News

Fine Art Comes of Age in the UAE

by Suchitra Bajpai Chaudhary via “Gulf News“

Dubai: The month-long art season in Dubai that concluded last week demonstrated the maturity and coming of age of the art market here, further establishing Dubai as the regional art hub.

Several record-breaking auctions were conducted dring the season. With over 60 art galleries and museums in the city, viewing and buying art has is now an established part of Dubai’s cultural agenda. The scope of this development over the last eight or nine years can be gauged from the fact that in a span of a month, Dubai now hosts an active art calendar with the Dubai art week, Design days and Sikka art fairs all happening simultaneously.

“ It is phenomenal how Dubai developed into the art space in the past eight-nine years.” Hala Khayat, Head of Sales at Christie’s, UAE.

“Art is an alternative asset and does not replace traditional assets. It is used to alleviate the risk in your traditional financial portfolio. When stocks and bonds go down, art goes up.”
” This synergy has attracted art curators and galleries from around the world to display and interact here. This has helped Dubai evolve into an attractive art trade market.

All major auction houses and art fund houses have opened offices here and have been doing robust business. This is proof that good art sells at a high price and there are as many buyers in the market here as sellers.

The Pharaoh’s Collection of Modern Egyptian Art, expected to sell for around $1.4 million (Dh4.68 million) made $3.89 million (Dh 14.03 million). The top lot of the sale, also from the Collection, was Abdul Hadi El-Gazzar’s (Egyptian, 1925-1965)Construction of the Suez Canal which sold for $1.02 million, a new world auction record for the artist. . . . .”

Week of Culture: The Second Day

via “State News Agency of Turkmenistan”

The large-scale cultural action – the Week of Culture, which rich programme includes various events revealing the diversity of the national culture, is held in the northern region of the country. The second day events can be united by a conceptual idea – creativity in the course of the history.

The second day of the Week started with the visit to sacred places. Workers of culture and art made a pilgrimage to the Mausoleum of Ashyk Aydyn Pir, a nurser of creative people located on the territory of Ruhubelent Etrap. Then forum participants visited the Kunya-Urgench State Historical and Cultural Complex. As is known, in 2005, the ruins of Kunya-Urgench were inscribed on the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites. At present, there are over 20 architectural monuments of various epochs In Dashoguz Velayat. Each of them bears evidence of the former greatness of the capital of the ancient Turkmen state, a largest centre of the East.

Forum participants visit the Mausoleum of Nadjmeddin Kubra – a recognized national place of pilgrimage, and the Dash Mosque – a museum of national crafts, from where the pilgrimage route to the Uch Yuz Altmysh Memorial Complex starts. Conference participants also visited the world-known mausoleums of Il-Arslan, Tekesh, Sultan-Ali, Turabek-Hanym, and other sights located on the territory of they unique reserve that is an integral part of the Turkmen people’s cultural heritage and the whole humanity as well.

The solemn ceremony of opening of the International Conference of Art that brought together famous Turkmen painters, masters of the decorative and applied art as well as their foreign colleagues in Dashoguz took place at the Dashoguz Velayat Museum of Local History.

Participants of the Week of Culture had an opportunity to see museum exhibits as well as to watch a documentary film dedicated to the ancient monuments of the northern region of our country and its modern tourist infrastructure. The film created by Turkmen cinematographers is the first part of a cycle “Trip to the history” as an excursion to the history of the national culture and art.

In the evening, word painters from different countries gathered together in the improvised Turkmen village on the bank of the Shavat River to participate in the poetry readings.

The second day of the Week of Culture in Dashoguz finished by mobile expositions and a big concert performed by masters of culture and art of Dashoguz and Mary Velayats at the Georogly Square.

This day of the big creative holiday demonstrated that the contemporary national culture ha absorbed the best of the rich historical, literary, musical, and artistic heritage, folklore and crafts, traditions and customs of our people.

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Royal Remains Burial Site to Be Entered on Russia’s Cultural Heritage List

“Royal Remains Burial Site to Be Entered on Russia’s Cultural Heritage List “

by “Russia Behind the Times“

A resolution passed on Tuesday by the Sverdlovsk regional government, enters the place outside Yekaterinburg, where the remains of the family of Russia’s last tsar Nicholas II were found, on the national cultural heritage list, the regional government’s press service reported.

