Stolen Gorgon Mask from Roman period returned to Algeria

Tunisian officials have signed over to their Algerian counterparts an ancient Roman artifact that was stolen during Algeria’s civil war almost 20 years ago.

 The Tunisian and Algerian ministers of culture met on Sunday in the ruins of the ancient city of Carthage, near the capital Tunis, to sign a formal agreement to repatriate the Gorgon Mask. 

Algerian Minister of Culture Khalida Toumi said returning the artifact was important for the bilateral relationship between Tunisia and Algeria. This special regional situation requires the reinforcement of the brotherhood bonds that connect us. - Khalida Toumi, Algerian Minister of Culture "This special regional situation requires the reinforcement of the brotherhood bonds that connect us," she said during the ceremony, calling the artifact part of Algeria’s "national and cultural identity".

 The one-metre-tall and more than 300kg mask was stolen in 1996. It was found in 2011 in the house of Sakher al-Materi, the son-in-law of former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The details of how the mask was stolen and taken to Tunisia are still unclear.

 According to Tunisian Minister of Culture Mohammad Sakli, the discovery of the artifact, which depicts a Greek mythological creature, was made when a video of al-Materi’s looted home was aired on Tunisian television shortly after the country's 2011 revolution. "Experts and scientists called [to] the attention of the Tunisian judiciary that this piece might actually belong to Algeria," Sakli told Al Jazeera.

 Three years passed between the artifact's discovery and its return because of a slow judicial process in Tunisia, Sakli said, adding the government could not force the judiciary to expedite the case. Toumi referred to the theft, which happened in the midst of Algeria's civil war, as a "stab in the back in a time when the Algerian people and its institutions were occupied [with] saving Algeria as a state, nation, and society". She announced that a joint Algerian-Tunisian committee of experts would be formed to examine cases of illegal trafficking of cultural artifacts.

 In Tunisia, home to ancient Phoenician, Roman, and Arab civilisations, many archaeological artifacts found their way into the hands of the Ben Ali family. Last December, Tunisian national television reported that nine people had been arrested for selling ancient coins, jewelry, and stone jars that had been stolen from al-Materi’s villa during the looting that followed the 2011 revolution. Source: Al Jazeera

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 In Greek mythology, a Gorgon (plural: Gorgons, Ancient Greek: Γοργών/Γοργώ Gorgon/Gorgo) is a female creature. The name derives from the ancient Greek word gorgós, which means "dreadful". While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature and occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters who had hair made of living, venomous snakes, as well as a horrifying visage that turned those who beheld her to stone. Traditionally, while two of the Gorgons were immortal, Stheno and Euryale, their sister Medusa was not, and she was slain by the demigod and hero Perseus.

‘Antiques Roadshow’ discovers a van Dyck masterpiece

(video below)

A priest in Nottingham, Father Jaime, had purchased the painting for $660, and brought it to a filming of Antiques Roadshow to be professionally appraised. Host Fiona Bruce initially thought the painting a fake, but something about it caught her eye.

She had just “spent weeks looking at nothing but Van Dyck paintings” with art expert Philip Mould, and suspected it might be genuine, so she called him in and he believed it was worth investigating.

After months of careful restoration, the pair consulted Van Dyck expert Christopher Brown, who verified it as a genuine Van Dyck .

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/29/antiques-roadshow-discovers-660-painting-is-661000-van-dyck-masterpiece/)

Self Portrait With a Sunflower, Private collection

Wikipedia:

Sir Anthony van Dyck (Dutch pronunciation: [vɑn ˈdɛˑɪ̯k], many variant spellings;^[1] 22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was aFlemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England, after enjoying great success in Italy and Flanders. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next 150 years. He also painted biblical and mythological subjects, displayed outstanding facility as a draftsman, and was an important innovator in watercolour and etching.

