Highlights from the recent SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles relevant to the future of museums By Marissa Clifford (left) and Sarah Waldorf (right) / 08.21.2017 SIGGRAPH is billed as a computer graphics and animation conference for techies, industry insiders, and a few interdisciplinary, outlying artists. But squeezed in amongst the rigging demos and VR[…]
A 1765 painting of Helios, the personification of the sun in Greek mythology. Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Roger Culver / 08.16.2017 Emeritus Professor of Physics Colorado State University On August 21, a total solar eclipse will be visible across parts of the United States. As the Earth and moon sweep through space in their annual journey[…]
William Booth’s illustration “In Darkest England and the Way Out”. While copies of the chart were bound into Booth’s book of the same name, this copy featured here was actually issued as a supplement to The Review of Reviews, November 1890 / Wikimedia Commons How William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, placed the ideas and[…]
Comb Brooch, 700–650 B.C., Etruscan. Silver and gold, 2 3/16 × 2 1/4 × 3/8 in.. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 81.AM.175. Gift of Alan Salke By Claire Lyons, Jeffrey Maish, and Monica Ganio / 08.16.2017 The reinstallation of the Getty Villa collection is now in full swing. We are reimagining our displays to show the evolution[…]
People fleeing on bullock carts as mass migration happened during the partition. AP Photo By Dr. Halmanti Roy / 08.14.2017 Associate Professor of History University of Dayton As citizens of India and Pakistan celebrate 70 years of their independence in August, they will also remember 1947 as the momentous year of their simultaneous birth. That year,[…]
Cleopatra Before Caesar by Jean-Léon Gérôme, oil on canvas, 1866. Cleopatra confronts Gaius Julius Caesar after emerging from a roll of carpet. The Egyptian Queen had been driven from the palace in Alexandria by her brother/husband Ptolemy XIII. She had to disguise herself to regain entry and treat with Caesar for protection and restoration of her throne. By Dr. Joshua J. Mark /[…]
Leonard Woolley’s excavation of Ur, 1900. / Courtesy Boston Public Library By Ben Thomas / 08.17.2017 In his essay The Machine-Tooled Happyland (1965), Ray Bradbury lays out his vision for the theme park of the future. Along with standard-issue attractions such as carousels and rollercoasters, tomorrow’s theme park must also contain an ‘audio-animatronic museum’, which features ‘Robot[…]
A page from one of Guldenstubbé’s manuscripts By Dr. Romeo Vitelli / 03.21.2017 Psychologist Providentia When stories about the Fox sisters of New York state and the mysterious “rappings” that allowed them to communicate with spirits first came out in the late 1840s, it sparked a spiritualism craze around the world. Never mind that the Fox women would[…]
San Fernando Valley Credit: Oakshade, Wikimedia Commons By Dr. David A. Wacks / 05.24.2017 Professor of Spanish Department of Romance Languages University of Oregon I wrote about the influence of Jewish exegesis in the development of fictionality, that is, those aspects of prose fiction that serve to enhance the as-if function of fiction and make possible the suspension of disbelief required[…]
Obelisk, Roman, AD 88/89. Granite, 351.5 cm high. Collection: Benevento, Museo del Sannio, inv. 1916 A brief history of Egyptian obelisks and their adoption in the Roman Empire on the occasion of a new conservation project. By Sarah E. Cole / 08.08.2017 Curatorial Assistant, Antiquities Department, J. Paul Getty Museum PhD Candidate in Ancient History,[…]
A sister tying the protective thread. Vikram Verma By Dr. Matthew Schmalz / 08.07.2017 Associate Professor of Religion College of the Holy Cross This year, Monday, August 7 marks one of the most important celebrations for Hindus throughout the world: Rakshabandhan, a ceremony honoring the bond between sisters and brothers. The date of Rakshabandan varies from year to[…]
What sounds did the people of Chaco Canyon hear during daily life? David E. Witt By Kristy E. Primeau and David E. Witt / 08.02.2017 Primeau: PhD Candidate in Archaeology, University at Albany Witt: PhD Candidate in Archaeology, University at Buffalo The State University of New York Picture an archaeological site, what comes to mind?[…]
“Ave, Caesar! Io, Saturnalia!” Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1880. / Wikimedia Commons By Cassandra Gill / 06.20.2017 Festivals in ancient Greece and Rome were important periods of time during which people performed “activities that are most often thought of as communications with the superhuman world.” Marked by a variety of unique cultural rituals and traditions, festival days stood in stark[…]
NOAA 5-day hurricane forecast model. Forecast tracks are shown in gray, observed tracks in black. / NASA Case study from the Getty’s digital art history team shows how modeling and machine learning are shedding light on the history of the art market. By Dr. Matthew Lincoln / 07.27.2017 Historian and Data Research Specialist Getty Research[…]
Gebhard Fugel, ‘An den Wassern Babylons.’ Gebhard Fugel [Public domain] By Dr. David W. Stowe / 07.27.2017 Professor of English and Religious Studies Michigan State University At sundown on July 31, Jews around the world will observe Tisha B’av, the most somber of Jewish holidays. It commemorates the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem, first by[…]
