British Museum

The handsome new Art of the Americas Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts is a place for looking at art, not a place for looking at architecture. That makes it a departure from other art museums of recent years. At least since architect Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, back in 1997, it seems we’re always being told that the museum itself, not its contents, is the real work of art. Not at the MFA. This is a building where the art is thoughtfully displayed in an architectural setting that doesn’t call attention to itself.

Two Chinese artifacts with an estimated combined value of 2 million pounds ($3.2 million) have been stolen from a British museum, authorities said Saturday. Two men and a woman from the West Midlands area have been arrested in connection with the Thursday night theft at Durham University's Oriental Museum, but the items had not yet been recovered, police said. The northern England-based university confirmed that two "priceless" artifacts were stolen when thieves broke into a ground-floor gallery at the museum: a large jade bowl with a Chinese poem written inside that dates back...

LONDON -- One of the biggest Viking treasures ever found has been discovered on an English farm by a father-son team of treasure hunters, the British Museum announced yesterday. The trove of coins and jewelry was buried more than 1,000 years ago -- a collection of items from Ireland, France, Russia, and Scandinavia that testified to the raiders' international reach. "It's a fascinating find, it's the largest find of its type of over 150 years," said Gareth Williams, an expert at the British Museum who examined the items.

OF ALL the things our kids enjoyed about our family's annual weeklong summer vacations in Quebec City, their favorite was a small museum. Its official name was "Musée du Fort" — the museum of the fort — but we always called it "the diorama. " You sat in a darkened room looking down on a topographical model of 18th-century Quebec — houses, churches, trees and hills, frigates on the St. Lawrence River, regiments of tiny blue- and red-coated soldiers. A slide show on the back wall told the story of the long French and English struggle for possession of the city.

ATHENS - Greece opens its long-anticipated new Acropolis Museum today, boosting its decades-old campaign for the return of 2,500-year-old sculptures removed from the ancient citadel by a 19th-century British diplomat. After years of delays and legal wrangling, the museum opens its doors to the public tomorrow at a nominal $1.40 charge - the price of a public bus ticket. Tonight’s lavish opening ceremony, which comes with a nearly $4.1 million price tag, is to be attended by foreign heads of state and government, whose attendance is seen as a tacit approval of the marbles’ return.

Two Chinese artifacts with an estimated combined value of 2 million pounds ($3.2 million) have been stolen from a British museum, authorities said Saturday. Two men and a woman from the West Midlands area have been arrested in connection with the Thursday night theft at Durham University's Oriental Museum, but the items had not yet been recovered, police said. The northern England-based university confirmed that two "priceless" artifacts were stolen when thieves broke into a ground-floor gallery at the museum: a large jade bowl with a Chinese...

ATHENS -- Many of Greece's most valued ancient statues are wearing chains and padded vests, ready for a rare outing. Culture Ministry officials demonstrated yesterday how more than 300 statues from the Acropolis are being packed for a move this fall to a new museum being built at the bottom of the hill. Statues from the Parthenon and other temples, up to 2,600 years old and weighing up to 2 1/2 tons, are being fitted with padded harnesses and will be lowered by chains and pulleys into styrofoam-filled boxes made of plywood and metal.

OF ALL the things our kids enjoyed about our family's annual weeklong summer vacations in Quebec City, their favorite was a small museum. Its official name was "Musée du Fort" — the museum of the fort — but we always called it "the diorama. " You sat in a darkened room looking down on a topographical model of 18th-century Quebec — houses, churches, trees and hills, frigates on the St. Lawrence River, regiments of tiny blue- and red-coated soldiers. A slide show on the back wall told the story of the long French and English struggle for possession of the city.

For the rest of this year the Museum of Fine Arts will be the custodian of one of the most exquisite and evocative objects in all of art history. It is a small ivory carving of a lioness mauling a young man. If it sounds gruesome, believe me, it's not - at least, not compared to some of the other works on display in the stunning exhibition "Art and Empire: Treasures From Assyria in the British Museum. " Not far from our little ivory, for instance, you will see a speared lion vomiting blood, humans impaled on long poles, and no end of severed heads.

. SECRET MUSEUMS Written and directed by: Peter Woditsch At: Museum of Fine Arts Running time: 77 minutes Unrated There’s something off-putting about the preponderance of aging, sweaty, overweight men doing the talking in “Secret Museums: In Search of Hidden Erotic Art,’’ a documentary about the hidden stashes of erotica held by various museums and libraries in Europe and America. Couldn’t the filmmaker, Peter Woditsch, have found people less queasy-making?

