Word: perth
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nonalcoholic beer to Muslims in the Middle East. Everything about him was on a large scale -- his ambitions, his capacity for risk, his appetite for publicity. Also, he had some Australian paintings. But he did not own an art collection that would cut ice outside his home city of Perth...
...after Black Monday -- Oct. 19, 1987 -- when Wall Street plunged 508 points. Actually, the market was running quite high between the crash and the sale of Irises, but the painting was greeted as a talisman. Bond beefed up the security arrangements on the top floor of his headquarters in Perth to fortress strength and unveiled his acquisition -- the only Van Gogh in Australia -- to the press. "This isn't just a great painting!" he exulted to the cameras. "It's the greatest painting in the world...
Early in 1989 Bond arranged to send the Van Gogh and five minor impressionist paintings he owned, packaged as "Irises and Five Masterpieces," on a tour of Australian museums, finishing at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. Irises was set in a double-glazed frame that ensured no one could touch or even closely inspect its surface -- which made some skeptical Aussies suspect it was an exact copy commissioned, for security reasons, by Sotheby...
Soon after the paintings went on display in Perth, curious anomalies arose. Sotheby's suggested to the Art Gallery that Irises might remain on view there for some weeks after the exhibition ended. The trustees of the museum wanted to be sure they would not be held liable for possible damage to Irises; there had already been demonstrations outside, protesting Bond's investments in Chile. The trustees called in government lawyers to check on the insurance of the Van Gogh...
Eight thousand lost lambs, now fully grown into muttonhood, have been haunting the harbors of the Middle East for two months. Originally sent from Perth to Saudi Arabia, which buys 3 1/2 million Australian sheep a year, this flock was turned away after the Saudi Ministry of Agriculture and Water asserted that the bleaters were afflicted with sheep pox and bluetongue. Australian officials say those diseases do not exist in their country and that the Saudis were pressured by their own sheep producers to cut imports...