The Art Newspaper – François Hollande, the president of France, denounced the destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage in a speech at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Tuesday night. Standing at the Met’s Temple of Dendur in its Egyptian galleries on 20 September, Hollande also announced the formation of a $100m fund from private and public donors to combat terrorist attacks on cultural sites and “protect the resources of humanity.”
Besides appealing for sites to be protected, Hollande also called for a strengthened commitment to cultural preservation that might include “intervention”, for which he gave no details. Restoration of damaged sites would also be part of his new mission, he said. So would “asylum” for some endangered works of art, a curious term, given the resistance towards accepting Syrian refugees in Europe and the Gulf States. read more