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Princes William and Harry will take part in a special vigil in honour of the Queen on Saturday, it has tonight been reported.The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex are set to join the Queen's six other grandchildren in a special 15 minute vigil at Westminster Hall.The eight grandchildren will reportedly stand in silence beside Her Majesty's coffin, in a scene which will mirror the Vigil of the Princes.The special vigil saw King Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, stand guard at St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh earlier this week.Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward will repeat the vigil at Westminster Hall on Friday night. It will now be followed by a separate event by the grandchildren on Saturday.And in a further twist, the Duke of Sussex will be allowed to wear military uniform at the event, according to The Mirror. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex (pictured on Wednesday during the procession of the Queen's coffin from Buckingham Palace to Westminster) will reportedly join the Queen's six other grandchildren tomorrow in a special 15 minute vigil at Westminster Hall The eight grandchildren will reportedly stand in silence beside Her Majesty's coffin, in a scene which will mirror the Vigil of the Princes (pictured). The special vigil saw King Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, stand guard at St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh earlier this weekPrince Harry, who served in the British army for a decade including two tours of Afghanistan, has so far worn a mourning suit with military medals to public events. However Prince Andrew, who also stepped back frontline royal duties in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal, is set to be given special dispensation to wear his colours on Friday night The Queen's other grandchildren including Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Zara and Peter Philips and Lady Louise and James, Viscount Severn (pictured) are also understood to form part of the guard of honour on Saturday evening Zara Tindal (pictured here leaving Westminster Hall on Wednesday following the procession from Buckingham Palace), will also reportedly take part in the special vigilThe Queen's other grandchildren including Princesses Beatrice (pictured left) and Eugenie (pictured right), Zara and Peter Philips and Lady Louise and James, Viscount Severn are also understood to form part of the guard of honour on Saturday eveningPrince Harry has reportedly been given special dispensation to don military colours at the vigil. However it is not clear what uniform he will wear, given that he no longer holds a position in the military.The Duke of Sussex has so far be unable to wear military uniform during any of his public appearances following the Queen's death.That is because, when he stepped back as a front line royal in the wake of Megxit, he was stripped of his military patrognages.Prince Harry, who served in the British army for a decade including two tours of Afghanistan, has so far worn a mourning suit with military medals to public events.However Prince Andrew, who also stepped back frontline royal duties in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal, is set to be given special dispensation to wear his colours on Friday night.The exception was made for the Duke of York to wear uniform for the vigil at Westminster Hall as a 'final mark of respect' for his mother.He is expected to wear the full military dress uniform of a Vice Admiral of the Navy - the only military rank that he still holds.The decision to allow Prince Andrew to wear a military uniform, while maintain the Duke of Sussex's ban, had led to criticism from some quarters, while the Duke of Sussex himself released a pointed statement addressing the issue, saying his decade of service was 'not determined by the uniform he wears'.A spokesperson for the Duke of Sussex said: 'His decade of military service is not determined by the uniform he wears and we respectfully ask that focus remain on the.'Today, a royal source told the Mirror: 'Common sense has prevailed.''It was a ludicrous situation given the Duke of Sussex has served his country and is a highly respected member of the armed forces with everything he has done for veterans,' the source added. King Charles looks tearful as he marches with Prince William, Prince of Wales, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Anne, Princess Royal and her husband Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence yesterday. The family will march behind the coffin again after the state funeral on Monday The Scots Guards march in the moonlight past Westminster Abbey, where the funeral will be held'It is important that the Queen's grandchildren are all made to feel welcome and comfortable as they grieve their beloved grandmother together.'The Queen's other grandchildren including Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Zara and Peter Philips and Lady Louise and James, Viscount Severn are also understood to form part of the guard of honour on Saturday evening. The procession route for the Queen's final journey on Monday - Westminster Hall to Westminster AbbeyThe Queen's Coffin will be carried from Westminster Hall shortly after 10.35am to the State Gun Carriage, which will be positioned outside the building's North Door.The procession will go from New Palace Yard through Parliament Square, Broad Sanctuary and the Sanctuary before arriving at Westminster Abbey just before 11am.- Westminster Abbey to Wellington ArchAfter the State Funeral Service finishes at around midday, the coffin will be placed on the State Gun Carriage outside the Abbey.At 12.15pm, the procession will set off for Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner.The route will go from the Abbey via Broad Sanctuary, Parliament Square (south and east sides), Parliament Street, Whitehall, Horse Guards including Horse Guards Arch, Horse Guards Road, The Mall, Queen's Gardens (south and west sides), Constitution Hill and Apsley Way.- Wellington Arch to WindsorAt Wellington Arch, the Queen's coffin will be transferred from the State Gun Carriage to the State Hearse just after 1pm, ahead of the journey to Windsor.It then will travel from central London to Windsor, on a route that has not been disclosed by the Palace. When the hearse arrives in Windsor, the procession will begin just after 3pm at Shaw Farm Gate on Albert Road.- Shaw Farm Gate to St George's Chapel, Windsor CastleThe state hearse will join the procession, which will have been formed up and in position, at Shaw Farm Gate before travelling to St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.The procession will follow the route of Albert Road, Long Walk, Cambridge Gate, Cambridge Drive, George IV Gate, Quadrangle (south and west sides), Engine Court, Norman Arch, Chapel Hill, Parade Ground and Horseshoe Cloister Arch.Just before 4pm, the procession will halt at the bottom of the West Steps of St George's Chapel in Horseshoe Cloister. Here, the bearer party will carry the coffin in procession up the steps into the chapel.The Queen will be interred during a private burial at King George VI Memorial Chapel in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle at 7.30pm. It comes as today full details of the Queen's state funeral were announced. The funeral will end with a two-minute national silence in a 'fitting tribute to an extraordinary reign' before she is laid to rest beside her late husband.Charles III and the Royal Family have said they 'wish to send their sincere gratitude for the messages of condolence received from around the world', adding they have been 'deeply moved by the global response and affection shown for the Queen as people join them in mourning the loss of Her Majesty'.200 everyday heroes - including NHS staff who excelled during the pandemic and volunteers recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June - will be part of a 2,000-strong congregation gathered at Westminster Abbey for the final farewell to the long-reigning monarch on Monday.Britain's bravest military heroes awarded the Victoria Cross - the highest and most prestigious award of Britain's honours system introduced in 1856 by Queen Victoria during the Crimean War - or the George Cross, have also been asked to attend. They will join royals, politicians and world leaders in the historic church at 11am. All guests must arrive from 8am and moving elements of the funeral will include the sounding of the Last Post at 11.55am followed by a two-minute silence in the Abbey and throughout the UK as the service nears its end at midday.The Queen's state funeral will 'unite people across the globe and resonate with people of all faiths', according to The Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, the man in charge of the historic day that will see Her Majesty buried with Prince Philip and her parents at Windsor on Monday evening.The Duke of Norfolk said today that it was 'both humbling and daunting' to have the 'honour and great responsibility' to run an event that will be watched by billions of people around the globe. He said: 'The events of recent days are a reminder of the strength of our Constitution, a system of government, which in so many ways is the envy of the world'.The Duke has laid out his plans and revealed that the King, the Princess Royal, the Duke of York and the Earl of Wessex will mount a 15-minute vigil around the Queen's coffin as it lies in state in the ancient Westminster Hall at 7.30pm on Friday. The siblings did the same thing in Edinburgh earlier this week in a ceremony known as the Vigil of the Princes.Buckingham Palace also revealed a minute-by-minute breakdown of the state funeral - the first that Britain has hosted since Winston Churchill died in 1965. On the morning of the State Funeral, the Lying-in-State will end at 6.30am as the final members of the public are admitted. The doors of Westminster Abbey will open at 8am as the congregation of 2,000 VIPs begin to take their seats, three hours before the service begins at 11am. At 10.35am, Her Majesty will be carried on the the gun carriage that conveyed her mother and father to their funerals from Westminster Hall, arriving at 10.52am. Her son, the new King, will lead the procession behind.Moving elements of the funeral will include the sounding of the Last Post at 11.55am as the service nears its end, followed by a two-minute national silence which will be observed by the abbey congregation and by millions across the UK. 4billion people globally are expected to tune with the BBC and ITV broadcasting all day in the UK.The Reveille - the traditional bugle call that awakens soldiers at dawn - and then the National Anthem will take place, and finally a Lament played by the Queen's Piper which will bring the service to a close at noon, when the coffin will be carried from the Abbey. At 12.15pm the Queen's children and members of the Royal Family will walk behind her coffin to Wellington Arch when it leaves Westminster Abbey and Her Majesty begins her journey to Windsor to be laid to rest next to her beloved husband Prince Philip. An early morning rehearsal for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London Construction workers prepare the platforms in Windsor Castle for the funeral on MondayThe Queen's coffin will be returned to the gun carriage by the bearer party and a procession, including Prince William and Prince Harry side-by-side again, will travel to Wellington Arch at Hyde Park. The King will once again lead his family in marching behind the Queen's coffin when it is moved. He will walk with Anne, Andrew and Edward, and behind the quartet will be the Queen's grandsons Peter Phillips, the Duke of Sussex and the Prince of Wales. Just like yesterday, they will be followed by the late monarch's son-in-law Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, the Queen's cousin the Duke of Gloucester, and her nephew the Earl of Snowdon. Minute-by-minute guide to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on Monday, September 19 6.30am - Doors will close to the public for the Queen's lying in state in Westminster Hall.8am - The doors of Westminster Abbey will open to the congregation to take their seats for the state funeral service.Heads of state and overseas government representatives, including foreign royal families, governors-general and realm prime ministers will gather initially at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, and travel under collective arrangements to Westminster Abbey.10.35am - Just after 10.35am, a bearer party, found by The Queen's Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, will lift the coffin from the catafalque.It will then carry it in procession from Westminster Hall to the Royal Navy's state gun carriage, which will be positioned outside the building's North Door.10.44am - The gun carriage, drawn by 142 Royal Navy service personnel, will set off at 10.44am.The King, members of the royal family, members of the King's Household and Household of the Prince of Wales will follow the coffin.10.52am - The procession arrives at the West Gate of Westminster Abbey where the bearer party will lift the coffin from the state gun carriage and carry it inside for the state funeral service.11am - The state funeral service begins.11.55am - The Last Post will sound followed by a national two-minute silence.12pm - Reveille, the national anthem and a lament, played by the Queen's Piper, will bring the state funeral service to an end at approximately noon.The coffin will be carried to the state gun carriage.12.15pm - The procession will set off for Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner, following the route of Broad Sanctuary Parliament Square (south and east sides), Parliament Street, Whitehall, Horse Guards including Horse Guards Arch, Horse Guards Road, The Mall, Queen's Gardens (south and west sides), Constitution Hill and Apsley Way.1pm - The procession will arrive at Wellington Arch.The bearer party will lift the coffin from the state gun carriage and place it in the state hearse.The state hearse will then depart on its journey to Windsor as the parade gives a royal salute and the national anthem is played.The King and the Queen Consort, the Prince and Princess of Wales and members of the royal family will depart for Windsor by car.3.06pm - The state hearse will approach Shaw Farm Gate on Albert Road, Windsor, and join the procession, which will have been formed up and in position.3.10pm - The procession will step off. The route will be: Albert Road, Long Walk, Cambridge Gate, Cambridge Drive, George IV Gate, Quadrangle (south and west sides), Engine Court, Norman Arch, Chapel Hill, Parade Ground and Horseshoe Cloister Arch.3.20pm - The door of St George's Chapel will open for the congregation for the committal service.3.25pm - Members of the royal family who will not join the procession will arrive at St George's Chapel for the service.3.40pm - The King and other royal family members who are walking in the procession will join it at the quadrangle on the north side as it passes into Engine Court.3.53pm - The procession will halt at the bottom of the West Steps of St George's Chapel in Horseshoe Cloister.The bearer party will lift the coffin from the state hearse, from where it will be carried in procession up the West Steps.4pm - The committal service will begin.The length of the service is not yet known but when it ends, the King and members of the royal family will depart from the Galilee Porch for Windsor Castle.It marks the end of public ceremonial arrangements.7.30pm - A private burial service will be conducted by the Dean of Windsor, attended by the King and members of the royal family.The Queen is to be buried together with the Duke of Edinburgh at the King George VI Memorial Chapel. The Queen's coffin will be carried during the procession on a 123-year-old gun carriage, pulled by 98 Royal Navy sailors using ropes in a tradition dating back to the funeral of Queen Victoria.She will be accompanied on her final journey by a massed Pipes & Drums of Scottish and Irish Regiments, the Brigade of Gurkhas, and the Royal Air Force - numbering 200 musicians.The Procession is formed of seven groups, each supported by a service band. Mounties from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will lead, immediately followed by representatives of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, NHS, along with detachments from the Armed Forces of the Commonwealth. Her Majesty's hearse will arrive at the Long Walk at 3.15pm, where the public will be able to give their final respects. The procession of senior royals, which will have been formed up and in position after being driven to Windsor, will again walk behind the hearse into the grounds of the castle.There will be a televised ceremony at St George's Chapel in Windsor at 4pm on Monday. Some 800 people, including members of the Queen's Household and Windsor estate staff, will attend the committal service. As the coffin is lowered into the royal vault the Sovereign's Piper will play a lament and walk slowly away so the music fades.The Queen is to be buried together with the Duke of Edinburgh at the King George VI Memorial Chapel. The King will scatter earth on his mother's coffin at 7.30pm at a private family service. Her Majesty will be buried next to her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, her father King George VI and mother, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, for eternity.Huw Edwards, Kirsty Young and David Dimbleby are among the broadcasters leading BBC coverage of the Queen's funeral, the corporation has announced.The special programming will air from 8am until 5pm on Monday September 19 on BBC One and iPlayer, with BSL signed coverage on BBC Two. Edwards and Fergal Keane will be covering events from London and Young and Dimbleby from Windsor, with other reporters stationed at other key areas throughout the day.ITV will also be broadcasting through the day, with the coverage led by journalist Tom Bradby, a friend of Prince Harry. After the state funeral, attended by some 2,000 guests, including visiting heads of state and other dignitaries, the late queen's coffin will be transported through the historic heart of London on a horse-drawn gun carriage before being driven by the state hearse to Windsor. Other representatives of the Realms and the Commonwealth, the Orders of Chivalry including recipients of the Victoria Cross and George Cross, Government, Parliament, devolved Parliaments and Assemblies, the Church, and Her Majesty's Patronages will form the congregation, along with other public representatives.And almost 200 people who were recognised in The Queen's Birthday Honours earlier this year will also join the congregation, including those who made extraordinary contributions to the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and have volunteered in their local communities.The Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, said: 'The Queen held a unique and timeless position in all our lives. This has been felt more keenly over the past few days as the world comes to terms with her demise.'Her Majesty's passing has left many people across many continents with a profound sense of loss.'The respect, admiration and affection in which the Queen was held, make our task both humbling and daunting. An honour and a great responsibility.'It is our aim and belief that the state funeral and events of the next few days will unite people across the globe and resonate with people of all faiths, whilst fulfilling Her Majesty and her family's wishes to pay a fitting tribute to an extraordinary reign.'The procession will arrive at the west gate of Westminster Abbey at 10.52am when the bearer party will lift the coffin from the gun carriage and carry it into the Abbey for the state funeral service, the Earl Marshal said.The service will begin at 11am and will be conducted by the Dean of Westminster.The Prime Minister and the Secretary General of the Commonwealth will read Lessons, while the Archbishop of York, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and the Free Churches Moderator will say prayers.The sermon will be given by the Archbishop of Canterbury who will also give the commendation, while the Dean will pronounce the blessing.At around 11.55am the Last Post will sound, followed by two minutes of silence to be observed in the Abbey and throughout the UK.Reveille, the national anthem and a lament played by the Queen's piper will bring the state funeral service to an end at around 12 noon.The bearer party will then lift the coffin from the catafalque and will move in procession through the Great West Door returning to the State Gun Carriage positioned outside the West Gate.After the service the Queen's coffin will be returned to the gun carriage by the bearer party and a procession will travel to Wellington Arch at Hyde Park.The King and the royal party will take up their same places behind the coffin as when they escorted it to the Abbey, while the Queen Consort and Princess of Wales will travel to the site by car as will the Duchess of Sussex and Countess of Wessex. The Queen's coffin will be lowered into the Royal Vault at St George's Chapel in Windsor (pictured), where she will be buried alongside her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, her beloved parents, and her sister Princess Margaret A member of the Coldstream Guards stands guard at Windsor Castle, the Queen's home until she diedThe route will be lined by the Armed Forces from Westminster Abbey to the top of Constitution Hill at the Commonwealth Memorial Gates.The Procession is formed of seven groups, each supported by a service band. Mounties from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will lead, immediately followed by representatives of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, NHS, along with detachments from the Armed Forces of the Commonwealth.At Wellington Arch the royal family will watch as the Queen's coffin is transferred to the new state hearse, whose details the Queen approved, before it begins its journey to Windsor Castle.The Earl Marshal said that at 3.06pm, the state hearse will approach Shaw Farm Gate on Albert Road, Windsor, and join the procession which will be in position.At 3.10pm the procession will step off via Albert Road, Long Walk, Cambridge Gate, Cambridge Drive, George IV Gate, Quadrangle (South and West sides), Engine Court, Norman Arch, Chapel Hill, Parade Ground and Horseshoe Cloister Arch.At approximately 3.40 pm the King and other members of the royal family who are walking in the procession join it at the Quadrangle on the North side as it passes into Engine Court.Members of the Queen's, the King's and the Prince of Wales's households will be positioned at the rear of the coffin.The Queen Consort with the Princess of Wales, and the Duchess of Sussex with the Countess of Wessex will again follow by car. | Royal Families |
Official photographs from the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla have been released.
Hugo Burnand, who also took their wedding portrait in 2005, captured the royal couple in their regalia shortly after Saturday's Westminster Abbey ceremony.
Group shots of senior royals and family members were also taken.
The striking images were captured in Buckingham Palace's Throne Room and Green Drawing Room.
The King is pictured wearing the Robe of Estate, the Imperial State Crown and is holding the Sovereign's Orb and Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross.
He is seated on one of a pair of throne chairs that were especially made for use at the 1902 coronation of King Edward VII.
Those chairs were also used by King Charles and Queen Camilla at Westminster Hall to receive addresses from the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament last year.
The Queen is pictured in the Green Drawing Room wearing Queen Mary's Crown and Robe of Estate.
In a statement, the King expressed his and Camilla's "most sincere and heartfelt thanks" to all those who helped to make the Coronation weekend "such a special occasion".
To people who joined in the celebrations, the King said: "To know that we have your support and encouragement, and to witness your kindness expressed in so many different ways, has been the greatest possible Coronation gift."
King Charles added that he and his wife would now rededicate their lives to "serving the people of the United Kingdom, the Realms and Commonwealth".
These photographs are sending an unmistakable message. It's showing King Charles and Queen Camilla in the most formal trappings of royalty, wearing their robes and crowns, showing them taking their place in these historic roles.
It's the kind of official shot you'd see on the wall of a public building rather than in a family album.
The picture of Camilla is also making it clear that this is now Queen Camilla, no longer the Queen Consort.
The choice of who is in the group shot of the Royal Family is also symbolic. It says that the focus is limited to the "working royals", that core group who will carry out official duties on behalf of the King. It's not the extended family or any hangers-on, these are the royals we're going to see representing the new reign. | Royal Families |
Following the crowning ceremony, the royals gathered for some official portraits taken at Buckingham Palace to commemorate the historic day
Following their crowning ceremony on Saturday, the royal couple posed for official coronation portraits at Buckingham Palace. Photographer Hugo Burnand got behind the camera for the historic snaps — after previously acting as Charles and Camilla's wedding photographer in 2005. (He clearly aced the assignment as he was tapped by the royals again to take the official portraits of Prince William and Kate Middleton on their 2011 wedding day.)
On Monday, Buckingham Palace released the first official portrait of King Charles.
For the monarch's solo shot, King Charles was in full royal regalia in the Throne Room, wearing the Imperial State Crown and Robe of Estate while holding the Sovereign's Orb and Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross. For the portrait, he sat on one of a pair of 1902 throne chairs that were made for the future King George V and Queen Mary for use at the coronation of King Edward VII.
In another portrait, King Charles and Queen Camilla posed together in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace. The Queen wore Queen Mary's Crown and her Robe of Estate.
Queen Camilla posed for a solo portrait in the Green Drawing Room while wearing Queen Mary's Crown and her Robe of Estate.
A group photo showed King Charles and Queen Camilla with working members of the royal family, including Prince William and Kate Middleton.Also in the picture were the Duke of Kent, the Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke of Gloucester, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, Princess Anne, Sophie the Duchess of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Prince Edward the Duke of Edinburgh.
To cap off the coronation weekend, King Charles also released a special message in conjunction with the portraits.
"As the coronation weekend draws to a close, my wife and I just wanted to share our most sincere and heartfelt thanks to all those who have helped to make this such a special occasion," he said in the statement. "We pay particular tribute to the countless people who have given their time and dedication to ensuring that the celebrations in London, Windsor and further afield were as happy, safe and enjoyable as possible."
"To those who joined in the celebrations — whether at home, at street parties and lunches or by volunteering in communities — we thank you, each and every one," he continued. "To know that we have your support and encouragement, and to witness your kindness expressed in so many different ways, has been the greatest possible coronation gift, as we now rededicate our lives to serving the people of the United Kingdom, the Realms and Commonwealth."
The note was signed, "Charles R," standing for "Rex," the Latin word for King.
While King Charles' official portrait shows him in the Imperial State Crown, he wore two crowns on his coronation day. During the ceremony, he was pronounced King with the St. Edward's Crown, which weighs nearly 5 lbs and was first created for King Charles II in 1661. However, he exited Westminster Abbey in the Imperial State Crown. This particular crown is slightly less heavy — but just as stunning with its 2,868 diamonds and colored stones, including 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds and 269 pearls.
Despite some rain, the coronation festivities went off without a hitch. Well-wishers lined the streets to catch of glimpse of the Coronation Procession following the crowning ceremony at Westminster Abbey, then made their way to Buckingham Palace to see the royal family appear on the balcony to watch a flypast (which was scaled down due to the weather — but not canceled completely, as some worried might happen).
Esteemed royals photographer Chris Jackson shared a balcony snap from a different perspective — inside the palace! King Charles and Queen Camilla waved to the crowd gathered down The Mall in London.
"An honour to shoot 'behind the scenes' and a never seen before angle from today's historic Coronation, what a day!!!!!! Save a 🥂 for me! 🇬🇧," he captioned the pic on social media.
The coronation of the first of a British monarch in the 21st century — but that's not the only reason it made the history books.
At the May 6 coronation, Charles, 74, and Camilla, 75, became the oldest King and Queen Consort crowned in British history. The oldest British monarchs to be crowned before King Charles were King William IV (who became sovereign at age 64 in 1830), King Edward VII (who was 59 in 1901) and King George IV (who took the throne at age 57 in 1820).
Meanwhile, Queen Camilla broke the record previously held by Queen Alexandra, who was 58 when she was crowned as Queen Consort in 1902.
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Read the original article on People. | Royal Families |
Venues across England and Wales are able to continue serving customers for an extra two hours between Friday May 5 and Sunday May 7 to mark King Charles' coronation.
Boozers will be able to pull pints for longer - a move the British Beer and Pub Association hailed as a timely boost for the industry.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman will extend licensing hours from the normal 11pm to 1am to allow people to "enjoy an extra pint or two".
The move was backed by a leading body in the hospitality sector as well as 77% of the public who took part in a month-long consultation.
Section 172 of the Licensing Act 2003 allows Ms Braverman to lay the order before Parliament on Monday to give permission for premises to stay open longer to mark occasions of exceptional significance.
Ms Braverman said: "His Majesty The King's Coronation will be a momentous occasion deserving of special celebration.
"That is why I am extending the licensing hours over this historic Coronation weekend.
"Up and down the country, people can enjoy an extra pint or two in the evening while families and friends can come together to wish His Majesty The King a long and happy reign."
Emma McClarkin OBE, chief executive officer of the British Beer and Pub Association, said: "This is a timely boost for the pub industry.
"In the midst of an acutely challenging period, I am sure our pubs will look to mark this joyous occasion by hosting special events and parties as part of national celebrations.
"The announcement of extended opening hours will help us all to mark this important event.
"It is sure to be a time for community and celebration, and the great British pub is always right at the heart of both, so I would encourage everyone to head down to their local and raise a toast to His Majesty during the Coronation weekend." | Royal Families |
On Wednesday, King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla released the invitations to the Coronation, which will take place on May 6, along with a new official portrait that shows the couple posing in the Blue Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. The photo was taken in March by Hugo Burnand, who also took an official portrait of Prince William and Princess Kate after their 2011 wedding.
According to the palace, the invitation will go out to 2,000 guests who are expected to attend the coronation. The invitation was hand-painted by heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson in watercolor and gouache, and will be reproduced on recycled paper. The invitation features a border of British wildflowers, including lilies of the valley, bluebells, and wild strawberries, and the palace noted that flowers appear in groups of three on the envelope to symbolize that Charles will be the third monarch of his name.
They also explained one of the symbolic figures that appears on the invitation. “Central to the design is the motif of the Green Man, an ancient figure from British folklore, symbolic of spring and rebirth, to celebrate the new reign,” the palace said. “The shape of the Green Man, crowned in natural foliage, is formed of leaves of oak, ivy and hawthorn, and the emblematic flowers of the United Kingdom.”
Instead of referring to Camilla as the Queen Consort, the invitation refers to her as “Queen Camilla,” confirming previous speculation that she would eventually follow in the footsteps of previous consorts and drop the word. Palace aides confirmed to Tatler that they would refer to her as “Queen Camilla” from now on.
One source explained about the reasoning behind the change. “It made sense to refer to Her Majesty as the Queen Consort in the early months of His Majesty’s reign, to distinguish from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” the source told the magazine. “‘Queen Camilla’ is the appropriate title to set against ‘King Charles’ on the invitation,” the source said. “All former Queen Consorts have been known as ‘Queen’ plus their first name.”
Along with the invitation, the palace announced the names of royal pages for the coronation, confirming reports that Camilla’s grandchildren would participate in the ceremony. Her pages will be Gus and Master Louis Lopes, the sons of her daughter Laura Lopes, and Freddy Parker Bowles, the son of Tom Parker-Bowles, and her great-nephew, Arthur Elliot.
Nine-year-old Prince George leads the list of the king’s pages, which also includes Oliver Cholmondeley, the son of Prince William’s friend and neighbor the Marquis of Cholmondeley, Nicholas Barclay, the grandson of the king’s second cousin Sarah Troughton, the Lord-Lieutenant of Wiltshire, and Ralph Tollemache, the son of the king’s godson Edward Tollemache. | Royal Families |
Following a busy overseas tour and his first State Opening of Parliament, King Charles is preparing to celebrate his 75th birthday next week.
The King will host a party at Highgrove, his home in Gloucestershire, on Monday after a weekend of commemorative events to mark Remembrance. A number of activities have been planned to celebrate the milestone on Tuesday, including the launch of the Coronation Food Project and a reception in honor of National Health Service’s 75th anniversary.
