Hoping to Save the Remains of a Ming Dynasty Temple

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Didi Kirsten Tatlow

CHINA---First a printing press, then real estate developers, now a welding-machine factory. Everyone has taken a piece of Nianhua Si, or Picking Flowers Temple, a Ming dynasty place of worship in the storied Drum Tower district of Beijing. Yet the real threat to the temple — dozens of historically and religiously significant buildings begun in 1581, the ninth year of the reign of the Wanli Emperor, and given its present name in 1734 during the Qing dynasty — isn’t decay, say residents and conservationists. It’s redevelopment. [link]

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Restoration of Interiors of Sikh Golden Temple to Begin Soon

SIKHSIYASAT 
By Parmjit Singh

Detail from the blackend golden plating from the temple

INDIA---It is learnt that the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee has hired a private firm to restore the interiors/wall-paintings at Darbar Sahib. The gold-plating inside the shrine has turned black apparently due to rising pollution while at a few places it is peeling off the walls. Similarly, the artwork on the upper floor has also suffered damage at various spots, particularly along the staircases leading to the top floor. When launched, it would be the first ever ‘kar sewa’ on the interiors of the shrine. The gold-plating and the artwork inside the Golden Temple dates to the Maharaja Ranjeet Singh era. The interiors of Sri Harmandar Sahib boast of rare architecture comprising ‘mohrakashi’, ‘tukri’ and ‘gach’ work. [link]

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From Denmark to Utah: Transporting Century-old Art

DESERET NEWS
By Emmilie Buchanan-Whitlock

Panels are removed from an altar painting at Vor Frue Kirke in Aalborg, Denmark.

UTAH---How do you transport a painting more than a century old from a castle in Denmark? The answer, said Dawn Pheysey, Brigham Young University Museum of Art's head curator, is very, very carefully. The paintings in the BYU Museum of Art's upcoming free exhibit, "Sacred Gifts: The Religious Art of Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hofmann and Frans Schwartz," which opens Nov. 15, are being transported from nine different locations in Germany, Sweden, Denmark and New York City.Altar paintings are taken from the altar in their respective churches and placed facedown on a clean, white archival material on the floor. All paintings must be transported in the upright position. Some, because of their size, require their own plane to make the trip to Utah.[link]

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Silk Road Artists Copying China's 492 Caves "Stroke for Stroke"

PEOPLE'S DAILY ONLINE

A wall painting in the Mogao Grottoes (Xinhua)

CHINA---While the ambitious plan to revive the Silk Road by building an economic belt hit recent media headlines, dozens of painters are working silently in the gloomy caves of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Northwest China's Gansu Province, once a major stop along the ancient route. With brushes and mineral pigments, they copy wall paintings stroke by stroke, trying to preserve the Buddhist art made by their ancestors over a millennium dating back to AD 366. Housing 45,000 square meters of murals and 2,415 painted sculptures, the 492 caves of the Mogao Grottoes were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987. "Such copies can help the paintings endure and display this unmovable art to more people," Wang Xudong, director general of Dunhuang Academy, told the Global Times. The academy, established in 1944, is dedicated to safeguarding the relics in Dunhuang. "Nevertheless, less than 20 caves have been fully copied so far," Wang said, adding that about 40 painters now are working full-time on this Herculean task. [link]

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