The British Royal Collection, which still contains many of his paintings of the royal family and others has a total of 26 paintings.^[30]The National Gallery, London (fourteen works), The Museo del Prado (Spain) (twenty-five works), The Louvre in Paris (eighteen works), The Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and the Frick Collection have examples of his portrait style. Wilton House still holds the works he did for one of his main patrons, the Earl of Pembroke, including his largest work, a huge family group portrait with ten main figures.

Tate Britain held the exhibition Van Dyck & Britain in 2009.^[31]

Banksy does Hustler Club in Hells Kitchen

waiting in vain..

at the door of the club

After a one-day hiatus, street artist Banksy returned today with a stencil on the door of the Hustler Club in Hell's Kitchen.

The work depicts a man wearing a tux and holding a wilting bouquet of flowers. On Banksy's website, it's accompanied by the caption "Waiting in vain... at the door of the club."

The Village Voice interprets the picture as  " a stencil of a guy with a bouquet of flowers waiting for a stripper to leave the club."

The New York Post reports:

Hustler Club marketing director Steve Karel said: “We’re honored that Banksy chose the Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club New York to share his art.”

Karel also said that “while we’d love to leave the work in place, it’s required we lift the gate when we open for business.”

“So after the public has the day to enjoy it, we will remove the door to keep it safe from vandals until we determine where it can be displayed in the future — hopefully inside of the club.”

A Hustler Club source said the place was locked up at 6:15 a.m., but someone came and hung a tarp over the gate two minutes later, then spent 43 minutes behind it.

Beefy guards were quickly posted to protect the potential goldmine.

Earlier this year, a Banksy mural removed from the side of a London building sold for $1.1 million.

Several dancers posed for photos with the Banksy just before workers began removing the gate for safekeeping around 6:30 p.m.

Almost immediately after the graffiti artist unveiled his latest creation on the side of a West Side jiggle joint, a nearby sign company began hawking magnets and prints of the spray-painted image Thursday morning.

Dean Landry, of Certified Graphics on West 51st Street, said he spotted the piece on a rolldown gate at the entrance to Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club while walking to work around 8 a.m., then grabbed a camera and snapped some photos.

“We were printing by 8:30,” Landry said.

The rush products were offered at $5 for a 3-by-4-inch magnet, $10 for a 6-by-9 version and $20 for an 11-by-17 print, and got snapped up by many of the hundreds of Banksy fans who flocked to the Hell’s Kitchen site.

Banksy’s Wednesday October 23th Today's art has been cancelled

UPDATED - Banksy’s Tuesday October 22th the Sphinx in the Bronx

 Street artist Banksy stayed another day in the Bronx,

He writes on his blog:

"No turn unstoned. A 1/36 scale replica of the great Sphinx of Giza made from smashed cinderblocks.You're advised not to drink the replica Arab spring water."

The New York post reports:

The three-foot-tall monument is standing guard outside a lot full of concrete blocks and cargo containers, its gaze fixed directly on the Mets’ Citi Field stadium about a block away.

And unlike Banksy’s other street-side works — most of which have been attacked by vandals — this one is surrounded by a 25-foot-wide moat of fetid water that’s more than an ankle deep, one of several large puddles along 127th Street.

The base of the sculpture appears to have been built from junk littering the area, with the face made of cement.

Bernardo Veles, who owns a nearby auto-glass shop, said the the masonry material was still wet when he touched it around 7 a.m.

“When I left last night, just after 9, there was nothing.  Just a big empty puddle,” said Veles, 27.

“At 6 this morning, my guys saw it and asked me what it was.  There are no marks, no truck pulled into the water.  Someone carried in the stone and built it piece by piece.”

“This place is empty at night, like a ghost town” he added.

“I am one of the last guys around and I leave at 8 or 9 every night. He must have done it in the middle of the night.”

Wikipedia tells us: `The Great Sphinx of Giza (Arabic: أبو الهول‎ Abū al Hūl, English: The Terrifying One), commonly referred to as the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining or couchant sphinx (a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head) that stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt.'

