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The Asiatic Society hosts a fifteen-day International Mother Language Day art exhibition at its newly built gallery at Nimtali in Dhaka, beginning today.
   The organisers, at a press conference at its premises, said that they would arrange the exhibition to pay homage to the martyrs of the historic Language Movement in 1952.
   Vice president of the Asiatic Society Professor Aminul Islam, society's general secretary, Professor Mahfuza Khanam,
   honorary director of the Asiatic Society Gallery of Fine Art, Professor Hamiduzzaman Khan and curator of the
   gallery Rafiq Sulaiman attended the briefing, among others.
   Vice-chancellor of Dhaka University, Professor SMA Faiz will inaugurate the exhibition as chief guest while Jahanara Abedin, wife of Shilpachariya Zainul Abedin will be present as special guest.
   The inaugural session will be followed by Professor Sirajul Islam, president of the Asiatic Society Bangladesh.
   The organisers said that around 50 rare artworks by the eminent artists of the country would be displayed at the
   gallery.
   Artworks from some other countries will also be on display, they added.
   'Most of the artworks are rare and many of them are not exhibited ever,' Hamiduzzaman Khan said adding they had collected some of the works of Shilpachariya Zainul Abedin, Quamrul Hasan, SM Sultan, Aminul Islam, Muhammad Kibria, Murtaja Baseer and other eminent artists of the country.
   He further said that some of the noted artists from India, Nepal, Malaysia, Greece, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom would attend the exhibition.
   Photographs of the US expatriate photographer Obaidullah Mamoon will also be displayed at the exhibition.
   The show will remain open from 2:00pm to 8:00pm everyday till February 24.

Recitation artiste Nazmul Ahsan delighted the audience reciting poems at his second solo poetry recitation programme titled 'Binidra Jege Achhi' at the Shaukat Osman Auditorium of the Central Public Library in Dhaka.
   The artiste with his baritone voice selected fifteen patriotic and revolutionary poems of the eminent poets of Bengali literature at the ceremony.
   He recited the poems including Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah's 'Batase Lasher Gandha', Birendra Chattapadhaya's 'Lockout' and Shamsur Rahman's 'Kalo Meyer Janya Pangtimala'.
   He also recited Nirmalenda Goon's 'Huliya', Srijan Sen's 'Matribhumir Janya', Asad Chowdhury's 'Barbara Bidlarke', Sunil Gangapadhaya's 'Kabir Mrityu' and Joydeb Basu's 'Bharat ek khonj'.
   He ended his performance by reciting a part of Syed Shamsul Huq's play titled 'Nuroldiner Sarajiban'.
   According to the artiste, he had selected the poems as he was performing in the month of the historic Language Movement.
   He also said that as the country was passing a critical time, he recited the poems which were full of revolutionary zeal.
   'Presence of a good number of audiences has inspired me. I hope, I will recite these poems at the divisional headquarters of the country in near future,' he added.
   He also hoped that the audience would enjoy these popular poems at a single programme.
   Nazmul, a devoted recitation artiste, released four albums of poetry recitation -- 'Neel Samudrer Deo', 'Bhalobasa Aguner Nadi', 'Eso Sparsha Koro' and 'Radha-Krishna'.

An image of an exhausted US soldier in a bunker in Afghanistan by Britain's Tim Hetherington for Vanity Fair magazine won the top World Press Photo prize for news photography on Friday.
   Judges described the photo as an image that shows 'the exhaustion of a man -- and the exhaustion of a nation.' 'We're all connected to this. It's a picture of a man at the end of a line,' said jury chairman Gary Knight. Prizes for photos in 2007 were awarded to 59 photographers of 23 nationalities.
   Getty Images Inc. won five awards, including top spots in the spot news singles and spot news stories categories for photos of the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, as well as a picture of dead mountain gorillas in the contemporary issues singles category.