Transport ban on Czech art

Czech artist Arnost Chabera's Counsel

By Ray Furlong in Prague

The Czech culture minister has taken the unprecedented step of banning the transport of any state-owned works of art out of the country.

The minister, Pavel Dostal, said the decision was taken to prevent the artwork being impounded due to a dispute over the Czech Republic's most popular television station, TV Nova.

Vladimir Zelezny: Battle with Ronald Lauder

The Czech state is being sued for $500m (£349m) by the American billionaire, Ronald Lauder, who says it failed to protect his investment in Nova when he lost control of it to Czech entrepreneur Vladimir Zelezny in 1999.

The move may endanger major exhibitions, including a long-planned show of baroque art in Paris next year that was due to tour 30 French cities.

Appeal

After winning court actions in Amsterdam, Mr Lauder had artworks owned by Mr Zelezny seized when they were exhibited in Salzburg in September.

The Czech government has so far been ordered by a court in Stockholm to pay $1m (£690,000) costs to Mr Lauder but is refusing to do so pending an appeal.

Ministers fear that state-owned pictures, statues and other artworks exhibited abroad could be his next target.

The biggest casualty of the ban could be a season of Czech art exhibitions planned to take place in Paris and other French cities next year.

The head of the Czech National Gallery, Milan Knizak, said the project was clearly under threat but supported the ban.

"I don't want to place state-owned works of art at risk," he said.

'Farce'

However, organisers of the project said the measure was "absurd" given that preparations were in the final stages - a view echoed by many in the Czech media.

The top-selling newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes said: "If the exhibition doesn't go ahead a grandly-conceived project promoting the Czech Republic, which the government has subsidised by over two million dollars, will end in farce."

An exhibition of Czech cubist porcelain and glass, set to be held in Los Angeles next year, is among other projects under threat.

Organisers complained that they will be letting their overseas partners down if it doesn't go ahead.

Court battle

The case recalls another incident from the early 1990s, when Prince Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein got an injunction to impound an oil painting which was on loan to a gallery in Germany.

The picture had been confiscated from one of the Prince's family seats in southern Moravia after World War II - and he wanted it back.

But after a lengthy court battle it was returned to the Czech Republic.

Ronald Lauder's lawyers say they have no plans for trying to get Czech artwork seized.