On Tuesday evening, there will be a private birthday party at Clarence House, where sources close to Charles say the guest list is “limited” to immediate family and close friends. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will not be in attendance as a spokesperson for Archewell recently told People that “there has been no contact regarding an invitation to His Majesty’s upcoming birthday.”
On Monday, Charles will join other 75-year-olds for a tea party in Highgrove’s Orchard Room overlooking the gardens, during which nominated guests and “community champions” will enjoy live music. As for who has been invited, the palace has said attendees are local residents who have been nominated by friends, family and neighbors, with the final guestlist being chosen by ballot.
The celebration will also mark other 75th anniversaries taking place this year, including Windrush 75 and the NHS’s 75th anniversary. A similar birthday party will be held for the local community at Dumfries House, ahead of Charles’s birthday on Tuesday.
Charles’s birthday will also see the launch of the Coronation Food Project which aims to eliminate food waste, something he is passionate about. King Charles and Queen Camila will visit a surplus food distribution center outside London and will speak to staff and volunteers of some of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains about how to distribute the national food surplus. The new legacy project, which will span five years, is one of the King’s ideas to combat the cost of living crisis and reduce waste.
Charles will also use his birthday to announce that the Prince’s Trust, the charity he founded with his Navy severance in 1976, will now become The King’s Trust. Buckingham Palace announced during the period of Charles’ accession that the Trust would evolve and the new branding will avoid any confusion with Prince William’s Royal Foundation. | Royal Families |
On Monday, nature icon David Attenborough traveled to London’s Richmond Park to plant an oak tree in honor of his late friend, Queen Elizabeth II. He also led a tree planting masterclass with broadcaster Clare Balding and a group of junior foresters who represent the Queen’s Green Canopy charity, and said a few words about the queen’s natural legacy.
“The Queen’s Green Canopy has created an invaluable national legacy for our children, future generations and the planet itself,” Attenborough said, according to The Telegraph. “The late Queen was very fond of the Royal Parks and was a great lover of trees, so this is a fitting tribute to her memory. Its creation also marks the continuing conservation of this protected landscape, and the wonderful wildlife within, so that it can be enjoyed by many generations to come.”
The Telegraph added that Attenborough’s oak was just one of 70 trees recently planted in the park to honor the queen. “They have been planted around a focal point which will later incorporate a seating area for rest and reflection, with the larger canopy trees complemented by smaller native trees and hedging such as hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, elder and dogwood,” they added. “It is hoped it will create a new habitat to support wildlife, including the endangered white-letter hairstreak butterfly and the cardinal click beetle.”
In May 2021, the queen and King Charles III launched the Queen’s Green Canopy by planting their own sapling near Windsor Castle. They were promoting an initiative called Plant a Tree for the Jubilee, which aimed to plant trees across the United Kingdom in honor of the monarch’s 70 years on the throne. The program grew out of a 2015 initiative called the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy, where she asked governments in the voluntary group to set aside acreage of native forest in her honor.
The queen celebrated the success of the jubilee plantings with a heartfelt message after its initial planting season. “I am deeply touched that so many community groups, schools, families and individuals have made their own unique contributions to the Green Canopy initiative,” she wrote in March 2022. “I hope your Jubilee trees flourish and grow for many years to come, for future generations to enjoy.” But after her death, the QGC decided to extend the program to the end of March 2023, so that further trees could be planted in her honor.
Attenborough and the late queen, who were born days apart in 1926, shared their love of trees in the 2018 BBC documentary The Queen’s Green Planet, which focused on the work done by the queen’s commonwealth initiative. The pair traveled through a 40-acre royal park, and the queen pointed out a few of the trees that have been planted in honor of members of the royal family’s honor. | Royal Families |
The Queen of Denmark has shared touching throwback photographs of the Queen ahead of the state funeral on Monday. Margrethe II, 82, who became the longest-reigning female monarch following the death of the Queen, will attend the Westminster Abbey service with her son Crown Prince Frederik.Ahead of the solemn service, which will be attended by hundreds of foreign royals and foreign dignitaries, Queen Margrethe shared a lengthy Instagram post commemorating the close bond between the two royal families. Fond memories: The Swedish Royal Family shared photographs celebrating the Queen ahead of her state funeral today. Among the photos was this snap of Her Majesty with King Carl XVI Gustaf during a state visit The Queen of Denmark has shared touching throwback photographs of the Queen ahead of the state funeral on Monday The Queen and Prince Philip pose for a photo with King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, who will be among the mourners todayYesterday the Danish Queen and Crown Prince visited Westminster Abbey to pay their respects before attended the 'reception of the century' at Buckingham Palace.The Swedish Royal Family, who will be represented at the funeral by King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, also shared an Instagram post paying tribute. King Carl XVI and the Queen were both great-great grandchildren of Queen Victoria, making them two of the closest relatives within the European royal houses. Both countries will mark the funeral by flying flags at half-mast. World leaders and top foreign dignitaries last night flocked to Buckingham Palace to pay their respects to King Charles ahead of the Queen's funeral. The Queen greets her distant cousin King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and his wife Queen Silvia during a state visit Margrethe II of Denmark, 82, who became the longest-reigning female monarch following the death of the Queen, will attend the Westminster Abbey service with her son Crown Prince Frederik The Swedish Royal Family also shared an Instagram post paying their respects today, ahead of the state funeralDuring one of the largest gatherings of world leaders seen in recent years the newly crowned Monarch and his wife, Queen Consort Camilla, greeted the likes of US President Joe Biden and wife Jill as well as President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, for a glittering but sombre event.Such a reception involving world leaders and British royals has not seen since the death of Queen Elizabeth II's father George VI in 1952, more than 70 years ago.More recently, but not on such a grand scale, the now late Queen attended the G7 in Cornwall where she met and took part in pictures with the G7 leaders.President of Ireland Michael D Higgins was seen being dropped off from a coach along with the former King and Queen Consort of Spain, Juan Carlos and Sofia and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, before the British royal couple met hundreds of dignitaries, including New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern and Canadian premier Justin Trudeau. King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden yesterday paid their respects to the Queen before the Buckingham Palace reception Queen Margrethe of Denmark was accompanied by her son Crown Prince Frederick to pay her respects at Westminster Hall The Prince and Princess of Wales and other working members of the royal family including the Earl and Countess of Wessex, the Princess Royal and Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester joined Charles and the Queen Consort in mingling with guests including Japan's Emperor Naruhito and the Kings and Queens from Holland, Norway and Sweden.Many dignitaries had already been viewing the Queen's coffin in the ancient heart of Parliament after being given a VIP timeslot as ordinary mourners who have queued through the night pay their respects with leaders of the free world.The Prime Minister Liz Truss and Government ministers including Jacob Rees-Mogg and James Cleverly were also spotted heading towards tonight’s glittering state reception which took place in the picture gallery and state apartments and featured drinks and canapes. Revealed: How the monarchies of Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Luxembourg are related to the Queen. All the major royal houses of Europe will be represented at the Queen's funeral at Westminster Abbey todayWho's who of the world's royal families: As monarchs prepare to pay tribute to the Queen, FEMAIL reveals who is set to attend - and how the Kings and Queens of Europe are related to Her MajestyBY FEMAIL REPORTERS FOR MAILONLINERoyal families from around the world will today turn out in force for the Queen's funeral. The Kings and Queens of the Netherlands, Spain and Norway will be among the 2,000 mourners at Westminster Abbey, alongside representatives from Lichtenstein, Bhutan and Monaco. They will come together to pay tribute to the Queen, who was the world's longest-reigning monarch at the time of her death aged 96. Thanks to family ties that date back generations, many European royals have a particularly close relationship to the Queen. Spain's reigning King Felipe even knew her as his 'dear Aunt Lilibet'. Among the most anticipated attendees is the Emperor of Japan, who rarely makes overseas visits. King Jigme & Queen Jetsun of Bhutan and the Sultan of Brunei will also attend. Here, ahead of the funeral, FEMAIL reveals the royal and imperial families that will be represented, and explains how the European houses are related to the Queen... King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of BelgiumKing Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium, pictured in 2020, were among the first royal families to confirm their attendance The monarchs share several common ancestors, including Franz, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who was the grandfather of Queen Victoria and the father of King Leopold I of the BelgiansThe Queen's distant cousin King Philippe of Belgium will attend the funeral with his wife, Queen Mathilde. The monarchs share several common ancestors, including Franz, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who was the grandfather of Queen Victoria and the father of King Leopold I of the Belgians.They are also related via King Christian IX of Denmark, known as the 'grandfather of Europe' due to his far-reaching family tree. The Queen is King Christian IX's great-great granddaughter. Philippe is his great-great-great-grandson. King Philippe and Queen Mathilde will attend the service without their four children.Their daughter Princess Elisabeth, who will one day ascend the throne, last week represented her parents when she signed a book of condolence to the Queen in Brussels. In a statement released shortly after the Queen's death, the couple said: '[The Queen] was an extraordinary personality. We will always keep fond memories of this great Lady who throughout her reign showed dignity, courage and dedication. 'Each of our meetings will remain forever etched in our memories. We extend our deepest condolences to the Royal Family and the British people. Rest in peace, Your Majesty, with your beloved husband.' King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands were among the first to RSVP for the monarch's final farewell Willem-Alexander's mother Princess Beatrix, the country's former Sovereign, will also be in attendance (pictured in August)King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, who was the first to RSVP to the Queen's funeral, is the Queen's fifth cousin once removed thanks to an ancient connection in their family tree. Willem-Alexander is a descendant of Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau, who was the daughter of William IV, Prince of Orange, and his wife Anne, the eldest daughter of King George II of Great Britain and his consort Caroline of Ansbach.The Queen is descendant from Princess Carolina through her paternal grandmother Queen Mary, wife of King George V.King Willem-Alexander will attend with his wife, Maxima, and his mother, Princess Beatrix, who abdicated in 2013. The Dutch royals were also among the first to pay tribute to Her Majesty.The official account for the Dutch Royal Family posted photos of the Queen, the new King Charles III and the new Queen Consort Camilla hosting Willem-Alexander and Máxima at Buckingham Palace on a state visit in October 2018.The statement read: 'We remember Queen Elizabeth II with deep respect and great affection.'Steadfast and wise, she dedicated her long life to serving the British people. We feel a strong bond with the United Kingdom and its royal family, and we share their sorrow at this time. 'We are very grateful for our countries' close friendship, to which Queen Elizabeth made such an unforgettable contribution.'King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, and Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of SpainKing Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain, pictured leaving the Spanish Embassy in London today, were amongst the first to send their sympathies to King Charles IIIFormer Spanish King Juan Carlos (pictured arriving at Buckingham Palace today) and his wife Queen Sofia will also attend the ceremony with Felipe and Letizia The Spanish King, who ascended the throne in 2014, will also be among the mourners at Westminster Abbey on Monday. He will be joined by his wife Queen Letizia. He is related to the Queen on both sides of his family and referred to the monarch as 'aunt Lilibet'. His mother, Queen Sofia, was a third cousin of the Queen and a first cousin once removed of the Duke of Edinburgh.Felipe's father, Juan Carlos, is a descendant of Queen Victoria. His grandmother, Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, was the daughter of Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice.Juan Carlos, 83, who abdicated in 2014 in favour of his son Felipe VI, 53, has been living in Abu Dhabi since summer 2020 after becoming the target of several probes in Spain over his financial dealings. There were questions over whether he would attend the funeral but he looks set to be among the mourners at Westminster Abbey. He will be in attendance at the funeral with his wife Queen Sofia. Queen Margrethe of Denmark and Crown Prince Frederik Following Elizabeth II's death, Margrethe II of Denmark has become the only living Queen in the world. She is pictured paying respect to the Queen yesterday Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (right) and Crown Prince Frederik (left) arrive to pay their respects at the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, Lying in State inside Westminster HalThe Queen of Denmark celebrated her Golden Jubilee at the weekend, but modified the event's proceedings after the death of the Queen was announced. Following Elizabeth II's death, Margrethe II of Denmark has become the only living Queen in the world.The 82-year-old is also now the second longest reigning monarch in the world, second only to Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei. She is also the world's longest serving current head of state. While the Sultan of Brunei has been a monarch since 1967, he only became head of state in 1984 - when Brunei gained independence from the UK. Game of thrones! How Queen Victoria sat at the centre of a spider's web of European royal connections With nine children of her own and 42 grandchildren, Queen Victoria sat at the centre of a spider's web of royal connections across Europe.Her husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha had dreamt of a Europe held together by family connections, and Victoria was determined to carry out his wishes.They married their offspring into royal and noble families across the continent, earning Victoria the nickname 'the grandmother of Europe'.Eight of their children married into royal houses, starting with Vicky, who wed the Crown Prince of Prussia.But after Albert's death in 1861, Victoria retreated from public appearances and became known for wearing black and living in mourning.Both Queens are great-great granddaughters of Queen Victoria - making them third cousins - with Margrethe often looking up to Elizabeth like a big sister.In May, Margrethe told the UK's ITV news that Elizabeth, 14 years her senior, was a 'huge inspiration' to her as the only other living Queen.'[Queen Elizabeth] was 26 when she became Queen. When I was growing up, I hoped I wouldn't be as young as that when my father died. It made an enormous impression on me. The fact that she was dedicating her life. I understood what that meant. This is for life. That is the whole point of my life. And I know she sees that too,' she said.'When I was growing up, my mother and father said to me, "look at what they do in England" and I could see that it could be done and it was worthwhile and you could live a very full life with it, even with a heavy schedule and demanding job.'She is also the first cousin of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf through Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Margaret of Connaught. Margaret of Connaught was the daughter of Queen Victoria's third son, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught. She was also Queen Margrethe' and Carl Gustav's great-aunt. In a statement she wished the new King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla her 'deepest thoughts and prayers' after Elizabeth II passed away peacefully at Balmoral.Speaking on behalf of the Danish family she was 'deeply moved' by the sad news of her 'beloved mother's death'.'I send you and Camilla my warmest thoughts and prayers,' she said.'She was a towering figure among the European monarchs and a great inspiration to us all. We shall miss her terribly.'Her 70 years of reign and service to the people of the United Kingdom, the Realms and the Commonwealth are an unprecedented and remarkable achievement.'We shall always remember her important contributions to their development and prosperity.' Queen Margrethe will be joined by her son and heir Crown Prince Frederik. It was initially believed his wife Australian-born Princess Mary would be joining, but local media in Denmark has since reported she is no longer attending due to a UK Foreign Office error meaning only two royals from each state can attend. King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden and Queen Sonja, left, will also both be present for the ceremony Monday Carl paid his condolences to his 'dear relative' following the Queen's death. 'The Queen served Her countries and the Commonwealth with an outstanding devotion and sense of duty'At the age of 75 Carl is the longest reigning monarch in Swedish history, having took to the throne in 1973. He and his wife Queen Silvia, 77, a German-Brazilian former flight attendant will be in attendance.King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden is one of the European royals with the closest ties to the Queen. He is a great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria and was a third cousin of the late Monarch. That is because the Swedish King is the great-grandson of Queen Victoria's son Prince Arthur, and is also related, on her mother's side to Victoria's eighth son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. Carl paid his condolences to his 'dear relative' following the Queen's death.'The Queen served Her countries and the Commonwealth with an outstanding devotion and sense of duty. She has been a constant presence, not only in British society but internationally. In addition, she has always been a good friend to my family and a link to our shared family history,' he said in a statement. King Harald & Queen Sonja of NorwayThe Queen's second cousin, King Harald V of Norway and Queen Sonja, pictured paying his respects, also made the journey to London Harald V and the Queen shared the same great-grandparents, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. The Queen's grandfather King George V was the brother of Harald's grandmother Princess Maude, who married King Haakon VIIKing Harald of Norway is a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth and 78th in line to the British throne. Harald V has ruled the Scandinavian country since January 1991, succeeding his father, Olav V. He will likely be in attendance alongside his wife Queen Sonja.Harald V and the Queen shared the same great-grandparents, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. The Queen's grandfather King George V was the brother of Harald's grandmother Princess Maude, who married King Haakon VII.Paying tribute to Her Majesty, the King said: 'Our thoughts are with His Majesty The King and the members of the Royal Family on the loss of Queen Elizabeth. 'For nearly a century, Her Majesty devoted her life to the service of the Commonwealth, following the British people through good days and bad, in times of happiness and sorrow. We also send our condolences to the British people.' Grand Duke Henri & Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of LuxembourgThe Grand Duke of Luxembourg and his wife Maria Teresa will also attend today's ceremony. Henri, who came to power in 2000, is a relative of the Monarch via Leopold I, Prince Albert's uncle The Grand Duke of Luxembourg and his wife Maria Teresa will also attend today's ceremony. They are pictured paying their respects last night Posting on Twitter after Her Majesty's death, the Luxembourg royal family wrote: 'Their Royal Highnesses are deeply moved and saddened by the news of the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch deeply attached to the friendship between our two countries.'The Grand Duke of Luxembourg and his wife Maria Teresa will also attend today's ceremony. Henri, who came to power in 2000, is a relative of the Monarch via Leopold I, Prince Albert's uncle. Posting on Twitter after Her Majesty's death, the Luxembourg royal family wrote: 'Their Royal Highnesses are deeply moved and saddened by the news of the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch deeply attached to the friendship between our two countries. 'HRH the Grand Duke will send a message of condolence on behalf of the people of Luxembourg to the British Royal Family.' Hereditary Prince Alois & Hereditary Princess Sophie of Liechtenstein The Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein and his wife, Hereditary Princess Sophie will also attend Alois, the Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein was the last European royal to confirm he would attend the Monarch's ceremony. Aged 54, he has been regent of his country since 2004 ands has been raising his four children with his wife, Hereditary Princess Sophie, who will also be in attendance. His father, Hans-Adam II, is the reigning Prince of Liechtenstein and an eighth cousin of Queen Elizabeth - making them one of the most distantly related royals in Europe.They are both descendants of Ludwig, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.Prince Albert & Princess Charlene of Monaco Prince Albert and Princess Charlene of Monaco, pictured in July, who attended a memorial service for the Queen over the weekend, will also attend Albert is married to Charlene, a South-African Olympic swimmer, but their marriage has been plagued by controversy over the past year with Albert admitting to two illegitimate children and Charlene spending a significant amount of time outside of MonacoPrince Albert of Monaco - who competed in bobsledding at the Winter Olympics five times from 1988 to 2002 -ascended to the Monaco throne after the death of his father, Prince Rainier III, on 6th April 2005. He is married to Charlene, a South-African Olympic swimmer, but their marriage has been plagued by controversy over the past year with Albert admitting to two illegitimate children and Charlene spending a significant amount of time outside of Monaco.The pair share seven-year-old twins Jacques, Hereditary Prince of Monaco and Princess Gabriella, Countess of Carladès.Albert, who is the son of Grace Kelly, and Charlene will no doubt put on a united front to pay tribute to Her Majesty at the service.Through his father, Prince Rainer, Albert is 7th cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth II. Their common ancestor is Johann Wilhelm Friso, Prince of Orange-Nassau.ASIAN ROYAL FAMILIES Sultan Hassanal of Brunei The Sultan of Brunei, who met the Queen several times throughout his reign, hsa also confirmed he will attend her funeral (pictured in 2019)The Sultan of Brunei, who met the Queen several times throughout his reign, has also confirmed he will attend her funeral. He has travelled to the UK many a time and has met with both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prime Minister David Cameron. Aged 74, he has been ruling over Brunei since since 1967, making him the longest running monarch in the world.In addition to being the country's Sultan and absolute monarch, 76-year-old Hassanal Bolkiah ibni Omar Ali Saifuddien III has also been the Prime Minister of Brunei since the country gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1984.His reign has also been mired in controversy. He has faced criticism of his country's human rights record, and questions have been raised over business dealings.Despite this, Bolkiah has appeared to have enjoyed a close relationship with The Queen. Like his father before him, he was knighted by Her Majesty, and the pair met on several occasions during their reigns - in both London and Bandar Seri Begawan. King Jigme & Queen Jetsun of BhutanThe Bhutanese Monarchs will also travel to London for the Sovereign's funeral, but will leave their sons. They are pictured paying their respect to the Queen King Jigme has been in power in Bhutan since 2011, and married his wife Jetsun Pema that same year. They are pictured yesterday in LondonThe Bhutanese Monarchs will also travel to London for the Sovereign's funeral. King Jigme has been in power in Bhutan since 2011, and married his wife Jetsun Pema that same year. They share two sons, Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck and Jigme Ugyen Wangchuck, who will not travel to London with them. Their oldest son, Prince Jigme Namgyel Wangchuck, is the heir to the Bhutanese throne. King Jigme, the hugely popular fifth Druk Gyalpo, studied in the UK and the US and ascended the throne in 2006, aged just 26 after his own father abdicated.Unlike his son, who plans to have a monogamous marriage, the former King, who introduced democracy to Bhutan during his reign, has four wives, all sisters who he married on the same day.But despite his own upbringing, the current monarch has made clear that he only plans to have one wife, whom he married on October 13, 2011, when she was still an international relations student at Regent's College in London. Emperor Naruhito & Empress Masako of JapanNahurito, 62, became Emperor of Japan after succeeding to his father Emperor Akihito in 2019 and he will also travel to London on Monday, with his wife Masako The couple, pictured paying their respects to the Queen, flew first class into London before swapping their luxury digs for a shuttle bus alongside other world dignitaries to get to the Queen's funeralNahurito, 62, became Emperor of Japan after succeeding to his father Emperor Akihito in 2019.His wife Empress Masako, will attend the ceremony with him, but their daughter Princess Mako will stay in Japan. The couple flew first class into London before swapping their luxury digs for a shuttle bus alongside other world dignitaries to get to the Queen's funeral.Leaked Government documents revealed plans for world leaders to travel en masse in a bus to Westminster Abbey for Monday's service, rather than using private cars. One of the newer world monarch's he formally proclaimed his ascendancy to the throne in 2019 in a centuries-old ceremony attended by dignitaries from more than 180 countries, pledging to fulfil his duty as a symbol of the state. 'I swear that I will act according to the constitution and fulfil my responsibility as the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people,' he declared, his voice slightly hoarse, in front of about 2,000 guests, including Britain's Prince Charles.Sultan Haitham of OmanAt 66, Haitham of Oman has been reigning since 2020, where he was named as successor by Sultan Qaboos before his death. He met the Queen in 2021At 66, Haitham of Oman has been reigning since 2020, where he was named as successor by Sultan Qaboos before his death.Before becoming Sultan, Haitham served in Qaboos cabinet and was Minister of Heritage and Culture from 2002 to 2020. The Sultan met the Queen during his visit to the UK in 2021. The Middle Eastern ruler was joined by his wife, Her Highness The Honourable Lady Sayyida Ahad Bint Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Busaidiyah during the visit.Sultan Haitham bin Tariq, a former culture and heritage minister who studied at Oxford, came to power after the death of his cousin Sultan Qaboos - the Arab world's longest-serving ruler - last year. Yang di-Pertuan Agong Abdullah & Raja Permaisuri Agong Tunku of Malaysia Yang di-Pertuan Agong Abdullah, 63, became the King of Malaysia in 2019. He will attend the ceremony with his wife, Raja Permaisury Agong Tunky, right Yang di-Pertuan Agong Abdullah, 63, became the King of Malaysia in 2019. As a young man, he completed his military training in the UK at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.He will attend the ceremony with his wife, Raja Permaisury Agong Tunky. Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah was crowned monarch after Sultan Muhammad V stepped down after the last his reported marriage to a Russian ex-beauty queen, Oksana Voevodina. The ceremony was televised nationally and attended by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and hundreds of guests decked out in Islamic finery.Before being sworn in at the palace, the 63-year-old, who is also the ceremonial ruler of central Pahang state, was given a welcome at the national parliament and inspected a guard of honour. His predecessor, Sultan Muhammad V stepped aside following just two years on the throne after he went on medical leave. Reports then surfaced he had married a former Miss Moscow in November.OTHERS King Tupou of Tonga At 63, King Tupou has been the Monarch of Tonga since 2012, and met with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their tour of Australia and New Zealand in 2018. It was not confirmed that his wife, Nanasipauʻu Tukuʻaho, will attend Monday's ceremony with himAt 63, King Tupou has been the Monarch of Tonga since 2012, and met with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their tour of Australia and New Zealand in 2018. He is married, however, it was not confirmed that his wife, Nanasipauʻu Tukuʻaho, will attend Monday's ceremony with him. His brother, Oxford-educated King George Tupou V passed away in a Hong Kong Hospital at the age of 63 in 2012, the cause of death believed to be linked to kidney problems.FORMER MONARCHIES Crown Prince Pavlos of GreecePrince Pavlos is the eldest son and second child of Constantine II, the last King of Greece from 1964 to 1973 and his wife, Anne-Marie of Denmark. He is pictured paying respect to the Queen lat night In a statement last week he thanked The Queen 'for the kindness HM gave to my parents and family in times of need.'Prince Pavlos is the eldest son and second child of Constantine II, the last King of Greece from 1964 to 1973 and his wife, Anne-Marie of Denmark. He is married to Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece. In a statement last week he thanked The Queen 'for the kindness HM gave to my parents and family in times of need.' Crown Princess Marie Chantal also said: 'A sad day today on hearing that Her Majesty the Queen passed. May she Rest In Peace and I am sure the heavens have a special place for her. She taught us duty, honor, love and above all else courage. She ruled immaculately and was so loved. Thank you for your service and for showing my in-laws such kindness and love during their darkest days.' Prince Emanuele of Savoy (Italy) Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, 47, has also confirmed he will attend the Queen's funeral on Monday (pictured in 2018) Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, 47, who is known as the 'Pasta Prince', due to his career running food trucks in LA, announced his plans to run for political office last year. The defunct Italian throne runs a catering business called Prince of Venice and has lead a colourful life in the public eye, claiming to have dated Kate Moss and starring on Italy's version of Strictly Come Dancing.He is the grandson of Umberto II, the last reigning king of Italy, who was deposed in 1946 when the country became a republic.Crown Prince Alexander of SerbiaAlexander was born in exile at London’s Claridge’s hotel, temporarily declared Yugoslavia for a day in 1945. Pictured last night Alexander was born in exile at London’s Claridge’s hotel, which was temporarily declared Yugoslavia for a day in 1945 to get around succession laws requiring future kings to be born on home territory. But in 2001, after the Yugoslav wars, he moved ‘home’.Alexander was born in exile at London’s Claridge’s hotel, which was temporarily declared Yugoslavia for a day in 1945 to get around succession laws requiring future kings to be born on home territory. But in 2001, after the Yugoslav wars, he moved ‘home’. He is a close friend of King Charles who has previously backed his attempts to get palaces from the Serbian government. Charles has visited his school chum and posed for photos at the Royal Palace.Margareta & Prince Radu of RomaniaMargareta & Prince Radu of Romania attended Prince Philip's memorial service in March and will attend the Queen's funeral todayMargareta, who was educated at a boarding school in Hampshire, is the eldest daughter of King Michael I of Romania and his wife Queen Anne. She and her husband Prince Radu, a former actor, will attend the Queen's funeral together. Charles recently joined distant relative Margareta, head of the Romanian royal family, in Bucharest to visit Ukrainian refugees.Tsar Simeon of Bulgaria As a boy, he was His Majesty Tsar Simeon II of the Bulgarians for three years before being deposed by the Soviets in 1946. Half a century later, he ended up serving as prime minister of Bulgaria from 2001 to 2005As a boy, he was His Majesty Tsar Simeon II of the Bulgarians for three years before being deposed by the Soviets in 1946. Half a century later, he ended up serving as prime minister of Bulgaria from 2001 to 2005.Prince Philipp and Princess Saskia of Hohenlohe-Langenburg Charles III (R), Prince Philipp of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and Philipp's wife Saaskia drive in an Alvis car in Langenburg, Germany, 28 May 2013Prince Philipp, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and his wife Saskia Binder, a former banker, are also set to attend. The couple also attended Prince Philip's Service of Thanksgiving earlier this year. Hereditary Prince Bernhard & Hereditary Princess Stephanie of Baden and The Margravine of Baden Prince Bernhard of Baden, who was born in Germany, and is the eldest son of Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, was Prince Philip’s great nephew. He will attended with his wife Princess Stephanie (pictured in 2011)Prince Bernhard of Baden, who was born in Germany, and is the eldest son of Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, was Prince Philip’s great nephew. He will attended with his wife Princess Stephanie. Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, is the elder son of Berthold, Margrave of Baden and Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark. At the age of 89, he is the eldest living nephew of the late Elizabeth II and the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and is first cousin to King Charles. | Royal Families |
The coronation of His Majesty King Charles III is nearly upon us and we’ve all been invited (sort of). In June 1953, the late Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation made history as the first-ever televised coronation of a monarch. Over 20 million Brits tuned in to the black-and-white broadcast back then, which was later shown worldwide. Seventy years later, Queen Elizabeth’s son is set to be officially crowned the King of England in a ceremony that will no doubt be viewed live by many millions across the globe. Looking to join in on the royal family’s festivities from across the pond? Even if you’re in the US, there’s no shortage of ways to watch or stream the coronation of King Charles today.
