September 2010

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Iraq Restorations
The World Monument Fund has launched a project with Iraq that aims to preserve the ancient city of Babylon (pictured above). The site is home to the ancient gardens built by King Nebuchadnezzar II, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The WMF are a New York based non-profit organisation that seeks to protect sites of cultural and architectural importance around the world. The Babylon site, located 55 miles south of Baghdad on the east bank of the Euphrates, will be developed in collaboration with Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, in order to promote conservation and avoid the ill effects of badly managed tourism and development within the city.

Funds totalling around $700,000 have been donated to the project by the United States Department of State. The ancient city had sustained damages in the past due to Saddam Hussein’s efforts to make it a tourist attraction, looting, and its usage as a military base during the Iraq War.

Other sites in Iraq earmarked for restoration by the WMF include the region of Sumer and sites associated with Babylonian, Assyrian and Parthian cultures.

Albertina Museum hit by financial crisis
Vienna’s Albertina Museum is currently facing a massive financial crisis. The museum has lost approximately two million euros in support. An anonymous European donor, who had pledged 1m Euros, has temporarily withdrawn his assistance and a second undisclosed Austrian company, has also withdrawn funding temporarily for 2009.

The withdrawals from such big investors have left the Museum’s upcoming ‘Gerhard Richter’ and ‘Rembrandt Exhibitions’ unsponsored. Despite the museum being owned by the state it also relies hugely on private funding.

Russian Art Market
The previously thriving Russian art market has been largely effected by the financial crisis according to reports in the Art Newspaper. Many art sponsors are considering withdrawing from the arts while the art market in Moscow has seen a widespread loss of jobs. Despite there still being a large amount of wealth within the country, collectors have become far more cautious about acquisitions, evident following November’s Russian art auctions in London.

Businessman and collector Aslan Chekhoev, who has delayed the opening of the new Russian Post-War art Museum in St Petersburg, has claimed that the crisis hasn’t had too much of an impact so far while Shalva Breus, Head of the Moscow-based Art Chronika Foundation, believes that the crisis will reduce the amount of pieces on sale but will perhaps increase the level of creativity saying, ‘artists will continue to create, and perhaps they’ll think less about making money and more about making good art.’

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