Picasso Loan to Palestinian Art Academy Suffers Complicated Obstacles

JERUSALEM (AP).- A Palestinian art academy is preparing to spruce itself up for a famous guest: a $7 million Pablo Picasso masterpiece that would be the first displayed in the West Bank. But simply arranging the painting’s journey remains a far more difficult work in progress over complications such as finding reliable transport and clearing Israeli checkpoints. The more than yearlong negotiations and planning — drawing in the Israeli military, Palestinian curators and Dutch museum officials — highlight the obstacles for even ordinary commerce or movement within the West Bank or through the few openings in the separation barrier with Israel. “Of course, at the beginning, we saw these complications but didn’t know to what extent this would reach,” said Remco de Blaaij, the curator at the Van Abbemuseum

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