How to watch the Coronation of King Charles III:
Date: Saturday, May 6, 2023
Start time: 6 a.m. ET
Location: Westminster Abbey, London, UK
UK TV: BBC, ITV, Sky News
US TV: ABC, BBC America, CBS, CNN, FOX News, NBC
When is King Charles’ Coronation?
The coronation of King Charles III begins with a procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey at 5:20 a.m. ET on Saturday, May 6 2023. The ceremony is officially set to start at 6 a.m. and conclude at 8 a.m. Following the end of the ceremony, the newly crowned King Charles and his Queen Consort, Camilla, will depart in the Gold State Coach, returning to the palace.Back at Buckingham Palace, the royal family make another appearance at 9:15 a.m. to watch a military flypast from the palace balcony.
What time will the Coronation be broadcast?
The coronation ceremony officially begins at 11 a.m. in the UK and 6 a.m. ET in the US. However, many US broadcasts will air coronation coverage as early as 5 a.m. ET, and the BBC will begin coverage at 2:30 a.m. ET.
Will the King Charles coronation be televised?
King Charles III’s coronation marks the second time a member of the British royal family’s coronation will be broadcast on TV. In the US, coverage of the coronation will air on many major broadcast and cable networks, including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC. In the UK, the BBC has coverage covered.
How to watch King Charles III’s coronation without cable
Don't have easy access to ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News or NBC? Don't worry. Here's how you can watch the coronation through a VPN, streaming platform or live TV package.
How to watch the King Charles III coronation for free
Many media outlets (including this one) will be livestreaming coronation coverage. Check back for more info on the Yahoo News coronation livestream.
How to watch the King Charles Coronation Concert
On Sunday, May 7 at 3 p.m. ET, a special coronation concert is set to take place at Windsor Castle.
Hosted by Hugh Bonneville and featuring performances by Katy Perry, British pop group Take That, international superstar Lionel Richie and opera singer Andrea Bocelli, the coronation concert may be the most exciting part of the whole royal weekend for some.
The coronation concert will air on BBC One, BBC iPlayer, BBC Radio 2 and BBC Sounds. For those in the US, it is currently unclear if the coronation concert will air on any major broadcast networks or streaming platforms, but you can easily tune into the UK's free coverage with the use of a VPN.
- Stream the Coronation Concert with ExpressVPN
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If you've never used a VPN before and want to learn more, check out this guide to the best VPNs of 2023.
Will Prince William and Kate Middleton be at King Charles’ coronation?
Prince Williams’ role in the coronation, according to a copy of the Liturgy of the Coronation Service obtained by Entertainment Tonight, will be to pledge his loyalty and allegiance to King Charles III during the ceremony.
Meanwhile, Catherine, Princess of Wales and Duchess of Cambridge has made headlines for her potential fashion choices come coronation day, with the Sunday Times reporting that she is opting for a “bold and innovative gesture” by wearing “a floral headpiece” as opposed to a tiara for the ceremony.
Will Prince Harry and Meghan Markle be at the coronation?
His wife, Meghan Markle Duchess of Sussex, will remain at home with the couple’s two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Meghan’s missing out on the party in part to throw one of her own for her son’s birthday, which falls on May 6, coronation day.
It’s been reported that the former Suits star is planning a “low-key” gathering to celebrate Archie’s 4th birthday.
Let’s review: Here’s every way you can watch the King Charles coronation from the US
Have more questions on the Coronation of King Charles III? Follow along with our live updates
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A top question on Google: What is the schedule today?
The day began at 6am when the viewing routes opened to the public, with members of the armed services taking part in the two processions gathering at 9.45am. At 10.20am, Charles and Camilla will set off in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey in a small procession. They’ll arrive at the Abbey just before 11am, when the service starts. At midday, Charles will be crowned. The coronation service will wrap up before 1pm, when the newly crowned Charles and Camilla will head back to Buckingham Palace in the Gold State Coach, accompanied by other working royals. The King and Queen will arrive back at the palace at 1.33pm, where they will receive a military salute, before appearing on the balcony while there is a flypast at 2.15pm."
Catch up on the full schedule here (EM)
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The Royal Family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace after the coronation at Westminster Abbey. (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)
A rather younger looking Charles (centre) pictured during the coronation of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1952. The Queen's coronation was the first to be broadcast to the nation on television - and around 27 million people are thought to have tuned in, while 11 million listened in on the radio, according to royal.uk. | Royal Families |
Though King Charles III just paraded before the public for the annual Trooping the Colour event (you may remember the heatstroke-heavy practice run from a few days prior) you can’t keep a good monarch down when it comes to a polished procession.
As such, all eyes were on Windsor Castle on Monday, where the annual Garter Day traditions took place, the first under the 74-year-old new king’s reign. Naturally, this is also the first with Camilla as Queen Consort and 40-year-old Prince William in his new title as the Prince of Wales.
As per the official website of the Royal Family, “the day begins with the Sovereign formally investing any new Companions with the Order's insignia in the Throne Room of the Castle. The members and officers attend a lunch hosted by the Sovereign, and then all process on foot to a service in St. George's Chapel. There is a short service where any new Companions are installed. The Sovereign and other members of the Order then return to the Upper Ward of the castle in carriages and cars.”
Kate Middleton was in attendance, wearing, as per People, “a long-sleeved white dress with black polka dots by Alessandra Rich paired with a coordinating hat by Philip Treacy.” Royal watchers will note that Garter Day is a big deal in the William-and-Kate story, as her appearance at the 2008 event, when he received his Order of the Garter knighthood, made it clear that the couple were serious. They were engaged a little over two years later.
Prince Harry is not a member of the Order of the Garter and has not attended the procession in years. Meghan Markle has never attended.
Someone else who was not at the public event was Charles’s brother Andrew. We need not remind you why. Last year a “family decision” was made, and it was determined that that the 63-year-old Duke of York could attend the private lunch in the Waterloo Chamber and witness the investiture of new members, but that was about it. Britain’s Daily Mirror wrote that this compromise was reprised this year. They also noted that that when Andrew attended the recent Coronation of King Charles he wore his Order of the Garter velvet robe and plumed hat.
There’s a good chance you have a question on your mind right now: what the heck is the Order of the Garter?
It is, in fact, "the oldest and most senior Order of Chivalry in Britain,” as per the official Royal website. It dates back to King Edward III who ruled England from 1327 until 1377. He was inspired by tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and, in the 1340s, thought it would be good to get a gang like that going for himself. Thus the Order of the Garter was born and they would hang out and, I dunno, play pinochle all night. At just around this time, King Edward’s armies were whooping the French at Sluys and Crécy and the Scottish at Neville’s Cross. While this was happening, England was getting walloped at home by the Black Death. It was a busy period.
Prince William was the 1000th person to join the group. Soon after the Order’s founding Ladies of the Garter were appointed, but were not allowed to be dubbed as Companions. This practice ended in 1488, with no women except for Sovereigns admitted until the early 20th century. Queen Elizabeth II allowed Ladies of the Garter to become Companions in 1987. The group maintains a category of Stranger Knights and Ladies Companions, which currently includes monarchs from Norway, Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, and Denmark.
If you want to kill some time, here is a list of all 1,018 members from history. Tony Blair is on there, as is Sir Edmund Hillary, the mountaineer, and other boldface names from world history, like Queen Isabella of Spain, King Leopold II of Belgium (not a great look!), Emperor Hirohito of Japan (he was “degraded” in 1941 but reinstated by Queen Elizabeth in 1971) and Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey, for whom the bergamot-enhanced black tea was named in the 1830s.
The Royal Family shared many photos from today’s event on social media. | Royal Families |
Prince Harry has sensationally accused the monarchy of trying to 'undermine' his explosive memoir Spare because its controversial contents have 'perhaps made them feel uncomfortable and scared' as he launched another furious attack on the royal family in the latest in a line of TV interviews to promote his book. The 38-year-old held nothing back as he took aim at his family during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, where he lurched between hurling more barbs at his family and making light-hearted jokes including about his 'frost-nipped' genitals while swigging a glass of tequila. Harry also took part in a skit with Tom Hanks and clinked glasses with Colbert as he praised America as a 'great place to live' and said how much he loves 'beautiful California', sparking cheers from the audience. He whipped up the crowd on several occasions, offering them all some tequila and talking about his Army career, asking: 'Are there any veterans in the house?'One of the more serious moments during the lengthy sit-down saw Harry rounding on his relatives over the backlash to his memoir, with Colbert questioning whether he believes the royals have an 'active campaign to undermine this book'. 'Of course,' the duke responded - adding that 'the British Press' has also been complicit in the 'campaign', with Colbert chiming in: 'But aided and abetted by the Palace.' 'Again of course,' Harry confirmed. 'But this is the other side of the story, right? After 38 years, they have told their side of the story. This is the other side of the story.' The father-of-two then suggested that what he perceives as the royals' 'campaign' against his memoir has come as a result of them being 'uncomfortable and scared' over its contents. 'There is a lot in there that, perhaps, makes people feel uncomfortable and scared,' he continued. Prince Harry has sensationally accused the monarchy of trying to 'undermine' his explosive memoir Spare because its controversial contents have 'perhaps made them feel uncomfortable and scared' The 38-year-old's latest attack on his family came during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday - the latest in a line of interviews that the duke has done to tout his bombshell book Harry's wide-ranging sit-down with Colbert saw him flitting between slinging barbs at the royals and making light-hearted, cringeworthy jokes - including poking fun at his 'frost-nipped' penis The wide-ranging interview with Colbert saw Harry address a number of topics ranging from the farcical to the furious, with the duke launching several tirades against the British Press - accusing it of 'abusing' his wife Meghan and bizarrely suggesting that it was 'embarrassing' for the media when he chose to quit the Royal Family and relocate to the US. During the interview, Harry also: Furiously slammed accusations that he 'boasted' about killing 25 Taliban fighters, while blaming his critics for 'spinning' his words and putting his 'family in danger';Revealed he still wears the necklace he says his brother Prince William broke during a fight over Meghan, having had it repaired;Confirmed that he has watched 'old and more recent' episodes of The Crown despite it featuring depictions of Diana's bulimia battle and divorce from Charles; Made a thinly-veiled dig at his father and the royals by saying that the 'Spencer gene is very strong' in reference to his children and their ginger hair;Discussed his 'frost-nipped' penis while laughing at Colbert's jokes about his 'royal jewels'; Shared his fondest memories of the Queen, praising her 'sharp wit' and 'sense of humour'; From the get-go, it was clear that the interview - which comes at the end of a transatlantic PR blitz to tout his memoir - would 'spare' nobody in the monarchy, with the opening seconds of the show featuring a mocking skit that ridiculed royal tradition. The show opened with a clip showing Colbert standing alongside two trumpeters wearing replicas of the uniforms traditionally worn by the State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry. As Harry strolled down a red carpet they began their fanfare, with the duke putting on a mock display of humility and telling the TV host such pomp 'wasn't necessary'. Then Harry leaned on Colbert's Hollywood pulling power, with actor Tom Hanks joining the prince as the host proclaimed that the trumpets had in fact been intended not for the duke, but for the 66-year-old star all along. Colbert then performed his traditional opening monologue ahead of his lengthy chat with Harry began, but not before the host poured each of them a glass of tequila. Harry sipped on a glass of tequila throughout the interview, having been offered a 'cocktail' by Colbert when he sat down At one point Colbert asked about a section in Harry's memoir in which he accuses his brother, Prince William, of physically attacking him and 'breaking his necklace' - which he revealed he has had repaired and still wearsIn another sign that Harry has adopted a 'Hollywood' personality, the duke made several attempts at comedy throughout the interview'I know that you yourself are a very private person for being a public figure,' he said, while brandishing a copy of Harry's book. 'You are revealing a lot of things in here. It must be on a certain level kind of nerve-wracking to be out there publicly, physically representing the book... Would you like a cocktail before we begin?' 'Yes please!' Harry then responded as Colbert pulled out a bottle of liquor. In the first of many audience interactions, the Duke turned to the group of spectators - which he revealed later included several veterans - to ask whether the late-night host 'ever makes you guys a drink'. In yet another sure-fire sign that Harry has adopted his very own 'Hollywood' personality, the Duke made several similar attempts at comedy throughout the interview, calling out jokes, trading banter with Colbert, and - in one of the most cringe-worthy moments of the sit-down - gleefully expressed mock regret that his frostbitten penis didn't turn into a rock-solid icicle. While the interview elicited plenty of laughs from the audience, it is sure to have had palace insiders rolling their eyes and gritting their teeth as the Duke laid bare several very intimate stories, ranging from the eye-wateringly awkward to the bitterly brutal - with Harry pulling no punches when it came to his observations about his family. For the most part, the sit-down addressed many of the same topics that Harry has addressed in all of his other interviews - which have included on-air chats with ITV's Tom Bradby in the UK and, in the US, with 60 Minutes and Good Morning America, as well as a cover feature and posed-up shoot for People magazine. Harry called out jokes, traded banter with Colbert, and - in one of the most cringe-worthy moments of the sit-down - gleefully expressed mock regret that his frostbitten penis didn't turn into a rock-solid icicleHowever, having done a round of very serious interviews - which some critics claim failed to properly question or address contradictions in his book - the Prince chose to wrap up his US media blitz with The Late Show, in what appears to be an attempt to tout his memoir in a more light-hearted manner. As he has done in every other interview thus far, Harry once again addressed his sensational claim that his brother, Prince William, physically attacked him during a fight over Meghan - with Colbert taking particular interest in the necklace that the Duke accused his sibling of 'breaking' during the altercation. Harry revealed that he has since had the necklace 'fixed' and pulled it out of his shirt, revealing that it now holds three pendants - two of which were presents from Meghan and are engraved with the heartbeats of their children, Archie and Lilibet, while the other was made for him by a 'friend in Botswana' and features a tiger's eye stone at its center. Prince Harry mocks the monarchy: Duke ridicules royal tradition (with the help of Hollywood star Tom Hanks) as he kicks off The Late Show with skit featuring trumpet fanfare and heralds in uniforms Prince Harry kicked off the latest in a long line of TV interviews by ridiculing royal tradition and mocking the Monarchy - with the help of Hollywood A-lister Tom Hanks.The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex poked fun at his family's long-standing and much-admired tradition of pomp and circumstance during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Stephen Colbert to promote his bombshell memoir Spare this evening, for which he pre-filmed a skit that showed him being greeted at the CBS studios by two trumpet heralds wearing regal uniforms. In the video, Harry is seen rounding a corner and walking along a red carpet while the trumpeters begin their fanfare, with the Duke telling Colbert in a show of mock humility: 'Woah, woah, woah, stop, stop. Stephen, not needed, but thank you, I appreciate it.''What are you talking about? This isn't for you!' Colbert, 58, responds, before urging Harry: 'Get out of the way, he's coming!' At that point, Hanks, 66, who was a guest on the late-night show on Monday - when the Duke filmed his own interview - comes around the corner, jokingly exclaiming: 'I'm back! Where's my fanfare?' while Harry throws rose petals at him. Prince Harry kicked off the latest in a long line of TV interviews by ridiculing royal tradition and mocking the Monarchy - with the help of Hollywood A-lister Tom Hanks The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex poked fun at his family's long-standing and much-admired tradition of pomp and circumstance during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Stephen Colbert this evening Tonight's episode of The Late Show kicked off with a skit featuring Harry and Hanks, 66, being greeted by royal fanfare as they entered the CBS studios The trumpeters featured on The Late Show were sporting uniforms that appeared to be replicas of the official garb worn by the State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry - who perform the fanfare at official state events, like Harry's own wedding and Prince Philip's funeral - however in place of the royal standard, they had the letters 'L' and 'S' embroidered on their jackets. Harry's pre-taped interview with Colbert has already resulted in several explosive moments which were brought to light courtesy of teaser clips shared on the CBS show's official Twitter account. In those trailers, the Duke furiously denied that he 'boasted' about killing 25 Taliban fighters, while taking aim at his critics for 'spinning' his words and putting his 'family in danger'. He also confirmed to the TV host that he watches controversial Netflix series The Crown, admitting that he has even seen 'more recent' episodes, which portray dramatized versions of his late mother Diana's battle with bulimia - and his parents' bitter divorce. Meanwhile a trailer for the episode saw Colbert ridiculing the royal family, comparing the Duke to Harry Potter and joking that his explosive new book is available as a commemorative plate. After playing a clip where Harry describes his pain at William trying to avoid him at Eton, the Late Show presenter said to roars of laughter: 'That's heartbreaking. To be rejected by his older brother at school even though that magic hat sorted them into the same house. What do you think? Hufflepuff? Gryffindor?' After Colbert tells Harry that the trumpeters were not in fact for him, but rather for Hanks, the Duke begins throwing rose petals at the laughing actor After a series of serious TV interviews the Prince has now chosen to do The Late Show, in what appears to be an attempt to tout his memoir in a more light-hearted mannerThe trumpeters featured in the show were wearing replica uniforms of the official garb sported by the State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry who perform the fanfare at official state events, including Harry's own wedding and Prince Philip's funeralIn another teaser Colbert said Spare is available in hardback, audiobook and 'commemorative plate' - a joke at the expense of Harry and other royals whose weddings and anniversaries are marked with limited edition tableware and crockery. And then in a further joke at Harry's expense - and the expense of the Royal Family including the Queen - Colbert says: 'Stock up on corgis and steal a priceless cultural treasure from one of your colonies because The Late Show is going imperial'.Harry's book also contains anecdotes that also appear to poke fun at his own family including hanging a trinket likeness of the Queen on a Christmas tree.Spare reveals that Meghan gave Harry an ornament of the Queen that she had bought from a local store in California.Harry writes in his book that it was ‘Granny’s face to a T’ and hung it straight on the large Christmas tree in their California home.Toddler Archie was running around and knocked the tree’s stand, which caused the ornament to fall off and smash into pieces. Harry reveals he still wears 'fixed' necklace William allegedly 'broke' during physical row - and shows charms of kids' heartbeats and tiger's eye pendant made by friend in Botswana Harry confirmed that he is still wearing the necklace he accused his brother of ripping from his neck during a physical attack in 2019 - showing off the 'now fixed' jewelry for the cameras.In one of the most extraordinary lines in his memoir, Harry writes that his brother branded Meghan 'rude' and 'difficult', resulting in what he says was William attacking him, alleging: '[William] grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.' Harry said he has 'now fixed' the necklace that he accused his brother William of breaking and revealed that it holds three charms - two that are engraved with Archie and Lilibet's heartbeats and another that was made by a friend in Botswana The story prompted a firestorm of controversy - one that Colbert brought up yet again during the interview when he asked Prince Harry about 'the physical fight', questioning: 'There is a lot of talk about the physical fight that the two of you had, where he pushed you down in the kitchen and broke the dog bowl, when you fell on it.'It says he broke your necklace. What necklace was this that he broke?' 'Uh, this one, which is now fixed,' Harry replied, pulling out a black leather cord from his shirt and showing off three silver pendants that dangled from it - two of which are engraved with cardiograms [heartbeats] of his two children, Archie and Lilibet, and the third of which 'a friend in Botswana made for me and which has got a tiger's eye in the middle'. 'It's got my kids' heartbeats, which my wife gave me,' said Harry, showing off silver plaques with the cardiograms of his children engraved.'And then a friend of mine in Botswana made this for me, which has got tiger's eye in the middle.'Tiger's eye is said to bring power, inner strength, healing and courage. Some cultures believe it wards off the evil eye.It is an inexpensive stone, mainly found in South Africa, but with deposits also found in Namibia, Australia, India, and Thailand.Harry has been seen wearing the necklace for many years, giving rise to speculation it was a gift from his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, who he dated from 2004 until 2010.Duke denies he 'boasted' about killing 25 Taliban fighters in explosive memoir Spare - and blames critics for 'spinning' his words and putting his 'family in danger'Prince Harry furiously slammed down accusations that he 'boasted' about killing 25 Taliban fighters in his explosive memoir Spare - while accusing his critics of 'spinning' his words and spouting 'lies' about the revelation, which he says have put his family 'in danger'. The 38-year-old vehemently defended his decision to share the information, hitting back at accusations that he 'undermined his own security' by writing about his Taliban kills, while blaming his critics for spreading 'dangerous lies' and 'spinning his words'. 'I think one of... the most dangerous lies that they have told is that I somehow boasted about the number of people I have killed in Afghanistan,' he told Colbert. 'I would say that if I heard anybody else, anyone, boasting about that kind of thing, I would be angry. But it's a lie. When the interview began Harry furiously slammed down accusations that he 'boasted' about killing 25 Taliban fighters He added: 'My words are not dangerous, but the spin of my words are very dangerous to my family.'Harry insisted to Colbert that it was not his words that were in any way dangerous - but rather the 'spin' that his critics have put on them, with the Duke saying it is 'a choice they have made', which has put his family in danger. He went on to insist that that the 'reason' he chose to write about his kill count was to 'reduce the number of suicides' among military veterans. 'I made a choice to share it because, having spent nearly two decades working with veterans all around the world, I think the most important thing is to be honest and to give space to others to share their experiences without any shame,' he said - while receiving applause from the audience, which included several veterans. 'And my whole goal, my attempt with sharing that detail is to reduce the number of suicides.' Prince Harry laughs as he CONFIRMS he watches The Crown - hinting he's even seen 'more recent' episodes that dramatize Diana's bulimia battle and bitter divorce from CharlesPrince Harry confirmed that he watches Netflix's controversial series The Crown - laughing as he revealed in a new bombshell TV interview that he has watched the 'more recent' episodes that portray 'sensationalized' accounts of his late mother Diana's bulimia battle and her bitter divorce from Charles. The Duke laughed uproariously while joking to the TV host that he 'fact checks' the highly-criticized show.'Yes I have actually watched The Crown,' Harry - who has a production deal with Netflix that is reported to be worth $100 million - told Colbert after the late night host asked if he had seen the series.'The older stuff and the more recent stuff.'Harry then burst into fits of laughter and mimed taking notes as Colbert questioned whether he 'fact checks' the show - before admitting: 'Yes, I do actually.'He then suggested that The Crown does not offer an entirely factual version of events - before pointing at his bombshell memoir Spare as an apparent example of accuracy, saying: 'Which is why it's so important that history has it right.' The 38-year-old's admission that he has watched more recent episodes suggests he has seen the show's highly-dramatized portrayal of his parents' bitter divorce Despite his jovial response to the question, the Duke's admission that he's watched multiple episodes of the show will likely prompt furious criticism and questions about why he and wife Meghan Markle have continued to work with streaming giant Netflix, despite its brutal portrayal of the royal family - and Harry's parents in particular.Season five of the series - which is the most recent - drew bitter backlash over its 'malicious' storylines, which included agonizing portrayals of the breakdown of Charles and Diana's marriage, as well as a fictional scene in which the future King is seen plotting to overthrow the Queen.The latest storylines have been widely bashed for their 'malicious' and 'lurid' content with critics branding Harry a 'hypocrite' for refusing to pull the plug on his Netflix deal in response to the streaming giant's portrayal of his family.To add insult to grievous injury, season five of the show was released just a matter of weeks after the Queen passed away at the age of 96. | Royal Families |
King Charles delivered his very first speech at the State Opening of Parliament on Tuesday, becoming the first king to do so in over 70 years.
It marked a significant and highly anticipated moment with King Charles wearing the Imperial State Crown and his ermine Robe of State in a ceremony that did not fall short of pomp and pageantry.
Queen Camilla recycled her coronation gown from designer Bruce Oldfield as well as the crimson Robe of State and famous State Diamond Diadem crown and necklace – a favorite of the late Queen Elizabeth’s.
In recent years, the State Opening of Parliament has been scaled down because of COVID-19 restrictions and the late Queen Elizabeth’s ailing health. Tuesday’s ceremony, however, included all the official royal regalia associated with the occasion including crowns and thrones and a procession from Buckingham Palace to the House of Lords in the Diamond State Coach.
Last May, Charles delivered the monarch’s speech on behalf of Queen Elizabeth who had to pull out of the occasion because of her poor health. On that day, Charles and Camilla were seated alongside the Imperial State Crown.
On Tuesday, King Charles wore the crown (the same one he wore for his coronation on May 6) in what was a deeply symbolic moment. The crown, which contains 2868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, five rubies and 269 pearls, has not been worn at a State Opening of Parliament for seven years. The Queen found the crown too heavy to wear in later life and opted for a hat and day dress instead.
The King’s decision to opt for all of the formalities at Tuesday’s ceremony – which included page boys to carry the trains of the royal robes — is an indicator of Charles’ penchant for tradition and heritage.
At his side were Queen Camilla and his sister, Princess Anne, who as Gold Stick in Waiting is the King’s chief “protector.” The Princess Royal entered the chamber with Charles, a sign of just how important she is to him.
In his speech, Charles honored his “beloved mother” and spoke of her legacy of “service and devotion.” “It is mindful of the legacy of service and devotion to this country set by my beloved mother the late Queen that I deliver this, the first King’s Speech in over 70 years,” he said from the throne in the House of Lords Chamber.
