Displaying items by tag: syria

Syria has seen damage to hundreds of historically significant cultural heritage sites since the outbreak of war three years ago, according to a new report released this week by the United Nations. The study finds that 290 culturally important areas in the Middle Eastern country have sustained damage or have been totally destroyed.

The U.N. said the report is based on satellite analysis that started in June, and that the city of Aleppo could be "one of the worst affected metropolitan areas nationwide." The study team also relied on a large number of reports and media from inside Syria as well as videos on YouTube to help pinpoint exact locations.

A new bill introduced in Washington, DC last week seeks to block looted Syrian cultural heritage from entering the US. The Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act asks Congress to appoint a cultural property protection czar and establish emergency import restrictions to protect endangered cultural patrimony. The bill aims to “deny terrorists and criminals the ability to profit from instability by looting the world of its greatest treasures,” says the congressman Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York, in a statement. Engel is co-sponsoring the legislation with Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey.

Black market sales of looted cultural objects are the largest source of funding for the Islamic State after oil, according to Newsweek.

In addition to the high toll that Syria’s four-year-old civil war has had on its people and infrastructure, Syria’s cultural heritage has been and continues to be destroyed at an unprecedented rate. World Heritage sites like the historic city of Aleppo and Krak des Chevaliers, as well as medieval Christian cemeteries and numerous archaeological sites and museums, have been subjected to extensive raiding and looting.

In an effort to help stem the loss of the region’s significant cultural heritage, Penn Museum’s Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in cooperation with the Syrian Interim Government’s Heritage Task Force, have come together to offer assistance for museum curators, heritage experts, and civilians working to protect cultural heritage inside Syria. A three-day training program, “Emergency Care for Syrian Museum Collections,” focusing on safeguarding high risk collections, was completed in late June; additional training programs are being planned, pending funding.

Art.sy, a New York City-based startup, which helps art lovers discover new works of interest using a Pandora-like model, has been at the center of an unexpected controversy. Art.sy shares the same official domain suffix (.sy) as the Syrian Arab Republic and as conflicts continue to rise in the worn-torn country, it has become clear that Art.sy needs to make some adjustments.

Art.sy’s main webpage was taken offline on January 2, 2013 and traffic was redirected to a backup site, Artsy.net. Officials explained that Art.sy’s domain, which had been paid for through the end of the year, was coming up as incorrectly expired and that the site would be restored the next day. As of January 4, Art.sy has officially changed its name to Artsy and moved its domain to artsy.net, permanently.

Artsy purchased their .sy domain in 2009, before the violence in Syria began to worsen. The site, which offers over 21,000 high-resolution artworks for the enjoyment of users, hopes to run uninterrupted from now on.