Police descended on a Tehran theater earlier this week and halted performances of the play "Hedda Gabler" by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen after an Iranian news agency blasted the classic drama in a review.

Coincinding with the incident, media reports surfaced about the creation of a new body to regulate cultural affairs in the Islamic Republic, signaling that a wider crackdown on artists might be underway.   

Theatergoers had flocked to Tehran's City Theater on Tuesday night to watch the drama, which had been playing since Jan 5. But when they arrived they were met by a crowd of police officers and informed that the play had been suspended.

As security forces and tanks streamed into the center of the Tunisian capital on Wednesday to try to put down mounting anti-government protests that have left scores dead, a group of about 50 Tunisian actors and artists gathered in a theater in Tunis to speak out peacefully, through plays and songs, about the dramatic events that have rocked their country to the core.

"The republic is in a coma," one actor cried out on stage in a play about the violent riots and police crackdowns on protesters that occurred in recent weeks.

When people in the audience were told that Tunisia's interior minister (who was fired Wednesday) had made public apologies about previous crackdowns on outspoken artists and actors, they angrily responded by shouting, "It's too late."

Today an orchestra, tomorrow a state.

With these words, Suhail Khoury, director of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, introduced the Palestine National Orchestra in its debut Friday in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

More than 40 Palestinian and foreign musicians came together to make the dream of a national orchestra a reality. The task was not easy, particularly because most of the musicians also play with renowned orchestras around the world. But for most of them, putting together a Palestinian national orchestra is seen as a stepping stone toward building an independent state of Palestine.

“Today we are witnessing the birth of the Palestine National Orchestra at a time when the Palestinian struggle for independence is passing through one of its most critical and difficult moments,” Khoury said.

“The task of bringing Palestinian musicians together to add a new cornerstone in the building of an independent Palestinian state was a very difficult endeavor,” he said.

Joy, sadness, dreams and politics are among the emotions and messages expressed in graffiti paintings and murals on the concrete walls of Gaza, captured in a recently published book on graffiti art in the strip.

"A thousand congratulations to the two bridegrooms," reads one graffiti painting in Arabic. Another hails the enclave's resistance fighters. "The martyr's stronghold" is written in broad Arabic letters on a wall in a similar black-and-white pattern as that of the Palestinian scarf, the Kuffiyeh. A third message written on a wall near a demolished building asks "Why??!!" in English.

An Egyptian court has convicted 11 Culture Ministry officials on charges of gross negligence and incompetence and sentenced them to prison in connection with the theft of a Vincent Van Gogh painting from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil Museum.

The officials, including Deputy Culture Minister Mohsen Shalaan and the museum's director, were each sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison and were released on $1,800 bail each pending appeal.  

The painting, known as "Poppy Flower" and "Vase and Flowers," was stolen in August, causing an international furor concerning the Ministry of Culture's ability to protect the country's artistic treasures. An official investigation showed that only seven out of the museum's 43 surveillance cameras were working at the time of the theft.

During interrogations, Shalaan claimed he reported the museum's security deficiencies to his superiors and that he had asked Culture Minister Farouk Hosni for a budget of $7 million to improve surveillance systems. He said he was only allotted $88,000.

Hosni later testified and presented documents showing a presidential decree approving more than $10 million to upgrade the museum. The painting, valued between $50 million and $55 million, is still missing.

-- Amro Hassan in Cairo

Photo: The stolen Vincent Van Gogh painting. Credit: Associated Press

The rich, dark wood furniture with mother-of-pearl inlay or mosaic decoration is a trademark of Syrian living rooms, luxury boutique hotels and government offices. But now the artisanal furniture from Damascus' traditional markets is increasingly attracting the eye of foreigners.

In the shops on Straight Street, furniture makers are experiencing a rise in exports, fueled by demand predominantly from the Gulf.

Al Moazen is a family outfit whose roots are more than 300 years old. The workshop, at the back of the shop, is abuzz as the handmade items are constructed. Chairs with beige cushions and mirrors surrounded by mosaic clutter the shop. Small tables and chests are stacked high upon one another.

"There is a lot more interest from outside Syria than there was," says Abdullah al-Moazen, the youngest generation to go into the business.

There's more to Arab art than ancient swirling calligraphy and seductive, kohl-lined eyes.

Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, which will open in Doha, Qatar on Dec. 30., aspires to highlight and share contemporary art by Arabs and artists living in the Middle East that might challenge some preconceptions. 

It will also serve as a research center, an exciting prospect for the regional arts community.

The project is being carried out under the auspices of Qatari royal Sheik Hassan bin Mohammad bin Ali al Thani, who is also vice president of the Qatar Museum Authority.

Mathaf, which simply means "museum" in Arabic, will be housed in a school that has been converted by the French architect Jean-Francois Bodin.

The inaugural exhibition, titled, "Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art," will include works culled from Mathaf's permanent collection of over 6,000 pieces, all of which were donated from Sheik Hassan's private collection.

