Britain has some of the best galleries in the world, but the vast majority of the oil paintings in public ownership have for decades been hidden away in private offices or storage. Until now.

By the end of the year, 210,000 paintings will have been dusted off and photographed for inclusion in a ground-breaking online museum, accessible to members of the public at just a click of a button.

A canvas of violent black brushstrokes by abstract expressionist Franz Kline sold for $40.4 million at Christie's in New York on Wednesday, setting a new record by far for the artist.

The result was four times higher than the previous high auction price for Kline, whose works have tended to be overshadowed by those of more famous abstract artists like Mark Rothko.

The Vatican on Thursday opened an exhibition devoted to art treasures from oil-rich Azerbaijan -- one of the few predominantly Muslim countries with which it enjoys close ties.

President Ilham Aliyev's wife Mehriban and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, inaugurated the show.

Rousing desert rhythms brought to life the oasis of M'Hamid, last stop in Morocco before the vast empty wastes of the Sahara, as musicians from across the region descended on the dunes.

The Taragalte music festival kicked off in earnest at the weekend under a spectacular star-lit sky, with a list of women's groups, from Morocco, Mauritania and Mali topping the bill.

The Musee d'Orsay will on Friday open a major exhibition of paintings from the 19th century at the new modern art museum in China's commercial hub of Shanghai, museum officials said Wednesday.

Many of the 87 paintings by artists in the French Naturalism movement, including works by Gustave Courbet and Jean-Francois Millet, are being shown in China for the first time, exhibition organizers told a news conference.

Christie's auctioned off the Archduke Joseph Diamond for nearly $21.5 million Tuesday night, a world auction record price per carat for a colorless diamond.

The Archduke Joseph Diamond was the first of two out-of-this world diamonds being auctioned off this week in Geneva. Sotheby's on Wednesday will auction what it calls an exceptionally rare fancy deep blue briolette diamond of 10.48 carats expected to get up to $4.5 million.

An informer's tip led South African police to a private cemetery Tuesday where they found four paintings hundreds of miles away from where they had been stolen from a museum in the capital, authorities said.

The tip is the latest twist in a heist that saw $2 million worth of art stolen Sunday from the Pretoria ArtMuseum by pistol-wielding thieves posing as eager students with their teacher. One oil painting of a South African township streetscape by artist Gerard Sekoto remains missing.

As Homer noted, the Trojans love nothing better than a good braai after fending off Achilles and his horde of assegai-wielding Greek impi.

Well, that is according to one retired classics professor who has spent more than 10 years putting Homer's epic poem about the Trojan war into a South African context.

Turkey's ruling party submitted a bill to parliament Tuesday to allow court testimonies to be given in the Kurdish language, one of the demands raised by hundreds of hunger strikers nationwide.

"A detainee, if he likes, may use another language (than Turkish) to defend himself against charges brought against him in the court," according to the bill proposed by the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).

In a poor but fertile corner of southern Morocco, illiterate Berber women are tapping the surge in global demand for argan oil, a "miracle" product they grind from a special nut, that is helping to lift them out of poverty.

Sometimes known as "liquid gold" or "miracle oil" for its rich cosmetic, culinary and medicinal properties, the exclusively Moroccan export has caused a sensation in the West, where it is touted as a unique hair care and anti-aging skin potion.