Deputy head of Russia's Hermitage suspected of embezzlement: Reports

When contacted by AFP on Thursday, the Hermitage declined to comment, saying the situation "was not quite clear yet." Photo: A. Savin / wikipedia.org.

SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP).- The deputy head of Russia's Hermitage museum has been put under house arrest for allegedly embezzling funds allocated for building new facilities, Russian media reported Thursday. Mikhail Novikov, who oversees construction at the world-renowned museum, was Tuesday "placed under house arrest until May 23", Moscow's Lefortovsky court spokeswoman Yekaterina Krasnova told AFP, without specifying the charges against him.

Security service sources cited in Russian media said that Novikov's arrest was tied to the embezzlement of public funds destined for the construction of a building used for storing the museum's artworks. The Hermitage in Saint Petersburg said in a statement Thursday that the FSB security service had searched the offices of its construction department in connection with "a criminal case against a number of people involved in embezzlement during the construction of new buildings and facilities for the museum's needs."

In 2015 the museum signed a contract worth 3.7 billion rubles ($65 million) with a construction company, which received one billion rubles but failed to complete its work on time, Kommersant daily newspaper reported. "What happened is mostly related to the Hermitage's construction sites," museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky told Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta. "Where there are important building projects, there is lots of money, lots of problems and lots of dishonest contractors."

When contacted by AFP on Thursday, the Hermitage declined to comment, saying the situation "was not quite clear yet."

This is not the first time the celebrated museum has been embroiled in scandal. In 2013 authorities carried out raids as part of a probe into the alleged embezzlement of $1.5 million of state funding allocated for refitting the museum. Housed in the vast Winter Palace, once home to Russia's tsars, the Hermitage has a collection of more than three million items, including paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

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Happy ever after: 14 years later the stolen Van Goghs are back in the museum!

Minister Jet Bussemaker and director Axel Rüger in front of the two paintings. Photo: Jan Kees Steenman.

AMSTERDAM.- After an absence of 14 years, the two paintings by Van Gogh that were feared lost are again on display in the Van Gogh Museum. The works were stolen from the collection in 2002 by thieves who needed only a few minutes for the entire operation. The theft was a major blow to the art world. Last September, a team from the Italian Guardia di Finanza stumbled upon the two paintings during a house search in the vicinity of Naples. Thanks to the concerted efforts of the Italian and Dutch authorities, the works could be released relatively soon and begin their journey back to the Netherlands. Starting today, they have resumed their place in the museum’s collection and are on display in the state in which they were found, without their frames.

‘The homecoming of the recovered paintings means that our collection is once again complete, and we can close the door on this particularly painful period in our history. I’ve been looking forward tremendously to the day when we could again show these two gems to our public. That day has finally come. We haven’t been able to tell their story for more than 14 years, but starting today, they again have a face and a voice! They’re home at last! Unbelievable!’ director Axel Rüger said with a broad smile.

Initial examination has shown that the works have suffered relatively little damage. Apart from a small area of visible damage to the canvas View of the Sea at Scheveningen, the Van Goghs are in reasonably good condition. The most obvious damage was caused immediately after the robbery, when one of the thieves removed the frames.

Presumably they were not tossed around very much during the years that followed. In fact, they seem to have been left in peace behind the double wall where they were found, in the house occupied by the parents of Camorra chief Raffaele Imperiale. Today the returned paintings will receive a festive welcome from the outgoing Minister of Culture, Jet Bussemaker, and museum director Axel Rüger. The works will be on display until 14 May, after which they will go to the restoration studio for examination and treatment.

Feared lost but recovered Last year members of a specialist team of the Italian Guardia di Finanza stumbled upon the two stolen works while searching one of the houses belonging to the fugitive Neapolitan Raffaele Imperiale. This put an end, in September 2016, to many years of uncertainty as to the condition and whereabouts of the paintings, which had been missing from the Van Gogh Museum since 2002.

