MONUMENT TO FAMOUS PAINTER CHAGALL IN VITEBSK, 1998-11-07 (photo)

FOR RELEASE WITH STORY BC-BELARUS-CHAGALL - Monument to famous painter Marc Chagall in the city of Vitebsk, some 260 km north of Minsk. Chagall's birthplace, the former Soviet republic of Belarus, unkind to him under communist rule, has become the scene of a posthumous embarrassment for admirers of the great Jewish painter. Belarus faces a fresh and embarrassing challenge - how to explain the disappearance of works by Chagall. Reviled during the Soviet era, the Jewish painter is now, belatedly, revered in the town and country of his birth. But a hometown museum devoted to Chagall, who died in 1985, cannot account for the whereabouts of 15 of his works. Picture taken JUN98. VF/CVI/JDP