"No turn unstoned"

"to leave no turn unstoned" is a spoonerism. A spoonerism is an error in speech, or deliberate play on words, in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched between two words in a phrase. In this case, a play on `leave no stone unturned' -(which is interesting phrase for Banksy to play with, since so many in New York are searching in all possible places for his work.)

 While spoonerisms are commonly heard as slips of the tongue resulting from unintentionally getting one's words in a tangle, they can also be used intentionally as a  a deliberate play on words.

This particular spoonerism "to leave no turn unstoned" was used by the multi-talented Irish playwrite George Bernard Shaw  who wrote "A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned" ( which could be reduced to "A critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned"; meaning- critics will have something negative to say about everything).

This would be a way for Banksy to say that he understands that those critical of his work (such as Mayor Bloomberg) will be critical no matter what form his work takes.

Bloomberg commented about Banksy saying: "Art is art, and nobody's a bigger supporter of the arts than I am. I just think there are some places for art and there are some places [not for] art. And you running up to somebody’s property or public property and defacing it is not my definition of art. Or it may be art, but it should not be permitted."

UPDATE----------------------------------------------------------->

Hours after Banksy's sculpture was announced, the piece got loaded into the back of a giant moving truck, and taken away.

Banksy’s Monday October 21th South Bronx

Street artist Banksy is spending a month in New York putting up graffiti art and staging `scenes'  for his show entitled Better Out Than In. 

Banksy paid a visit to the South Bronx for today's work.

The stencil plays on what appears to be existing graffiti, which reads "Ghetto 4 Life." Banksy added a young spray-painter and his butler. This picture may be taken to be a bit of self deprecation.

Banksy has come under criticism from other graffiti artist, some whom claim that he sold out by selling his work in the `art market' where prints have sold for upwards of $500,000 at auctions (including a work titled "I Can't Believe You Morons Actually Buy This Shit") and original works have sold for well over a million dollars.  Many critics assume that the once poor Banksy is now rich. This has prompted anti- Banksy signs to pop up around New York:

Though other graffiti artist have added their tags to the wall after Banksy's work.

Within hours work men were photographed measuring the new Monday October 21th Banksy' picture in preparation for a plexiglass cover to protect the work.

This is the second time Banksy has struck the South Bronx. Last week Banksy's his traveling fiberglass Ronald McDonald statue, and shoe-shine boy were in the neighborhood.

Banksy’s Sunday October 20th Upper West Side New York {UPDATED}

Though initial attacks on @Banksy's work was rebuffed by onlookers- by evening it was covered in plexiglass. The some time in the night the piece was tagged with the phrase "Let the Streets Decide".

Lucky visitors on Sunday did get to `experience' the United Kingdom-based graffiti artist's work.

Banksy is spending a month in New York putting up graffiti art and staging `scenes'  for his show entitled Better Out Than In. 

While many street art enthusiasts have welcomed the graffiti art, New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he does not consider the work art and the illegal activity 'should not be permitted'. At the same time Rival graffiti artists, angered by a new presence on their 'turf', have raced to destroy the works.

Pablo Picasso Artwork May Be Destroyed in Norway

A government panel in Oslo, Norway has recommended tearing down buildings damaged in a 2011 terrorist attack  when a car bomb was detonated in front of the building housing the Prime Minister's office in the Regjeringskvartalet (Government Quarter), killing eight people and damaging surrounding Brutalist buildings by Erling Viksjø.

 Since the attack, the buildings have been abandoned—fenced off behind white protective tape with broken windows—while the government decides what to do with them According to the BBC, a poll by the newspaper Verdens Gang shows 39.5% in favor of demolition and 34.3% against (no details on what the rest of the polled favored).

 The buildings are two of this city’s signature   examples of Brutalist architecture ( from the French béton brut, or "raw concrete"- a style of architecture that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s.) The buildings were designed by Norwegian architect Erling Viksjø (1910 – 1971) . Viksjo' design " attempts to process the modernist tradition to create a new monumentality where concrete expressive development potential and an integrated artistic decoration are key".

