(Above: “Horsefair at Valkenburg” (1633) by Salomon van Ruysdael, currently on display at the Stedelijk Museum in Leiden, The Netherlands. Photo: NY Times.)
[Haaretz] I called this a while ago. Relatives of a Jewish collector whose work was stolen by the Nazis fear an anti-Semitic backlash to the restitution cases: “Now they’ll start saying the Jews are out to get money.” (See also: Bloomberg, JTA, NY Times)
[AlterNet] From a piece about the link between war propaganda and pornography: “Let’s not fall for the fundamentalist Christian charge that pornography is part of the modern drift away from religion. We can see in Christian religious art the almost identical images of sexual sadism as in modern pornography.”
[Reuters, HT: Byzantine Sacred Art Blog] Modi expert Christian Parisot, president of the Modigliani Institut, authenticated a newly discovered Modigliani painting, owned by an anonymous Serbian collector.
[Today’s Zaman] İstanbul Municipality Education Department head Mustafa Doğan on arts and crafts training courses: “It is our mission to develop and promote handicrafts and other forgotten branches of Turkish-Islamic art and pass them on to future generations. We will … help them reach the spot they deserve to hold because these crafts are our historical memories.”
[Pakistan Daily Times] “The Arts of Kashmir” curator Pratapaditya Pal insists the show gets beyond the “shawls that have become almost synonymous with Kashmir.” (See also: The Pakistani Newspaper)
[Sify Movies] Indian singer Mohammad Rafi gets a shrine from artist Tasawar Bashir.
