“After hinting at a big announcement for days, the Egyptian antiquities ministry revealed the details this morning: more than 100 intact wooden coffins with brightly painted scenes and hieroglyphs, and well-preserved mummies inside.” – Smithsonian Magazine
Category: visual
Met Opera’s Custom-Made Marc Chagall Stage Curtain Is Up For Auction
The artist — whose two murals for the opera house’s lobby, famously visible to passersby from well beyond Lincoln Center’s central plaza, were put up as collateral for a loan in 2009 and again in 2014 — created the 65′-by-48′ curtain for a 1967 staging of Mozart’s Magic Flute, the only opera production he ever designed. – The New York Times
Fashion Is Fashion. Art Is Art. But…
“I don’t think you necessarily have to own it to appreciate couture. It’s like art. I don’t really like when people talk about fashion as art. Fashion is fashion. Art is art. But yes, I don’t think that you have to own art in order to appreciate art. You can go to a museum and you can appreciate paintings and whatever you like. So why not for couture? – Washington Post
Is Baltimore Museum’s Plan To Sell Art Really About Pay Equity?
“The BMA is hardly the only museum with stark pay-equity problems in its lower ranks. But its attention to the issue has set it apart from countless other institutions that have largely ignored the issue. For the sake of the museum’s service workers — and service workers everywhere — here’s hoping they figure it out.” – Los Angeles Times
Athens Workers Find A Bust Of A Greek God While Doing Sewer Work
The Greek Culture Ministry was calm about it. “The head, one of many that served as street markers in ancient Athens, was found Friday and it appears to be from around 300 B.C. — that is, either from the late fourth century B.C., or the early third century. It depicts Hermes at ‘a mature age.'” – Seattle Times (AP)
Why Is There No Smithsonian For Latinx History?
In 1994, a report called “Willful Neglect” called for change. And yet, here we are. “The need for this museum cannot be overstated, particularly now. Latinos are the second-largest ethnic and racial group in the country, and yet our diversity and complexity remains misunderstood.” – The New York Times
How This Powerful Artistic Couple Makes Work Separately And Together
The artists were sharing a wall at an exhibition when they realized they had something in common – the tragic loss of two friends. Soon, they shared both life and art as well. – Los Angeles Times
The Vanished Botticelli In The Middle Of Lawsuits, Tax Havens, And A Multi-Country Investigation
Who owns the 1485 Madonna and Child? And, perhaps more importantly for art lovers, where is the painting? The tale is long, twisty, and intensely shady. – The Observer (UK)
Ugly New Buildings Keep Going Up, And Up, And Up Some More
Rowan Moore found evidence of ugly buildings not only in the UK, but across the world. Why? Modern construction streamlining, perhaps. “It’s not that you can’t design good buildings with modern techniques, but it takes skill and thought. It also takes a degree of influence over detail that modern building contracts, which tend to empower contractors to do what they like, often deny to architects.” – The Observer (UK)
Rome’s Infamous Graffiti Artist Is No Longer Anonymous
And Geco isn’t seen with the same, let’s call it reverence, that many give Banksy. Rome’s mayor, Virginia Raggi: “‘He has soiled hundreds of walls and buildings in Rome and other European cities, which had to be cleaned using public funds.’ She posted a photo of ‘hundreds of spray paint cans, thousands of stickers,’ and other tricks of the trade that she said investigators had confiscated from the apartment of Rome’s most-wanted graffiti painter.” – The New York Times