Vatican art goes online

By AUDREY MICHELLE MAST
and MAUREEN MURPHYInternet art evangelism

London’s The Independent reported that the Vatican will be offering virtual online tours of its vast art collection. According to The Independent, “The Vatican’s website was already one of the snazzier outposts on the Net (www.vatican.va), with the keys of St Peter and the papal triple crown stamped on a background the colour and texture of parchment with St Peter’s Basilica floating in a pink haze.” Surfers can now revel in the glory of the works of the Vatican’s Gregorian, Egyptian, and Etruscan museums, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Raphael’s rooms.

“But it’s not philanthropy,” The Indep-endent points out, adding, “Cardinal Edmund Casimir Szoka, who oversees the artworks, said: ‘The tool of the Web, with its enormous potential, allows us to get to an ever growing number of people to spread the message of evangelism.’” The Vatican is also attempting to become more user-friendly, and Internet users can now email the pope at john_paul_ii@vatican.va.

Undoubtedly, the online art galleries will be a useful resource for art historians everywhere. Also, people worldwide are relieved to hear that the Catholic Church, the largest landowner in the world, is now spreading its message through peaceful means like art instead of violent, archaic tactics like the Crusades, inquisitions, and missionary work in non-Western countries by Europeans who infected indigenous peoples with devastating diseases. The pope, commenting on the aforementioned unpleasant means of increasing the church’s ranks, told F News “That is so last millenium.”

Iraqi art body count

Just like we’ll never know how many Iraqi civilians were killed during the U.S.-led war (because the U.S. will not conduct a body count), we’ll never be sure just how many pieces were stolen from Baghdad’s National Museum when it was looted early April. UNESCO estimates that 3,000 to 4,000 pieces remain missing. The Associated Press reports, “Initial figures said 170,000 artifacts were missing. [UNESCO Assistant Director-General Mounir] Bouchenaki said that was the number of artifacts in the museum’s collection, and many items originally thought looted had been placed in hidden vaults for protection before the U.S.-led invasion began. Other items were returned.”

Although this is certainly welcome news, even 170,000 items is a drop in the bucket compared what has been plundered from various archeological sites in Iraq. Excavation looters are digging through layers of soil to reach what are most marketable on the art market — Sumerian artifacts that are 5,500 years old. What happens to the 5,500 years of history layered on top? It gets smashed and discarded.

And in an ultimate twist of irony, President Bush has recently blamed the unaccounted weapons of mass destruction on looters. The Independent reported last June, “In his weekly radio address, Bush was forced to produce a new explanation of why the U.S. has not found Iraq’s alleged chemical and biological weap-ons. He told listeners that suspect sites had been looted in the closing days of Saddam Hussein’s regime.”

British artist heats it up

BBC News reports that Turf War, an exhibition by British graffiti art star Banksy, was prematurely closed amid animal rights controversy. Displayed in an abandoned garage in East London, Banksy’s work included pigs, cows, and sheep painted with “animal-friendly” paint in motifs such as Andy Warhol’s face. The show’s organizers claimed protesters had nothing to do with the closing (a government inspector endorsed their conditions as healthy), but instead the animals were removed due to heat distress. Banksy, whose latest creative coup was an album cover for Blur, claims on his website that “technical difficulties” closed the show.

David’s bad hygeine

Also from BBC News: after an 11-year controversy about how best to preserve it, Michaelangelo’s famed sculpture “David,“ housed at the Accademia of Florence, will be cleaned with distilled water. This month, cleansing efforts will begin in anticipation of the sculpture’s 500-year anniversary in 2004. Restoration experts had argued over whether water would destroy the unique coloration of the marble, including effects that have developed over half a millenium. In April, a restorer who had originally been hired to clean David resigned, stating that the statue’s unique beauty was a result of the filth of ages and that it should only be swept with a hairbrush. Initial reports that the Coca-Cola corporation is slated to sponsor David’s restoration as an international promotion for Dasani, its new bottled water product, are unconfirmed.

From the“Painfully Obvious” files

Studies by the National Endowment of the Arts found that nonwhite Americans with comparatively lower incomes are less likely to attend cultural events like jazz and classical music performances, operas, musicals, plays, and ballet. This income group is also less likely to attend art museums. The largest percentage of attendees at most arts affairs is, in fact, Caucasian and well-educated. The study’s only noteworthy finding was that women’s attendance outnumbers men in every category excluding jazz to a disproportionate degree; and numbers of women at jazz performances was .1 percent greater than men, though they do comprise 52.1 percent of the adult population. When questioned about whether this study was an alarm call for increased arts funding in economically depressed areas, President Bush suggested that the problem could be solved by eliminating art and culture funding altogether.

Better than Antiques Roadshow

Debates over authenticity of paintings is nothing new, but they were rarely important to Teri Horton, a retired truck driver from Costa Mesa, California, until now. The Australian newspaper The Sunday Age reports that Horton purchased a $5 unsigned abstract painting at a thrift store in the early ’90s, unaware of similar work by an artist named Jackson Pollock. Horton disliked the painting and meant to give it to a friend, but kept it because it wouldn’t fit through her friend’s front door. Eventually, Horton showed the painting to a friend who knew about art and had it examined by Peter Paul Biro, a Canadian forensic art expert, who pronounced it genuine, its authenticity clinched by a fingerprint Biro found on the painting that matched prints found on 33 other paintings from Pollock’s Long Island studio. The International Found-ation for Art Research, based in New York, opposes Biro’s findings, however, though their rationale remains mysterious. The foundation’s panel of experts is anonymous and refuses to answer inquiries about its verdict, cementing Horton’s opinion that the New York monopoly is refusing to authenticate the Pollock as a form of price-fixing. An independent investigation by F News found that the International Foundation for Art Research are actually specialists in the Rococo movement of the 18th century, and thought they were authenticating a Fragonard.