The last King to deliver such a speech was his grandfather King George VI in 1951 when Charles was a toddler.
Since becoming King, Charles, who was once seen as a meddling Prince of Wales who lobbied ministers with handwritten letters about issues he cared about, has been careful not to be seen to be political in any way.
The King’s Speech, which commentators have described having been delivered in a “resolutely neutral tone,” laid out government’s legislation and Charles was obliged to outline Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plans to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda, something the King is privately said to strongly disagree with. On Tuesday, he had his best poker face on, there was no hint of whether he approved or not.
While the reception to Charles’s debut King’s Speech has been mostly well received, anti-monarchist demonstrators were out in force at Whitehall. Waving placards with the words “Not My King” and “Down with the Crown” there were loud boos from the 200 or so protestors who had lined the processional route. Graham Smith, chief executive of anti-monarchy group Republic, described the King’s Speech as a “pantomime” but the King seemed oblivious, waving to protestors as he passed by in the state coach.
The King and Queen have engagements later this week including this weekend’s Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph. | Royal Families |
Prince George, son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, charmed as an official page boy during King Charles’ coronation.
All three children of Kate Middleton and Prince William were present at the crowning ceremony of King Charles and Queen Camilla on Saturday. While the royal couple’s younger two children, 7-year-old princess Charlotte — sporting a headdress to match her mother’s — and 5-year-old Prince Louis appeared at the Westminster Abbey with their parents, George had more official duties to handle.
The 9-year-old prince, second in the line of succession, served as an official page boy alongside seven others.
“Eight Pages of Honour have been chosen to attend Their Majesties during the Coronation Service,” the Royal Instagram announced. “The Pages will form part of the procession through the Nave of Westminster Abbey. The King’s Pages of Honour will be His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales, Lord Oliver Cholmondeley, Master Nicholas Barclay and Master Ralph Tollemache.”
The king and the queen both had four pages each. The queen’s were Arthur Elliot, Camilla’s great-nephew, and her grandsons, Freddy Parker Bowles as well as Gus and Louis Lopes.
All eight pages were dressed in uniform in honor of the celebration.
George’s participation made him the youngest future monarch to be officially involved in a coronation service, according to the The Telegraph.
Four-year-old Prince Charles watched his mother Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 while 11-year-old Princess Elizabeth witnessed the crowning ceremony of her father King George VI in 1937. Neither participated in the actual service, though.
The Queen Consort also had two Ladies in Attendance – her sister Annabel Elliot and her trusted friend the Marchioness of Lansdowne. | Royal Families |
During her life, Queen Elizabeth II was close to her eight grandchildren, and spent many holidays and family occasions with her numerous great-grandchildren. Because the late queen would have celebrated her 97th birthday on April 21, Prince and Princess of Wales are honoring her memory by sharing a previously unseen photograph of the queen and a handful of her descendants, taken by Princess Kate last summer at Balmoral.
The photograph is also a who’s who of the young royals we’re likely to see at events over the next few decades. It features her two youngest grandchildren, Lady Louise Windsor and James, the Earl of Wessex as of last month, the children of Prince Edward and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh. William and Kate’s three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis are standing in the second row, each with a wide grin. To the left of the queen are Zara and Mike Tindall’s three children, Mia, Lena, and Lucas, and to her right are Isla and Savannah Phillips, the daughters of Peter Phillips.
Four of the queen’s great-grandchildren are not included in the picture. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s children, Prince Archie and Prince Lilibet, have never visited the Balmoral Estate. August Brooksbank, the son of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank, and Sienna Mapelli Mozzi, the daughter of Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi are also not pictured. (In January, the palace announced that Eugenie and Jack are expecting a second child this summer.)
The royals’ main family Instagram account also posted a tribute to the late queen, a photo taken during a walkabout in Edinburgh last June, and a reference to the fact that she wasn’t actually born as the nation’s heir presumptive. “When Her Majesty was born in April 1926, Princess Elizabeth and her family did not expect that she would one day become Queen,” the caption read. “Following the abdication of her uncle King Edward VIII in 1936, her father acceded to the throne.” | Royal Families |
Queen Camilla in mourning following brother-in-law's death just two months before King Charles' coronation
The Queen Consort's family announced the death of Camilla's brother-in-law just hours after the Queen Consort was photographed greeting guests for International Women's Day.
The Queen Consort is in mourning following the death of her brother-in-law Simon Elliot on Wednesday.
The announcement came on the same day the Queen Consort hosted a high-profile event for International Women’s Day at Buckingham Palace.
Mr Elliot was married to Camilla’s sister Annabel for more than 50 years and was close to both the Queen Consort and King Charles, even accompanying the royals on their honeymoon at Balmoral in 2005.
The 82-year-old was a frequent guest at various royal events, including the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September.
Mr Elliot’s widow Annabel is the middle child of Major Bruce Shand and Rosalind Cubitt.
Ms Elliot is a renowned interior designer who was even tasked by her brother-in-law King Charles with redecorating his Welsh estate Llwynywermod.
The Elliots are parents to three children including Ben Elliot, the former co-chairman of the British Conservative Party who resigned after Liz Truss was elected Conservative Party leader in 2022.
While the family have yet to announce Mr Elliot’s cause of death, the former businessman’s funeral is set to take place later this month.
Sadly, Mr Elliot’s passing is the second close death for the Queen Consort in less than a year, following the death of her cousin Charles Villiers in August last year.
Mr Villiers took his own life at age 59 after an eight-year divorce battle considered to be the longest in modern British history.
Camilla and Annabel also had a brother, Mark, who died tragically after sustaining a head injury in a fall at age 62 in 2014.
The latest death to hit the Shand clan falls less than two months before the coronation ceremonies on May 6.
It was recently revealed that Camilla’s family will feature prominently in the celebrations, and the Queen Consort is insisting on including her grandchildren in official ceremonies.
Although none of the Queen Consort's family hold a title, the Shand grandchildren will hold Camilla’s veil while she is blessed with holy oil, a sacred tradition previously reserved for Royal Duchesses. | Royal Families |
Prince William and Kate Middleton’s royal titles of the Prince and Princess of Wales are finally official following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Despite the long-reigning monarch passing last September, the couple’s nobility monikers were just formally sealed earlier this month.
Once William’s father King Charles III became sovereign upon the death of his mother, the 40-year-old royal and Kate, 41, inherited the titles of Prince and Princess of Wales.
But their titles were only formally announced when the Letters Patent officially passed the Great Seal of the Realm and the public notice was posted in The Gazette on Friday. The actual sealing event occurred on Feb. 13.
“In accordance with the direction of HIS MAJESTY THE KING Letters Patent have passed the Great Seal of the Realm, dated the 13th February 2023 for creating His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, Duke of Cornwall, Rothesay and Cambridge, Earl of Carrick and Strathearn, Baron of Renfrew, Baron Carrickfergus, K.G., K.T., Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, PRINCE OF WALES and EARL OF CHESTER,” the full posting read.
Charles, 74, was named the Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in 1958, and his investiture was held in 1969 when he was crowned by the Queen at Caernarfon Castle.
When the King married Diana Spencer in 1981, she then became known as the Princess of Wales until her passing in 1997.
As for William and Kate, they were also given the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge by the Queen when they were married in April 2011.
The other monikers they received at the time of their wedding included the Earl and Countess of Strathearn and the Baron and Baroness of Carrickfergus.
William and Kate’s social media accounts were changed to reflect their new titles right after the Queen died last year, with both their Twitter and Instagram accounts updated to read: “Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge.”
The Duke of Cornwall name is usually held by the eldest son of the reigning monarch.
Charles and his wife, Queen Consort Camilla, also previously used the names of the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay, which are utilized when they are in Scotland. William and Kate now hold the Scottish alias as well.
Charles will officially be crowned as monarch during his coronation ceremony on May 6 — an event that is said to be more “inclusive.”
The scaled-back event will “reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future, while being rooted in long-standing traditions and pageantry,” former BBC correspondent Jennie Bond said in an interview last month.
She added that the coronation is “clearly going to be a big event” and might even be “more enormous than the funeral of the queen in terms of state attendees.” | Royal Families |
CNN — The former King of Greece, Constantine II, has died at the age of 82, CNN affiliate CNN Greece reported on Tuesday. According to CNN Greece, the former King had experienced serious health problems in the past few months and recently contracted coronavirus for the second time, which appeared to have significantly worsened his condition. Constantine first tested positive for Covid-19 in January 2022, after being hospitalized with pneumonia the previous month, CNN Greece reported. Constantine II was born in Psikhikó, near Athens, on June 2, 1940. He spent World War II in exile in South Africa, returning to Greece in 1946. A year later, Constantine became crown prince when Greece’s King George II died and his brother, Paul – Constantine’s father – ascended the throne. Constantine II became King when Paul died on March 6, 1964. That year, he married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark in Athens. They had five children: Prince Pavlos, Princess Alexia, Prince Nikolaos, Princess Theodora and Prince Philippos. After a military coup in 1967, Constantine and his family fled to Rome, and the military regime appointed a regent to take his place. The Greek monarchy was abolished on June 1, 1973, when the military regime proclaimed the country a republic – a decision that was backed by a subsequent referendum. Constantine accepted the abolition after another referendum was conducted by an elected civilian government in 1974. That year, the former King moved from Rome to England, settling in London. In the 2000s, he became a frequent visitor to Greece. Constantine II was the cousin of Britain’s King Charles III and the godfather of Prince William. His sister, Sofia, was Queen of Spain between 1975 and 2014. Constantine will receive a private burial at a former royal estate outside Athens, the Greek government said on Wednesday, according to Reuters. | Royal Families |
Hidden Details in Ancient Egyptian Paintings Revealed With Portable Chemical Imaging
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A new on-site study of portraits decorating the walls of ancient Egyptian tombs has revealed instances where designs were painted over and altered, possibly during subsequent Egyptian dynasties. Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the study suggests that our current model of tomb painting being a highly formalized process may be wrong.
Portable analysis finds changes to portraits of Menna and Ramesses II
This study took place within the tomb chapels of Menna (an overseer during the reign of Amenhotep III, 1391–1353 B.C.) and Nahktamun (chief of the altar in the Ramesseum, circa 1100 B.C.). Both chapels are located in the Theban Necropolis near the river Nile.
Using two portable macro X-ray fluorescence imaging (MA-XRD) guns, the researchers scanned two portraits – one of Menna in the Menna tomb and one of Ramesses II in the Nahktamun tomb. MA-XRD analysis is non-destructive and can penetrate through multiple paint layers, allowing the researchers to create several chemical imaging maps detailing the locations of pigment in the portraits.
By analyzing the locations of each pigment, as well as assessing any differences in composition between pigments, the researchers were able to identify several alterations in the portraits.
The portrait of Menna depicts him and his wife taking part in a rite of adoration for the god Osiris. Here, Menna is posed such that he raises two arms in front of his face. However, a very close visual inspection shows the shape of something else near one of Menna’s arms. From the MA-XRD mapping, the researchers determined that this was a third arm, which appeared to have been painted over with a white surface layer before a new arm was painted at a slightly different angle – though the reason for this overpainting remains unclear.
“From a strictly visual point of view, it has been described as resulting simply from an esthetic issue. However, this is a modern judgment, and it remains rather difficult to justify what we could declare un-esthetic would have appeared to an ancient Egyptian,” the researchers wrote in the new PLOS ONE paper. “The change in the arm’s position is very slight, and it is difficult to say that it really changes anything to the stance of the worshipper.”
Ramesses II given new regalia
MA-XRD analysis of the Ramesses II portrait also revealed that adjustments had been made to the pharaoh’s crown and other royal regalia.
As the researchers explain, this royal portrait previously played a key role in helping to date the age of the Nakhtamun tomb, as it depicts Ramesses II wearing a beard. In this era, the beard would have represented grief, and so could indicate that the young pharaoh was grieving the death of his father. Based on this, the tomb was dated as belonging to Ramesses II’s own reign during the 19th dynasty (1292–1190 B.C.), and the jewelry that Ramesses II appears to be wearing also reflects what was known to be in style during this period.
However, the MA-XRD images appear to show that an alternate style of necklace, more common in the later 20th dynasty, was originally painted around the pharaoh’s neck. This would suggest that the Ramesses portrait was first painted in the style of the 20th dynasty and then repainted to reflect his own 19th dynasty fashion at a later date – possibly for some symbolic or cultural reason.
“The hypothetical re-dating of the tomb to the 20th dynasty, instead of the 19th dynasty and the reign of Ramesses II, could be further strengthened by the rather elongated proportions of the figures in the chapel of Nakhtamun,” the researchers wrote.
Rethinking our perspective on Egyptian paintings
Ancient Egyptian paintings, especially those that would constitute royal iconography, are commonly thought to have been the result of a highly formalized process. Alterations have previously been spotted through visual inspections alone, but these were thought to be very rare among such art.
In light of their discoveries, the researchers behind this latest study have called for further investigation of similar works. Further analysis may also help to shine a light on some of the reasons why alterations have taken place and the timings of any overpainting.
“[. . .] due to the rather opaque quality of the paint layers and the fact that most of the scientific inspections of these works of art have been carried out only through direct visual observation, this may very well be but the tip of the iceberg,” they wrote.
“From a methodological perspective, we have shown that the use of MA-XRF is not limited to experiments in laboratories and museums, but is also possible and highly rewarding in the field,” they added.
Reference: Martinez P, Defeyt C, Elleithy H et al. Hidden mysteries in ancient Egyptian paintings from the Theban Necropolis observed by in-situ XRF mapping. PLOS ONE. 2023;18(7):e0287647. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287647
This article is a rework of a press release issued by PLOS. Material has been edited for length and content. | Art and Culture |
Photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto Has Unveiled His First Major Work in the U.S.: A Towering Sculpture That Pierces the San Francisco Sky
The new landmark will be the crowing glory of Yerba Buena's new Infinity Point Park, opening later this year.
The famous San Francisco skyline has just acquired a new addition. The 69-feet-tall, tapered needle of Point of Infinity: Surface of Revolution with Constant Negative Curvature by Japanese architect and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto sits atop a former water tank on the nearby island of Yerba Buena, and will be visible to all eyes in the surrounding Bay Area.
The mammoth stainless steel sculpture cost $2 million and was installed last month as part of the island’s new hilltop Infinity Point Park that will officially open to the public later this year. It marks Sugimoto’s first major work in the United States, where he has lived and worked since 1970. He was selected from more than 495 other candidates who responded to an open call in 2017.
From the monument’s 23-feet base, it appears to the human eye as though it reaches up forever, piercing the skies above. “The concept of infinity is a human invention,” Sugimoto said of this playful illusion. “It is a paradox. Nonetheless, we pursue it. It is symbolic of humankind’s pursuit of knowledge and innovation.”
Speaking to the artist’s architectural expertise, this effect was achieved thanks to a complex mathematical formula. “A hyperbolic curve that suggests both infinity and eternity: two converging curved lines, getting closer and closer but never meeting, Sugimoto explained in a press statement.
The artist has made his name for a decades-long, highly varied practice that encompasses sculpture, photography, garden design, calligraphy, theater production, and architecture. His works are included in the collections of SFMoMA, the Met, New York’s MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Hirshhorn Museum.
His latest structure echoes the Transamerica Pyramid on the other side of the Gold Gate Bridge and is also reminiscent of the Tower of the Sun, a tall stone sundial that memorably featured in the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. This is only fitting, as its unveiling marks the first stage in establishing the adjunct island and former naval base as a new cultural destination.
Point of Infinity inaugurates a series of new public artworks commissioned by the Treasure Island Arts Program in partnership with the San Francisco Arts Commission. This 20-year initiative is part of the wider redevelopment of Treasure Island, and is funded by a special requirement that one percent of construction costs must be redirected towards public art. The total money raised for this purpose is expected to be as much as $50 million.
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A new bronze sculpture called "The Embrace" meant to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King was blasted by some onlookers as "hideous" after it was unveiled on the grounds of Boston Common over the weekend."The Embrace," featuring two sets of bronze arms locked in a hug, is meant to be a portrayal of the photo taken when MLK, Jr., found out he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. But while some praised the statue as being a "monument of love," many other social media users said it missed the mark. Critics agreed the statue was "horrible," "hideous," "awful," and worse.MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY: 5 SURPRISING FACTS ABOUT THE CIVIL RIGHTS HERO A man reaches to touch a detail of the 20-foot-high bronze sculpture "The Embrace," a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, in the Boston Common, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, in Boston. The sculpture, consisting of four intertwined arms, was inspired by a photo of the Kings embracing when MLK learned he had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. The statue was unveiled during ceremonies Friday, Jan. 13, 2023. (Steven Senne/AP)Amaka Ubaka from 7 News Boston tweeted, "BREAKING: The bronze sculpture called ‘The Embrace’ honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King has just been unveiled on the Boston Common #7news #MLKWeekend #MLKDay2023."Former Pentagon official Amber Smith replied, "This is a horrible sculpture.""Should have been lovely and inspiring - instead it's hideous and depressing," Christina Sommers, a conservative author, tweeted.Conservative rapper Zuby agreed, tweeting, "This is awful."Some shared the actual photograph to express their confusion over why the sculpture removed the couples' heads. "I'm so confused. Why remove the head?!" Obianuju Ekeocha, a pro-life activist, tweeted.Samantha Sheldon, a podcaster, responded, "I actually agree with you. I think a monument of the true image, would have been slightly more honorable. #MLK The full image below would make more sense.""The original photo this inspired was beautiful and perfect. Why not just honor that with a replica instead of this horrible and weirdly sexualized bronze blob… #mlkscultpure #MLK," Shireen Qudosi, a journalist who covers Islam, tweeted. 11/3/1964-Atlanta, GA: Dr Martin Luther King Jr votes as his wife, Coretta Scott King, waits her turn. (Getty Images)Youtuber Jay D. Cartere tweeted, "This is a terrible sculpture. It looks like someone grabbing a thigh. A very different kind of ‘loving emrace’"."Would have been nicer to have it from the arms up. With the heads. It's Odd looking for sure," Jimmy Palmiotti, a writer and producer, wrote.Clean Slate Films, an entertainment company, tweeted, "I'll bet it will look great when they finish it!"Others took their frustration directly out on the artist. The sculpture was created by Hank Willis Thomas, who was selected in a competition by local nonprofit Embrace Boston.Pop culture critic Jacob Airey tweeted, "Wow, they should fire whoever designed that."ALVEDA KING SAYS OF MLK'S ICONIC SPEECH, 57 YEARS LATER: 'WE STILL HAVE A DREAM'The couple met in Boston as students in 1952, and Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech in Boston Common in 1965 after leading thousands of activists in a Civil Rights March. "It’s deeply significant that America’s oldest public park is installing a public monument that is a celebration of the profound role that our city played in the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King," Keith Mahoney, vice president of communications and public affairs at The Boston Foundation, which partnered with Embrace Boston, said of the sculpture, according to Boston University."The work of Embrace Boston will continue after this, and its commitment to equity and to breathing life into a monument that’s a celebration of love is extremely hopeful and represents the dawn of an era of hope for our beloved city," he added. American Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at a rally held at the Robert Taylor Houses in Chicago, Illinois, 1960s. ( Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images)CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPIt's not the first time that the sculpture of a famous figure has caused a commotion. In upstate New York, a statue of Lucille Ball was dubbed "Scary Lucy" because of its jarring features, which locals said did not do the quirky comedian justice. A new statue that appeared to placate critics was later unveiled in Lucille Ball Memorial Park in the western New York village of Celoron by sculptor Carolyn Palmer.The earlier statue's creator, Dave Poulin, said that he received death threats over his creation. He apologized and called his sculpture "unsettling," but his offer to redo it for free was rejected. Cortney O'Brien is an Editor at Fox News. Twitter: @obrienc2 | Art and Culture |
One major name is missing from the line-up of great British architects that students learn have shaped the way that Britain looks. And it is a name with quite a ring to it: Decimus Burton.
Now members of the Decimus Burton Society believe they are about to put that right by establishing this Victorian classical revivalist’s place alongside better known titans such as Christopher Wren, John Nash and Edwin Lutyens. A new museum celebrating his achievements is on the drawing board and awaits approval this spring.
Burton, born in 1800, designed a string of early new towns, including Fleetwood in Lancashire and St Leonards-on-Sea on the south coast, in addition to the grand residential areas around London’s Regents Park and Hyde Park and the world-famous glasshouses at Kew Gardens.
The grandeur of his Wellington Arch, the London landmark that played a central role last year in television coverage of the funeral of the late Queen, only underlines the profile the architect really deserves, say his campaigning admirers.
“Burton was hugely popular but does not have the recognition he should. He was a unique figure because of the long period he spanned and the extreme breadth of his work and influence,” said Paul Avis, an architectural designer and chairman of the appreciation society. Avis is part of a team finalising plans for the museum and study centre dedicated to Burton near to his former home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Burton was the 10th child of architect James Burton – hence his first name – and he studied design under Nash. During his lifetime his creative drive made him well known in England and Ireland, where he designed Dublin’s Phoenix Park. But his reputation dropped off sharply after his death, when many of his drawings, blueprints and documents became separated or lost.
“They are scattered all over the country because Burton gave some of his documents to the Royal Institute of British Architects [RIBA], where he had been vice president, while other papers were moved about or sold off by various institutions,” said Avis. “So our idea is to create a central archive.”
The sudden availability in 2020 of a pair of Burton’s grand villas has allowed the society’s to go forward with its ambition to found a museum and research centre. The two adjoining buildings in the heart of Calverley, the groundbreaking residential quarter Burton designed in 1828 for Tunbridge Wells, are the last intact pair on the terrace. With funding, including a hoped-for grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, they will be opened to the public.
“We don’t want to replace other Burton collections at RIBA or the Victoria & Albert Museum. Instead, we want an information resource at a place where he worked, inside buildings he designed,” said Avis. “He was a great innovator and Tunbridge Wells was of great importance to him. Calverley was set up with villas around a park, and accommodation above parades of shops. Princess Victoria was a patron who donated funds to build the school.”
In March 2022 members of the Burton society were given a year to work on their plan and they are to present it to the council this April.
For Burton’s fans, the lost London Colosseum, a large entertainment hall in the capital that drew on Roman and Greek architecture, remains a ghostly symbol of his unfairly forgotten status. It once stood on the edge of Regents Park and housed the largest drawn panorama of the day. This was a vast urban vista, sketched out by an artist who had positioned himself on the top of St Paul’s Cathedral for the task. Visitors travelled up to various viewing platforms to examine the painted panorama inside the first steam passenger lift.
Burton’s classical architectural influences were unfashionable after his death, when a taste for heavier Gothic revivalism in new buildings took over. But by the 20th century, younger architects were looking again at his innovations, in particular at the modernism of his experimental work with large glass and iron structures, as in the glasshouses of Kew. His supporters hope the museum may see his influence grow once again. | Art and Culture |
The untold stories of Filipino nurses and other migrant workers in Britain is celebrated in a new roving exhibition to mark the 75th anniversary of the NHS.
The Migration Museum is launching its touring exhibition, Heart of the Nation: Migration and the Making of the NHS, at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery on 30 June until 29 October, the first leg of a national tour. The exhibition will go to Leeds in November and to London in 2024.
The immersive media exhibition highlights the “crucial” contributions of migrant workers to the NHS since its creation in 1948, which “have long been ignored”. It features dozens of personal stories contributed by people who have come from all over the world to work at all levels of the NHS from the 1940s to the present day, alongside photography, film, newly commissioned artwork, unique artefacts and historical ephemera.
At the centre of the exhibition is a newly commissioned interactive music and video installation, co-created and performed by seven people currently working in the NHS, exploring themes of care through singing and storytelling.
Healthcare workers from the Philippines and neighbouring countries in south-east Asia are among the many groups featured in the exhibition. More than 22,000 people from the Philippines were working for the NHS at the start of the Covid pandemic, according to a Commons library report, with the country being one of the world’s largest exporters of nurses.
“The story of south-east Asians and Filipinos in the health service hasn’t had the same acknowledgment, and hasn’t been highlighted as much as some of the other stories we’re more familiar with,” said Aditi Anand, the artistic director at the Migration Museum, who curated the exhibition.
“People from those countries have played a really important role, especially more recently, but also going all the way back to the 50s, 60s, and 70s.”
Filipino healthcare workers were particularly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic: the community faced the highest number of staff deaths in the NHS and social care, according to the Filipino Nurses Association, accounting for 22% of all staff deaths.
The stories highlighted in the exhibition, which were collated by Becky Hoh-Hale for the Ingat Ingat project, include those of Henedina Gadong, who came to the UK in 1976 and recalls how her supervisors underestimated her, despite her award-winning career performance; Mariacruz Appleton, who came in 1969 and says she felt like an “ambassador” for the Philippines as people in the UK were unfamiliar with the country; and Mirasol de Guzman, who came in 2000, leaving behind her family while she worked to build a better life for them in the UK.
Anand was particularly moved by Appleton’s story. “The reason the story has stuck with me is because of the incredible photographs and archives; she’s got this picture of her just getting off the plane at Heathrow dressed incredibly stylish, wearing a 1960s shift dress. There’s something about the imagery and being able to see people in all of their personalities, excitement, and the reasons that brought them here,” she said.
“Her story was really interesting because so many people came here to work without often knowing where they were going to be sent. She was a midwife back in the Philippines, but she and one of her midwife friends who came with her were sent to a psychiatric hospital. They went to do challenging mental health nursing, which they [had] never done before.”
Appleton’s experience was one shared by many migrant health workers. “There was such a shortage in nurses and doctors in particular specialities within the NHS that were considered less attractive to British-trained doctors and nurses. They were doing that essential job of filling the gap that existed,” Anand said.
Today, about one in six people working in the NHS has a non-British nationality, while many others are the children and grandchildren of migrant healthcare workers. “We have some idea of migration being an important part of the NHS, but not how central it is. Without migration the NHS really wouldn’t have survived in its early years,” Anand said.
“So much of the British healthcare system had relied on links of Britain’s former empire. We’ve got these amazing sets of photographs in the exhibition that show these medical colleges and institutes of hospitals that were set up by the British in their former colonies where you had training provided in the medical healthcare system of Britain. So it just created these longstanding links that go back hundreds of years.
“Even when these countries gained their independence, decolonised, those links always remained. You had the Nationality Act of 1948, that allowed people to then travel [as] subjects of the British empire and come to Britain. The NHS really can’t be understood without the context of an empire and how it enables the movement of people to come here and work.” | Art and Culture |
MEXICO CITY -- Mezcal is not your ordinary pet. Hundreds of years ago the Latin American Indigenous group, the Nahuas, believed that a hairless dog like him, a Xoloitzcuintle, was a sacred creature who could guide its deceased master through the underworld.
Dozens gathered on a recent day at Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City for a meet-and-greet with Mezcal and three more “Xolos”, as these slender dogs are locally known. The canines were at the art and culture museum as part of an effort to raise awareness about responsible adoption of Xolo puppies and promoting the significance of the breed.
“Can I touch him?” asked a woman working security for the museum, as she nervously brought her hand closer to the dog’s head
“Absolutely! He loves to be petted,” said Mezcal’s owner, Nemiliz Gutiérrez, who leads a project with her sister, promoting the breed to the public.
