(Photo by Hossein Ayyoubsani)

Wood carving workshop

German Puppetry Workshop at Fajr

A German artist held a number of puppetry workshops on the sidelines of the ongoing Fajr International Theater Festival in Tehran.
Barbara Scheel, the founder of the German Association for Therapeutic Puppetry, began the workshops on January 20.
She was surprised by the thirst for knowledge among the Iranian people.
“My workshops in Iran have been a special experience. Iranians’ capacity to absorb the information is amazing. It has increased my motivation for holding the workshops,” she told ISNA.
Scheel has previously held similar workshops in Japan, South Korea, Portugal, Brazil and several other countries.
“Puppetry is not taken seriously in some countries. For example, some traditions in South Korea hindered my workshops in the country,” she said.
“But, I am really gratified to hear the expert and profound questions by the Iranian people in my workshops,” she added.
Scheel, 75, established the Association for Therapeutic Puppetry in 1984 to exchange information, to document, to research and to support those people who work with puppets, shadow puppets or masks in situations of healing in psychological, physiological and pedagogical surroundings.
“The reactions of people on puppets deal with the so called ‘interims object’ well known in psychology. It says that in childhood we all had things: dolls, puppets, pillows, etc., which we took as a substitute for persons that we needed to survive emotionally,” she said.

Moradian to Compete In French Festival

Iranian sculptor Jamshid Moradian will be competing in the Camille Claudel International Festival of Sculpture, which will be held in the town of La Bresse, France in May.
Moradian, who has been invited to the festival, has sent a surrealistic wooden sculpture for his entry.
“I have previously showcased the sculpture in my latest exhibition at the Seen Gallery,” Moradian told ISNA.
Tehran Gallery put a collection of his sculptures on display in June 2012.
Wooden, stone and metal sculptors from around the world will be competing at the festival, which is scheduled to open on May 4.
Organizers will announce three winners during the closing ceremony of the festival on May 12. The winners’ travel expenses will be paid by the organizers.
Camille Claudel (1864-1943) was a French sculptor and graphic artist. She was the elder sister of the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel.
The festival is scheduled to highlight the theme of humanism.

New Titles on Iranian-Tajik Literature Unveiled

A ceremony was held on January 23 to unveil new titles on literary and poetry in Iran and Tajikistan.
The titles of the books are: ‘Iran in Tajikistan’s Contemporary Poetry’, ‘History of Modern Literature in Tajikistan’ (published in Persian and English) by Ali Asghar Sherdoust, ‘Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh’ and ‘Nikolay Chernyshevsky’ by Vali Samad.
According to the public relations office of the Elmi-Farhangi Publishing Institute, the ceremony was held in the presence of the presidential advisor and manager of the institute, Ali Zarei-Najafdari, at Tajikistan’s Academy of Sciences. Besides, head of the academy Mohammad Shah Halalov, head of the Tajikistan National Library Naser Jan Salimov and a number of Tajik and Iranian wits were invited to the ceremony, IBNA said.
Later in the ceremony, Iran’s ambassador to Tajikistan underlined the high level of political, economic, and cultural ties between Tehran and Dushanbe.
“The ties between the two countries are in their most desirable status possible and they have set a record in their presidential visits from each other’s nations,” Sherdoust said.

30th Book of the Year Award Due

The 30th Book of the Year Award will be held on February 2, in the presence of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Caretaker of the Culture Department of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Esmaeili said the closing ceremony of 30th Book of the Year Award of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be held in the presence of the president and minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini.
The ceremony is slated for February 2 at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall.

Rotterdam Dutch Art Thefts Lead to Romania Arrests

Police in Romania have detained three suspects linked to a major art heist, which took place at a Dutch art gallery last October, officials say.
“Three people have been arrested, but unfortunately we did not get the paintings back,” a Dutch police spokeswoman confirmed, BBC wrote.
Seven masterpieces by artists including Picasso and Monet were stolen from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam.
They had been shown as part of the gallery’s 20th anniversary exhibition.
The missing works include Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, Picasso’s Tete d’Arlequin, Matisse’s La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune and Freud’s Woman with Eyes Closed.
It was the biggest art theft in the Netherlands since 20 works disappeared from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh museum in 1991.
Three suspects have been detained at the request of prosecutors from the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), the Romanian Mediafax news agency reports.
Rotterdam police spokeswoman Yvette van den Heerik confirmed the arrests, adding that the suspects’ involvement in the heist was still being investigated,
The robbery took place before daybreak on 16 October last year.
Police were alerted during the night when the gallery’s state-of-the-art alarm system went off but the thieves had already left the premises by the time officers arrived at the scene.
Experts estimate the items taken could be worth “hundreds of millions of euros” if sold legally at auction. But this is unlikely, seeing as the seven paintings have been registered internationally as stolen.

Metropolitan Museum’s Islamic Department Draw 1m Visitors

Attendance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s acclaimed New Galleries for Art of Iran, the Arab Lands, Turkey, Central Asia, and Later South Asia topped the one-million mark on January 18, 2013.
In the 14 months since their grand reopening on November 1, 2011, the galleries have attracted an average of 2,550 people per day. This number represents approximately 14 percent of the total attendance in the Metropolitan’s main building during the same time period, ArtDaily siad.
Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, commented, “In its role as a global museum, the Met strives to present the very best examples of art from all cultures and all periods of history.
From May 2003, the Museum worked on the reinstallation of its galleries for the art of the Islamic world, aware of the meaning and power of these collections in our modern world.
Since these galleries reopened in their new configuration just over a year ago, we have been truly gratified by the exceptional interest that our visitors--both local and international--have taken in this newly conceived presentation of Islamic art.”
More than 1,200 works from the renowned collection of the Museum’s Department of Islamic Art--one of the most comprehensive gatherings of this material in the world--are on view in the completely renovated, expanded, and reinstalled suite of 15 galleries, a project that took eight years to complete.
The organization of the galleries by geographical area emphasizes the rich diversity of the Islamic world, over a span of 1,300 years, by underscoring the many distinct cultures within the fold.
The new galleries are featured on the Museum’s website.

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH):

The people who will be in Hell are surely those who disregard the verses of God.