"We are not trying to present some sort of new canon," Wassan al-Khudairi, acting director and chief curator of Mathaf, told Babylon & Beyond. "This is why we stress multiple modernities and multiple narratives."

Conflicting statements have emerged over whether the remains of a 2,000-year-old Parthian fortress known as Tappeh Dokhtar, or the "Virgin's Mound," dating from Iran's pre-Islamic past were recently demolished in the Iranian city of Hamadan to make room for a mosalla, a Muslim prayer center often used by hard-line supporters of the government.

An official in Hamadan told Babylon & Beyond over the phone that the remains of the monument, which stood on a hilltop in the area known as Tappeh Mosalla, were still "intact" and emphasized that "no damage" had been caused to it.

But statements from other local officials and researchers on Iranian cultural heritage sites suggest otherwise.

"Until two years ago the remains of the ruins of the fortress, which was possibly Parthian, was standing and was destroyed when the construction of the mosalla began," Mehrnush Najafi-Ragheb, spokeswoman for Hamadan's Municipality Islamic Council, told Iran's Culture Heritage News Agency.

On a dusty, rocky plain patches of dried grass try to poke through. A couple of makeshift tents, composed of scraps of material flapping insecurely in the wind, attract the eye while two swaddled figures can be seen talking in the background. 

Utterly exposed and barren, a feeling reinforced by the black and white photographer Doha Hassan, it is no place to call home. But for some whose rural livelihoods have been ravaged by a three-year drought in Syria, it is. 

They are farmers, herders and business owners who were reliant on the local agricultural economy in the northeastern states of Hassakeh, Deir Ezzor and Raqqa. 

When the crops failed and the grazing land shriveled up, many people -- up to 300,000 of the 1.3 million the United Nations and government estimates to have been affected -- were forced to leave. 

Some went to the cities to seek work; others ended up in camps such as the one seen above in a photograph taken by Hassan, who has chronicled the effects of the drought. 

"Their plight has gone undocumented," she says. "Many people in this country don't even know how bad the drought was and how many lives have been ruined."

The search is still underway for a Vincent Van Gogh painting that, according to Egypt's minister of culture, Farouk Hosni, was cut from its frame and stolen from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil museum on Saturday.

Known as both "Poppy Flowers" and "Vase With Flowers" and believed to have been painted by the Dutch Impressionist master in 1887, the 12-inch-by-12-inch canvas is worth $55 million. 

Hosni ordered urgent measures at all ports to try to prevent it from being taken out of Egypt.

A few hours after the painting's disappearance, Egypt's official news agency, MENA, reported that two Italian tourists were detained at Cairo International Airport on suspicion of connection to the theft moments before they boarded their flight back to Italy.

Museum officials were quoted as saying that the Italian couple raised suspicions after they were seen going to the toilet before swiftly cutting short their tour and leaving the museum.

Hosni later announced that "Poppy Flowers" had been recovered -- before retracting that statement, saying it was "based on information we received that was wrong and incorrect" and that authorities were still on the hunt for the painting.

The Zulfiqar Mosque's minaret rises over Sadr City, curving at the top into the shape of the double-tipped sword from which it takes its name, the sword of Imam Ali.

But its unusual minaret is not all that distinguishes the mosque in this Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. Inside, worshipers gaze up at something that was illegal under Saddam Hussein's rule and even now could put the mosque at risk: paintings.

On the walls hang two huge canvases depicting the battle of Karbala in the 7th century in which Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was killed, eventually leading to the split between Shiites and Sunnis. Shiites mourn the death of Imam Hussein in a yearly commemoration called Ashoura.

On one canvas, Imam Hussein clutches the body of his son against a red sky. In the second, Hussein's half-brother, Abbas, looks out serenely from atop his steed as the battle rages behind him.

"To place the drawing in a mosque is a genetic mutation,” said the artist Baqer Sheik, who painted both pieces. “There is some kind of evolving in the Shiite religious culture and understanding.”

Most mosques throughout Islamic history have been decorated with geometrical designs and arabesques, often using mosiacs of faience. Painting living creatures, and especially humans, is extremely controversial in Islam and banned completely by some sects.

Shiite clerics have generally been more tolerant of depicting human figures, and images of Imam Hussein are ubiquitous during Ashura in places such as Iran and Lebanon. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, these illustrations have become more common in Iraq, but Abu Yaser, one of the financiers of the mosque, said most of these icons are cheap and poorly done.

Over the last weeks, several busts of famous Iranian figures worth thousands of dollars have mysteriously vanished from their pedestals in central Tehran one by one.

First, a statue of the renowned Iranian poet Shahriar disappeared. Then the busts of two prominent figures in Iran's 1906 constitutional revolution as well as a Persian lexicographer went missing.

Iranian police are now launching an investigation into the incidents after a 10th bust disappeared from Tehran's central Behjatabad Park on Monday.

The target this time: the 9th century physician and philosopher Avicenna, who was of Persian origin. 

“The Tehran attorney general is looking into the capital's serial statue thefts,” Tehran prosecutor General Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi was quoted as telling reporters by Iran's state-owned English-language Press TV.