By reviewing ancient codex and records written after the conquest in 1521, experts have determined the religious relevance of the dogs among Mesoamerican civilizations. That fact isn’t lost on the sisters.
“We are privileged because we have among us some precious jewels of history that are living cultural heritage,” said Gutierrez’s sister, Itzayani, who owns a playful Xolo named Pilón.
Experts found that the Nahuas believed these dogs represented the god, Xólotl, the twin brother of deity Quetzalcóatl. While the latter personified life and light, the former was an effigy of the underworld and death. The Xolo, thought to be a creature capable of moving through the darkness, was conceived as a guide for their owner’s soul after dying, wrote historian Mercedes de la Garza in an article published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Burial sites found by archaeologists in central Mexico show the remains of men and dogs lying side by side, which suggests that Xolos may have been sacrificed during their masters’ funeral rites. It was thought to be a way the living could ensure that when the soul of their loved ones reached the river of the underworld, it could reunite with its dog, mount on his back and cross together.
In the Nahuatl language, “Xolo” means “monster”, and though some dislike the physical appearance of these dogs, many find them fascinating. Mezcal’s hairless skin is dark as a shadow. When touched, it feels soft and warm. His teeth are rarely visible, as Xolos don’t bark much. On the recent day, he posed for pictures like a movie star and leaned his head toward visitors wanting to pet him.
Like his predecessors, Mezcal never loses sight of Gutiérrez, who constantly pats her loving dog.
“Xolos are loyal by nature,” said Gutiérrez. “If one is adopted by a family, it will choose a member to stick with.”
The closeness between Xoloitzcuintles and their owners was also noted by the Nahuas, according to experts. To please the gods, some Xolos were sacrificed in order to spare their masters’ lives.
The dogs were killed in those ceremonies by extracting their hearts. This fact distinguished them from any other animal offered in sacrifice, wrote De la Garza.
The dogs also are a part of modern-day culture in Mexico and beyond. At least a couple of Xoloitzcuintles can be seen in Frida Kahlo’s paintings. A few more appear in portraits where the artist posed with her husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Their love for these pets was shared by friend and art collector Dolores Olmedo, whose home in Mexico City became a museum and until recently took care of a few Xolos that visitors could approach.
In 2016, the capital’s mayor gave the Xoloitzcuintle a cultural heritage designation, and a year later, a charming Xolo named Dante reached world fame after his appearance in animated film “Coco”, which portrayed the adventures of a Mexican boy through the underworld.
Back in San Ildefonso, the Gutiérrez sisters hope more people will come to appreciate the breed’s significance and help it thrive. Once thought by experts to be headed toward extinction, Xolos can be spotted in upper class Mexico City neighborhoods. Nemiliz Gutiérrez adopted Mezcal, but said some breeders sell the dogs for upwards of $3,500.
Not every Xolo is in demand though, especially the variety with fur.
“Almost nobody wants them,” said Gutiérrez, who works with her sister to find caring homes for all Xolos regardless of their coats. Through that process, they enjoy sharing about the breed’s historic significance – when Xolos embodied an endless love believed to transcend death.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. | Art and Culture |
LONDON -- A new exhibition is opening in London to chart for the first time the contributions that Black British culture made to U.K. fashion and design history and to celebrate Black designers who haven't received public recognition.
“The Missing Thread: Untold Stories of Black British Fashion" at central London's Somerset House, which opens Thursday, pays tribute to the influence of Black designers in fashion from the 1970s. But it also spotlights the racism and other barriers they faced in an industry that remains difficult to break into for people of color.
Curators said that the idea of a display celebrating Black fashion and culture has germinated for some time. But it was only after the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of U.S. police — and the global eruption of protests against racial injustice that was triggered — that momentum gathered for a show that also features broader social and political context, such as the rise of anti-immigration sentiment and overt racism in Britain in the 1970s and '80s.
“Even if you have heard of these designers, people have no idea of the trials and tribulations they went through,” said Harris Elliott, one of the exhibition's curators.
The exhibition opens with an entrance made to look like a small house built with colorful measuring tape. Elliott, who created the installation, said that the house symbolized the fragility of hopes and dreams experienced by early Caribbean migrants to the U.K., many of whom were skilled tailors but were ignored once they arrived in Britain.
“You come as a tailor, you end up working in a factory or working on a bus,” Elliott said.
One success story was Bruce Oldfield, the veteran couture designer who worked closely with Princess Diana and, more recently, made Queen Camilla's coronation gown. Oldfield was one of the first visible Black designers in the U.K. in the ‘70s and ’80s, and the exhibition featured a glamorous red silk embroidered dress worn by Diana in 1987.
But Oldfield — who had a Jamaican father — is rarely referenced as a Black designer, and has never championed Black culture.
A big portion of the exhibition is dedicated to the work of Joe Casely-Hayford, a leading Black fashion designer in the ‘80s and ’90s who is largely unknown or forgotten in mainstream fashion history. The designer, who worked with U2, inspired a generation of Black Britons and should have received the same recognition as better-known designers like Paul Smith and Vivienne Westwood, curators said.
Andrew Ibi, another of the show's curators, said that he hoped the exhibition will inspire more young Black people to enter the creative industries.
“If you don't see people like you, well then you don't think you can do that. And that was largely a problem for Black designers at the time,” Ibi said. “We hope this exhibition acts as a legacy for young people who see it and say ‘look at this rich culture, I can do what I want, I can be an artist, photographer, designer.'"
“The Missing Thread” will run until Jan. 7. | Art and Culture |
Whether they're poached, scrambled or fried, everyone has their favourite way of preparing eggs.
But some of the world's most famous artists made use of them in a different manner – by adding them to paint, a study suggests.
The likes of Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, also known as 'Old Master' artists, may have added protein to their oil paintings to overcome issues with humidity, surface wrinkling and yellowing, researchers have discovered.
And while the presence of protein in their masterpieces – which date back more than 500 years – has previously been detected, the reasons why they added the unusual ingredient has remained unknown.
A team led by scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany examined the effects of adding protein in the form of egg yolk to oil paints.
They discovered water uptake from humid environments can be suppressed when the egg proteins formed a thin layer around the particles of paint pigment.
Adding egg yolk was also found to provide stiff paints with strong impasto - being able to layer it on thickly - and prevented wrinkling of the surface during drying.
Antioxidants within the yolk also helped prevent the paint from yellowing when it dried, by slowing the reaction between oxygen and oil.
The team said their findings help improve our understanding of why these artists added protein, such as egg yolk, to their oil paintings.
Examples of this technique being used include Botticelli's 'Lamentation over the Dead Christ', in which Christ's face and feet show evidence of an egg layer build-up.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers said: 'It is usually assumed that traditional Old Masters' oil paints only contain oil as a binding medium, possibly with varying additions of some resins.
'However, proteins have also been detected in oil paints by Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and other Italian Renaissance masters.
'What was the role of these proteins, how and why were they introduced into oil paints?
'The technical knowledge of the Old Masters, how paints had to be prepared, was initially passed down in workshops but is lost today.
'We investigated oil paints with a small amount of added egg yolk to better understand Old Masters' paintings and their techniques.'
They conclude that they were able to show how these artists might have used protein – such as egg yolk – to 'overcome unexpected problems with humidity and produce paint layers stable against wrinkling and oxidative degradation, giving us the opportunity to admire their masterpieces still today.'
The researchers also said their findings may aid the conservation and preservation of some Old Master artwork today. | Art and Culture |
Buzz, Elsa or Gru: Is there a role for pain and violence in children's media?
Whether it's the antics of Tom and Jerry or a boo-boo on Peppa Pig, pain and violence have long been portrayed in children's TV and movies. But how suitable is such content in children's broadcasting?
Talking with fathers and mothers of young children (aged 4 to 6 years), researchers identified two core themes for pain in children's media: 1) that it can amuse and entertain; and 2) that it can provide valuable lessons for children to learn about empathy and emotions.
It's an interesting finding given the long-term debate about maladaptive and distorted experiences of pain in children's shows, says UniSA researcher, Dr. Sarah Wallwork.
"Pain and violence in media are easily accessible to children. It's in cartoons, computer games and the latest blockbuster movies, so it's important for parents to understand how it is portrayed to young children," Dr. Wallwork says.
"In this study, we asked parents how they felt about pain in popular children's TV and movies.
"A lot of parents feel positively about children's media in general and endorse watching screens from a young age. When it came to pain and violence in these media, however, we found that parents shared quite different views.
"Many parents saw pain as comedic or slapstick—exaggerated and used to entertain. This type of pain was very common in media—think Toy Story's Mr. Potato Head losing his body parts and then popping them back in without worry, or the Minions in Despicable Me who are always getting whacked about.
"Others saw comedic pain as problematic because it could potentially desensitize children from pain as well as reduce children's empathy for pain in others.
"Many parents also felt that children's media could provide opportunities for children to learn about their emotions and how to respond appropriately to pain—for example, in Frozen Elsa accidentally strikes and harms Anna with her powers, and we see the concern for her injured sister.
"There are different perspectives of pain in children's media, and of course everyone is an individual. But despite the differences, it's clear that children's broadcasting can provide opportunities for families to connect—whether it's through shared humor, or shared lessons, a parent's support will always help."
More information: Maria Pavlova et al, Portrayals of Pain in Children's Popular Media: Mothers' and Fathers' Beliefs and Attitudes, Frontiers in Pain Research (2022). DOI: 10.3389/fpain.2022.898855
Provided by University of South Australia | Art and Culture |
Archaeologists have discovered 35 miniature gold-foil depictions of Norse gods tucked inside the remnants of a pagan temple in Norway.
The gold foils, which are flat and as thin as a piece of paper, contain etched motifs depicting the god Frøy and the goddess Gerd and date to the Merovingian period in Norway, which began in 550 and continued into the Viking Age, according to Science Norway. The foils may have been used as sacrificial offerings.
The gold pieces lack holes, so it's unlikely that they were worn as jewelry. The first gold foils were discovered in Scandinavia in 1725 and were eventually labeled as "gullglubber," which translates to "golden old men."
"This is a very special find," Kathrine Stene, the archaeologist who led the excavation this summer, told Live Science. "Each foil is quite small and measures about the size of a fingernail."
Several of the roughly three dozen gold foils were packed inside postholes that once contained support beams for the building in Hov, a village in southern Norway, while others were found where the structure's walls once stood.
Archaeologists originally discovered the small building back in 1993 along with two gold foils. Additional excavations in the 2000s revealed 28 more gold pieces.
Although similar foils have been found in Norway and across Scandinavia — including in similar pagan buildings in Bornholm, Denmark, and Uppåkra, Sweden — this is the first time that archaeologists have discovered the foils in a smaller structure.
"But more of these small pieces of gold keep appearing," Ingunn Marit Røstad, an archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, told Science Norway. "Either through excavation or with metal detectors. So, more could pop up in various places in Norway as well."
During a separate excavation, archaeologists discovered 30 similar foils elsewhere in Hov.
"Normally we find these in special buildings that were once used for religious purposes," Stene said. "We were surprised to find them in such a small building."
By looking at the postholes, researchers could measure the structure's footprint and determined that it was roughly 49 feet (15 meters) in length. In comparison, most homes during that time period were between 66 and 98 feet (20 to 30 m) long.
There's been some speculation about how the foils got there. While some researchers have suggested the gold pieces were used as an admission fee to enter the building, Stene said it's more likely that the foils were placed there during construction.
"Based on where we found them where the walls once stood and inside the postholes, they couldn't have been used as tickets to enter into the building," Stene said. "It's more likely that they were used as more of a sacrifice so that this special building would have a good life.
"We're happy that we found them," she added. "This was considered a sacred place to pagans."
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Jennifer Nalewicki is a Salt Lake City-based journalist whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics and more. She covers several science topics from planet Earth to paleontology and archaeology to health and culture. Prior to freelancing, Jennifer held an Editor role at Time Inc. Jennifer has a bachelor's degree in Journalism from The University of Texas at Austin. | Art and Culture |
The year 2023 marks the 35th anniversary of the Harvey Awards, one of the most prestigious ceremonies in comics—and a celebration of the myriad forms they’ve inspired across the world and across mediums. To mark the occasion, io9 has teamed up with the organization to lift the lid on this year’s nominees, ahead of the annual gala and award ceremony at New York Comic Con.
“The Harvey Awards continues to distinguish itself by honoring the unique talents required to create the very best graphic novels,” Harvey Awards co-chair John Lind said in a press release provided to io9. “This year is especially impressive given the range of diversity among authors, illustrators, and content being created in the field and we are thrilled to recognize these accomplishments.”
“The candidates for this year’s Harvey Awards represent the amazing spectrum of excellence in the comics field,” co-chair Nellie Kurtzman added. “We can’t wait to honor the creators who filled these past 12 months with such magnificent reading.”
Highlights from this year’s nominees include Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands for Book of the Year; Lore Olympus, the wildly popular webseries by Rachel Smythe, up for Digital Book of the Year; and a stacked Best Manga category—including two nods for Tatsuki Fujimoto and translator Amanda Haley for both Chainsaw Man and Goodbye, Eri. Beyond the realm of books and into adaptations, Marvel and DC dominate the Best Adaptation from Comic Book/Graphic Novel category with the likes of The Sandman, She-Hulk, Sweet Tooth, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse all getting nods alongside the likes of Nimona, Wednesday, and more. Check out the full list of nominees for Book and Digital Book of the Year, Best Children’s or Young Adult Book, Best Manga, Best International Book, and Best Adaptation from Comic Book/Graphic Novel below, making their debut here on io9!
• Acting Class by Nick Drnaso (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Follow Me Down: A Reckless Book by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips (Image Comics)
• Girl Juice by Benji Nate (Drawn and Quarterly)
• It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood (Image Comics)
• Little Monsters Vol. 1 by Jeff Lemire & Dustin Nguyen (Image Comics)
• The Man in the McIntosh Suit by Rina Ayuyang (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Mimosa by Archie Bongiovanni (Abrams ComicArts/Surely)
• Public Domain Vol. 1 by Chip Zdarsky (Image Comics)
• Who Will Make The Pancakes by Megan Kelso (Fantagraphics)
• Barnstormers by Scott Snyder and Tula Lotay (Comixology Originals)
• Deeply Dave by Grover
• Everything is Fine by Mike Birchall
• Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe
• Ripple Effects by Jordan Hart, Bruno Chiroleu, Justin Harder, and Shane Kadlecik
• Clementine Fox and the Great Island Adventure by Leigh Luna (Graphix/Scholastic)
• Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Club: Roll Call by Molly Knox Ostertag and Xanthe Bouma (HarperAlley)
• Frizzy by Claribel A. Ortega and Rose Bousamra (First Second)
• Hungry Ghost by Victoria Ying (First Second)
• In Limbo: A Graphic Memoir by Deb JJ Lee (First Second)
• Northranger by Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo (HarperAlley)
• Cat + Gamer by Wataru Nadatani, translated by Zack Davisson (Dark Horse Manga)
• Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto, translated by Amanda Haley (VIZ Media)
• Goodbye, Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto, translated by Amanda Haley (VIZ Media)
• Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki, translated by Alex Dudok de Wit (First Second)
• Spy x Family by Tatsuya Endo, translated by Casey Loe (VIZ Media)
• Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War by Gaspard Talmasse, translated by Nanette McGuinness (Life Drawn)
• Always Never by Jordi Lafebre and Clemence Sapin, translated by Montana Kane (Dark Horse Books)
• Ashes by Álvaro Ortiz, translated by Eva Ibarzabal (Top Shelf Productions)
• Blacksad: They All Fall Down Part 1 by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, translated by Diana Schutz and Brandon Kander (Dark Horse Books)
• The Extraordinary Part: Book One: Orsay’s Hands by Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot, translated by M.B. Valente (Fantagraphics)
• Tiki: A Very Ruff Year by David Azencot, Fred Leclerc and Lucie Firou, translated by Nanette McGuinness (Life Drawn)
• American Born Chinese (Disney+), based on American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (First Second)
• Drops of God (Apple TV+), based on Drops of God by Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto (Vertical)
• Moon Knight (Disney+), based on Moon Knight (Marvel Comics)
• Nimona (Netflix), directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, based on Nimona by ND Stevenson (Quill Tree Books)
• The Sandman (Netflix), based on The Sandman (DC Comics)
• She-Hulk (Disney+) based on She-Hulk (Marvel Comics)
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, based on Spider-Man (Marvel Comics)
• The Stuff of Legend - The Board Game, based on The Stuff of Legend by Mike Raicht Brian Smith and Charles Paul Wilson III (Th3rd World Studios)
• Sweet Tooth Season 2 (Netflix) based on Sweet Tooth by Jeff Lemire (DC Comics)
• Wednesday (Netflix), based on The Addams Family by Charles Addams
The Harvey Awards Gala will take place at New York Comic Con, which runs this year from October 12-15. More details about the ceremony and the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame nominees will be revealed at a later date.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. | Art and Culture |
PARIS -- Behind some great men, there is a bigger brother.
Claude Monet’s older sibling is the focus of a landmark Paris exhibit illuminating the hitherto unknown role Leon Monet played in the French impressionist painter’s life and art. Leon — a color chemist four years his senior -- is now understood to have been critical in the emergence of Monet’s commercial success as well as the famed color palette that created masterpieces like the “Water Lilies” series.
“It’s never been known before, but without Leon there would not have really been a Monet — the artist the world knows today,” said Geraldine Lefebvre, exhibit curator at the Musee du Luxembourg.
“His rich big brother supported him in the first period of his life when he had no money or clients and was starving," she said. “But more than that. The vivid palette Monet was famous for came from the synthetic textile dye colors Leon created” in the town of Rouen — site of some of Claude's best-known paintings.
The groundbreaking exhibit is the fruit of years of investigation by Lefebvre, who visited Monet’s great-grandchildren, studied family albums and brought to light a masterly portrait of Leon by Claude that Leon hid away in a dusty private collection and has never before been seen by the public. The 1874 painting shows Leon with a black suit, stern expression and red — almost wine-flushed — cheeks.
The exhibit dispels a long-held view that Claude and his older brother were estranged.
“Historians always thought the two brothers had nothing to do with each other. It was assumed because there are no photographs of Claude and Leon together, and no correspondence. In reality, they were incredibly close throughout their life,” Lefebvre said.
The brothers had an argument in the early 1900s and that may explain why no direct traces of the relationship exist. “Maybe Leon got rid of the traces, maybe it was Claude. Maybe it was jealousy. We will never know. It is a mystery,” Lefebvre said.
What is now known is that Leon would wine and dine his younger brother, introduce him to other artists, give him money, and patronize his art — buying it up at auction at high prices to boost his reputation.
“One of the problems was because they shared the surname it seemed like (Claude) Monet was buying back his own pictures. But it was Leon,” said professor Frances Fowle, senior curator of French art at the National Galleries of Scotland.
“This exhibit is important as it throws light on Leon Monet, who up until now has been an invisible figure. It also reveals the wider network at work. Leon was a key figure,” Fowle added.
Leon’s influence went beyond his brother: He financially supported other impressionists such as Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley — some of whom would connect around his dinner table in Rouen, where the wine would flow freely. Claude followed his brother to Rouen, where he painted his Rouen cathedral masterpieces.
Monet also worked for his older brother as a color assistant, a pivotal moment not only in his life — but possibly in the emergence of impressionism as we know it.
Leon would dissolve carbon to create a chemical called aniline, which created incredible synthetic colors that natural pigments couldn't compete with. One of the earlier examples of Leon’s color filtering down into Monet’s art is from an 1860s illustration — before he was famous — that is featured in the exhibit. Monet drew his future wife Camille in a dress with an eye-popping green that had never been seen before.
“The French press coined the term ‘Monet green,’” Lefebvre said, adding that journalists were initially mocking of it. “At the time, they said he would make a good dye artist.”
However, both Monets had the last laugh.
Claude Monet founded impressionism — a term coined from his 1872 painting “Impression, Sunrise” — to become one of the most celebrated painters of the last two centuries. And by impressionism's height at the end of the 19th century, an incredible “80% of all impressionists’ work” used the synthetic colors borrowed from Leon, according to Lefebvre.
These synthetic hues, which were cutting edge at the time, enabled members of the group to depict the fleeting impression of the moment with shifting colors and luminosity.
“Who knows the exact extent of the impact Leon had on the movement?" Lefebvre said with a shy smile. “But it was extraordinary.”
“Leon Monet. Brother of the artist and collector” runs at the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris from March 15 until July 16. | Art and Culture |
Harry Styles, some might argue, belongs in a museum. A masterpiece! A work of art. A rare artifact to be studied and celebrated. And now in a museum he shall be, the celebrated pop artist depicted by one of the most celebrated pop art figures: David Hockney painted Styles’ portrait, and it will be displayed in an upcoming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in the U.K.
Hockney’s exhibit, “Drawing From Life,” is set to open in November, and is actually the second iteration of the show. The first was on display for only 20 days in 2020, before COVID-19 forced quarantines and shutdowns, leaving the art in the dark, behind locked doors.
Styles is a bonafide Hockney fanboy—when he was photographed for Vogue in 2020, he wore a pair of Bode cords, hand-painted with symbols that were important to him, a depiction of Hockney among them. Legendary producer Clive Davis is the one who suggested to Hockney, while sitting for his own portrait, that he paint Styles, Hockney told Vogue.
“Clive told me about Harry’s new album, and JP [Hockney’s studio assistant] sent Harry a note and asked him if he’d like to come to my studio and sit for his portrait,” Hockney said. “He replied straight away and said, yes, he’d love to.”
Hockney wasn’t familiar with Styles before the performer came to sit for him over a few days in May 2022, resulting in a playful portrait where Styles wears an orange and yellow striped cardigan, jeans, and a demure string of pearls. “Now I know Harry’s a celebrity, though: I’ve seen all his music videos.”
As expected for a Hockney fan, Styles was more than thrilled to be captured by the artist.
“David Hockney has been reinventing the way we look at the world for decades,” he told Vogue. “It was a complete privilege to be painted by him.” He called Hockney “the man with enough one-liners for a lifetime.”
Though the portraits of celebrities like Styles and Davis will be on display in the exhibition, Hockney, now 86 years old, just as frequently chooses to paint family members and others in his inner circle. If you stop by the exhibition, you’ll be able to meet (in portrait form, at least), as Hockney describes him, “the dandy who cuts my toenails.” | Art and Culture |
When Childish Gambino’s song This s America was first released in 2018, its elaborately choreographed and racially loaded film clip inspired a storm of speculation as people tried to decode what likely became the most talked-about music video of all time. Which of the dance moves were based on Jim Crow caricatures? Is the shooting of the gospel choir a rejection of spiritual upliftment? Is the last shot a reference to Get Out? And just what did the galloping horse mean?Then remakes began to stream in from around the world. This Is Iraq, This Is Sierra Leone, This Is Nigeria, This Is Barbados, This Is Malaysia: all tackling racial injustice, human rights abuses, political hypocrisy and greed through dance and song.Now Marrugeku, Australia’s leading First Nations dance company, has put together This Is Australia: a searing indictment of the country’s treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, refugees and migrants. Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Like Childish Gambino’s video, Marrugeku’s take is packed with references familiar to Australians with one eye on the news – a man with a spit hood over his head, an overly-familiar white reporter, refugees holding signs, heavily armed police. The song, lead by Noongar rapper Beni Bjah, opens: “We just want a barbie / Crack a can or two / Put upon your thongs / Aussie day is due / Oh, lest we forget / The footy’s on tonight / Can’t you just get over it / You know she’ll be right.”“It’s is a different process to writing an original song, to having a blank canvas,” Bjah says. “But having Childish Gambino’s version to go off actually helped – This Is America had already inspired me so much, all these ideas just popped in my head. We could have probably written three or four songs.”Marrugeku’s co-artistic directors Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain had the idea years ago, while brainstorming a work that would tackle First Nations incarceration rates and Australia’s treatment of refugees. That work would become Marrugeku’s latest show, Jurrungu Ngan-ga (Straight Talk), which heads to Adelaide Festival in March.At the time, then prime minister Scott Morrison was announcing a $7m plan for a “re-enactment” of James Cook’s journey on the HMS Endeavour that would circumnavigate Australia, despite the fact that Cook never did that. (It was later scrapped due to the pandemic.) When Black Lives Matter protests began a few months later after the murder of George Floyd in the US, suddenly Australia was engaged in a national debate around toppling statues celebrating figures such as Cook.“We were thinking, how do we respond to all of this?” says Pigram. “And this was it. [Marrugeku] worked on the choreography, while Beni crafted up those amazing lyrics that hit hard in the heart.”Glover’s opening dance, as a twitching caricature, inspired Pigram to think of an Australian equivalent. “We were trying to think of the kind of stereotypical dance that people imagine Aboriginal people doing – the kangaroo, and shaking shoulders,” she says. “[Dancer] Luke Currie-Richardson is doing it with style, but it is kind of cheeky.”Halfway through, the song is interrupted by a wailing cry, sung by Marrugeku’s Emmanuel James Brown, over a shot of a triumphant Cook figure standing on a boat. This is a grieving response to the valourisation of Australia’s colonisers – a reminder of the pain they left behind, Pigram says: “We talk about melting statues down, when these statues are melting people down.”The project sat in stasis during the pandemic, until stars aligned: Marrugeku was touring Jurrungu Ngan-ga around the Kimberley just as the Western Australia border re-opened and all the company’s dancers were in the same space for the first time in a long time.Marrugeku and Bjah reunited on a sweltering day at Fitzroy Crossing, on Bunuba country, to record the video. Childish Gambino’s clip features several long, meticulously choreographed takes, and Marrugeku filmed roughly seven takes of every shot. “Multiple takes for anything a couple of minutes long is a lot work,” Bjah says. “But the dancers were so on point, they brought me up to their level. I felt the pressure because I didn’t want to make them keep running through it on a hot day.”While Marrugeku’s shows like Jurrungu Ngan-ga earn rave reviews from those with the opportunity to see them, Pigram and Bjah hope people around the world who can’t will watch This Is Australia, and better understand the unique challenges facing Australia’s First Nations peoples, migrants and refugees.“When we make a show for a theatre, we’re making the show that some people can never access – people who are incarcerated, on prison islands, in detention centres,” Pigram says. “So this is how we get to them, and to people all across the world.”“Australia has a fear of the unknown,” Bjah says. “What we don’t understand, we want to lock up or send home. And we’re the most multicultural country in the world.” | Art and Culture |
While modest, this simple table has a special secret—the artisans who crafted it lived more than 400 years ago.
The rare rosewood table, standing 31 inches (79cm) tall was made around 1,600CE during the Ming Dynasty. Known colloquially for their vases and porcelain, there was nothing the Ming Dynasty artisans couldn’t craft.
British Auctioneer, antiquities expert, and occasional television presenter Charles Hanson discovered the remarkable piece in a country home in Derby.
Reports place its value at between $70,000 and $100,000 but is likely to spark a bidding war at Hanson’s Auctioneers in October.