Axel Rüger: ‘As director of the museum, I have first-hand experience of the effect that such a traumatic incident can have on the staff. In recent years I’ve been involved in the search for the works. It’s wonderful for me to get them back and to see them in our collection for the first time!’

Fourteen years of wondering about their condition and whereabouts It was long feared that the works had suffered considerable damage. The recovered paintings appear to be in reasonably good condition, however. The relatively minor damage is all the more remarkable given that both paintings were forcibly removed from their frames after the theft, in the course of which View of the Sea at Scheveningen was damaged by one of the thieves.

The canvas Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen seems at first glance to be unharmed, apart from slight damage to the edges in a few places and some scratches in the layer of varnish. The work View of the Sea at Scheveningen suffered more damage: a piece of the paper support – and therefore a significant part of the depiction – is missing in the lower left-hand corner. We recently learned that this piece of paper was torn off when the work was forcibly removed from its frame. Small pieces of paint have chipped off in several places along the edge. In fact, this work had already had an eventful past, marked by intensive restorations and new ‘relinings’. During the latter interventions, the work on its original paper support was ironed onto a canvas, using a paste made of wax and resin, which was applied with a great deal of heat and pressure – a technique that is no longer used.

Filling in the gaps in the story The two paintings from Van Gogh’s early period are small gems that have a lot of added value for the museum’s collection. Their return therefore fills glaring gaps in the presentation.

View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882), originally painted on paper, is one of the first works Van Gogh made without the supervision of his teacher, Anton Mauve. In the preceding years he had devoted himself almost exclusively to drawing and had done little painting. Given his still-scant experience, the canvas is strikingly forceful. Even though the brushwork is fairly coarse and the simple, drawn figures distributed rather haphazardly over the beach, the space and the approaching storm are aptly characterized.

Van Gogh painted the Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen in 1884, when he was living with his parents in Nuenen in the province of Brabant. The canvas was intended for his mother, who had broken her leg early that year. The choice of subject, the church of the Reverend van Gogh, suggests that Vincent hoped his father would take pleasure in the work as well. X-radiographs show that Van Gogh touched up the foreground and other passages too, probably a year later, in 1885. He painted figures in front of the church door and applied autumnal colours to the bare winter trees and hedges. Only the church, the sky and some of the trees remained unchanged. In the foreground Van Gogh painted women wearing long mourning shawls, perhaps a reference to his own grieving process and thus to the death of his father, who died on 26 March 1885. In addition to its art-historical importance, therefore, this work is clearly of biographical value as well.

Van Gogh bus connects Nuenen and Amsterdam To mark the return of the two Van Goghs, the organization Van Gogh Brabant and the Van Gogh Museum are introducing a bus service between Amsterdam and Nuenen. Visitors to the Van Gogh Museum can see, all on the same day, not only the paintings but also the edifice depicted, the Reformed Church in Nuenen. The bus service begins on 30 March.

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Man slashes Thomas Gainsborough painting at the National Gallery!

'Mr and Mrs William Hallett', better known as 'The Morning Walk', a 1785 painting by Thomas Gainsborough, was attacked with a pointed object by a visiting member of the public.

LONDON (AFP).- A man suspected of slashing an 18th century painting at Britain's National Gallery which featured in a James Bond film is due to appear in court on Monday. Keith Gregory, 63, was arrested on Saturday after allegedly damaging Thomas Gainsborough's painting "The Morning Walk" in the prestigious London museum.

The gallery said in a statement that the attacker had used a "sharp instrument". "The damage is limited to two long scratches which have penetrated the paint layers but not the supporting canvas," the statement said. "A man was quickly detained by gallery assistants with the help of some visitors. He was arrested by the Metropolitan Police," it added. The east wing of the gallery, where the permanent exhibition of British paintings is housed, was evacuated and closed for two hours.

"The Morning Walk" depicts a young couple walking through a woodland landscape and was completed in 1785, shortly before the young lovers were married. It could be seen in the background in a scene in the 2012 Bond film "Skyfall" starring Daniel Craig. Gregory was charged on Sunday and remanded in custody. The painting has been removed from the gallery to be assessed by restorers.

