Looted Benin Bronzes To Be Lent Back To Nigeria

“A group of major cultural institutions in the UK and Europe … is seeking a way to end decades of wrangling over the estimated 4,000 bronze and ivory artefacts looted by the British army from what is now southern Nigeria as part of a punitive expedition in 1897. Since the 1960s, Nigeria has repeatedly called for their repatriation.”

More Than A Third Of Museum Visitors Don’t Consider Museums ‘Culture’ – And Other Takeaways From The 2017 Culture Track Report

“For many respondents, going to the park or eating at a food truck counts as a cultural experience, while attending a museum does not. … Below, we spotlight seven findings from the study could have major consequences for how traditional cultural hubs like museums think about audience outreach, development strategies, and cultural participation in the 21st century.”

Want To Be A Know-It-All? The ‘Very Short Introduction’ Books Are Here For You

“Some of these books are concise introductions to topics you might later wish to pursue in greater depth: Modern India, say, or Shakespeare’s Tragedies. Others, like Teeth, contain pretty much everything the average layperson would ever want or need to know. All of them, however, take their Very Short commitment seriously. The length of each book is fixed at thirty-five thousand words, or roughly a hundred and twenty pages. … Never mind that the Roman Empire got some four thousand pages from Edward Gibbon, and that was just to chronicle its demise; here it gets the same space as Circadian Rhythms, Folk Music, and Fungi.”

Acoustics In Ancient Greek Amphitheatres Aren’t Really So Extraordinary: Study

At the famous theatre at Epidaurus, the claim has always been that you could hear a pin dropping or an actor whispering onstage even in the farthest seats. But a team of researchers has done extensive tests there, at Argos and at the Odeon in Athens, and they found that – while these ancient venues are hardly as bad as, say, the Sydney Opera House or Lincoln Center’s original Philharmonic Hall – this hear-a-pin-drop business is a myth.

Smithsonian’s Freer And Sackler Galleries Reopen After 18-Month Renovation

“After more than a year and a half of renovation work, the Freer reopened to the public over the weekend, along with a raft of new exhibitions at its partner institution, the subterranean Sackler Gallery to which it is connected by an underground tunnel. With the director of the Freer/Sackler, Julian Raby, set to retire early next year,” writes Philip Kennicott, “this project serves as a summation of his tenure: Sensible, accessible and stylish in a low-key way.”