“Hanson’s Asian works of art consultant Adam Schoon has dated the table to around 1,600,” said Hanson, referring to the piece as a Banzhou side table. “To put that into historical context, that was the end of the Tudor period in England and Wales.”
“It is a work of art. It was crafted during the Ming Dynasty period which dates back to 1,368 – 1,644. Its simplicity defines modern style.”
Mr. Schoon was able to give Hanson a rich background in the use of the table, which thanks in no small part to the Chinese civilization’s immaculate record keeping, will give any potential bidders the complete history of its use.
Made of fine huanghuali wood, the unique floating panel construction is supported by three dovetail transverse stretchers underneath.
“Items like this are mentioned in 16th-century Chinese novels about life in grand houses. Its design has been seen in wall murals relating to the Jinyuan Dynasties [sic] of 1,115-1,368,” said Hanson, referring to the two dynasties preceding the Ming.
“Banzhuo literally means ‘half table’ and is so-called for its size, which is half that of an ‘eight immortals table,'” he continued. “The banzhuo was mainly used for serving wine and food and is also sometimes referred to as a jiezhuo, meaning extension table.”
“The simplicity of its construction is impressive too. It has mortise and tenon joints, which have been used by woodworkers around the world for thousands of years.”
The sellers inherited it from a relative who was an avid collector of Asian artifacts and was genuine ‘head-over-heels for anything Asian.’
Emperor Longqing lifted a ban on maritime trade which allowed huanghuali, a tropical hardwood, to be imported from Southeast Asia.
Due to the wood coming from slow-growing, small trees, the availability of furniture made from it is extremely rare.
“The wood itself is a thing of beauty. Its dense, beautifully-figured grain displays a broad range of colors from pale honey to rich mahogany,” Hanson continued. “It polishes to a translucent golden sheen. The finest huanghuali has a translucent shimmering surface with abstract patterns.”
“Today huanghuali furniture is in demand at auction. It appeals to wealthy collectors from the Far East due to its elegance and historical significance because they’re keen to repatriate works of art to their homeland to celebrate and honor their culture.”
SHARE This Story With Any Antique Hunters You Know… | Art and Culture |
Sir Billy Connolly has unveiled four new artworks for sale.
The much-loved Scottish comedian, 80, has been a keen artist since 2012, and has unveiled the new drawings through the Castle Fine Art gallery.
The pieces have been launched through his Born on a Rainy Day art series and are being sold for £1,250 each - though they can be bought as a set for £4,500 framed or £3,300 unframed.
The pieces are named Pontius Tries Pilates, One Armed Juggler, Nightmare and Drunk Donkey.
"The Big Yin" said he always wanted to give Pontius Pilate a "keep-fit name", adding the idea came to him when his wife joined a pilates gym.
He added: "I said it would be funny to call it Pontius Pilates, then I thought people would be offended by that, so I fiddled around and I got Pontius Tries Pilates.
"He's just a guy trying at the gym, trying his best. I don't understand the whole gymnasium culture, but he does and he's good."
On his One Armed Juggler drawing, Sir Billy said: "He's an example of the fact that most of the figures in my work are doing things that don't matter. Just doing the things they do, thinking they'll do you good - I've spent my life doing that."
He added: "You see guys in their 60s out running in the evening and you think: 'Get a chair. Get a chair and a bottle of beer and switch on the telly; who are you kidding?'.
"But all my guys are doing that, they're trying to be part of it wherever 'it' is."
The Nightmare piece is inspired by Sir Billy's own bad dreams, which he says he never really remembers upon waking up.
He said: "But I'm famous for shouting in the night and singing and laughing; my daughter has seen me; I've never remembered it.
"And I was directing a play in my sleep. I was talking to the actors and then I would become the actors, singing songs."
His Drunk Donkey piece hearkens back to his earlier days when he lived in Scotland.
He owned two donkeys who he says he would let "wander about the place eating grass".
The comedian says the animals are "lovely" and "friendly", comparing them to dogs.
He added: "They cling to you, they've got a real tie to human beings. Donkeys are funny animals but it's an endearing kind of funny.
"Our donkeys used to escape over the wall of the garden, run down to the village and the villagers would bring them back.
"Donkeys always look drunk and behave drunk. This one's a friendly looking guy and I think he's been drunk a few times because he's got a beer belly on him. And he's got the drunk legs."
Read more:
Klimt portrait becomes most expensive artwork auctioned in Europe
Solo Banksy exhibition to be held at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art
Sir Billy was first inspired to start drawing while on tour in Canada.
He said: "I'd never drawn in my life until this point, but I just started drawing weird islands and carried on drawing.
"I asked my wife to tell me if they were getting better and she said 'definitely'.
"My manager sent them to the gallery, and now I make pictures and they're lovely to me.
"And the fact that other people like them and want to live with them in their homes blows me sideways.
"To have somebody who wants a part of your mind in their life - I thought my wife had been the only one to fall for that, but it turns out that she's not alone." | Art and Culture |
All About America explores American culture, politics, trends, history, ideals and places of interest.
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK — Almost since its founding, the United States has incorporated artwork into federal spaces. The U.S. Capitol, with its domed ceiling, murals and ornamented doors is a prime example. The iconic Washington Monument, begun in 1848 and finally completed in 1888, was commissioned by the U.S. government.
Today, about one-half of 1% of the budget for a new federal building goes toward commissioning artists to create original pieces for that particular structure.
“It allows creative voices to be part of the whole American dialogue,” says Jennifer Gibson, director of the Center for Fine Arts at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), the government agency that oversees federal buildings. “It's a record of our past, and it creates a dynamic presence in towns and cities and border stations across the country.”
Artists join a GSA registry to be considered for a project. The commissions are decided by a panel that includes tenant representatives, the lead architect, community members and arts professionals, as well as the GSA. The artists are given details about the building project and asked to come up with an artwork they think is best suited for the space.
“I think, in a way, it shows the plurality of who we are. And the artists represent so many different communities, so many different backgrounds,” Gibson says. “And I think that's one of the glories of it. That as a nation, we are open to all of these different ways of understanding ourselves.”
New York artist James Carpenter created two artworks for federal buildings. The first, installed in 2000, is a glass-and-aluminum lens ceiling for a courtroom at the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona. The second is a sculpture of suspended light pillars, using aluminum and stainless steel, which was installed at the Orrin G. Hatch U.S. Courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2014.
“My work is really about how to enhance or influence, in a very positive way, people's experience of spaces, primarily through the introduction of light and manipulating light and presenting light in a way that's perhaps highly unusual,” Carpenter says.
"It's about bringing the building alive or trying to make the building really be responsive to its context.”
The process, from selection to installation, can take several years. Carpenter says the Salt Lake City project took a total of 12 years. In addition to potentially being time-consuming, working with the GSA isn’t always as profitable as selling to the private sector, especially for artists in the prime of their careers. Gibson has seen artist commissions that range from $50,000 to $1 million. But the decision to work on government art projects doesn’t always come down to money.
“They're looking at it as a way to participate in what's going on in the nation and to be part of its history,” Gibson says. “This is for the nation. This is permanent. We will take care of it. And it's your way to participate.”
For Carpenter, who has worked on numerous projects for both public and private sector clients, other factors impacted his decision to work with the GSA.
“It's not like doing a commercial building, where every moment and every dollar is so critical and getting in the way. I think, with the GSA, everybody has really the same goal of building the highest-quality buildings possible,” he says.
"The buildings can be here 100 years, 150 years. It's all about longevity, durability. … The GSA is really trying to do something of exceptional quality, and something that really speaks to people using the buildings as an exceptional moment in their daily life.”
Today, the GSA follows guiding principles for federal architecture set back in the 1960s during the John F. Kennedy administration. A presidential committee stated that, "Where appropriate, fine art should be incorporated into the designs of federal buildings with emphasis on the work of living American artists."
These specially commissioned pieces, which can be found in 428 public buildings across the country, make up only a fraction of the GSA’s fine art collection, which contains 26,712 art pieces, including some pieces that date back to the 1850s.
The majority of artworks in the collection are paintings created during the New Deal era in the 1930s and early 1940s, when the government employed salaried artists. More than 23,000 pieces are on loan to 225 institutions, including museums, universities, libraries and public schools across the country.
Gibson and her colleagues are charged with keeping track of the far-flung collection.
In the 1990s, the Office of the Inspector General — which fights waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government — told the GSA to keep a record of the artworks, which are government property. Getting an official count, including identifying, locating and recovering New-Deal-era artworks, is an ongoing process.
“They were just hanging on the walls and offices. … Sometimes, people didn't like it. Or they redecorated, and they threw it in the trash. And years later, some of these things start to appear online and [on] websites at various auction houses,” Gibson says. “People saw them as decoration. They didn't see them as part of this whole legacy of federal art, and somebody would retire and they'd say, ‘Oh, she loved that artwork. Let's give it to her for as her retirement present.’”
The GSA collection is a treasure trove that belongs to the American people. The government doesn’t sell artwork in its possession, so it has no market value. However, as a record of the history of American culture, the collection could be considered priceless. | Art and Culture |
The art collection of Paul Allen, the late co-founder of Microsoft, fetched more than $1.5 billion at Christie's New York on Wednesday night, making it the most valuable single-owner art collection ever to be sold at auction.The auction -- the first of two sales of Allen's art -- exceeded the record $922 million private art collection brought in earlier this year by real estate developer Harry Macklowe and his former spouse Linda Macklowe.Several of the lots offered from Allen's collection surpassed $100 million, achieving record auction prices for their artists. Georges Seurat's Les Poseuses Ensemble, the most valuable artwork sold during the auction so far, fetched $149.24 million. Paul Cézanne's La Montagne Sainte-Victoire sold for $137.8 million, while Vincent Van Gogh's Verger avec cyprès sold for $117.2 million and Paul Gauguin's Paul Gauguin's 1899 oil on burlap Maternité II, sold for $105.7 million.The artwork, along with another 95 pieces to be auctioned on Thursday, are part of more than 150 paintings spanning several centuries that Allen collected over several decades. In addition to being a tech pioneer and philanthropist, Allen was passionate about art and culture, gaining a reputation as a serious art collector after leaving Microsoft in 1983. Allen died in 2018 at 65 of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In addition to masterpieces by Renoir and Monet, other artists represented in Allen's wide-ranging collection include Picasso, Botticelli and Jan Brueghel, as well as more contemporary artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Edward Hopper and David Hockney.The proceeds from the sale will go to charity, in accordance with Allen's wishes. During his lifetime, Allen donated more than $2 billion to charitable causes. | Art and Culture |
Australia’s vast wildernesses are famous for many things, but rock art, specifically one of the largest concentrations of rock art known in the world, isn’t typically one of them.
West Arnhem Land in the Queensland Peninsula hosts an incredible painted record of Man’s relation to his planet, its changes, challenges, and bounty, but a completely new rock art style covering 4,000 years of history shows Aboriginal Australians adapting to the transformation of Arnhem land into the lush riverine environment it is today.
The total collection of painted rock art in West Arnhem Land has been dated to a span of 30,000 years, stretching from just a few centuries ago to back within the last ice age. However, the period between 8,000 BCE and 4,000 BCE was seemingly absent from the variety of images painted onto the sandstone.
Now, the Bininj, Mawng, and Amurdak Aboriginal people teamed up with archaeologists led by Paul Tacon of Griffith University to finally isolate the works from this hidden period. They show a land in flux, where sea level rise meant the coasts retreated backward 150 feet per year, where mangrove forests came to dominate the near-shore landscape, and increased rainfall fed already swollen rivers.
Using the local Mawng People’s language, one of Tacon’s Bininj Aboriginal collaborators has dubbed the new rock art style the Maliwawa Style. After 8 years of field surveying and work, the team has documented 572 Maliwawa paintings and is ready to share their story with the world.
“It was really exciting to find previously undocumented shelters with lots of Maliwawa figures on walls and ceilings, sometimes in scenes,” Tacon told Archaeology Magazine, where a reader can read their feature piece on the topic. “When we saw these paintings for the first time, there was a rush of adrenaline, much excitement, cheering, and lots of shouts to each other.”
16,000 years ago, paintings were simply images of animals, while 5,000 years later the style shifts to one depicting humans interacting with animals and the landscape with tools. Then there’s the 4 millenium gap recently filled by the Maliwawa Style, before Aborigines began using unique floral motifs around 4,000 years ago, and practicing anatomical drawings 2,000 years after that.
Maliwawa Style figures showcase people in dreamlike floating poses. Metamorphoses are common, with humans taking on the shapes of animals—like a kangaroo head. Furthermore, the interplay between human and animal is more intimate than any other style.
They also depict evidence of a changing climate, with the first-ever painting of a dugong found anywhere on Earth. Many snakes and reptiles are shown, perhaps because their burrows were being flooded routinely.
Unlike the other rock art styles in Arnhem Land that portray the world through human eyes, Tacon and his Aboriginal collaborators find that animals are often the storytellers in Maliwawa art. Their hypothesis is that it was the ancients’ way of showing the degree to which every form of life was impacted by the dampening of their land.
There’s also significant variation in the Maliwawa works.
“Populations were becoming more regionally distinct, and this can be seen in the rock art across West Arnhem Land,” Tacon told Matt Stirn, writing in Archaeology Magazine. “The emergence of a few regionally distinct styles of rock art in northern Australia, including the Maliwawa Style, reflects this.”
While working alongside the Aborigines, Tacon was able to benefit from a “two-toolbox” approach, that showed how the more dramatic Maliwawa depictions are showing the “Dreaming”—the Bininj creation story when the world was made and spirits passed on information through art.
“Some Maliwawa Style scenes seem to depict important Dreaming creation stories that are still important today,” says Tacon, “and aspects of the style, such as the back-to-back figures, are still painted in the context of important spirit beings. So the Maliwawa Style figures highlight long-term connections not only to the land, but also to the origin of key creation stories in a time of great change.”
The 21st century has seen some of the largest advances in the study of rock art in modern history. Large works, such as the so-called “Sistine Chapel of the Ancients” or the Pecos River Style, which is now being recognized as the “oldest book in North America,” show a level of community organization and depth of knowledge and theology long thought absence in hunter-gatherer society.
SHARE These Stunning Images With Your Friends… | Art and Culture |
Sports have a long history of inspiring art.
There's the Boxer at Rest, in the National Museum of Rome. It's more than 2,000 years old. Residing in The British Museum is the Townley Diskobolos, a Greek statue depicting a discus thrower -- that's even older.
There are paintings and sculptures of wrestling, fox hunts, foot races, chariot races and on and on.
"The human body is a profound and complex source of inspiration," visual artist and architectural designer Maurice Casas told ESPN. "It serves as a reminder of who we are. The human body is a shell packed with the attributes, complexities and anxieties of our humanity that at some point have a need to be expressed."
That combination of artistic expression and sports is combined into one popular social media feed: Art But Make It Sports (@ArtButSports).
"I like viewing art through a sports lens," LJ Rader, the creator behind the account, told ESPN.
The fine art meme-making comes from a person who doesn't have an art history background or education, but "a fan who has spent significant time digging deep into artists and different styles and motifs within the art space."
His work was on full display throughout the NFL playoffs, including Super Bowl LVII between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. From Raphael to Rubens, here's the story of the postseason through paintings.
The divine Patrick Mahomes
Mahomes suffered a high ankle injury in the AFC divisional round against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The injury usually requires a recovery time of 4-6 weeks. Mahomes missed a single series. Often hobbling, he threw for 508 yards and five scores in the two games following the injury while winning Super Bowl MVP honors. Some might call that miraculous.
"Whoever is capturing the image in sports does similar things to what a titan does, where you want to elicit a reaction," Rader said. "You want to show the beauty and movement of an athlete the same way you might want to show the beauty and movement of a religious scene."
Rader chose three different paintings featuring Jesus Christ for his posts about Mahomes.
Brera Pietà, by Giovanni Bellini, 1460, 📸 of @PatrickMahomes via @ClayWendler pic.twitter.com/P2FJcpXl7L— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) January 22, 2023
The Resurrection of Christ, by Workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, 16th century, 📸 by Jack Dempsey pic.twitter.com/lFQ2RHk8wY— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) February 13, 2023
Hang these plays in the Louvre
Art But Make It Sports began in 2015. Its database of world class paintings is often the extent of the pictures on Rader's phone. He has pictures of around 7,500 paintings from museums he has visited around the world. Rader said he has tried to memorize what's in his photo archive so that he is ready when a play or moment in a game happens.
"There's a sports image that happens in a game and I either know exactly, off the top of my head, the [artwork] is something I've taken a photo of or seen," Rader said. "I can tell what it might look like, what art history motif it might be ...or start to think about what artist's style that might be."
High Renaissance and Baroque were his themes for the NFL playoffs. Britannica describes Baroque as "stylistically complex, even contradictory. In general, however, the desire to evoke emotional states by appealing to the senses, often in dramatic ways, underlies its manifestations."
Battling styles? Emotions and drama? Surely a Baroque artist would love postseason sports. However, while Raphael's work is known for its grandeur and what Britannica calls a classical spirit that is "harmonious, beautiful and serene," Cincinnati Bengals Joe Burrow, featured next to the painter's "Fire In The Borgo," might not agree.
The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, after Jusepe de Ribera, 1620-26, 📸 via @NFLonFOX pic.twitter.com/42eCSEvd2a— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) January 29, 2023
Creation of the Animals, by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1551-52 https://t.co/NgUae4CiVQ pic.twitter.com/pTd1uSaHDG— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) January 15, 2023
French Neoclassical painter Jacques Louis-David's work was used for two other plays from the AFC playoffs. Some memes don't always tell the whole story. Baltimore Ravens QB Tyler Huntley's leaping attempt ended in a fumble which the Bengals returned 98 yards for a score. Napoleon was eventually exiled.
The Intervention of the Sabine Women, by Jacques-Louis David, 1796-99, 📸 via @Bengals pic.twitter.com/zIae5dWMJB— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) January 30, 2023
Modern interpretations
While his memes often use medieval and Renaissance-era European paintings, Rader's personal favorites are more modern and include Alice Neel, Georgia O'Keeffe and Bill Traylor. Modern art, however, can be trickier to use because of interpretations of the human body.
"Modern artists represent people in more diverse and complex forms and styles than previous art movements, because they are on the other side of history with hundreds of years in between," Casas said.
Impressionism, realism and contemporary styles were used to capture some of the scenes of the postseason.
Mrs. Peale Lamenting the Death of her Child, by Charles Willson Peale, 1776 pic.twitter.com/QqiocSqlxS— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) February 13, 2023
"I like old masters' work a lot, probably because they're good for meme fodder, but some of the more contemporary work I have a hard time getting behind," said Rader, of his favorite artists to use for the feed. "The more abstract work can definitely play, if done correctly." | Art and Culture |
The 3,000 year old chalk figure on a hill in England's Berkshire Downs is to receive some much needed titivation.
The Uffington White Horse is a prehistoric hill figure, 110m (360ft) long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk. The Guardian stated in 2003 that "for more than 3,000 years, the Uffington White Horse has been jealously guarded as a masterpiece of minimalist art," and it is by far the oldest of the white horse figures in Britain.
However, the chalk figure has shrunk over time, archaeologists have discovered. The head and neck, in particular, have become thinner since the 1980s, the National Trust and Oxford Archaeology team said. The trust said it plans to reverse the Oxfordshire landmark horse's "weight loss" and restore its original outline.
"The Uffington White Horse is set in a dramatic landscape, shaped by nature and by people through time, and this is a hugely important chalk figure, partly because it is the oldest scientifically-dated example in Britain, dating back to the late Bronze Age," says archaeologist Adrian Cox. "Through the efforts of generations of local people, it has been cared for and has survived as an iconic feature of this amazing landscape."
He said while it has been maintained in a similar form for centuries, "we suspected there had been a gradual reduction since the 1980s", adding: "The results of our new research show that this is indeed the case."
The turf has been replaced and plans are being drawn up to "carefully reverse the recent shrinkage and restore its original outline, all under close archaeological supervision", the archaeologist added. | Art and Culture |
ATHENS, Greece -- Greece on Friday welcomed the return of ancient artifacts from the Acropolis, furthering a campaign to press the British Museum to hand back a collection of sculptures taken from the ancient site in Athens more than 200 years ago.
Culture Minister Lina Mendoni led a ceremony Friday for the repatriation of three sculpture fragments — representing a horse and two male heads — from the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis which had been kept at the Vatican Museums.
“Initiatives like these show the way, how the pieces of the Parthenon can be reunited, healing the wounds caused by barbaric hands so many years ago,” Mendoni said.
“This takes us to the just and moral demand of the entire Greek people, and of this government and its prime minister, for the final return of all the sculptures of the Parthenon.” The fragments will be added to the collection at the Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009 at the foot of the ancient site in the center of the Greek capital.
Mendoni said Greece would be willing to lend the British museum ancient Greek artifacts for exhibition to “fill the gap" if the marbles were returned.
“Greece cannot recognize possession and ownership by the British Museum because it considers the sculptures to be there as a product of theft,” she said.
The Vatican called the return an ecumenical “donation” to Greece’s Orthodox Church, but the gesture added pressure on the London museum to reach a settlement with Greece following a campaign launched by Athens 40 years ago.
“This act by Pope Francis is of historical significance and has a positive impact on all levels … We hope it sets an example for others,” the leader of Greece’s Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos II, said.
Greece argues that the Parthenon sculptures are at the core of its ancient heritage, while supporters of the British Museum maintain that their return could undermine museum collections and cultural diversity globally.
Carved in the 5th century BC, the sculptures from the Parthenon were taken in the early 19th century by British diplomat Lord Elgin before Greece won independence from the Ottoman Empire.
Culture Ministry officials in Greece have played down remarks made last month by British Museum chair George Osborne that the U.K. and Greece were working on an arrangement to display the Parthenon Marbles in both London and Athens.
Last year another marble sculptural fragment from the Parthenon temple — depicting a foot of the ancient Greek goddess Artemis — was returned to Athens from a museum in Palermo, Sicily.
Bishop Brian Farrell, a Vatican secretary for promoting Christian unity, headed the visiting delegation to Athens and said the return of the three fragments from the Vatican had been discussed during a visit to Athens by Pope Francis in 2021.
“The gifting of the fragments of the Parthenon which had been held in the Vatican Museums for more than two centuries, shows itself as cultural and social gesture of friendship and solidarity with the people of Greece,” Farrell said.
“We assure you of our intimate joy at the realization of your legitimate wish to have the ... fragments at home in their place of origin,” he added. | Art and Culture |
Carved by the Italian sculptor Donatello over a decade in the 15th century, the marble reliefs on the outside pulpit of Prato Cathedral in Tuscany are celebrated for their rich, emotive depiction of dancing cherubic figures set in stone. In this short video from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the UK sculptor Simon Smith talks the audience through his process of recreating these reliefs for the exhibition Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance, on display at the museum from February to June 2023. Starting with a pencil sketch before working with a series of ever-finer tools to ‘nibble away’ at the stone, Smith offers an immensely satisfying glimpse into how one of history’s great sculptors created dazzling, emotive scenes from just stone, shadow and light.
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A rare half-shekel silver coin from the first year of the First Jewish Revolt against the Romans about two millennia ago has been discovered in the Judean Desert. The rare coin, discovered in the area of the Ein Gedi nature reserve, had the words “The Holy Jerusalem” in ancient Hebrew on the coin’s face.
The coin, dated to 66/67 CE when the Second Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem, was found in the Judean Desert Survey led by the Israel Antiquities Authority together with the Heritage Ministry and the staff officer of the Civil Administration Archaeology Unit in Judea and Samaria carried out over the last six years with the aim of retrieving these ancient finds before the antiquity looters.
Recently, in the course of examining every cave and crack in the rock, Israel Antiquities Authority inspectors reached a cliff in a wadi near En Gedi when they came across the coin on the ground at the entrance of one of the caves.
One explanation for this find is that the Jerusalem-minted coin fell from the pocket of a rebel who escaped to the desert during the revolt – perhaps on his way to nearby En Gedi.
On one side of the coin, “The Holy Jerusalem” appears – the word “Holy” spelled without a vowel, reflecting the development of the writing on the coins that appeared later on in the Revolt as “The Holy Jerusalem” with the vowel. Three pomegranates are depicted on the center of the coin – a familiar symbol as it was adopted on the old Israeli lira coin that was currency in the State of Israel until 1980.
On the other side of the coin, a chalice (goblet) is depicted, above which the letter “Aleph” appears marking the first year of the outbreak of the Revolt and the value “Half-Shekel.” The chalice is a characteristic symbol on Jewish coins in currency towards the end of the Second Temple period.
Jewish rebels minted their own coins
These coins were minted in the values of shekel and half-shekel at the time of the First Revolt of the Jews against the Romans in Judea between the years 66 to 70 CE.
In line with the Torah commandment prohibiting the depiction of images, the Jews used vegetal motifs and cultic and religious symbols on their coins, while the pagan population depicted symbols such as animals and the portrait of the ruling emperors and the Greek language that was the common language employed at the time.
As part of the Jewish defiance, and the creation of an internal “Jewish Revolt economy,” the rebels minted their own silver and bronze coins depicting Jewish symbols.
The rebels decided to use the archaic Hebrew script that was current several hundred years earlier at the time of the First Temple Period instead of the Greek script that was used by the population in the country and the region at the time of the Second Temple.
The leaders of the Jewish Revolt decided to defy the rulers and to mint silver coins autonomously, using the Hebrew script and without the image of the ruling Emperor. It seems that the coins were minted in Jerusalem, possibly in the Temple area.
According to Yaniv David Levy, the Israel Antiquities Authority’s numismatic scholar, “coins from the first year of the Revolt such as this one, are rare. During the Second Temple period, Jewish pilgrims used to pay a Temple Tax in half-shekel coins.
For about 200 years, Tyrian-minted coins (tetradrachms from Tyre, which in the Roman Empire took on an unusual role as the medium of payment for the Temple tax in Jerusalem) made of fine silver and a status symbol in the region, were used for this contribution.
In the course of the revolt the rebels minted alternative coins inscribed with “Shekel Israel,” “Half-Shekel,” and “Quarter-Shekel” coins. It seems that the rituals in the Temple continued during the revolt and these coins were now used by the rebels.
Amir Ganor, a director of the Judean Desert Survey and Excavation Project noted that “the find of the silver Year-One half-shekel in the course of a controlled archaeological activity is a rare event in Israel and in the Judean Desert in particular.
This find emphasizes the importance of the controlled professional survey of the whole area. Every new find contributes to the history of the people and the country. Were it not for the survey, the coin may have been found by antiquity looters and sold on the antiquity market for the highest price offered. Over the six years of the project, we have recorded over 800 caves and have found thousands of significant finds.”
Heritage Minister Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu added that “the exciting discovery brings further evidence of the deep and indisputable connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. This amazing find is another strong sign of our people’s roots in the Land of Israel.”
Israel Antiquities Authority director Eli Escusido concluded that the discovery of the half-shekel coin is yet another gift that we have bestowed on the Israeli nation – first-hand evidence of a turbulent period in the history of our people 2,000 years ago, in a period of extremity and discourse that divided the nation and led to destruction.
