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The article discusses an investigation into whether Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli was illegally exporting items of artistic and cultural value when he attempted to ship ruins of an Italian church to New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) PS1 for his "The Church of Vezzoli" exhibition as of Novemebr 25, 2013. Topics addressed include the legal aspects of Vezzoli's initial purchase of the ruins, as well as his attitudes towards the cancellation of the exhibition due to the investigation.

ROME -- The Temple of Venus and of Rome - once one of Rome's most majestic shrines - reopened to the public on Thursday after a long restoration. ''This temple has been both a school and course of study for many,'' said Claudia Del Monte, who began working on the restoration 23 years ago and directed the project. The temple, which consists mostly of ruins and columns both from the chamber and the perimeter of the ancient building (part of which was incorporated into a church), was restored to consolidate the structure and allow the ancient building to be more easily studied. ''We're introducing new itineraries even as we work to better monitor the buildings,'' said Roberto Cecchi, a culture ministry official who formally oversaw the most recent phase of restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Early in the 16th century Rome and Florence were locked in a heated rivalry. Florence had the Medicis, or what was left of them; Rome was in ruins -- it had been sacked in 1527 -- but it had the papacy, and with it the promise of rebuilding. The best artists were frequently caught in between. That contest is now playing out at two New York museums. The Met has a magnificent survey of drawings by the Florentine mannerist Bronzino, and the Morgan Museum & Library has unveiled ''Rome After Raphael,'' a show of some 80 Italian drawings from its collection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ON the road through the tree-studded high desert toward the small town of Chinle, Ariz., the car radio was bringing in the local Navajo station, with a playlist heavy in Top 40 hits, peppered with Navajo-language station breaks and car commercials. The sky was a cloudless blue, and I was on my way, with my childhood friend Esther Chak, to Canyon de Chelly, a geologic maze of towering red cliffs and deep-cut gorges dotted with pictographs and ruins of ancient cliffside villages. Lying in the heart of the 21st-century Navajo Nation, it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in North America, a window into both an ancient world and a modern one. It was late afternoon when we reached the mouth of the canyon. As we stood at the visitors' entrance, dazzled by the 360-degree horizon beckoning us from every direction, Merlin Yazzie, a cherub-faced park ranger with a ponytail, gave us a friendly wave. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

EXPLORING BYBLOS, A UNESCOWORLD HERITAGE SITE NEAR BEIRUT, LEBANON, MARCH 26, 2009 Angela Hartwick, a 31-year-old Canadian online art gallery director based in Dubai, walks among the ancient ruins. ''Byblos is this crazy historical site, and yet it's a stone's throw away from this whole suburban sprawl, some of which suffered so much damage and destruction in 2006. So Lebanon has both modern ruins and ancient ruins. And its culture blends rough-edged Arabic ways with refined French ways. Walking through Beirut, in a span of 20 minutes, you can go from a Shiite Muslim stronghold to a really affluent French neighborhood. This kind of contrast spreads across the people as well. There are strict traditional Muslims, and then there are women in miniskirts and enhanced breasts. As I walked through Byblos, I kept thinking how humanity keeps reinventing itself. You're standing there in thousands of years of history, but then you see different eras cropping up. You see a 12th-century castle, and then you see a building blown out from the 2006 war. It's all sort of there in the same picture.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

DIVING INTO A CENOTE ON HER 30TH BIRTHDAY, VALLADOLID, YUCATAN, MEXICO, FEB. 22, 2009 Jenny Ivansson, a lighting designer from Vaxjo, Sweden, now living in New York. ''The plan was to get away from New York in February. We had gone to Chichen Itza, the Mayan ruins, and ended up somewhere in between there and Tulum. From what I understand, cenotes are formed when underground water breaks down the stone to create these sinkholes. I had never heard of them before, but they turned out to be everywhere. People even had them in their backyards. This one was in the middle of a sleepy little Mexican town. I just decided to jump in. You know when you've been in the sun all day, your body is sort of swollen and you're exhausted? It felt liberating, the end of a nice birthday -- which I normally spend in Sweden or New York, where it's freaking cold. When we were leaving, I recognized some Norwegians arriving -- the language is very easy for us to understand. But you just pretend you don't know what they're saying. I said ''Enjoy'' in English. They arrived the same way as I did -- thinking it was incredibly exotic and special -- and I didn't want to ruin their moment.'' As told to Seth Kugel [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With block upon block of crumbling houses, abandoned stores, and churches and theaters left to rot like ancient ruins, this old industrial city can easily seem like a ghost town of vanquished dreams. Steel City, so nicknamed in its heyday when all the smokestacks were pumping, lost its big shoulders a long time ago, replaced with a slump from the weight of rampant poverty and a forlorn economic scene. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It was at least 200 feet down to the pavement from the power cable strung between the crumbling parapet I was hiding behind and the rooftop across the way, where five mutants were shooting at me with rocket launchers and energy rifles. I could have jumped -- a little fall can't hurt me anymore -- and sneaked around the back of the tower, but the shortest path between two points is a straight line, even here in the Warren, this fetid ghetto in the ruins of what used to be Empire City. So I leapt straight onto the cable and slid across, sparks arcing from my heels as two mutants fell to head shots from my plasma beam. I jumped from the wire into their midst and unleashed a concussion wave, blowing two more bad guys over the precipice. A roundhouse kick and a left hook to the jaw later and the last of the crazed freaks lay unconscious at my feet. Total elapsed time: about 12 seconds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

PARIS, or Lutetia, as it was known in ancient Gaul, was sacked, fortified and rebuilt by the Romans. Tourists today tend to gravitate to its few remnants -- the baths in the Cluny Museum (6, place Paul Painleve; 33-1-5373-7800; www.musee-moyenage.fr); the ruins of the Arenes de Lutece, a second-century 15,000-seat arena (47, rue Monge and rue de Navarre); and ramparts under the square of the Notre Dame Cathedral (7, parvis Notre-Dame, Place Jean-Paul II; 33-1-5542-5010; www.carnavalet.paris.fr). But the collections of Roman antiquities at the Louvre(34-36 quai du Louvre; 33-1-4020-5317; www.louvre.fr), located in the Denon and Sully wings, on the ground floor and first floor, and the Musee des Antiquites Nationales, in a Paris suburb, should not be missed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An exhibition celebrating a century-old piece of legislation may not seem an obvious crowd pleaser. But for the curators, it's a way of arguing that Italy's art treasures would be vastly diminished were it not for its strict -- some assert, draconian -- cultural-heritage laws. That's why every statue, vase and archaeological shard on display in ''Ruins and the Rebirth of Art in Italy,'' a show that opened last week at the Colosseum in Rome, has a story to tell. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents information on Liset Castillo, a young artist in Brooklyn, New York City, who builds sand castles of different world civilizations and architectural monuments, including the Taj Mahal, the Coliseum, and the Great Wall of China. Thereafter, she destroys them, and take photographs of the ruins. It is mentioned that all great civilizations come to an end, just like sand castles.

Focuses on photographs of the ruins of the World Trade Center, New York City. View that a turning point has been reached in the visual history of ground zero; Slide show and talk that was given in New York by photographer Joel Meyerowitz; Presentation of the ruins as beautiful; Comments of Meyerowitz, including his difficulties getting into the site to take pictures; Descriptions of photographs.