A Palestinian art academy on Monday put on display a $7 million Pablo Picasso masterpiece, the first of its kind in the West Bank.

Picasso's 1943 "Buste de Femme" is on loan from the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland. Organizers said they had to overcome a lack of reliable transport and several Israeli checkpoints along the way.

The art director of the Palestinian academy, Khalid Horani, said it took two years to arrange the loan. He said the painting's journey was "a story full of details and difficulties."

The small art school in Ramallah put in the loan request in early 2010. Normally, such inter-museum exchanges are routine and take about six months to coordinate.

"Nothing is normal over here," Horani said. "We planned to have an art work here, but found ourselves going through all the political complications."

Horani said the painting was flown from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv and was then escorted to Ramallah by an Israeli security company before going on display. He said the uprisings in the Arab world also postponed the artwork's delivery.