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Ancient, near-pristine Buddha to make Kabul museum debut

In this photograph taken on March 14, 2017, Italian restoration expert Ermano Carbonara (R) and head of the French Archaeological Delegation to Afghanistan (DAFA), Julio Bendezu-Sarmiento (L), unveil a statue of Buddha at the DAFA office in Kabul. Having withstood time, the elements, looters and war, the spectacular Buddha restored and removed from one of Afghanistan's most dangerous regions is to make its public debut in the country's national museum. Wakil KOHSAR / AFP.

KABUL (AFP).- Having withstood time, the elements, looters and war, a spectacular Buddha restored and removed from one of Afghanistan's most dangerous regions is to make its public debut in the country's national museum. The statue, which depicts the sage in a purple shroud offering his hands to the heavens, had been hidden beneath layers of soil and silt since some time between the third and fifth centuries, according to the archeologists who discovered it. The exceptionally well-preserved piece, with its colours still vibrant, was found in 2012 at the Mes Aynak site about 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of Kabul, in the now Taliban-infested Logar province.

Its discovery was made possible after a Chinese consortium began digging a massive copper mine that uncovered an ancient monastery complex stretching out over an area of four square kilometres (1,000 acres). "The statue was almost whole when it was discovered, with its head present, which is rare," said Ermano Carbonara, an Italian restoration expert. "It was placed in the centre of a niche, which itself had been decorated with painted flowers, in the heart of a great centre of (an area used for) prayer. "It was better to remove it from the site to protect it," he added. The clay used in the sculpture was taken from the Mes Aynak river and is particularly sensitive to moisture. "A night of rain could destroy it," said Carbonara, adding the details of the face, the black curls of the Buddha's bun, its pink cheeks and deep blue eyes pointed to a "truly sophisticated technique" of craftmanship.

Headless Buddhas A lust for looting in a country wracked by anarchy for the past four decades left Carbonara with little choice: the Buddha's head, its most valued part on the black market, had already rolled to the ground -- either the result of an unfortunate strike of an excavator's spade, or the first attempt at plundering. "We find plenty of headless statues. If we'd left it be, its head wouldn't have lasted a long time," said Julio Bendezu, director of DAFA, the French government archaeological mission in Afghanistan. Once in Kabul, a team of Italian, French and Afghan workers re-attached the head and placed the Buddha back in the recess, along with one of two accompanying characters, who appear to be either monks or patrons. The second is already in the museum and will also be returned to its original place. "Often, those who financed the construction of the statue and its housing wanted themselves represented by its side," explained Bendezu.

The restoration also allowed experts to study the statue's inner structure of straw and wood, revealing a Greek influence brought by Alexander the Great when his armies swept through the region around 330 BC. The Buddha left DAFA's workshops earlier this week under military escort and was brought to the National Museum of Afghanistan in preparation for its public unveiling. A vast room has been dedicated to the excavation and treasures of Mes Aynak, testifying to the pre-Islamic past of Afghanistan.

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Chad cave paintings at world heritage site defaced

Camels at a waterhole in a canyon in Ennedi. Photo: Desertman/ wikipedia.org.

N'DJAMENA (AFP).- Cave paintings at a UNESCO world heritage site in Chad have been defaced by unknown vandals, the central African nation's culture minister told AFP on Sunday. The cave paintings are located at Archei in the stunning landscape of the sandstone Ennedi Plateau in northeast Chad, which is near the border with Sudan. "We discovered inscriptions left by some visitors. They wrote on top of the cave paintings," said the minister Mahamat Saleh Haroun, also a Chadian filmmaker.

The natural and cultural landscape of the Ennedi Massif was declared a world heritage last year by the UN cultural agency UNESCO. The writing consists of "some names" of visitors and the last messages date from January of this year, said Haroun who has seen photos of the damage. Most of the cave paintings date from 4,000 years ago and depict some figures and animals like giraffes, according to UNESCO. "Thousands of images have been painted and carved into the rock surface of caves, canyons and shelters, presenting one of the largest ensembles of rock art in the Sahara," UNESCO says on its website about the Ennedi Massif.

