BERLIN. A group of 30 monumental sculptures from Tell Halaf, in Syria, have been reconstructed after being pulverised into 25,000 fragments in a bombing raid in World War II. Dating from soon after 1000 BC, the basalt statues were on display in Berlin until a combination of fire and water caused devastating damage.

Following the war, there were legal and political problems in even considering restoration. Although the reunification of Germany in 1990 eased the difficulties, conservators initially feared that reconstruction of the sculptures would be impossible. However, the painstaking work eventually began in 2002 and is finally nearing completion.

Tell Halaf lies in north-east Syria, close to the Turkish border and is now a Kurdish region. The site’s origins date back to 6000 BC, in late Neolithic times, but arguably the most important remains are those of the Aramaean civilisation, in the tenth century BC.

In 1899 Tell Halaf was discovered by Baron Max von Oppenheim, a German diplomat based in Cairo. He later sought permission from the Ottoman authorities to excavate the site between 1911 and 1913. Work was interrupted by World War I, and his final dig took place in 1927. The greatest finds were the remains of the palace of Prince Kapara, which included a five-metre high ensemble of three gods standing on animals and a twice life-size figure of a seated woman (or goddess, as Oppenheim believed). The excavated finds were divided between the national museum in Aleppo and Oppenheim, who took his share back to Berlin.

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Witt Library, Conway Library and Photographic Survey due to restrict access from September

london. The Courtauld Institute in London is considering drastic cuts to its three archives of images, including the Witt Library. From September, they would only open one day a week and effectively cease to collect. This proposal is causing great concern amongst art historians, as well as the art trade, since it is a major resource.

Cost-cutting lies behind the proposal, and the Courtauld is concerned about the subsidy involved in administering and adding to the collections (Witt Library, Conway Library and Photographic Survey).

More than three million images are kept in London’s Somerset House and are currently open to the public every weekday, for a modest £10 a year (or £2 a day). Although the internet means that much of the recently added material is now available online, web images cannot be searched in such a systematic way.

Courtauld staff who run the three collections are now under threat of redundancy. The plan is that the libraries would open only one day a week (with volunteer assistance) and further images would not be systematically added. An internal consultation with the librarians is underway, and is due to be concluded in August.

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new york. Florida’s longest-running contemporary fair, Art Miami, has changed hands, with a new partnership taking over the event. Art Miami LLC, the new partnership consisting of veteran Art Miami fair director Nick Korniloff and media executives Mike Tansey and Brian Tyler, acquired the fair—which will celebrate its 20th edition this year from 2-6 December—from Summit Business Media for an undisclosed sum last week. “Summit’s focus is media for finance and insurance,” says Eric Smith, the vice president of Summit, which also owns Art Expo. “It wasn't in our long-term interest to grow the fair.”

“Getting full control and ownership of Art Miami from a larger company means so much,” says Mr Korniloff. “The ability to not deal with layers of management in an effort to make decisions will truly benefit our exhibitors and all the collectors and attendees who visit Art Miami.”

The sale of Art Miami marks yet another conglomerate selling off an art fair. In July 2008, the UK firm DMG World Media sold Palm Beach International Fine Art Fair and later the contemporary fair Palm Beach 3 back to David Lester, who had sold both fairs to DMG in 2001.

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