Death mask of Isaac Newton, “one of the most valuable and important masks” in the Laurence Hutton Collection, one of just a few copies from the original made by Louis-François Roubiliac held at the Royal Society / Princeton University A Barthesian bristle and the curious power of Walt Whitman’s posthumous eyelids — D. Graham Burnett[…]
Dukes of Burgundy (from left to right): Philip the Bold, 16th century, oil on panel, 41 × 30 cm (Hospice Comtesse, Lille); After Rogier van der Weyden, John the Fearless, 16th century, oil on panel, 41 × 30 cm (Hospice Comtesse, Lille); After Rogier van der Weyden, Philip the Good, c. 1450, 29.6 x 21.3 cm (Musée des[…]
Asante kente cloth, 20th century, silk and cotton (Vatican Museums) By Dr. Courtnay Micots / 07.17.2017 Assistant Professor of Art History Florida A&M University Inspired by a spider’s web Among the Asante (or Ashanti) people of Ghana, West Africa, a popular legend relates how two young men—Ota Karaban and his friend Kwaku Ameyaw—learned the art[…]
Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building / Photo by Ad Meskens, Wikimedia Commons By Melissa Levine, J.D. / 07.19.2017 Lead Copyright Officer, Librarian University of Michigan Imagine you wanted to find books or journal articles on a particular subject. Or find manuscripts by a particular author. Or locate serials, music or maps. You would use[…]
Creative Commons By Dr. William Thomas Okie / 07.20.2017 Assistant Professor of History and History Education Kennesaw State University This is a tough year for the Georgia peach. In February, growers fretted about warm winter temperatures, which prevented some fruit from developing properly. They were more discouraged in March after a late freeze damaged many of the remaining[…]
Coloured engraving after J.T. Balcomb depicting an Edison phonograph with a carbon microphone, 1878 / Wellcome Library Dr. Eva Moreda Rodríguez on the formative years of the recording industry, focusing on the culture surrounding the gabinetes fonográficos of fin-de-siècle Spain. By Dr. Eva Moreda Rodriguez / 07.12.2017 Lecturer in Music University of Glasgow To the question “When[…]
By Dr. Ayalla A. Ruvio / 07.02.2017 Assistant Professor of Marketing Michigan State University While you might think of Spam as a basic canned meat, it’s actually one of the greatest business success stories of all time: Since Hormel Foods Corporation launched the affordable, canned pork product in 1937, it’s sold over eight billion cans in 44 countries around[…]
From ‘Le Livre des merveilles de Marco Polo’. / Biblioteque Nationale, Paris By Ben Thomas / 04.04.2017 Editor The Strange Continent Cannibalism is not uncommon. Humans have long enshrined the consumption of human flesh in sacred ritual – not just a few times, but again and again, in almost every corner of the globe. Evidence[…]
Hundreds of new images from Thoreau’s collection of plant specimens will be available for viewing online. “I think it’s fair to say that the data that live inside these cabinets has been dark for far too long,” said Charles Davis (pictured), director of the Harvard University Herbaria. / Jon Chase, Harvard Staff Photographer By Alvin Powell[…]
May 5th, 1981, Housing Estate, North Shields, Tyneside, negative, 1981; print, 2014, Chris Killip. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of and © Chris Killip The artist from the Isle of Man speaks about the advantage of shooting with a big camera, getting close to your subjects, and the danger of shooting digital. By Laura Hubber /[…]
In Sir Thomas Malory’s ‘Le Morte d’Arthur,’ a character complains that young people are too sexually promiscuous. The British Library By Dr. Eric Weiskott / 07.05.2017 Assistant Professor of English Boston College As a millennial and a teacher of millennials, I’m growing weary of think pieces blaming my generation for messing everything up. The list of[…]
Human ear complaining to Nature from the Spiegel der Weisheit manuscript (Salzburg, 1430). / British Library By Dr. Chris Woolgar / 04.28.2016 Professor of History and Archival Studies University of Southampton In 1440, a popular Lollard priest, Richard Wyche, was burned at the stake in London for heresy. An ad-hoc shrine sprang up at the[…]
The foundations of the church are currently lying in water about 1.5 to two meters deep. It is estimated that the structure collapsed in an earthquake. DHA photo Doğan News Agency / 07.06.2017 The remains of an ancient basilica have been discovered about 20 meters from shore in Bursa’s Lake İznik, according to local archaeologists.[…]
By Beth Guynn / 09.09.2011 Senior Archival Cataloger Getty Research Institute When we think of the Mexican Revolution, many of us probably conjure up images of Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata, two of the most well-known figures from the ten-year civil war (1910-1920) that raged across Mexico during the early years of the twentieth century.[…]
Dome of the Rock and Wailing Wall, Jerusalem / Photo by Peter Mulligan, Creative Commons By Dr. Michael W. Palmer / 12.09.2010 That Israel’s understanding of God changed over time is not a controversial claim. The biblical texts record significant changes very clearly. From Henotheism to Monotheism The twelve gods of the Greek Olympic pantheon with[…]