The "integrated artistic decoration" in the two buildings up for demolition are five murals painted by Pablo Picasso —the artist's first works executed in concrete.

Proponents of demolition plan on taking down the murals brick by brick and reconstructing them elsewhere. But preservationists point out that the murals are site specific, designed by Picasso for these particular buildings.

The Picasso Administration calls idea of removing the artwork and tearing down the buildings"unbelievable".

The the National Museum in Oslo, is also against the buildings destruction. They opened an exhibition in June called Picasso — Oslo. Art and Architecture in the Government Buildings. The following is the very informative the text from the exhibit:

Works of Pablo Picasso in Oslo, Norway, threatened by demolishment.

“The Fishermen” mural by Picasso and Carl Nesjar
 (photograph by Helge Høifødt, via Wikimedia)

In Oslo city the government building ("H-blokka") is like an exclamation mark; a monument over the development of the welfare state of Norway after the Second World War. The high rise building is also a result of the breakthrough of modernism in official Norwegian architecture in the 1950s. The art decorations in natural concrete were novel, radical and sensational at its time, and the architecture and artwork are intimately and indivisibly connected.

It was the Norwegian architect Erling Viksjø who together with civil engineer Sverre Jystad introduced natural concrete as a new building material. The Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar was in charge of the artwork on the natural concrete walls of the new government building. In 1957 he invited Pablo Picasso to participate in the concrete art work, and the well known and admired artist said yes. Pablo Picasso was very intriguied by this new material, and he made 3 unique drawings for the building walls, which Carl Nesjar performed by sandblasting the concrete. Pablo Picasso was excited.

Carl Nesjar sandblasting the concrete

A fourth motive was made after the already known theme, Picasso’s Satyr, Faun and Centaur, now in The Museum of Picasso in Antibes. During the work process Carl Nesjar decided to leave out the Centaur figure. He had to meet with Picasso again to confess to his deed, but Picasso agreed with Nesjar that the wall and stone work was better off without the figure.

The cooperation between Carl Nesjar and Pablo Picasso developed and continued for 17 years until Picasso’s death in 1973. Their cooperation in the Governmental building in Oslo has been a prerequisite for Picasso’s official monumental art in the times to come. Apart from Oslo, we find Picasso’s monumental work in Barcelona, New York, Stockholm, Paris, and Jerusalem.

(photograph by W. Råger, via Oslo Museum)

Technical investigations of “H-blokka” after the bombing in Oslo in July 22nd 2011 show that the building’s constructions are safe and the integrated art work is intact.  The symbolism in both architecture and art are not of less importance today than before the attack on the Norwegian state and political system.

The Government has decided that the Norwegian ministries are to be situated together in and around the present government quarter. "H-blokka" is now under the threat of being demolished, to give room for new, bigger and modern governmental buildings. Others claim "H-blokka" may be preserved and be part of a larger scale development in the area. The Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage are amongst them that strongly insist on its conservation.

The exhibition is a contribution to the current debate on government building future fate. It demonstrates the quarter's architecture, historical and artistic qualities, in international format, with emphasis on Pablo Picasso's works.

Curator: Karin Hellandsjø

Art Talk is Back after a long vacation!

The blind learning to paint by touch

In China, Zeng Bailiang teaches his blind pupils to use their sense of touch to create works of art.

Comments from Indian Artist:

The following are some comments made by Indian artist (from India) that I came across and found interesting.

