar exhibition at a museum in Bonn, Germany. "We will present the exhibits at the same time in Bonn and Bern," Maria Teresa Cano, a spokeswoman for the Bern museum told AFP. The museums, which are closely coordinating their exhibitions, said in a joint statement they aimed to present the collection "within a historically and scientifically contextualised framework", including details on efforts to determine the origin of some of the pieces.

When Gurlitt died in 2014, more than 1,500 artworks, including valuable paintings and sketches by Picasso, Monet, Chagall and other masters, were discovered at two homes he owned in Germany. Gurlitt, the son of an art dealer tasked by Adolf Hitler with helping to plunder great works from museums and Jewish collectors -- many of whom perished in the gas chambers -- left his vast collection to the Bern museum. The museum accepted the collection after mulling the ethical implications, but left some 500 works of dubious provenance in Germany to allow a government-appointed task force to complete its research on identifying the heirs. The 14-member task force, which wrapped up its investigation in late December, meanwhile said only one percent could be shown without doubt to have been stolen from Jewish families under the Third Reich or sold under duress. One of Gurlitt's cousins, Uta Werner, who is in her late 80s, has contested Gurlitt's soundness of mind when he wrote the will naming the Bern museum as his sole heir. She lost the initial case, but her appeal is still pending.

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More analysis needed on King Tut 'hidden chamber': Egypt minister Khaled al-Anani

British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves enters King Tutankhamun's tomb at the Valley of the Kings on March 31, 2016. Results expected to be unveiled tomorrow of imaging scans of the tomb of pharaoh Tutankhamun that could reveal proof of two hidden chambers, possibly containing the remains of legendary beauty Queen Nefertiti. MOHAMED EL-SHAHED / AFP.

LUXOR (AFP).- Further analysis is needed of the tomb of pharaoh Tutankhamun to determine if the resting place also contains the remains of legendary beauty Queen Nefertiti, Egypt's antiquities minister said Thursday. Khaled al-Anani appeared to dim some of the optimism surrounding the tomb in the ancient necropolis of Luxor after his predecessor said this month that there was a "90 percent chance" of two hidden chambers possibly containing organic material at the site. "I hope we are going to find something else, but nothing is certain at the moment," Anani told AFP outside Tutankhamun's tomb. He was speaking as new radar tests were carried out on the mausoleum. Results are expected on Friday.

A study by renowned British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves has said that Nefertiti's tomb could be in a secret chamber adjoining Tutankhamun's final resting place in the Valley of Kings at Luxor in southern Egypt. Reeves, professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, believes one door of Tutankhamun's tomb could conceal the burial place of Nefertiti. According to him, Tutankhamun, who died unexpectedly, was buried hurriedly in an underground chamber probably not intended for him.

Former antiquities minister Mamduh al-Damati said this month that preliminary scans had unearthed evidence of "two hidden rooms behind the burial chamber" of the boy king. Anani said Thursday that analysis would determine the thickness of a possible wall behind the funerary chamber. "There is a possibility that there is a cavity, after the latest scan. I hope we will find something... but as a scientist I need to be careful before announcing results," Anani said.
(**In Case Of Looting!**)
He added that if the latest scan revealed further evidence of a hidden room, a small hole could be bored through a wall and a camera inserted to discover what lay behind.

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Son begins quest to bury Islamic State-slain Khaled al-Assaad known as 'father of Palmyra'

Head of Syria's Museums and Antiquities Administration Maamun Abdelkarim (R) sits with Tarek Khaled al-Assaad (L), the son of slain Palmyra's chief archeologist Khaled al-Assad, who was decapitated by jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group following the capture of the ancient city by IS in 2015, on March 30, 2016 in the garden of the National Museum in Damascus. JOSEPH EID / AFP. By: Sammy Ketz

DAMASCUS (AFP).- The son of a Syrian archeologist who was beheaded by Islamic State group jihadists in ancient Palmyra is on a mission to give his father a "dignified" burial near the world heritage site. Khaled al-Assaad, known as "the father of Palmyra", was 82 years old when IS fighters executed him on August 18, 2015, three months after the group overran the city known as the "Pearl of the desert". Syrian troops backed by Russian forces recaptured Palmyra on Sunday, after a fierce offensive to rescue the city from jihadists who view the UNESCO-listed site's magnificent ruins as idolatrous. "The jihadists beheaded him and they placed his head on the ground, underneath his body, which hung from an electric pole in the main square of Palmyra," 35-year-old Tareq Khaled al-Assaad told AFP at a museum in Damascus. "Someone took his head and buried it, while two men rescued the body and buried it somewhere else. Our goal is to bring the head and the body back together and to lay him to rest in a dignified place in Palmyra," Tareq said. "We feel that my father's joyful soul is soaring over Palmyra, hailing its liberation," he said, adding that he plans to travel to the world heritage site "soon". "My niece, who is 10 years old, dreamt that her grandfather was sitting in the garden, smiling."

Pioneer of Syrian archaeology Seen as one of the pioneers of Syrian archeology, Assaad was director of antiquities in Palmyra for 40 years until 2003. He was responsible for the discovery of several ancient cemeteries at the site and oversaw the excavation of 1,000 columns as well as its stunning necropolis of 500 tombs. It was Assaad, too, who secured the listing of Palmyra as a World Heritage site. When jihadists were closing in on the city in May 2015, Assaad's sons managed with the help of security guards to rescue 400 ancient busts and other archaeological gems.

On May 20, the last van left Palmyra museum, just 10 minutes before IS arrived. Assaad's other son Walid, who took over from his father as the city's new director of antiquities, was tortured by IS. To this day, he uses crutches to walk. The jihadists "were looking for two tonnes of gold, but my brother told him there wasn't any. To make him talk, they disfigured some statues in the museum, including the (Arabian) goddess Al-Lat's," Tareq said. "My brother just kept telling them: 'That's the gold that you're looking for.'"

'Refused to kneel' After Palmyra fell, Assaad moved to Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, 110 kilometres (70 miles) to the northwest. On July 20, masked men entered the village demanding to know where he was "to give him an Islamic re-education" then sentenced the famed archaeologist to death. His son believes he was executed because he refused to obey orders to pledge allegiance to IS. Assaad asked to visit the museum one last time. His captors then led him with his hands tied and his feet bare to the heart of the city. His killers scrawled their accusations on a placard pinned to the archaeologist's body: being a regime loyalist, representing Syria at conferences abroad "alongside infidels", and serving as the "director of idolatry" in Palmyra. "He refused to kneel for his beheading. He told them that he wanted to remain as upright as the city's columns and palm trees," Tareq said.

He says his father's decapitated body was left hanging in the city centre for three days, before IS fighters took it down and dumped it in a landfill outside the city. "Two of my father's friends watched the van drive away, and they then took my father's body to give it a proper burial," he said as he wept. Tareq wants to bring closure to his family by putting his father to rest in a dignified burial, but he remains wracked with remorse. "I feel guilty. I imagine my father in prison, wondering why the children he raised abandoned him. If I had known they were going to execute him, I would have gone there myself, and blown myself up to save him."

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