London exhibit of Byzantine art trumps bureaucracy
A dazzling exhibition of a thousand years of Byzantium's art is in the final stages of assembly in London after months of labyrinthine complications.
In fact the very definition of the word byzantine.
This effort to bring Byzantium to Britain culminates in the opening Saturday of a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. And on Tuesday, with four days remaining before the official opening, the trials had not ended.
"This was one of the most complicated and difficult exhibitions we have had to put together in recent years," said Adrian Locke, the Royal Academy's acting director of exhibitions.
Institutions in Russia, Ukraine, Greece and Egypt did not easily give up their treasures for loans. And they were cautious about the implications of Britain's recent legislation granting institutional loans immunity from seizure.
It's been quite a process in order to get some of these objects here, and multi visits and multi layers of red tape have had to be passed to get these objects," Locke said in an interview.
The gallery had been through similar issues with its previous blockbuster, "From Russia," which was complicated by a low point in British-Russian relations over the poisoning of former agent Alexander Litvinenko. To pave the way for art, Parliament rushed through legislation to protect institutional loans from seizure.
This week, the gallery was still waiting for a minister's signature in Egypt to release priceless icons from the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai to come to London.
"We've been a little bit unfortunate that the minister of culture, who has to sign the documents, has been away from Egypt," he said in an interview.
Read entire article at International Herald Tribune
In fact the very definition of the word byzantine.
This effort to bring Byzantium to Britain culminates in the opening Saturday of a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. And on Tuesday, with four days remaining before the official opening, the trials had not ended.
"This was one of the most complicated and difficult exhibitions we have had to put together in recent years," said Adrian Locke, the Royal Academy's acting director of exhibitions.
Institutions in Russia, Ukraine, Greece and Egypt did not easily give up their treasures for loans. And they were cautious about the implications of Britain's recent legislation granting institutional loans immunity from seizure.
It's been quite a process in order to get some of these objects here, and multi visits and multi layers of red tape have had to be passed to get these objects," Locke said in an interview.
The gallery had been through similar issues with its previous blockbuster, "From Russia," which was complicated by a low point in British-Russian relations over the poisoning of former agent Alexander Litvinenko. To pave the way for art, Parliament rushed through legislation to protect institutional loans from seizure.
This week, the gallery was still waiting for a minister's signature in Egypt to release priceless icons from the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai to come to London.
"We've been a little bit unfortunate that the minister of culture, who has to sign the documents, has been away from Egypt," he said in an interview.