THROUGH OCT. 9 LONDON “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe’’ : The British Museum has one of the world’s great collections of artifacts from the Middle Ages. This landmark exhibition, which features more than 150 items, draws on the museum’s holdings and those of another 40 institutions. The items span a thousand years, from the late Roman Empire to the verge of the Renaissance. Lying at the intersection of faith and beauty, these objects place personal artifacts associated with Christ or the saints in beautifully crafted containers.

. SECRET MUSEUMS Written and directed by: Peter Woditsch At: Museum of Fine Arts Running time: 77 minutes Unrated There’s something off-putting about the preponderance of aging, sweaty, overweight men doing the talking in “Secret Museums: In Search of Hidden Erotic Art,’’ a documentary about the hidden stashes of erotica held by various museums and libraries in Europe and America. Couldn’t the filmmaker, Peter Woditsch, have found people less queasy-making?

THROUGH MARCH 6 LONDON “Journey Through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead For some 17 centuries, from 1500 BC to 100, the compilers of these papyrus manuscripts gathered spells for the safe passage of the deceased through the hereafter and on to eternity. The British Museum has one of the world’s foremost collections of “Book of the Dead’’ papyri.

The handsome new Art of the Americas Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts is a place for looking at art, not a place for looking at architecture. That makes it a departure from other art museums of recent years. At least since architect Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, back in 1997, it seems we’re always being told that the museum itself, not its contents, is the real work of art. Not at the MFA. This is a building where the art is thoughtfully displayed in an architectural setting that doesn’t call attention to itself.

ATHENS - Greece opens its long-anticipated new Acropolis Museum today, boosting its decades-old campaign for the return of 2,500-year-old sculptures removed from the ancient citadel by a 19th-century British diplomat. After years of delays and legal wrangling, the museum opens its doors to the public tomorrow at a nominal $1.40 charge - the price of a public bus ticket. Tonight’s lavish opening ceremony, which comes with a nearly $4.1 million price tag, is to be attended by foreign heads of state and government, whose attendance is seen as a tacit...

For the rest of this year the Museum of Fine Arts will be the custodian of one of the most exquisite and evocative objects in all of art history. It is a small ivory carving of a lioness mauling a young man. If it sounds gruesome, believe me, it's not - at least, not compared to some of the other works on display in the stunning exhibition "Art and Empire: Treasures From Assyria in the British Museum. " Not far from our little ivory, for instance, you will see a speared lion vomiting blood, humans impaled on long poles, and no end of severed heads.

THROUGH OCT. 9 LONDON “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe’’ : The British Museum has one of the world’s great collections of artifacts from the Middle Ages. This landmark exhibition, which features more than 150 items, draws on the museum’s holdings and those of another 40 institutions. The items span a thousand years, from the late Roman Empire to the verge of the Renaissance. Lying at the intersection of faith and beauty, these objects place personal artifacts associated with Christ or the saints in beautifully crafted containers.

THROUGH MARCH 6 LONDON “Journey Through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead For some 17 centuries, from 1500 BC to 100, the compilers of these papyrus manuscripts gathered spells for the safe passage of the deceased through the hereafter and on to eternity. The British Museum has one of the world’s foremost collections of “Book of the Dead’’ papyri.

LONDON -- One of the biggest Viking treasures ever found has been discovered on an English farm by a father-son team of treasure hunters, the British Museum announced yesterday. The trove of coins and jewelry was buried more than 1,000 years ago -- a collection of items from Ireland, France, Russia, and Scandinavia that testified to the raiders' international reach. "It's a fascinating find, it's the largest find of its type of over 150 years," said Gareth Williams, an expert at the British Museum who examined the items.

ATHENS -- Many of Greece's most valued ancient statues are wearing chains and padded vests, ready for a rare outing. Culture Ministry officials demonstrated yesterday how more than 300 statues from the Acropolis are being packed for a move this fall to a new museum being built at the bottom of the hill. Statues from the Parthenon and other temples, up to 2,600 years old and weighing up to 2 1/2 tons, are being fitted with padded harnesses and will be lowered by chains and pulleys into styrofoam-filled boxes made of plywood and metal.