Category: visual

Visitors to the site can browse reconstructions that date back as early as 1200 BCE, the Mycenaean period — or Bronze Age — through Classical Athens, featuring the rebuilds made necessary by the Greco-Persian War, and ages of occupation by Romans and Ottomans. Tsalkanis traces the evolution of sites like the Acropolis throughout the ages, the rise and fall of the city walls, the Agora, which served as center of city life, and various temples, libraries, and other fortifications. – Hyperallergic

The web favors certain virtues—wit, weirdness, bombast, and urgency—over others. In real time, we’ve witnessed critics watch their well-crafted essays sink to the internet’s depths like a stone. As our cameras rolled, a critic at one of the nation’s largest newspapers darted from one editor’s desk to another, trying to understand why a blog post was bombing and, eventually, with a moving show of emotion, broke down. – ARTnews

Four owners in a condo building had gone to court for an injunction requiring the museum to screen or block off part of its popular 10th-floor viewing gallery so that “hundreds of thousands of visitors” would stop “relentlessly” looking into their floor-to-ceiling windows. Last year, a judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ suit, saying that they could put up curtains or blinds. The condo owners went to the Court of Appeal, which has now rejected their complaint, adding that the Supreme Court would not hear it. – The Guardian (PA)

The research, which appears in the Journal of Archaeological Science, contests the accepted timeline that the Easter Island society was already in decline by the year 1600 and its massive stone statues left to fall into disrepair. Conducting radiocarbon dating on 11 sites on Easter Island, the authors determined the timeline of each monument’s construction. Their findings indicate that Easter Islanders were still actively building new Moai figures, and maintaining existing ones, up until at least 1750. – Artnet

The 1916-17 Portrait of a Lady, stolen from an art gallery in Italy in 1997, was discovered hidden in a wall of that very museum this past December. Now an entry in the diary of the gallery’s director at the time of the theft raises the possibility that the painting’s disappearance could possibly have been a publicity stunt gone wrong. – The Guardian

The 1632 Portrait of a Young Woman was attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn when it was given to the Allentown Art Museum in 1961, but during the 1970s the attribution was changed to a student from the master’s studio. But after the painting was sent to a high-tech NYU lab in 2018 for “routine conservation,” scholars reconsidered. – Smithsonian Magazine

“There’s a rich history of thinking about how we learn across our lifespans in library settings and other community-based arts programs. But museums have only started to look at this arena pretty recently. Our goal is to create a space where patrons can absorb information and feel intellectually stimulated. But we also want to provide a starting point to help them make new and lasting connections . . . because simply trying something new and coming together around a shared interest can be life-changing at any age.” – Arts ATL

Ruins excite our imagination with the lesson that our greatest structures will one day return to the ground, while reminding us that in their fallen states these sites are endowed with beauty, even redemption. – Washington Post

“Since 2012, scientists based in New York and experts at the Munch Museum in Oslo have been working on this canvas — which was stolen in 2004 and recovered two years later — to tell a story of color. But the research also provides insight into Munch and how he worked, laying out a map for conservators to prevent further change, and helping viewers and art historians understand how one of the world’s most widely recognized paintings might have originally looked.” – The New York Times