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“One of the treasured objects lost in the Columbia space shuttle disaster was a painting of the Earth as it might look from the moon, created 61 years ago by a Jewish teenager in a Nazi concentration camp.”

Rome is so full of classic architecture, modern Romans have mostly shrugged their shoulders and said – can’t top that. “So it may be a surprise to learn that Rome is regaining its creative momentum. Over the past several years, the city has seen the launch of a series of major building projects designed to update its cultural profile. The first of these, a $157-million complex of three concert halls by celebrated Italian architect Renzo Piano, was unveiled in December. Two major civic projects by American Modernist Richard Meier are under construction.”

These are serious architects vying to design a replacement for the World Trade Center. “But the selection also underscores the degree to which commercial considerations and political maneuverings will determine what the final master plan will look like. What the Libeskind and Think designs share, to different degrees, is an ability to bend to the political needs of the various interests that control the site’s future, in particular downtown’s commercial power brokers. And in that sense, the designs say less about our collective ideals than about the limits of the democratic process when it comes to building in New York.”

“In light of the emerging power struggle that will determine how much of the grand designs for ground zero get built, any effort to assess the finalists may come off like an exercise in aesthetic hairsplitting. But as the redevelopment officials who sponsored the competition vie with real estate developers and others who remain intent on overstuffing the 16-acre site with commercial space, such an analysis becomes essential, if only because it reminds us what this exercise is all about.”

An American citizen claims that a Pissarro painting in a Spanish museum was stolen from his family by the Nazis. “But despite a persistent claim to the Pissarro painting, the Spanish authorities say that the museum is the legal owner and that any claim should be made in the courts, a response that has drawn criticism from American lawyers familiar with the claim. ‘The reaction of the Spanish government is quite astonishing. Why should a government that already has a law relating to the return of Holocaust property refuse to have a discussion on the issue’?”

To convince collectors of important Picasso and Matisse art to loan their work for a show, curators started playing cards with them. “The object of the game? To create sparks for a three-city show in which the two artists would face off on the gallery walls. Collectors got to shuffle the deck, juxtaposing the cards in various ways. But the game always ended the same way: the collectors were asked to part with their card, their art, for a year. It worked.”