When taking over the culture ministry in February, Haroun had said one of his objectives was to draw more attention to Chad's tourist sites. As a filmmaker, Haroun made headlines in 2010 when he became the first Chadian to enter and win an award at the Cannes Film Festival's main competition with "A Screaming Man".

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Stash of paintings discovered after 16 years just 50 miles from place of theft

Last autumn, one of the stolen paintings re-surfaced at a US auction house.

LONDON.- In December 2000, just before Christmas, eight valuable paintings were stolen from a quiet residence in Denmark. The theft was reported to the Danish police, who were unable to locate the thief or the stolen paintings. As a result, an insurance company paid out on the loss and registered the paintings on the Art Loss Register’s (ALR) database of lost and stolen art.

Last autumn, one of the stolen paintings re-surfaced at a US auction house. It was an enigmatic portrait by the Danish painter Carl Holsøe of a young lady sitting in a room, lost in her book (pictured). The stolen painting had made its way across the Atlantic, where the ALR located it whilst carrying out a routine search of a catalogue as part of the auction house’s long-standing commitment to due diligence. The ALR immediately informed the auction house, the insurer and the Danish police of their discovery.

After further investigation, it emerged that the consignor to the US sale had recently acquired the painting from a local Danish auction house, which was located just an hour’s drive from the place of theft.

The ALR liaised with the Danish police who obtained a warrant to search the residence of the consignor to the Danish auction house from which the consignor in the US had purchased it. The police were astonished to discover the other seven paintings from the theft still stashed inside the suspect’s house. The paintings had been hidden for sixteen years just 50 miles away from their original home. The police seized the paintings and promptly returned them to the insurer as the rightful owner.

The Carl Holsøe painting which the ALR had discovered remained in the US auction. The ALR negotiated its sale for the benefit of the insurer.

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Mosul Museum: A Prime Target for Jihadists!

A sniper aims his weapon towards Islamic State (IS) group fighters in west Mosul as Iraqi forces continue to fight against jihadists to further advance inside the city, on March 7, 2017. Iraqi forces said they had seized the main government offices in Mosul and its famed museum as they made steady progress in their battle to retake the city's west from jihadists. ARIS MESSINIS / AFP.

MOSUL (AFP).- Iraqi security forces recaptured the Mosul museum, where Islamic State group militants infamously filmed themselves smashing priceless artefacts, police said on Tuesday. Iraqi forces "recaptured the archaeological museum," Lieutenant General Raed Shakir Jawdat said in a statement, without specifying when this occurred. The museum was on a police list of sites recaptured from IS during an ongoing offensive to reclaim Mosul, along with the central bank building, which was looted by the jihadists. Lieutenant Colonel Abdulamir al-Mohammedawi of the Rapid Response Division, the special forces unit that usually spearheads operations with the federal police, also confirmed the museum's recapture, saying it was retaken on Monday. IS "stole the artefacts and completely destroyed the museum," Mohammedawi said.

The jihadist group released a video in February 2015 of militants destroying ancient artefacts at the museum, after overrunning the city of Mosul the previous June. The five-minute video shows militants at the museum in Mosul knocking statues off their plinths and smashing them to pieces. In another scene, a jackhammer is used to deface a large Assyrian winged bull at an archeological site in the city. IS also smashed stone carvings and detonated explosives at the site of Nimrud near Mosul, and vandalised sculptures at Hatra, another ancient city located in north Iraq. The destruction at the museum and the archaeological sites has drawn widespread condemnation internationally and inside Iraq.

While IS has cast its destruction of Iraqi heritage as a religiously mandated removal of idols, the jihadists have had no qualms about selling smaller artefacts to fund their operations. IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since recaptured most of the territory they lost. Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul on October 17, first recapturing its eastern side and then setting their sights on the west in a push launched last month.

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Dismal Photo of the Day - The Battle of Palmyra Continues....

