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Back out in the world, Afghanistan's hidden treasures...
WASHINGTON DC - Ancient
artifacts secretly kept in a bank vault in the war-torn country, safe from
marauding militia, looters and the Taliban, are now on a museum tour for all the
world to see. In an act that provoked worldwide outrage, the fundamentalist
Taliban rulers of Afghanistan in March 2001 destroyed the monumental statues of
Buddha that had been carved into the rock cliffs of Bamiyan 1,600 years ago. The
shocking destruction was not an isolated event. As part of the same campaign,
the Taliban sent hordes of militants into the Kabul Museum to smash every
statue, no matter how small, that depicted a human figure or any other
creature... But the museum did not die. Unknown to outsiders, museum director
Omara Khan Massoudi and his assistants had packed the finest treasures of the
museum during the 1980s and placed them in the vaults of the Central Bank in the
presidential palace. "What kept them safe," says Hiebert, "was the code of
silence"...
LOS ANGELES TIMES
June 15, 2008
Landscapes are the draw at National Gallery
WASHINGTON DC - For much of
the 19th century, scores of French painters, laden with knapsacks and portable
easels, trekked through the Forest of Fontainebleau to capture the shifting
wonders of nature with their brushes right on the spot. Some came for weekends;
some stayed for a lifetime. Pioneers of the new art called photography, laden
with even more equipment, made the pilgrimage as well. So did the young
Impressionists. Together they all raised the art of landscape to new heights in
France. A generous sampling of this work is on display in an exhibition at the
National Gallery of Art that celebrates a place rather than a painter. Called
"In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers From Corot to
Monet," the show closes June 8 and goes on to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston
in July. The place celebrated is a forest that was once the hunting grounds for
the royal chateau in the town of Fontainebleau...
LOS ANGELES TIMES
April 20, 2008
Engage, Isolate, or Strike
After the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended in the last decade
of the 20th century, American strategists turned their sights on another threat:
the potential havoc that might come from a group of smaller countries like North
Korea and Iran that the Americans called "rogue states." That name was a
wonderful metaphor. It reminded everyone of "rogue elephant," the term that
hunters and wildlife experts use for an elephant that breaks from the herd,
follows its own rules, and goes on wild rampages. The antics of a rogue elephant
sounded just like the threat of a rogue state, especially a rogue state trying
to arm itself with nuclear weapons. But the metaphor had one flaw. No one tries
to negotiate with rogue elephants. Hunters simply kill them...
UCLA MAGAZINE
March 25, 2008
Tribal Politics
In 1962, when we were
both young, I spent a good number of hours with Mwai Kibaki in Nairobi,
listening to him explain the complexities of Kenya tribal politics. He was an
official of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the party that would lead
the colony of Kenya to independence a year later, and I was a Ford Foundation
fellow studying the new nations of Africa. I would drop by his office every week
or so and, if he was not busy, he would take time to reply to my questions. He
was polite, soft-spoken and matter-of-fact, not charismatic at all, and it never
dawned on me that he might become president of Kenya some day...
NEWS COMMENTARY
February 3, 2008
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Stanley Meisler
is the author of the biography
Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War and the history
United
Nations : The First Fifty Years.
Meisler served as a
Los Angeles Times foreign and diplomatic
correspondent for thirty years, assigned to Nairobi, Mexico City, Madrid,
Toronto, Paris, Barcelona, the United Nations and Washington. He still
contributes articles to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Sunday Opinion
and Art sections and writes a News Commentary
for his website,
www.stanleymeisler.com.
For many
years, Meisler has contributed articles to leading American magazines
including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, the Nation, the
Reader’s Digest, the Quarterly Journal of Military History, and the
Columbia Journalism Review. While most of these articles focus on foreign
affairs and political issues, Meisler has contributed more than thirty articles on
artists and art history to the Smithsonian
Magazine... |
(1709 - 1784)