International News Digest
GALLERY EXHIBITS CONTROVERSIAL MUHAMMAD CARICATURE
A Danish gallery has decided to exhibit a caricature of Muhammad that unleashed a wave of protests in the Muslim world against Denmark in 2006. Citing an article in magazine Sappho, Agence France-Presse reports that the controversial caricature will be part of a larger exhibition dedicated to the watercolor works of the artist-caricaturist Kurt Westergaard at the Galleri Draupner in Skanderborg. The caricature—one of twelve satiric drawings published in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten—represents Muhammad wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb with a lit fuse. Muslims found the drawing, which confounds the prophet with terrorism, offensive. The seventy-four-year-old Westergaard had words of praise for the gallery director, Erik Guldager. “[He] is the first to dare to exhibit my works, even if my watercolors are not political.” In May 2008, Westergaard received the Sappho Prize from the Society for the Protection of the Freedom of Expression of the Press and the Right to Criticize Religion. Westergaard had originally hoped to show his watercolors in an unnamed gallery in Hoejbjerg near Aarhus. But his participation was canceled when an unnamed Swedish artist invited to participate in the same exhibition threatened to pull out if Westergaard showed his works. The exhibition at Galleri Draupner begins August 29.
NEO RAUCH: PROFESSOR NO LONGER
Is the outlook brighter for collectors on the waiting list for a painting by Neo Rauch? As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the international star of the Leipzig School may just have more time on his hands after resigning from his position as professor of painting at the Leipzig Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst. The Cologne painter Heribert C. Ottersbach has been selected to take over the professorship. Rauch occupied the position for the past three years at the academy.
UNESCO RECOGNIZES “BALTIC WAY” FROM 1989
The Baltic human chain created in 1989 has been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Citing an article by Latvijas Avīze’s Uldis Smits, eurotopics reports on the popular intervention that took place on August 23, 1989: A million people formed a chain stretching from Estonia across Latvia to Lithuania by joining hands to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that marked the end of the three states’ independence in 1939. Smits is satisfied that the intervention—known as the “Baltic Way”—has been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register: “In doing so, UNESCO recognizes the event as an outstanding example of nonviolent resistance which embodies the ideals of freedom and unity,” writes Smits. “But back then, twenty years ago, Western leaders were concerned that the demonstration could damage Mikhail Gorbachev and his perestroika. The Berlin Wall was still standing and there was a lot of prejudice. For us, however, honoring the human chain is now our duty to share the legacy of those days with others.” Smits finds the international recognition especially significant in a year when so many other anniversaries, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, are being celebrated in Europe.
RISING MARKET FOR CHRISTIAN RELICS
While religious works can create an uncertain territory veering between sacrilege, vandalism, censorship, and adoration, there’s at least one clear position when it comes to selling Christian relics. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Alexander Kissler reports, paragraph 1190 of the Roman Codex notes in no uncertain terms: “It is forbidden to sell holy relics.” Despite the ban, the market for the relics seems to be thriving online. In March 2006, a headdress worn by Pope Pius X in 1911 was auctioned for over twenty-eight hundred dollars, including an official Vatican certificate of authenticity. In February 2007, the bidding for the skull and the upper arm bones of the Orthodox saint Filipp started at fourteen hundred dollars. While Catholics are not permitted to sell, that leaves a whole field of sellers and buyers, including Catholics who purchase relics in order to bring them to their proper resting place: in the high altar of a church. Last February, cardinal José S. Martins from the Vatican finally made an official statement about the worrisome rise of the relics market on the Internet. If the relics were “used in the wrong way,” superstition could flourish while “Satanic sects” might use them. At that time, Internet sites were offering bone fragments from Saint Franziskus for around six hundred dollars, a fragment of Saint Rita’s tunic for thirty-seven dollars, and countless items once touched by Father Pios at prices that raise questions about the authenticity of the relics.
EGYPTIAN BUST GETS A NEW SET OF FANS
An Egyptian bust on display in Chicago’s Field Museum has garnered a new following. As Agence France-Presse reports, “hundreds” of Michael Jackson fans have been coming every day to the museum to swoon before the bust, which bears a striking resemblance to the late king of pop. Museum director Jim Phillips told AFP that the museum was being “flooded” with inquiries by phone and by e-mail about the three-thousand-year-old bust, which dates from the Egyptian New Empire. But the interest doesn’t stop with inquiries. “Some people come into the museum and ask us, ‘Where is Michael Jackson?’” said Phillips. “We explain to them that he’s not here but that we have a bust that resembles him.” Phillips doubts whether Jackson was inspired by the bust, whose historical model has not been identified in the report. Yet the facial similarities between the ancient Egyptian and the pop star are certainly striking, especially in the eyes and the nose. “I didn’t follow all the stages of Michael Jackson’s physical transformation,” says Phillips. “But they are very similar.”