After two millennia, we have returned to our country, and Holy Jerusalem is again our capital. The find of the coin at these times, is a reminder for us of what happened in the past, teaching us the importance of working towards unity.” | Art and Culture |
World Updated on: January 24, 2023 / 1:34 PM / CBS News Artists use AI to bring creations to life Artists use artificial intelligence to bring their creations to life 06:52 A painting with mysterious origins is likely a Raphael masterpiece, researchers from the U.K. said after using facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze the portrait. The Renaissance-era painting, named the de Brécy Tondo, has been studied extensively for more than 40 years. Researchers from the University of Nottingham and University of Bradford used an artificial intelligence facial recognition system developed by Hassan Ugail, a professor of visual computing at Bradford, to determine its likely creator. Instead of DNA, the system uses DNN – a deep neural network – which identifies patterns in images and videos. The system is more accurate than the human eye and was able to analyze the painting's similarities to another, created by Raphael. The Italian Renaissance painter is considered "more versatile than Michelangelo and more prolific than their older contemporary Leonardo," according to the National Gallery in London, which houses some of his paintings. The de Brécy Tondo painting and Raphae's Sistine Madonna side-by-side. University of Nottingham & University of Bradford Ugail said the facial recognition system is assisted by artificial intelligence "whereby millions of facial images are fed to a machine learning algorithm which learns 'deep' features and characteristics of the human face." "These features may be the physical attributes (e.g., shapes, colours and textures of the face) but also include a lot (potentially thousands of features) which cannot be described visually or physically," Ugail said in an email to CBS News. "In this sense, the analysis carried out through these facial recognition systems can compare two facial images in much greater detail and can outperform humans."The technology found the de Brécy Tondo, which features a woman and baby, closely matched Raphael's Sistine Madonna, which also features a very similar woman and baby. A woman observes Raffael's 'Sistine Madonna' from 1513 at the Gobelin hall of the Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) in Dresden, Germany, 27 March 2013. Matthias Hiekel/picture alliance via Getty Images The so-called Madonnas in each painting had a 97% similarity, while the children in each had an 86% similarity – a similarity above 75% is considered identical, according to the study.Ugail said this technology is being used for recognizing and authenticating identities in criminal investigations and routine identity verification. It can also be used in medical image analysis to help diagnose diseases like cancer. The painting was a part of the de Brécy Trust, an art collection that belonged to the late George Lester Winward. He gave his collection to the trust so it was available for art scholars and researchers to study.The trust had previously analyzed the de Brécy Tondo and found its pigments were that of pre-17th century works, and it was not a Victorian copy, according to Howell Edwards, a professor and honorary scientific adviser to the trust. The School of Athens, 1508-1511, by Raphael (1483-1520), fresco, Room of the Segnatura, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City. DEA / V. PIROZZI Analysis over four years by late Raphael specialist, Dr. Murdoch Lothian, found that the Tondo was likely a Raphael, Timothy Benoy, honorary secretary of the trust, told CBS News via email. "The view of other particular art historians consulted, including certain of those with Italian Renaissance and Raphael expertise, has been that the Tondo is a 'possible' Raphael.'"Dr. Christopher Brooke, honorary research fellow at the University of Nottingham, told CBS News via email the study is "a big step forward in using machine learning in art history.""It's a very sound study with positive results," said Brooke, a co-author of the study and an expert historian of ecclesiastical art and remote sensing techniques. Raphael, whose full name was Raffaello Santi, was named architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, until he died. Several architects took over the project, with the most notable being Michelangelo. One of Raphael's most famous paintings is The School of Athens. In: Art Artificial Intelligence Caitlin O'Kane Caitlin O'Kane is a digital content producer covering trending stories for CBS News and its good news brand, The Uplift. Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue | Art and Culture |
The Parthenon Sculptures, also known as the "Elgin Marbles" or "Parthenon Marbles" were taken from Greece in the early 19th century and have been displayed in Britain ever since – however, the debate over who rightfully owns these Greek artifacts continues to this day.The British Museum and the Greek government are in the midst of talks over whether the museum will return the marbles.The marbles were taken from the Parthenon between 1801 and 1805 by Lord Elgin, the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, according to the British Museum.The museum says the Ottoman Empire was the governing authority over Athens at the time, and Elgin removed half of the remaining sculptures from the ruins of the Parthenon with the permission of Ottoman authorities.Can a governing power such as the Ottoman Empire rightfully give away the artifacts of the cultural state it rules – like the Grecian marble sculptures?The British Museum claims Elgin's transaction was done legally."His actions were thoroughly investigated by a Parliamentary Select Committee in 1816 and found to be entirely legal, prior to the sculptures entering the collection of the British Museum by Act of Parliament," the British Museum said.However, Greek authorities disagree."The violent detachment of the Parthenon Sculptures from their physical context and the architectural setting that they were part of violated the laws, the common sense of justice and the established morals at the time," said the Office of the Secretary General for Greeks Abroad and Public Diplomacy in Athens in a statement to ABC News.The Elgin Marbles are being negotiated between the British Museum and the government of Greece.ABC News / Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images / Smithsonian / Google EarthThe Parthenon Marbles aren't the only cultural antiquity under debate.Many museums around the globe, particularly those in imperialistic or colonialist countries, have been criticized for their massive collections of historically and culturally important artifacts that come from colonized countries.Who owns the artifacts? Depends on who you ask.Patrimony laws around the world protect cultural heritage by legally preserving antiquities, artifacts and to prevent international conflicts like the fight over the Parthenon Marbles.However, these laws go as far back as 1891, with one of the first patrimony laws in Egypt, according to anti-racketeering group Antiquities Coalition. Many other countries around the world followed with protections of their own.Anything taken before these protections were in place is where the argument of rightful ownership gets a bit complicated.In some cases, it's up to the institution or museum to return an artifact that has been stolen, looted, or taken under precarious circumstances."A lot of people would think it's morally right, ethically right to return these objects," said Leila A. Amineddoleh, an attorney specializing in art, cultural heritage, and intellectual property law. "Some of them, like the Benin Bronzes, were taken under very violent and brutal circumstances … human lives were lost, and people were massacred.The Benin Bronzes were stolen from Nigeria during a British raid in 1897 on Benin City, according to the Smithsonian Museum. The Smithsonian's Board of Regents voted to return the bronzes in June 2022 under the museum's new ethical returns policy."Not only was returning ownership of these magnificent artifacts to their rightful home the right thing to do, it also demonstrates how we all benefit from cultural institutions making ethical choices," said Lonnie Bunch, secretary of the Smithsonian, in a statement at the time.Even so, a group of Nigerian Americans are suing to keep the Benin Bronzes in the U.S. They have accused the Smithsonian of a "breach of trust for failing to protect the interests of United States citizens descended from enslaved people" who could learn about their culture through the bronzes.The question of morality in cultural preservation is an issue that's not black and white."The Parthenon is a symbol of Greece in ancient Athens," Amineddoleh said. "I don't really understand how the British Museum can continue to argue that they're keeping the work safe if, in fact, those objects were removed and destroyed the site [of the Parthenon.]"What responsibility do museums have?The Metropolitan Museum of Art has experience . The Met has recently returned works to Nepal, India and Nigeria in partnership with officials from each country.Through the Met's own researchers and outside sources, the museum sometimes learns a work should be returned to its country of origin based on its policies or the laws of the country in which it originated."The Met has a long and well documented history of responding to claims regarding works of art, restituting objects where appropriate, being transparent about the provenance of works in the collection, and supporting further research and scholarship," Met officials told ABC News, saying it is one of the few institutions in the field to do so.The Benin Bronzes have been taken to several countries around the globe.ABC News / Picture Alliance via Getty Images / Smithsonian / Google EarthThose in favor of returning objects, like professor of political science at the University of South Africa Everisto Benyera, say it's a "form of reparation and restorative justice.""What was stolen here are not mere artifacts, but they were important aspects of a civilization," Benyera said."While to some they are beautiful artifacts, to their owners – who are the victims of this theft – they are the missing link in connecting with those in the other realms of life such as the living dead, commonly known as the ancestors."The Crown Jewels have come under scrutiny after Queen Elizabeth II's death.ABC News / Chris Jackson/Getty Images / Smithsonian / Google EarthGrace Ndiritu, an artist and advocate for "de-colonizing" museums, told ABC News ancient art signifies the creativity and invention of a culture."Not only do [artifacts] show the mythologies and spiritual beliefs, they also show the innovation and the power of different tribes and different societies," said Ndiritu.Ndiritu's work centers on "healing" museums, which she believes often perpetuate a colonizer mindset – that of taking stolen prized possessions from one nation and profiting from it or removing it from the context of the origin country's culture."Usually, objects were seen as prizes or possessions and not actually valued for their spiritual context or the cultural context," said Ndiritu.Others, like the British Museum, argue that a diversity of these artifacts from around the world offer "wider cultural context and sustained interaction with the neighbouring civilisations.""The collection is a unique resource to explore the richness, diversity and complexity of all human history, our shared humanity," the British Museum says on its website. "The strength of the collection is its breadth and depth which allows millions of visitors an understanding of the cultures of the world and how they interconnect – whether through trade, migration, conquest, conflict, or peaceful exchange." | Art and Culture |
Beyoncé’s Renaissance was a celebration of Black club music, and specifically the freedom carved out in queer spaces. Largely absent since her debut album Take Me Apart and its remixes (2017-18), US R&B outlier Kelela also goes hard at the club; her long-awaited second LP is a more first-hand account, foregrounding a rebirth.
Since her debut, the singer has delved deep, absorbing narratives of resistance to racism, misogynoir (sexism as it relates to the Black female experience) and foregrounding queer female creativity. The result is a record that divides its time between the dancefloor and the bedroom, moving via hazy, in-between spaces filled with delicate yearning and immersive sound design.
Kelela’s choice of beats has long skewed British, with old-school drum’n’bass powering this album’s most immediate “ravin” track, Contact. But this is a record designed to penetrate cell-deep, with slow, unspooling tracks such as Holier, where beats don’t intrude, the music hanging as though in a space out of time. The standout title track builds deliciously slowly, outlining the distance travelled and – after a piano ripple, angelic backing vocals and an assertion of Kelela’s needs and desires – climaxing into a digital beat workout. | Art and Culture |
Director Denis Villeneuve's "Dune Part 2" returns to the barren desert planet of Arakkis starting on November 3, 2023, with Paul Atreides continuing his messianic journey towards liberating the notorious spice-harvesting world from the vicious Harkonnen invaders for the blue-eyed Fremen natives.
As a creative diversion to fill the empty days until "Dune Part 2" strikes theaters this fall, Penguin Random House will thankfully be releasing "The Official Dune Coloring Book" (Berkley/Ace) on September 26, 2023 as the first adult coloring book edition inspired by legendary author Frank Herbert's seminal galaxy-spanning novels.
The Official Dune Coloring Book: $16.99 at Amazon (Pre-order)
The spice will surely flow with color in this official Dune coloring book from Penguin Random House. It includes 96 pages of scenes from Frank Herbert's iconic Dune story of Arrakis for fans to color and enjoy.
Here's the official description:
"Visit Arrakis in a whole new way as you color in your favorite characters and scenes from Frank Herbert's enduring and beloved classic novel. 'Dune,' of course, tells the unforgettable story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable desert planet, and his journey to a mythic destiny that will bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.
"This intricate, beautifully wrought coloring book will include 44 original illustrations, featuring character studies, locations, and scenes inspired by 'Dune,' the profound and triumphant novel adored by millions of readers around the world. This artwork is by the world-renowned illustrator Tomislav Tomic, who was one of the illustrators of the bestselling 'Official Game of Thrones Coloring Book.'"
As the pressures of everyday life in the digital age continue to wreak havoc on humanity's nerves and sense of peace, these types of gorgeously rendered coloring books influenced by nearly every popular sci-fi, fantasy and horror film and TV franchise offer an oasis of calm for fans to exercise their talents and imagination.
This new "Dune" coloring book delivers an artistic solution to satiating fans' eager anticipation of Warner Bros.' $125 million sci-fi sequel to the 2021 blockbuster that collected $402 million at the global box office.
Check out these virgin page samples above depicting Paul and his mother Jessica evading a massive sand worm attack in the deep desert, and the charismatic House Atreides troubadour Gurney Halleck posing with his baliset musical instrument.
Pens and markers at the ready? Let the colors flow!
"The Official Dune Coloring Book" will be released on Sept. 26, 2023. | Art and Culture |
India’s Art Scene Heats Up As Sher-Gil’s Painting Fetches A Record
Amrita Sher-Gil, hailed as “India’s Frida Kahlo,” fetched a record price for a work by an Indian artist — a sum that, while modest by global standards, reflects the burgeoning potential of the country’s art market.
(Bloomberg) -- Amrita Sher-Gil, hailed as “India’s Frida Kahlo,” fetched a record price for a work by an Indian artist — a sum that, while modest by global standards, reflects the burgeoning potential of the country’s art market.
Sher-Gil’s 1937 painting sold for the equivalent of $7.44 million on Saturday — enough to beat the previous record, set just a few days earlier by S.H. Raza. The Sher-Gil canvas — depicting a group of women gathered and conversing in a circle — was sold in New Delhi by Saffronart, an auction house.
The price tag may not be staggering in the rarefied art world, where the priciest pieces command tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Nonetheless, the sale shows that art collectors remain willing to snap up fine art in an increasingly affluent India.
“India is at a particularly important point in terms of making its mark on the global stage,” Minal Vazirani, co-founder and president of Saffronart, said in an interview. “There is a fair bit of interest in India and Indian culture, both in terms of historic antiquities, but also contemporary art.”
Sotheby’s held its first Indian auction in Mumbai in 2018, after competitor Christie’s withdrew from live auctions in the country before that following dwindling sales.
Billionaires’ Demand for Art to Jewels in India Lures Sotheby’s
Wealthy Indians, known for parking money in gold and real estate, are increasingly expanding into other investments, including stocks and bonds — and art offers another alternative.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | Art and Culture |
Tananarive Due's The Reformatory is one of the best novels published in 2023. A superb mix of literary fiction, horror, and historical fiction, The Reformatory tells a story of inequality, ghosts, abuse, and the power of love between siblings.
But it also explores racism in 1950s Florida, a place where race relations weren't much better than they'd been in 1865, when the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and gave Black people their freedom — but not equality.
It is the summer of 1950 and 12-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr. and his older sister Gloria encounter teenager Lyle McCormack, the son of Red McCormack, a man who basically owns the little town where they live, Gracetown. Lyle looks at Gloria strangely and then touches her arm and says some things he shouldn't, so Robbie kicks him. As a result, he gets a bloody ear from Red McCormack and a six-month sentence at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory with a dark past in which boys of all races often vanish forever.
While the reformatory is full of racists — and Robbie soon learns that extreme physical punishment is common — one of the biggest surprises is that he can see ghosts, haints, regularly. The haints don't hurt Robbie and he learns to deal with them quickly. He even thinks he can communicate with his dead mother through the pipes in the showers. The other ghosts, however, show signs of violence and Robbie soon starts to unveil the reformatory's dark, violent history through these apparitions.
Meanwhile, Gloria does everything in her power to rescue her little brother while also coping with their father's forced absence and the changing ways in which she has to navigate the world as a Black girl that's now seen as young Black woman by those around her.
The Reformatory is a haunting, unflinching novel that delves deep into the realities of the Jim Crow South — and the very real horror of the schools like the Gracetown School for Boys and the atrocities that went on inside their walls. Due, who has never shied away from tackling racial issues in her work, delivers here a historical fiction narrative that manages to destroy readers with the ugliness of unabashed racism while also making every hero in the book Black and celebrating Black excellence via figures like Zora Neale Hurston, Thurgood Marshall, and Louis Armstrong. Yes, there is a lot of abuse here and the N-word is constantly used a weapon to insult and belittle Black folks, but ultimately the narrative deals with love and perseverance, and that makes it even more memorable.
This story works on two different levels. The first is as an immaculately researched chronicle of prejudice that reads like literary fiction and pulls readers into the darkest corners of Gracetown to show how racism operated in Florida in the 1950s — a time where Black people were still forced to use different entrances and the Klan was a constant presence. Then the haints show up and the novel morphs into a spooky story of floating ghosts and dead children, gone because of disease, burnings, or from a knife to the back. This mix allows Due to show supernatural horrors as well as horrors that are too real, and those are worse. Furthermore, The Reformatory takes place in a time where the past, horrible as it was, was still very present. For example, Gloria remembers walking through town with her father before he was forced to run away to Chicago after false rape accusations that were made to keep him from organizing workers. During one of their walks, they pass a tree and Robert Stephens tells his daughter: "See this tree? When I was a boy, this was a hanging tree. We had to walk past it to go to school even if a man was still swinging."
The Reformatory is Due's attempt to piece together the story of a family member never spoken of, but it's also much more than that. This is a novel that isn't afraid to look at the past and expose the good and the bad, the heartwarming and the harrowing, the real and the lies that were told by those in power. The Gracetown School for Boys is fiction, but it's an imaginary twin of the infamous and very real Dozier School for Boys, which is a true horror story from the heart of Florida. This makes The Reformatory not only a brave novel about racism and injustice but also a timely, necessary read that ultimately serves as an invitation to make sure we never make the same mistakes again — and to stomp out racism wherever it raises its ugly head.
Gabino Iglesias is an author, book reviewer and professor living in Austin, Texas. Find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @Gabino_Iglesias. | Art and Culture |
Edward Berger's acclaimed anti-war epic has dominated Oscar shortlists and BAFTA nominations alike. It’s been a big week for Netflix’s anti-war epic “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Edward Berger’s adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s world-renowned bestseller rolled into the final days of Oscar nominations voting with surprise crafts momentum, qualifying for four shortlists (makeup and hairstyling, score, sound, and VFX) along with the Best International Feature category as Germany’s submission. “All Quiet” then swept BAFTA nominations on Thursday, its 14 nominations equalling the record for a non-English-language feature set by “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in 2001.
Beyond the shortlists, cinematographer James Friend is an Oscar contender, too, despite being overlooked as an ASC nominee. He received a BAFTA nomination as recognition of his bravura work in capturing the sheer scope of the unrelenting artillery attacks and massive carnage on the battlefield with large format cameras. “All Quiet on the Western Front” re-imagines Remarque’s novel as an intense POV movie with long tracking shots, as we follow Paul (Felix Kammerer) from winter to spring in the harrowing final days of World War I. The visual and sonic crafts are essential in contributing to the visceral immediacy of the death and destruction that Paul experiences around him — akin to that of an immersive horror film.
But will the film come away with one or more Oscar nominations? The likeliest are MUAHS and sound, but the “All Quiet” presentation received praise at the VFX “bake-off” last Saturday, and composer Volker Bertelmann has previously received a nomination from his peers for “Lion.”
“All Quiet on the Western Front”Reiner Bajo
Makeup and Hairstyling
Makeup and hair designer Heike Merker immersed herself in the fine details of applying mud and blood to Paul and his fellow soldiers on the rain-soaked battlefield. She helped convey their journey into becoming sludge-caked, weary, demoralized soldiers. This entailed an assortment of wigs and lots of facial hair, and keeping track of the evolution of the war makeup and hair (especially since scenes were not shot in order).
Kammerer was painted with glazing gels and grease paint around his eyes and face (particularly after the horrific mustard gas attacks), and he had dry lips to make him look freezing. This was to illustrate how quickly young Paul has grown into a soldier. Crucially, there were many iterations of mud and dirt, in terms of textures, colors, and viscosity to build and chart the trajectory of the character makeup. The makeup and hair also had to depict Paul’s physical and mental state. He had to look thinner and more tired, and his teeth had to be darker (with the aid of teeth splints).
Score Berger’s go-to composer Bertelmann provided an almost atonal score that reflects Paul’s emotional state as well as the horror-film vibe of war itself with acute, staccato drumbeats, along with a burst of sinister, spare chords. Interestingly, an iconic bass became the film’s leitmotif, and the composer built the entire score around it. While the drum evokes a military sound and history, Bertelmann carefully avoided marching band percussion; therefore, the snare drums were bullet-like by design: both unsettling and insistent.
Finally, for the the giant chords, Bertelmann had a personal solution: his great grandmother’s refurbished harmonium. This keyboard instrument causes metal reeds to vibrate and when he played it, the composer used the instrument’s unique mechanics as part of the score, tricking it out with microphones to accentuate the sound.
Sound
The team of sound supervisor/sound designer Frank Kruse, co-sound designer Markus Stemler, and re-recording mixer Lars Ginzel created a soundscape that was immersive and haunting. They sourced what they could from the period, including the bellicose and noisy wardrobe — particularly metal helmets and spiked boots — which provided a trove of sounds for the team. However, not many other recorded sounds remain from World War I, so the soundscape was a combination of production sound and created sonics.
The research also revealed that the soldiers had a sonic relationship with the war. They often couldn’t see what hit them, but they could hear it, and that gave the various agents of death nicknames. For example, the machine gun was a sewing machine. This was utilized to great effect in the the scene where the whir of the sewing machine segues into a burst of gunfire.
Silence was important as well, and the variations of human breath or the smallest of gasps are as effective as the crash of bombs. Ultimately, the sound reflects Paul’s arc from enthusiastic young fighter to demoralized zombie.
Visual Effects
Production visual effects supervisor Frank Petzold took a naturalistic approach led by Friend’s principal photography, and the goal was to rely on as many photographic elements as possible for compositing. All locations and props were 3D scanned and modeled, to support the placement of the principal photographic elements with CG shadows and reflections. CG simulations were reserved for augmentation.
Explosions, meanwhile, were handled by the SFX team and shot at the former airfield location with the Red camera, then seamlessly comped into the background during the battle sequences. Indeed, smoke became a character of sorts, and it was hard to discern what was practical and what was digital. Curiously, yellow smoke from mustard gas was left a bit mysterious.
Tanks were a character as well. The appearance of the first machines of war were handled in 3D animation, since they wanted them to come across as gigantic creatures. But, as some of the close-up tanks were separately shot with SFX support by the Red camera, 3D animation was used to control the timing of the tank fleet as they break through the fog. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. | Art and Culture |
The Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery has archived all of the original images featured in Dickens' work throughout his creative career. Dr. Michael John Goodman had the idea to digitize the art from Dickens' novels during lockdown.
“The world of Dickens illustration is beset with poor reproductions of the source material, so for this project, I have searched out what I consider to be some of the best editions that feature the original illustrations printed to a decent quality,” Goodman explains. After collecting and scanning the images, he even cleaned them up in Photoshop, so that they look as crisp as possible.
Dickens collaborated with several illustrators during his lifetime, each with a distinctive style that complemented the story at hand. Instead of showcasing these works of art with Dickens' text, Goodman chose to display each image on its own so it can be appreciated.
“In many ways, it is a call-back to the print shops and galleries of the 19th century, where illustrated prints would often be placed in the windows of these establishments, tempting potential customers to buy the latest instalment of a novel,” Goodman adds. “Similarly, if this website encourages users to read more Dickens (or to further explore the work of one of the artists), then it has done a very satisfactory job.”
You can find all of the original illustrations on the website for The Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery.
Goodman is also the creator of the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive. | Art and Culture |
Balkrishna Doshi, one of the Indian subcontinent's most celebrated architects, has died at the age of 95. Doshi passed away on Tuesday, according to a spokesperson from the Pritzker Prize. He was India's first — and to date, only — winner of the award, the profession's equivalent to the Nobel Prize. Throughout his seven-decade career, Doshi, who often went by the initials B. V., championed public architecture and low-cost housing for India's poor."Doshi was instrumental in shaping the discourse of architecture throughout India and internationally since the 1950s," said an emailed statement from the Pritzker Prize. "Influenced by 20th-century masters, Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, he explored the relationships between fundamental needs of human life, connectivity to self and culture, and social traditions. Through his ethical and personal approach to the built environment, he touched humanity in every socio-economic class of his native country."Amdavad ni Gufa, a subterranean museum with domed roofs that protrude playfully above ground. Credit: Vastu Shilpa ConsultantsHis practice, Studio Sangath, also shared the news of his passing on Instagram with a message signed by his family and business partners."There are few words to express the deep pain and sorrow as we announce the passing away of our backbone, guru, friend, confidant and mentor," the post reads. "He was a light in this world, and now we need to continue shining his light by carrying it within us in our own lives.""(In India) we talk of housing, we talk of squatters, we talk of villages, we talk of towns — everybody talks, but who is going to really do something about it? I took the personal decision that I would work for the 'other half' — I'd work for them and try to empower them."Balkrishna DoshiBorn in Pune in 1927, Doshi worked under Le Corbusier in Paris in the early 1950s before returning to India to oversee the modernist master's projects in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. He settled in the latter, where he established his practice, Vastu Shilpa Consultants, and would later complete some of his best-known projects, including the Tagore Memorial Hall and Amdavad ni Gufa, an underground museum topped with a series of domed roofs. Typical of Doshi's pioneering housing complexes, the Aranya Low Cost Housing Project features an intricate network of interconnected passages, courtyards and public spaces. Credit: Vastu Shilpa ConsultantsBut Doshi was prolific elsewhere, completing more than 100 projects in cities including Bangalore, Hyderabad and Jaipur. Although of international renown, his work was almost exclusively focused on his home country. Some of his other signature projects include the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and the Madhya Pradesh Electricity Board building in Jabalpur. The Aranya Low Cost Housing development, in the city of Indore, perhaps best articulated his outlook. Featuring an intricate network of passages, courtyards and public spaces, it offered 6,500 affordable residences to more than 80,000 people. Speaking to CNN about his Pritzker Prize win in 2018, Doshi expressed his career-long commitment to using architecture as a force for public good. "(In India) we talk of housing, we talk of squatters, we talk of villages, we talk of towns — everybody talks, but who is going to really do something about it?" he asked. "I took the personal decision that I would work for the 'other half' — I'd work for them and try to empower them." Premabhai Hall, an auditorium built in Doshi's home city of Ahmedabad. Credit: Vastu Shilpa ConsultantsRecounting his own encounters with "extreme poverty" as a child, Doshi went on to reaffirm his commitment to social housing in India. "These people have nothing -- no land, no place, no employment," he said. "But if the government gives them a little piece of land, they can get a feeling of, 'I'm going to work hard, and find a way to build my own home.' If you put them together as a community, there's cooperation, there's sharing, there's understanding and there's this whole diffusion of religion, caste, custom and occupation. "When I visit these places after almost 30 years, (I find people) who we gave one-foot-high plinths with a water tap and a toilet. Today, they have two-story or three-story buildings, that they built by themselves... (They are) multicultural, multi-religious people — including different income groups — and they all live together. They talk and communicate." | Art and Culture |
The voluptuous statue of a mermaid placed in a square in a fishing village in Puglia, southern Italy, has caused a stir for being “too provocative”.
The statue was created by students at the Luigi Rosso art school in Monopoli before being positioned in a square named after the scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini.
The artwork, which is yet to be officially inaugurated, became a target of ridicule after photos taken during its installation were shared on social media.
The Bari-based actor Tiziana Schiavarelli wrote on Facebook that a friend in Monopoli had “rightly expressed some perplexity about this ‘monument’”.
