The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York has launched a new initiative to commission works by contemporary Chinese artists.

The new program is made possible by a $10 million grant from the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation. It will enable the museum to commission works by artists born in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau.

A documentary on Egyptian Jews that had been blocked by the country's security service will screen in theaters at the end of the month, the film's director said on Wednesday.

"Jews of Egypt on the 27th of March in movie theaters. We won the war against National Security. We got the permit," wrote the director, Amir Ramses, on his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

A $3 tag sale buy has turned into a massive windfall for the lucky bargain hunter: the Chinese bowl sold for $2.23 million at an auction at Sotheby's on Tuesday.

The small pottery bowl, finely crafted with an ivory glaze, turned out to be a thousand year old "Ding" bowl, dating from the Song dynasty, which ruled China from 960 to 1279.

Stunning reproductions of the famed cave paintings of Lascaux are being displayed for the first time outside of France at an exhibit in Chicago opening Wednesday.

Meticulously copied to the millimeter, these full-sized replicas are one of the only way to see these images, since the cave was closed to the public in 1963 in order to preserve the ancient masterpieces.

France on Monday vowed to step up efforts to return works of art stolen from Jews by the Nazis to the families of their rightful owners.

The pledge came on the eve of an official ceremony at which six 18th-century paintings will be returned to the descendants of Vienna-based industrialist Richard Neumann and another 17th-century work handed over to the family of Josef Wiener, a Prague banker who perished in the holocaust.

A painting donated to Britain's National Trust by the estate of a wealthy supporter has been identified as a Rembrandt self-portrait worth 20 million pounds ($30 million), the heritage body said Monday.

The painting was given to the trust in 2010 by the estate of Edna, Lady Samuel of Wych Cross, whose property-developer husband was a major collector of Dutch and Flemish art. It hangs in Buckland Abbey in southwest England, the former home of 16th-century seafarer Francis Drake.

Many Brazilians cast their country as racial democracy where people of different groups long have intermarried, resulting in a large mixed-race population. But you need only turn on the TV, open the newspaper or stroll down the street to see clear evidence of segregation.

In Brazil, whites are at the top of the social pyramid, dominating professions of wealth, prestige and power. Dark-skinned people are at the bottom of the heap, left to clean up after others and take care of their children and the elderly.

Forget what you think you know about America's stiff and stodgy capital city.

Beyond the staid suits and ties of Washington's politicians, lobbyists and lawyers lies the "other DC" -- an underground cultural scene of graffiti, go-go and hardcore punk music that took off in the 1980s and still pulsates today.

The soaring half domes of the Martyr Monument stand out against the drabness of eastern Baghdad, not far from where Saddam Hussein's feared eldest son was said to torture underperforming athletes.

Saddam built the split teardrop-shaped sculpture in the middle of a manmade lake in the early 1980s to commemorate Iraqis killed in the Iran-Iraq War. The names of hundreds of thousands of fallen Iraqi soldiers are inscribed in simple Arabic script around the base.

Sri Lanka denied entry to a British tourist sporting a Buddha tattoo on his arm because he showed disrespect to Buddhism, a newspaper report said Saturday.

The unnamed Briton was turned back at Bandaranaike International Airport late Friday, according to the daily Lankadeepa Sinhalese.