ART

Two different groups of Japanese art lovers/investors are bidding on the house where Vincent van Gogh was born. They want to transform the building, now a real estate agent’s office, into a museum dedicated to the Dutch painter. Van Gogh, who was born in 1853, spent his childhood in the house in the small southwestern village of Zundert in the Netherlands, but is not believed to have worked there. One of the groups is bidding for the property with a Belgian businessman, who has already bought a house in the southern French village of Auvers-sur-Oise where Van Gogh committed suicide in 1890.