This combination of pictures created on March 3, 2017 shows a file photo taken on March 31, 2016, (top) of the amphitheatre in the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria, and a photo (bottom) taken on March 3, 2017, of the amphitheatre displaying damage. STRINGER, JOSEPH EID / AFP

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Lincoln Center heads urge Trump to keep funding arts

US President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress in Washington, DC, on February 28, 2017. JIM LO SCALZO / EPA POOL / AFP.

NEW YORK (AFP).- Executives at New York's Lincoln Center made a joint appeal Tuesday for the United States to preserve arts funding, warning that steep cuts mulled by President Donald Trump would have devastating effects. Leaders of the prestigious complex's institutions -- including the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic and New York City Ballet -- said arts funding benefited people from children to veterans and also "anchors communities." "In American cities and towns, arts institutions and districts are breathing life into neighborhoods -- attracting investment, spurring development, fueling innovation and creating jobs," they wrote in a statement.

Unlike in Europe, cultural funding in the United States is largely private. But the Lincoln Center executives said it was vital to preserve the underlying leadership from the National Endowment for the Arts which last year received $148 million in government appropriations. The Lincoln Center executives pointed to the endowment's statistics that the arts -- which covers everything from concert tickets to the movie industry -- generated $704.2 billion in economic benefits each year across the United States. "A great America needs that kind of return," they wrote without explicitly naming Trump. The Trump administration has proposed major cuts in federal funding, especially foreign aid -- except for a $54 billion boost in military spending.

Arts funding has been a perennial target for some US conservatives, who highlight controversial works and question the need for government support.

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Damaged Palmyra busts back in Syria after Italy restoration

A picture taken at the National Museum in Damascus on March 1, 2017 shows a rare bust rescued from the Islamic State group in the ancient city of Palmyra awaiting to be restored, after it was returned to Syria. Recovered by Syrian troops, the two funeral busts had been badly disfigured with what appeared to be hammer blows. They are perhaps the only such artefacts to have left the desert site without being stolen. IS jihadists had seized Palmyra in May 2015 and began to systematically destroy the city's monuments and temples, while also looting its many archeological treasures. Louai Beshara / AFP.

DAMASCUS (AFP).- Two rare busts rescued from the Islamic State group in the ancient city of Palmyra and restored in Italy have been returned to Syria, the country's antiquities director said Wednesday. "The two statues were returned to Syria on Tuesday and added to the 400 artefacts that were rescued from Palmyra," Maamun Abdul Karim told AFP. IS jihadists seized Palmyra in May 2015 and began to systematically destroy the city's monuments and temples, while also looting its many archeological treasures. They were driven out in March 2016 but recaptured the town last December. Recovered by Syrian troops, the two funeral busts had been badly disfigured with what appeared to be hammer blows. They are perhaps the only such artefacts to have left the desert site without being stolen.

Modern technology was used in their restoration, which is also being hailed as a tribute to Khaled al-Assad, former head of antiquities at Palmyra who was murdered by IS in 2015 at the age of 82. AFP reporters saw the two statues -- one of a woman and the other of a man -- being transported from the Damascus museum to an undisclosed location on Wednesday. Abdul Karim said the restoration of the busts "is the first real, visible positive step that the international community has taken to protect Syrian heritage". "This is part of cultural diplomacy, which does not prevent coordination among the people of different countries to combat extremism and barbarism," Abdul Karim said. "In the end, Syrian heritage is human heritage," he told AFP.

The busts date to the second and third centuries and were transferred to Rome via Lebanon. A team of five specialists worked on the restorations for a month, focusing in particular on the faces. On one, the upper part of the face had been destroyed, but the team managed to recreate the missing portion using a synthetic nylon powder and a 3-D printer, a technique that had never been used for such a restoration. The new piece was attached to the bust with powerful magnets, "which makes it completely removable, in line with the principle that all restoration work must be completely reversible", said Antonio Iaccarino, one of the restorers. "What the Islamic State has destroyed, we have rebuilt," he said. "Through culture, we also wage an ideological battle."

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