Q. There has been a strong figurative element in your work. But over the years, the figure has started becoming smaller and fainter
In the earlier years my works were based totally on reality. So every single detail was captured on canvas. Everything was painted after being observed in their natural surroundings. Now the need to capture images totally in their natural surroundings no longer exist. My purpose is to hide some parts, because if you show the entire figure the interest in details is totally lost. Earlier the desire to show reality was greater. Now, in some parts, there is a certain distancing from reality. Earlier, I would draw even in a crowd. Now, I need to work in solitude. I can't draw if there are guests or relatives in the house. I sense a vibration that is distracting. There is a certain power in the stillness of an object. Stillness is a form of speed while not in force. It is stillness that can create greater tension in a work of art. Life is a mystery and it is inexplicable. A given situation can only be explained. In such circumstances, there is tension that may be apparent, but for me, that is what is real. It is this factor that prompts me to conceive a magical situation which is akin to magic realism. (artist Jogen Chowdhury)

What does it mean to you to paint? 
Art for me, is the ultimate Annanda (bliss). Art can provide you with the metaphysical answers you have been looking for even whilst you are involved in its creation. They call it drawing. I really have no name for it. It's a compulsion, an itch. The more I scratch, the more I want to continue. It is enjoyable but it can also hurt when nothing emerges but an incomprehensible mess. Was I taught to draw? Silly question really. How can one manipulate a compulsive itch? Try and stop it and see what happens. Bad temper, depression and a sickness of spirit. Emptiness. It follows that my subject matter is of importance to me and is not fortuitous. Dependent on this choice are the means that will reveal it. Nor is it ever certain that every venture will be successful. What is certain, and this gives me some comfort, is that a moment of my life was spent in such absorption that bypassed Time. If at the end of it, what I make I made finds acceptance with someone, it confirms to me that I'm not alone. The drawing becomes a ground for sharing an experience.

What is your process like? Is there any change in your style from earlier to now?
My gaze is independent of my pencil holding hand. I think I could shut my eyes without ceasing to scribble. Sustained scribbling achieves only a small inroad that may dislodge an image. Sounds dramatic doesn't it? It isn't always so. I could not repeat the contours of a subject I've tackled before, which is not to say that I would not go back to the same subject in the hope of discovering another dimension. I used to do abstracts earlier and I have now moved on to human forms. I thought that the person or the individual is being neglected – the person in a particular situation who is influenced by the conditions around. I want to now emphasise the human beings caught up in their particular condition. (artist Krishen Khanna)

As a 'messenger' of Indian spirituality, and everything else the country has to offer its people and the world, you turned to 'significant form' through symbolism. However, many of your global contemporaries like Noland and Stella turned to pure form to repudiate symbolism from their art. Can you share your thoughts on this difference? 

"Well, it is symbolism in a way, but it is more a concentration on the significance of vital forms. You see, only symbolism or philosophy is not enough. Buddhi to hriday ki dasi hain [the mind is slave to the heart], said Mahatma Gandhi. Einstein has also said that the emotion is extremely important. You have to go beyond imagination. Kala ja akal ke aage ke noor, chirage rah hain manzil nahin [move beyond the mind and intelligence, it is only a path, not a destination], you have to go beyond intelligence. Now, you see, this has to be done and I have a feeling that only being an Indian or having an Indian passport is not enough. You have to 'know' - mano ke Shankar, na mano to kankar - if you believe in a symbol like the shivling [a sculpted representation of Shankar or Shiva in stone], it can be godly; if you do not believe, it is no more than a pebble. A stone can represent divine power, and it can also be just the visual representation of a stone! So the question of finding the immense power of symbolism in Indian culture is one thing. To be dedicated to it in a romantic way, is entirely a different thing. Now it depends who the artists are that are working in this direction, and what they are trying to show."

In the late 1970s, the artist's focus turned to pure geometrical forms; his images were improvisations on an essential theme: that of the mapping out of a metaphorical space in the mind. The circle or "Bindu" now became more of an icon, sacred in its symbolism, and placed his work in an Indian context. 

