An estimated £150 million-£2 billion worth of art treasures are looted from sites around the world every year, according to a new Institute for Archaeological Research report. “Buddhas in Cambodia have been decapitated with power saws and the illegal trade in fossil hunting stretches from Nebraska to the Gobi Desert.” The report urges Britain to sign the 1970 UNESCO Convention prohibiting illegal exports and imports of artifacts, claiming up to 90% of antiquities auctioned in London over the past 20 years were sold without any details of provenance. – Yahoo! News (Reuters)
Tag: 06.12.00
AFFIRMATIVE EMBRACE
George Segal, who died at age 75 last Friday, is remembered not only as a preeminent pop artist, but also as a sculptor whose depiction of sexual freedom and tolerance of difference were way ahead of his time. “It’s significant that in 1983 (in his “Gay Liberation” sculpture commemorating New York’s Stonewall riots) he had already sought to include gays and lesbians as a part of his vision of America.” – Salon