Brazil museum selling prized Jackson Pollock to stay afloat

This work of Jackson Pollock is part of the MAM-Rio collection since 1952 and was donated by Nelson Rockefeller.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP).- Rio de Janeiro's Modern Art Museum is selling one of its most prized works, a Jackson Pollock painting, to help stay afloat. The private, not-for-profit museum said a sale of this type has never been done before in Brazil, although it is common in Europe and the United States. The Pollock painting in question is titled "No.16" and was completed in 1950.

Proceeds of the sale will be used to create a fund to keep the museum going for another 30 years, it said. The painting was donated by the late former US vice president Nelson Rockefeller in 1954, and is estimated to be worth around $25 million.

The Brazilian Museum Institute called on the Modern Art Museum to reverse course and try to come up with another way to raise money at a time of financial struggle for many of the South American country's museums. But the Culture Ministry said it supports the strategy, saying the Modern Art Museum will become less vulnerable to economic crises and less dependent on donations and sponsorships.

Rio de Janeiro has been mired in financial turmoil since it hosted the Olympic Games in 2016, mainly because of a fall in oil prices and as a hangover from the recession that all of Brazil endured in 2015 and 2016.

© Agence France-Presse
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Facebook apologises for censoring prehistoric Venus statue

This undated picture released on February 28, 2018 shows the prehistoric "Venus of Willendorf" figurine pictured at the Nature Historical Museum in Vienna, Austria. The "Venus of Willendorf" figurine, considered a masterpiece of the paleolithic era, has been censored by Facebook, drawing an indignant response Wednesday from the Natural History Museum in Vienna, where it is on display. Helmut FOHRINGER / APA / AFP.

VIENNA (AFP).- Facebook apologised on Thursday for censoring the prehistoric "Venus of Willendorf" figurine, considered a masterpiece of the paleolithic era. "Our advertising policies do not allow nudity or implied nudity but we have an exception for statues. Therefore, the ad with this image should have been approved," a spokeswoman for Facebook told AFP. "We apologise for the error and have let the advertiser know we are approving their ad,” she added.

The controversy began in December when Italian arts activist Laura Ghianda posted a picture of the artwork on the social networking site which went viral. After it was censored she said that "this statue is not 'dangerously pornographic'. The war on human culture and modern intellectualism will not be tolerated." Her outrage was echoed by Vienna's Natural History Museum, where the statue is displayed. "Let the Venus be naked! Since 29,500 years she shows herself as prehistoric fertility symbol without any clothes. Now Facebook censors it and upsets the community," the museum said in a statement.

The 11-centimetre (4-inch) statue was discovered in the Austrian village of Willendorf in the early 20th Century. It dates from the early stone age and is "the most popular and best-known prehistoric representation of a woman worldwide," according to the museum's director general Christian Koeberl.

Facebook is regularly criticised over content which it bans or indeed content it allows to be published. On March 15, a French court is due to pronounce on the decision by the California-based social networking site to close the Facebook account of someone who posted a photo of 19th century French painter Gustave Courbet's "Origin of the World" painting, which depicts female genitalia.

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'Stolen works' sentence of Picasso's electrician overturned

Pierre Le Guennec (R), who is accused of receiving stolen goods after being found in possession of paintings by late Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, arrives with his wife Danielle at the court in Aix-en-Provence, southeastern France on October 31, 2016 for their appeal trial. Le Guennec, a former electrician, and his wife were convicted to two years suspended sentence for receiving stolen goods regarding some 271 artworks by Picasso which Le Guennec claims were given to him by Picasso and his wife Jacqueline when he carried out work on their villa in Mougins in the 1970's. BORIS HORVAT / AFP.

PARIS (AFP).- France's highest appeal court has overturned the conviction of Pablo Picasso's former electrician and his wife, who were given suspended sentences for keeping 271 of his works in their garage for four decades. Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec were given two-year suspended jail sentences in 2015 for possession of stolen goods, in a case that made headlines worldwide.

A higher court upheld the verdict in 2016 but the Cour de Cassation, in a ruling seen by AFP Thursday, overturned it. Ruling there was insufficient evidence that "the goods held by the suspects had been stolen" the court ordered a retrial. The couple's lawyer Antoine Vey hailed the ruling. "It's a great decision which reinforces the line that Le Guennecs have always upheld -- that there was no theft whatsoever." The retrial will offer them "a huge opportunity to finally establish the truth", Vey said.

The collection, whose value has not been assessed, includes drawings of women and horses, nine rare Cubist collages from the time Picasso was working with fellow French artist Georges Braque and a work from his famous "blue period".

At his original trial Le Guennec, who is in his late seventies, claimed that Picasso had presented him with the artworks towards the end of his life to reward him for his loyal service. But he later changed his account, telling the appeal court that the works were part of a huge trove of art that Picasso's widow Jacqueline asked him to conceal after the artist's death in 1973.

Le Guennec said he stored more than a dozen garbage bags of unsigned works which Jacqueline later retrieved, except for one which she left him saying: "Keep this, it's for you."

The affair came to light when Pierre Le Guennec attempted to get the works authenticated by Picasso's son Claude Ruiz-Picasso in 2010. The artist's heirs promptly filed a complaint against him, triggering an investigation.

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