French Renaissance art gets royal treatment in US

BERLIN — “Are there still Jews in Germany?” ”Are the Jews a chosen people?“ Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust, there is no more sensitive an issue in German life as the role of Jews. With fewer than 200,000 Jews among Germany’s 82 million people, few Germans born after World War II know any Jews or much about them.

Art is meant to push boundaries, make people think, and evoke a reaction. A great work of art leaves a lasting impression that people continue to buzz about for years to come.

Visitors to a special after-hours showing of an exhibition based on the theme of “naked men” were encouraged earlier this week to shed their clothes.

France and South Korea on Monday signed a deal to loan back to South Korea a collection of antique manuscripts stolen in the 19th century, formalising an agreement made last year.The royal archives of the Joseon dynasty, covering a period from the 15th to the 19th centuries, were seized in 1866 by a French admiral in retaliation for the Korean court's alleged persecution of Catholics."This accord... concerns the loan of these 297 manuscripts by France to South Korea for five years, which may be prolonged," a French foreign ministry statement said Monday.

Sculptures planned for a recreation centre in the town of Ajax, Ont., just outside Toronto, have been criticized by some city councillors for being “overweight” and resembling the “Pillsbury Doughboy” — prompting the artist to put his designs “on diets.” Regional councillor Colleen Jordan said she was concerned about the message the sculptures were sending the greater community.

SEVARE, Mali — Islamist extremists torched a library containing historic manuscripts in Timbuktu, the mayor said Monday, as French and Malian forces closed in on Mali’s fabled desert city. Ousmane Halle said he heard about the burnings early Monday. “It’s truly alarming that this has happened,” he told The Associated Press by telephone from Mali’s capital, Bamako, on Monday. “They torched all the important ancient manuscripts. The ancient books of geography and science. It is the history of Timbuktu, of its people.”

The distinguished Canadian poet David Wevill, who recently expressed dismay over the scheduled sale of hundreds of pages of his early manuscripts by Bonhams next month, will instead be getting them back.

French sculptor Daniel Buren has decided to cancel an exhibition scheduled for mid-July in Beijing in "solidarity" with detained artist Ai Weiwei, he told AFP.Buren, perhaps best known for his striped columns in the historic state-owned Palais Royal gardens near the Louvre in Paris, was to have shown a vast exhibit at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art from July 15."I don't think it is possible to do nothing," Buren told AFP. "It's almost an ethical obligation to act," added the Frenchman, who was to have headed for Beijing early next month.