Happy New Year to All!

Please take a few minutes of your time to read the following message about the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre that was forwarded to us by Barbara Heller in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Also, please note that the Barbara Heller who wrote this is not the same person as Barbara in Canada!

URGENT

To all friends of the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre:

I am writing to you as I know you will be concerned to learn that the survival of the Art Centre in Harrania, for whose adobe workshops and galleries Ramses Wissa Wassef won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983, is seriously threatened by rising water.

To view dramatic photographs and to read a report about the damage please visit www.wissa-wassef-arts.com/petition.html

The trustees of the Ramses Wissa Wassef Exhibition Trust, a charity registered in the United Kingdom which in 1985/86 and 2006 organised a series of highly successfully exhibitions of the tapestries in the UK, plan to present a petition to the Governor of Giza and other authorities in Egypt.

Please lend your support to this call for urgent action to ensure the survival of the Art Centre and of the tapestry weaving experiment which continues to delight and inspire thousands of people thoughout the world. Any further help you can give by urging friends and colleagues to sign the petition would be greatly appreciated. All signatures will be added to the 300 collected at the recent exhibition of new tapestries for sale held in London at the end of 2007.

Barbara Heller, Trustee & Secretary of the Ramses Wissa Wassef Exhibition Trust

Please sign the on-line petition by 10th February 2008 at
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/on-behalf-of-the-ramses-wissa-wassef-art-centre-egypt.html