The artist calls his recent work a "result of two parallel enquiries". Firstly, it is aimed at a "pure plastic order" and secondly, it concerns the theme of nature. Both converge into a single point and become inseparable - the "Bindu" (the dot or the epicentre). "The Bindu symbolizes the seed, bearing the potential of all life"   (Artist S H Raza)

Diego Rivera's tribute from Google

HAT TIP TO Los Angeles Times for this well written story about  the search Giant Google's tribute to Diego Rivera

Posted at 12:06 AM ET, 12/08/2011

DIEGO RIVERA GOOGLE DOODLE: Logo celebrates the legendary Mexican muralist whose career was larger than life

By Michael Cavna

.

.

“SINCE ART IS ESSENTIAL for human life, it can’t just belong to the few.”

So demanded Diego Rivera, the leading Mexican muralist whose creative ambitions swept across the 20th century as large as his class-spanning public art. And Thursday, Google does what it can to spotlight Rivera’s essential art for an audience of millions.

Today, on the 125th anniversary of Rivera’s birth, Google’s homepage ”Doodle” celebrates the artist with a mural rich not only in color, but also in biographical detail.

Between the Doodle’s columns is the historic panorama of a towering career and transforming country. At left, in typical attire, Rivera himself stands on the telltale scaffolding, the full-bodied painter placed in telling proximity to a star-like image whose hues burn as bold and bright as the artist himself. (Like the burst of a sunflower surrounded by leaves, the image also sprouts thoughts of such agrarian Rivera works as “The Blood of the Revolutionary Martyrs Fertilizing the Earth.” from 1927.)

Beneath the scaffolding is a feminine silhouette — as if a shadowed nod to such Diego Rivera models as 1949’s ”Ruth Rivera” and her reflectionbeheld as if in the sun. And then there’s the prominent scaffolding itself — as if inspired directly by 1931’s “The Making of a Fresco, Showing the Building of a City.”

Rivera believed that outdoor public art helped visual mediums reach the masses across the classes. “Art is the universal language,” Rivera said, “and it belongs to all Mankind.”

And so it is telling that as our eye sweeps to the Doodle’s right, we see a man in red scarf, clad as a laboring campesino — so evocative of his“Peasants” and the iconic “The Flower Carrier.” And moving still right, by contrast, we see a bowler-topped, urban fellow — as if he migrated directly from the middle of 1948’s “Dreams of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park.”

Then, the central striking image of two faces — mother and offspring — that summons the emotional poetry of “Mother and Child Sleeping.”

“All art is propaganda,” Rivera said. “Religious art. Political art. The only difference is the kind of propaganda.”

And so it is fitting that as we move to the foot of the “L” in “Google,” we get an industrial worker wielding a tool — a visual reference to one of Rivera’s controversial American commissions. Rivera was hired by the Ford Motor Co., and his series of politically charged fresco panels was called “Detroit Industry.” Ultimately, Edsel Ford allowed that it was acceptable for an artist to displease his patron; the work is now recognized as one of Rivera’s masterpieces.

Rivera also believe that art was a great source of national pride, so as the Doodle’s Mexican flag waves to the right, we see buildings reflective of his official commissions and his modern-day nation.

And there, admiring all this, are two women. The woman with the trademark flowers in her hair is clearly Frida Kahlo — the legendary Mexican painter and wife of Rivera whose life and career is so inextricably intertwined with Rivera’s. Kahlo, in fact, has already received her own Google Doodle — back in 2010.

And the woman in white? That could an allusion to Lupe Marin, who was referred to as “Rivera’s other wife.”

----read the rest here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/12/google-doodle-celebrates-the-work-of-diego-rivera.html

Mural Altered at Penn State

Should art be altered to reflect the change

 in understanding about a subject?

Painted out of the picture

Prior to his day in court, former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky,  and was convincingly tried by the media, and found and presented as guilty of heinous sexual abuses on multiple children.  Sandusky, has been charged with 40 criminal counts related to sexual abuse that occurred over 15 years. Sandusky’s attorney, Joe Amendola, says his client has been aware of the accusations for about three years and maintains he is innocent.
And prior to his day in court, Sandusky's image was removed from the `Inspiration Mural' at Penn State.

Will Paterrno be Next To Be Removed?