“The resolution enters the place on Staraya Koptyakovskaya Road, where the royal remains were found, on the national register of cultural heritage sites, where it will be defined and saved for future generations,” the press service said in a statement. Spokesperson for the regional property ministry Galina Utkina told Interfax that a letter requesting that this site be entered on the national register of state protected cultural monuments, will be sent to the Culture Ministry. After the site is entered on the register, all actions at the place where the royal remains were found will be banned unless approved by the regional property ministry, she said. “But further research will be allowed, if a plan is negotiated with us, so we will know who is doing what at the site,” Utkina said. The remains of Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, the grand duchesses Tatiana, Olga and Anastasia, and their servants were found on Staraya Koptyakovskaya Road near Yekaterinburg in the late 1970s. In July 1998, the remains were buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The remains of Grand Duchess Maria and Crown Prince Alexei were found at the same site in 2007.

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World’s First Heritage Sites

“World’s First Heritage Sites”

by Katia Hetter via “CNN“

(CNN) — Checking off the world’s most important natural and cultural wonders can be a herculean task.

The World Heritage List — that most lauded and recognizable of preservation lists — includes nearly 1,000 sites all over the world.

That number will almost certainly increase when the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization meets June 15-25 in Qatar.

Instead of sorting through that encyclopedic list, why not start at the very beginning with the first 12 sites?

The Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, Yellowstone National Park in the United States and the Island of Goree in Senegal were among the 12 sites named to the first list in 1978.

Only countries that sign the convention creating the World Heritage Committee and list can nominate sites, and that was just 40 countries when the first nominations came out. Thirty-six years later, 191 nations have signed the convention.

“There is an incredible diversity of sites both natural and cultural around the world,” said Mechtild Rossler, deputy director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, a 22-year veteran of the organization. “The beauty of this convention is that the text defining natural and cultural heritage is very broad.”

Being named to the list is a big deal. Government officials work for years to prepare their nominations, and preservation officials hope for those designations to support their work. And what tourist site doesn’t tout its World Heritage Site designation?

While we wait to learn the newest members of this prestigious list, here are the first 12 World Heritage sites, listed in the order in which they are listed in the minutes of the September 1978 meeting in Washington.

L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Park, Canada

What’s left of the 11th-century Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Park on the island of Newfoundland in Canada is the earliest evidence of the first European presence in North America.

Excavations have found timber-framed, peat-turf buildings like those found in Iceland and Norse Greenland during the same period. It’s the first and only known Viking site in North America. The site was protected by the government of Canada in 1977, just a year before its inclusion on the World Heritage List.

Nahanni National Park, Canada . . .

Again In Sana’a: Festival For Tourism And Cultural Heritage

“Again In Sana’a: Festival For Tourism And Cultural Heritage”

by Tamjid Alkohali via “National Yemen”

“The Glory Lights Association held the Festival of Tourism and Cultural Heritage in Al-Sabeen Park, sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism and the Tourism Promotion Board under the slogan “with our unity and dialogue we salute our heritage and the glory of our tourism.” The festival aimed to activate domestic tourism and recognize Yemeni habits and traditions.

The Festival was opened by Culture Minister Kassim Salaam who expressed his happiness at holding the festival, wishing to increase the cultural events in Yemen in order to emphasize the people’s belief in the unity of its land, heritage, history, and fate.

The Director General of Environment in the Tourism Ministry explained that the Festival aims to raise awareness of the importance of Yemeni heritage and coincides with the awareness of the outputs of the National Dialogue Conference.

The responsible of festival Afaf Hammoud said that the festival aims to encourage people to visit the internal tourist areas in Yemen instead of traveling abroad for tourism because Yemen isn’t less important and beautiful than any other country.

One of the festival’s visitors said the festival revealed that Yemen is rich in tourism and tourist sites, adding that tourism is a means for cultural and civilizational communication as well as for community cohesion.

The festival included a number of cultural and artistic events in addition to displays of handicraft products, textiles, and photographs at the provincial level. . . . “