Joe Patterno, nicknamed "JoePa," holds the record for the most victories by an FBS football coach with 409 and is the only FBS coach to reach 400 victories. He coached five undefeated teams that won major bowl games and, in 2007, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach. He defended his failure to go to police after Mike McQueary, then a 28-year graduate assistant and now Penn State’s receivers coach, told him of the March 2002 incident, in which Sandusky assaulted the boy in the showers. Paterno report the incident up the chain of command to Tim Curley, Penn State athletic director. Curley reports it up his chain of cpommand to senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz. Both Curley and Schultz meet with McQuery


"While I did what I was supposed to with the one charge brought to my attention, like anyone else involved I can’t help but be deeply saddened these matters are alleged to have occurred," Paterno says.

Curley and Schultz surrender that afternoon on charges of perjury and failure to report the possible abuse of a child. Each is released on $75,000 bail after appearing in a Harrisburg courtroom.

Paterrno offered to resign at the end of the season. He offered his regrets and acknowledges some responsibility for the scandal. "It is one of the great sorrows of my life," it said. "With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more." He also added: "At this moment the board of trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address."

But the board of trustees was greatly critical over Paterrno's failure to call police or follow up after learning about the alleged March 2002 assault. On the same night that Patterno offers to resign at thend of the season, he is fired by the University.

At a packed news conference at 10 p.m. Wednesday, when John Surma, vice chairman of the board, announced that Graham Spanier and Joe Paterrno were being fired.

Graham Spanier, who had been president at Penn State for 16 years, the president of one of the biggest, most-respected universities in the country, who manages a $4.3 billion budget, 24 branch campuses and 96,000 students, was also dismissed after being caught up in the child molestation charges.

But after the announcement reporters from every national news outlet from NPR to Fox News spent their time asking detailed questions — some of them angrily — about why the football coach was let go. 

Soon after students pour into the streets toward the columns of the Old Main administration building and into Beaver Canyon, a street located between rows of tall apartment buildings. They throw rocks and bottles, overturn a TV news van and kick out the windows, and chant "We Want Joe!" The police respond with pepper spray.

Make him, and his memory go away

(Reuters) - Until a few days ago, Jerry Sandusky's face smiled down on students from a mural in downtown State College, the home of Penn State University, where football players and coaches are treated like royalty.

On Wednesday, the creator of the mural painted over Sandusky. The former assistant football coach was charged a few days earlier with sexually abusing eight boys over more than a decade.

"I got an email yesterday from one of the victim's mothers saying simply, 'Michael, can you please take Sandusky off the mural,'" said Michael Pilato, a local painter who created the "Inspiration" mural in 2001.

The Harrisburg Patriot-News, citing five sources, reported in March 2011 that a grand jury had been meeting for at least 18 months to consider child abuse allegations against Sandusky.

Last weekend, Sandusky was charged with sexually abusing eight boys between 1994 and 2008.

Through the long investigation, Sandusky himself remained a fixture on campus. As recently as this summer, he was seen using the football players' weight room several times a week.

Sandusky was also seen at a Second Mile golf fundraiser, and several attendees said he appeared up-beat.

The former coach is removed

Sandusky's memoir titled "Touched" was published in 2000. 

In the book, Sandusky confesses an inability to grow up. "I had always professed that someday I would reap the benefits of maturity, but my lifestyle just wouldn't let me," he wrote, later adding that "the times when I found myself searching for maturity, I usually came up with insanity."

With more time on his hands after retiring, Sandusky shifted his focus to the Second Mile, the foster home-turned-charity for kids from broken homes he started in 1977, the year after taking the defensive coordinator job at Penn State.

Second Mile was an integral part of Sandusky's life. He was its chief fundraiser and best cheerleader and even drew a salary, though he had no operational authority.

According to the grand jury, the Second Mile was also where Sandusky found his victims.

*http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/12/us-usa-crime-coach-feature-idUSTRE7AB0OW20111112