“It looks like a mermaid with two silicone breasts and, above all, a huge arse never seen before on a mermaid. At least not any I know.”
Schiavarelli stressed that she did not have an issue with the art students or the local council, which had commissioned the work. “But I am very amused by this thing … who knows if it will become a further attraction for tourists,” she added.
Adolfo Marciano, the headteacher of the Luigi Rosso art school, defended the statue, saying it was a “tribute to the great majority of women who are curvy”. He explained that the students were tasked by the mayor of Monopoli to create several statues for the town, including one on the theme of the sea.
“The students got together and came up with the idea of a mermaid,” Marciano said. “The council was shown the scale model and said it was good, and then decided the completed sculpture would be placed in the square.”
Marciano said he did not want to cast judgement on the students’ inspiration, but that he viewed the work “as a representation of reality, in this case of the female body”.
He added: “You see adverts on television with models who are very thin, but the mermaid is like a tribute to the great majority of women who are curvy, especially in our country. It would have been very bad if we had represented a woman who was extremely skinny.”
Beppe, who lives in Monopoli, said the sculpture, which has been kept covered until its inauguration, had caused much discussion in recent days, with some people criticising it as “too provocative”.
“It’s a shame as the art students deserve to be praised instead of criticised,” he said.
The students also created a statue dedicated to the victims of workplace accidents, which will be unveiled on Monday. “This is much more important than the mermaid,” said Marciano.
Female statues in other areas of Italy have caused similar controversy. In 2021, a bronze statue portraying a woman in a transparent dress in the Campania town of Sapri sparked a sexism row. The work, by the sculptor Emanuele Stifano, was intended as a tribute to La Spigolatrice di Sapri (The Gleaner of Sapri), written by the poet Luigi Mercantini in 1857. The statue, which was branded “an offence to women”, was unveiled during a ceremony attended by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte. | Art and Culture |
I came across Philadelphia’s Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club online. Black horsemen hadn’t really seeped into the public consciousness at that time, but as soon as I found a picture of a black man standing on a horse, I started researching further so as to figure out the context. It was 2014 and I was a broke graduate, so I couldn’t afford to do a project about it. But after a commission for London’s Now Gallery, I finally was able to fly out to the US in 2016.
It was my first time in the country and, halfway through my two weeks there, Trump was elected. Part of me really likes the US and part of me dislikes it. I don’t think the UK is particularly great in terms of how our government treats the people, but the US is on another level. There is a sense of abandonment. People are left to fall through the cracks at a much faster rate.
While my initial interest in the stable came from the fact that it was so visually striking, it was the historical context that drew me in deeper. I found out that in the first Kentucky Derby, in 1875, 13 of the 15 jockeys, including the winner, were Black. There was a long lineage of Black horse riders, which made sense when the people looking after the horses were enslaved. But there have been Black people riding horses in the city in Philly for more than 100 years, and a lot of stables have popped up in abandoned buildings since manufacturing collapsed in the US in the 80s.
There’s another stable in Brooklyn, and a big one in LA – the Compton Cowboys. Guinness did an advert with them a year or two after I made this project. There are loads in the south as well, generations of people who kept horses.
I called my project Concrete Horsemen. It became centred on African American identity, and the public perception of what it means to be Black, and I wanted it to bring to the forefront the contributions that African Americans have made to horse culture in the US. I used the word horseman because cowboy has racist connotations dating back to slavery. Enslavers would refer to the person who handled the cows or horses as the “cow boy” or the “horse boy”, whereas white cowboys were called “cowhands”. Today when you think of cowboys, the iconography is people like Clint Eastwood.
Part of the purpose of Fletcher Street is that it’s a way of teaching kids discipline and keeping them off the streets. The area is 97% African American, over half of the people live below the poverty line and there is a high rate of gun crime. But I was trying to show a positive side because what these people are doing is amazing. Younger kids clean the stables out and get to ride the horses as a reward. It’s a community project as well as being a clubhouse. The first few days I barely made any pictures, I just spent time hanging out and playing basketball with members like Kareem, who is pictured here. There are some women involved but it’s mostly male at the moment. A lot of the younger guys were starting to have kids and a lot of those are girls, so I’m guessing the next generation of riders will be more female.
I don’t like the label “photojournalist”, which I associate with people parachuting into other countries and creating “poverty porn” and presenting it as objective truth. The idea that the camera doesn’t lie stems from early photography, when it was the most realistic way of documenting things, but I don’t think photography can be unbiased. It is always heavily influenced by the photographer, consciously or not. So rather than a photojournalist, I would describe myself as someone doing documentary portraiture which is heavily influenced by research. There has to be some substance behind it. It’s not hard to make a nice picture: the challenge is to make work that’s beautiful but also has depth and some sort of message. Or to document something interesting that isn’t well known.
I feel that Concrete Horsemen had an impact. Since I did the project, there’s been a Netflix movie with Idris Elba, set in Philly, called Concrete Cowboys. One of the guys I photographed at Fletcher Street is one of the main characters in the film, which makes me happy. There’s also a scene in the 2022 horror film Nope, in which Daniel Kaluuya rides a horse in jeans and an orange hoodie that is exactly the same shade that a rider has in my Concrete Horsemen series. It’s interesting how little things seem to trickle into other stuff and affect the wider artistic discourse.
Cian Oba-Smith’s CV
Born: London, 1992.
Trained: Photography at the University of the West of England.
Influences: Gordon Parks, Malick Sidibé, Alec Soth, Paul Graham, Deana Lawson
High point: “Seeing my work hanging in the National Portrait Gallery for the Taylor Wessing in 2017. My teacher Ms Miller took us there during our A-levels and I never dreamed I’d have work there.”
Low point: “My cousin taking his own life in 2017. I felt indifferent to photography and life in general, the loss sucked the colour out of everything and it was a long time before I could see the joy in things.”
Top tip: “Make work that you’re passionate about and you feel needs to be seen. If it resonates with you it will resonate with others.” | Art and Culture |
Life-size images of extinct camel species found carved into stones in Saudi Arabia
An international team of archaeologists has discovered life-size images of an extinct camel species carved into rock formations in Saudia Arabia. In their project, reported in the journal Archaeological Research in Asia, the group discovered the carvings on a rock outcropping in the Nefud desert.
Historians have found it difficult to learn much about the Neolithic era in places like Saudia Arabia due to the harsh environment—the heat, sand and rock are not conducive to preserving traces of people who lived there thousands of years ago. Still, some evidence has been found—in a place called the Camel Site, for example, in a northern part of the country, there are large rocks carved with life-size pictures of camels.
Camel carvings have also been found at other sites in Saudi Arabia; one discovered five years ago in Al-Jouf province has been described as a "parade of life-size camels." In this new effort, the team was studying a rocky outcrop near the southern edge of the Nefud desert.
The outcrop was known to researchers, but it took a closer look to discover artwork etched into its surface by people living in the area thousands of years ago. The new team found several dozen images of a species of camel that has been extinct for thousands of years. Prior research has suggested that such camels once lived all across the Arabian Peninsula. The outcropping has been named Sahout—images were found on three of its formations.
The research team found that the images had been made in layers by different groups of people living during different periods and carving over the images made by those before them—the team could see differences in technique and style. They noted also that the majority of the images were made in crevices likely to preserve them. Also, prior research has shown that other material found in the general area has been dated back to approximately 8,000 years.
In studying the artwork, the researchers found that the images were likely made using stone tools (from chert) and took up to two weeks to create. They also found some evidence that suggested the carvings might have been a communal effort.
More information: Maria Guagnin et al, Before the Holocene humid period: Life-sized camel engravings and early occupations on the southern edge of the Nefud desert, Archaeological Research in Asia (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.ara.2023.100483
Journal information: Archaeological Research in Asia,
© 2023 Science X Network | Art and Culture |
Artificial intelligence has suggested that a lost painting, which was thought to be a Victorian counterfeit, is “undoubtedly” the work of Raphael, the Renaissance painter.
Teams from the universities of Nottingham and Bradford used facial recognition technology to identify the work, known as the de Brecy Tondo, and found that the faces were exactly the same as those in a Raphael altarpiece.
The painting has now gone on public display for the first time at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, where it will be shown for the next two months.
‘Startling results’
Some experts had speculated that the mysterious work, part of a collection established by George Lester Winward, a Cheshire businessman, was a Victorian copy. The painting has been researched and debated for over forty years because of its resemblance to Raphael’s Sistine Madonna.
Mr Winward set up the de Brecy Trust Collection in 1995, two years before his death, to preserve the collection and ensure that the works were available for study by art scholars.
Prof Hassan Ugail, director of the Centre of Visual Computing at the University of Bradford, said: “Testing the Tondo using this new AI model has shown startling results, confirming it is most likely by Raphael.
“Together with my previous work using facial recognition, and combined with previous research by my fellow academics, we have concluded that the Tondo and the Sistine Madonna are undoubtedly by the same artist.” | Art and Culture |
A painting of the pop star Harry Styles created by English artist David Hockney will be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Hockney, 86, painted the As It Was singer, 29, in his art studio in Normandy, France.
The painting shows him wearing an orange and red cardigan with a pearl necklace and blue jeans.
It is among more than 30 new portraits that will be displayed for the first time when David Hockney: Drawing from Life opens on 2 November.
Styles was formerly a member of the boyband One Direction, which formed on The X Factor in 2010.
He has released three solo albums, including 2022's Harry's House, which went to number one on the official UK albums chart.
Portraits of Hockney's mother, the late Laura Hockney; his friend, the fashion designer Celia Birtwell; his former partner, curator Gregory Evans; and people from the local Normandy community where he lives will be displayed at the gallery.
The exhibition was previously on display at the National Portrait Gallery for just 20 days in 2020 before it was closed due to the pandemic.
In addition to the 33 new works, there are also colour-pencil drawings created in Paris in the early 1970s and a selection of drawings from the 1980s, when the artist created a self-portrait every day over two months.
The art pieces have been rendered in pencil, pastel, ink and watercolour, with Hockney also making use of a 35mm camera and apps found on the iPhone and iPad.
Altogether around 160 works from public and private collections, including from the artist himself, comprise David Hockney: Drawing From Life.
Sarah Howgate, senior curator of contemporary collections at the National Portrait Gallery, said: "Closing this five-star exhibition after just 20 days in 2020 was incredibly disappointing for the gallery and its many visitors, making this restaging of David Hockney: Drawing from Life all the more significant.
"Now revitalised with over 30 new energetic and insightful painted portraits of friends and visitors to the artist's Normandy studio, it is a real privilege to have the opportunity to collaborate with David Hockney again."
Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Nicholas Cullinan, added: "Following our reopening and the success of a brilliant first summer, I am delighted to be restaging this major exhibition for David Hockney at the new National Portrait Gallery, which makes good on a pledge I made to David in March 2020 that we would return to his wonderful exhibition in better days.
"Hockney is one of the most internationally respected and renowned artists today, and to see his new portraits, made over the last couple of years and which demonstrate his constant and continuing ingenuity and creative force, is life-affirming."
The National Portrait Gallery reopened in June after a three-year refurbishment costing £41.3m. | Art and Culture |
Research sheds new light on York's thriving medieval Jewish Community
Researchers have shed new light on York's medieval Jewish population, unearthing new documents and evidence which points to a thriving community where the chief Jewish citizens of the city were also some of the most important figures in England.
The massacre of York's Jews in 1190 has overshadowed the fact that from the 1210s onwards there was once more a thriving Jewish community living and working in the city in mostly harmonious relations with their Christian neighbors.
Digital reconstructions
Now a team from the University of York's Heritage360 Streetlife project has undertaken new research on the "forgotten story of York's medieval Jewish community."
Based on new archival evidence, the team have created digital reconstructions of the houses where the chief Jewish citizens of York lived.
They have also identified the location of York's first synagogue and how leading figures from the Jewish community cooperated with the senior clergy of York Minster in purchasing the large stone building which became the city's Guildhall.
Key findings from the project include:
- The three leading citizens of the post-1190 Jewish community lived on the west side of Coney Street, backing on to the river. The houses modeled by the project are those of Leo Episcopus (where Boots is now), his son-in-law Aaron of York (where Next is now), and Aaron's nephew Josce le Jovene (Waterstones and Fabrication).
- Leo and Aaron both served as chief representative of the whole Jewish community of England, and in the 1230s and 1240s Aaron was considered to be the richest man in the country.
- The reconstructions of the houses are based on surviving medieval houses elsewhere in York, as well as comparable houses in Lincoln. They were originally built by Christian landlords and leased to the Jews, and would have been indistinguishable from the other houses on the street where the chief Christian citizens of York lived. Aaron's house had a synagogue in its back plot, but this would not have been visible from the street.
- The reconstructions show how the stone houses (called 'solars') had domestic quarters on the first floor but let out the ground floor as shops. Coney Street was an important commercial high street, and the range of shops depicted (including a clothier, leather worker, vintner, goldsmith, baker, and apothecary) is based on contemporary evidence for these trades operating in this area.
- Charters from Durham Cathedral Archives show how Aaron of York cooperated with the senior clergy of York Minster in purchasing the large stone building which became the city's Guildhall (the medieval civic center), ensuring that the city had a central meeting-place and contributing greatly to York's civic history. It is also likely that Aaron co-operated with the Minster on other major civic projects, including the construction of the "Five Sisters' window in the Minster itself (previously known as the "Jewish Window'), in return for land extending York's Jewish cemetery.
- The charter also provides a date, previously unknown, for when York acquired the Guildhall of 8th September 1231. Other charters from Durham have preserved Aaron's own handwriting and signature, a rare survival at a time when charters were usually sealed, not signed.
- New research has also pinpointed for the first time the exact locations of the houses of the two leading members of the pre-1190 Jewish community, Josce and Benedict, on Fossgate and Colliergate respectively. This also changes our understanding of where the city's first synagogue would have been, and where the noted Rabbi Yom Tov would have taught, which was most likely on the south side of Fossgate.
Visual interpretation
Dr. Louise Hampson, project lead at the University of York, said, "The digital reconstructions offer an accessible visual interpretation of how the Jewish community lived side-by-side with their Christian neighbors, including on York's most high-status medieval street."
Dr. John Jenkins, researcher on the project, added, "The research brought to light the ways in which Jews and Christians worked together for the common good of the city, playing a key role in the acquisition of the civic Guildhall as well as in the rebuilding of York Minster, both of which remain important civic assets to this day."
Howard Duckworth, Warden of the York Synagogue, said, "The amount of new information that has been uncovered by the team is truly inspiring and has now been recognized by Jews, not only in the UK, but across the world."
"We have discovered a totally new history of Jews in York, which for many years has been overshadowed by the massacre at Clifford's Tower. This research is so much more, a real history anyone can relate to. When you walk through York now, you see York with totally different eyes, thanks to the team for all their work."
An attendee of a recent workshop connected to the project said, "The research is very exciting, it's really changed my understanding."
"The identification of the likely sites of the synagogues is so important and makes York a very important place when we are thinking about our scholars from the past."
Provided by University of York | Art and Culture |
WARREN, R.I. -- A nearly 150-year-old stained-glass church window that depicts a dark-skinned Jesus Christ interacting with women in New Testament scenes has stirred up questions about race, Rhode Island's role in the slave trade and the place of women in 19th century New England society.
The window installed at the long-closed St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Warren in 1878 is the oldest known public example of stained glass on which Christ is depicted as a person of color that one expert has seen.
“This window is unique and highly unusual,” said Virginia Raguin, a professor of humanities emerita at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and an expert on the history of stained-glass art. “I have never seen this iconography for that time.”
The 12-foot tall, 5-foot wide (3.7 meters by 1.5 meters) window depicts two biblical passages in which women, also painted with dark skin, appear as equals to Christ. One shows Christ in conversation with Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, from the Gospel of Luke. The other shows Christ speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well from the Gospel of John.
The window made by the Henry E. Sharp studio in New York had largely been forgotten until a few years ago when Hadley Arnold and her family bought the 4,000-square-foot (371-square-meter) Greek Revival church building, which opened in 1830 and closed in 2010, to convert into their home.
When four stained-glass windows were removed in 2020 to be replaced with clear glass, Arnold took a closer look. It was a cold winter's day with the sunlight shining at just the right angle and she was stunned by what she saw in one of them: The human figures had dark skin.
“The skin tones were nothing like the white Christ you usually see,” said Arnold, who teaches architectural design in California after growing up in Rhode Island and earning an art history degree from Harvard University.
The window has now been scrutinized by scholars, historians and experts trying to determine the motivations of the artist, the church and the woman who commissioned the window in memory of her two aunts, both of whom married into families that had been involved in the slave trade.
“Is this repudiation? Is this congratulations? Is this a secret sign?” said Arnold.
Raguin and other experts confirmed that the skin tones — in black and brown paint on milky white glass that was fired in an oven to set the image — were original and deliberate. The piece shows some signs of aging but remains in very good condition, she said.
But does it depict a Black Jesus? Arnold doesn't feel comfortable using that term, preferring to say it depicts Christ as a person of color, probably Middle Eastern, which she says would make sense, given where the Galilean Jewish preacher was from.
Others think it's open to interpretation.
“To me, being of African American and Native American heritage, I think that it could represent both people," said Linda A’Vant-Deishinni, the former executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. She now runs the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence’s St. Martin de Porres Center, which provides services to older residents.
“The first time I saw it, it just kind of just blew me away,” A’Vant-Deishinni said.
Victoria Johnson, a retired educator who was the first Black woman named principal of a Rhode Island high school, thinks the figures in the glass are most certainly Black.
“When I see it, I see Black," she said. “It was created in an era when at a white church in the North, the only people of color they knew were Black.”
Warren’s economy had been based on the building and outfitting of ships, some used in the slave trade, according to the town history. And although there are records of enslaved people in town before the Civil War, the racial makeup of St. Mark’s was likely mostly if not all white.
The window was commissioned by a Mary P. Carr in honor of two women, apparently her late aunts, whose names appear on the glass, Arnold said. Mrs. H. Gibbs and Mrs. R. B. DeWolf were sisters, and both married into families involved in the slave trade. The DeWolf family made a fortune as one of the nation's leading slave-trading families; Gibbs married a sea captain who worked for the DeWolfs.
Both women had been listed as donors to the American Colonization Society, founded to support the migration of freed slaves to Liberia in Africa. The controversial effort was overwhelmingly rejected by Black people in America, leading many former supporters to become abolitionists instead. DeWolf also left money in her will to found another church in accord with egalitarian principles, according to the research.
Another clue is the timing, Arnold said. The window was commissioned at a critical juncture of U.S. history when supporters of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and their Southern Democrat opponents agreed to settle the 1876 presidential election with what is known as the Compromise of 1877, which essentially ended Reconstruction-era efforts to grant and protect the legal rights of formerly enslaved Black people.
What was Carr trying to say about Gibbs' and DeWolf's links to slavery?
“We don’t know, but it would appear that she is honoring people of conscience however imperfect their actions or their effectiveness may have been,” Arnold said. “I don't think it would be there otherwise."
The window also is remarkable because it shows Christ interacting with woman as equals, Raguin said: “Both stories were selected to profile equality."
For now, the window remains propped upright in a wooden frame where pews once stood. College classes have come to see it, and on one recent spring afternoon there was a visit from a diverse group of eighth graders from The Nativity School in Worcester, a Jesuit boys' school.
The boys learned about the window's history and significance from Raguin.
“When I first brought this up to them in religion class, it was the first time the kids had ever heard of something like this and they were genuinely curious as to what that was all about, why it mattered, why it existed,” religion teacher Bryan Montenegro said. “I thought that it would be very valuable to come and see it, and be so close to it, and really feel the diversity and inclusion that was so different for that time.”
Arnold hopes to find a museum, college or other institution that can preserve and display the window for academic study and public appreciation.
“I think this belongs in the public trust," she said. "I don’t believe that it was ever intended to be a privately owned object.” | Art and Culture |
Between the streets: shades of New York – in pictures Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Kissing couples and snoozing subway kids feature in a major retrospective of street photographer Richard Sandler’s work – along with previously unseen shots Main image: Through the looking glasses … Bloomie's Gal, 1978. Photograph: Markus Hartel/Richard Sandler Mon 27 Feb 2023 02.00 EST Nannies and Tykes, Soho, NYC, 1982The Eyes of the City, the first major retrospective of the great New York street photographer Richard Sandler, will be on display at the Bronx Documentary Center, New York, until 26 March. The exhibition will feature never-before-seen prints from his extensive archive Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Argument, 5th Ave, NYC, 1983Richard Sandler: ‘In 2018, I began an archive dive, that, to my delight, unearthed many overlooked or rejected pictures that were the equals of the work in Eyes. I quickly realised there was still a lot of meat left on the bones’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter RR Train, NYC, 1982‘Most people assume that the three black kids are related to the black woman on the right, but that’s not the reality. The dozing kids were on the train with the white woman and I took a few pictures of that scene, first. Then the woman on the right got on the train, saw me making a picture, was angered by that and tried to block their faces from my camera’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Bloomie’s Gal, 3rd ave, NYC, 1978‘I posted this picture on Facebook maybe six years ago. Some months later I got a message from a dentist in New Jersey, telling me that this is a picture of his mother, Magdalena. He then told me her story; Magdalena was a teenager when she and her family were sent to a Nazi concentration camp. She never saw her parents again. Because she was young she was useful as a worker but she also endured the unspeakable “medical experiments” of the infamous “doctor” Mengele. She was forever broken by the experience’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Subway Swoon, NYC, 1986‘The couple in the middle of the frame are having an intimate moment, and her eyes, and perhaps his, appear to be closed, making the moment feel all the more romantic. But the reality was that, as the train was pulling out of the station, it kicked up a lot of dust, and that’s why their eyes are closed’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Subway Kiss, NYC, 1987‘This photograph was extremely lucky: I boarded the train in the middle of the carriage, then I walked to the end of the car where I saw the couple about to kiss on the platform and the two guys with shades in the foreground. I made two pictures with the doors open. Then the doors closed, and to my amazement the glass was cracked exactly where the kissing couple’s faces lined up. I knew that was the best picture of the three frames. Sometimes the photo gods throw you a bone and you make a picture that becomes an instant metaphor’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Four Women on 5th ave, NYC, c 1985With an incisive eye and peerless craft, Sandler prowled the streets of New York from the late 1970s until September 11, 2001. He captured a changing city, with its dramatic juxtapositions of class and race laid bare in his frame. Sandler is among the all-time greats of street photography Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Pole kiss, NYC, c 1983‘When the pandemic blew in it became the most productive time in my creative life. By day, I went through my whole street archive, marking the best ones, and by night I printed them in my darkroom’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Tiffany’s, 5th ave, NYC, c 1988‘On the occasion of this retrospective at the Bronx Documentary Center I have included a number of those pictures and they will form the backbone of a second book of New York City street pictures, entitled NYC, in a Minor Key’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Subway Noir, NYC, 1987In addition to Sandler’s prints, a trilogy of his first-person documentary films will be shown at the exhibition: The Gods of Times Square, Sway and Brave New York. Sandler’s films capture the essence of Times Square and the East Village in the 90s as these quintessential parts of New York City faced gentrification and real-estate speculation, forcing many New Yorkers from the neighbourhoods they once inhabited Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Grand Central Terminal, NYC, 1990‘I am a hardcore street documentarian and my path was, and is, to “take the pulse” of the city and offer something of a diagnosis in pictures’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Topics Photography Exhibitions New York Art | Art and Culture |
Nicole Penrose struggles to articulate how special it is to hold a 159-year-old bible once owned by her great-great grandfather James.
Key points:
- The bible was found in an abandoned house and donated to the Lions Club in Bendigo
- It was falling apart before Wayne Morris restored it, and his wife Sandy tracked down Ms Penrose
- Ms Penrose describes Wayne and Sandy Morris's work as "totally awe-inspiring"
The Melbourne woman travelled to Bendigo in central Victoria at the weekend to pick up the bible from members of the city's Lions Club book club, including Sandie and Wayne Morris, who were responsible for repairing it after it was donated "in tatters" in July.
"It's just totally awe-inspiring. The dedication shown by Sandie and Wayne just to get the bible back to us … it's really wonderful," Ms Penrose said.
The leather-bound bible — which dates back to 1864 and includes hand-written notes about births, deaths and marriages in the Penrose family — was held together with sticky tape and string when it was donated by a Guildford resident in July.
It had been left in an abandoned house in Newstead.
Mr Morris, a keen amateur book restorer, started work and did not stop for a month.
"I spent nearly four weeks working on it, because I studied everything before I attempted it," he said.
"It's the first big [book] I've done."
Mr Morris cleaned and fixed the front and back covers, replaced the original spine, restored and repurposed the original leather, fixed torn pages and put pages back in place, all while marvelling at the detail and drawings in the 12cm-thick, gold-embossed book.
The search for descendants
Meanwhile, Mr Morris' wife Sandie was determined to find a Penrose descendent, so the heirloom could be returned.
After much online sleuthing, she reached out to the owner's great-great granddaughter.
"I really thought it was a scam [when the email arrived]," Ms Penrose said.
"I told my family about it, and we all laughed. Sandie was persistent luckily and sent through the next [email] and promised she wasn't a scammer or stalker."
Seeing the book for the first time on Sunday, she was overwhelmed.
"I can't get over it. It's truly wonderful," Ms Penrose, a self-confessed history buff, said.
A family's story uncovered
Receiving the bible has given Ms Penrose a new and powerful connection to her great-great grandfather James Penrose, who came to Australia from Cornwall with his wife Emily and a brother in 1865, settling in Maldon.
According to written notes in the bible, James and Emily Penrose had nine children, but lost three — one on the journey to Australia, one soon after arriving and another in 1901.
"When [a family] has immigrated, I can understand people not feeling connected to their past, but this, seeing his handwriting in particular … has cemented the connection," she said.
"It's like it really happened — I didn't know about the babies they'd lost."
James Penrose was a tin miner before moving into management, a Methodist Church Sunday school teacher, a store owner and a much-respected community member.
His funeral procession in 1903 is said to have been one of the largest in Maldon at the time.
"This is something that is concrete, and we can keep with us, always. Back then, this was their way they documented things … whereas we snap photos."Loading | Art and Culture |
Image source, Martin ShieldsImage caption, The works at Barnbougle Castle give more information about Burns' time at Ellisland FarmDocuments discovered at a 13th Century castle near Edinburgh have provided a "fascinating picture" of Robert Burns' life on a farm in southern Scotland.University of Glasgow experts were invited to Barnbougle Castle by the Rosebery family.Among the collection they examined was an "unexpected bonus" of a book labelled only Burnsiana.It helped to provide new insight into his time at Ellisland Farm north of Dumfries in the late 18th Century. Image source, Martin ShieldsImage caption, Further study of the work is to be carried outProf Gerard Carruthers said: "We are so grateful to the Rosebery family for giving us access to this superb collection and in particular for lending us Burnsiana to delve even further into the materials held within it."The book contains a full set of evidence for Burns' construction of Ellisland, previously unknown, including quantities of nails, floorboards and door frames."Here we have the minutiae of Burns constructing his first family dwelling as an adult, building both a house and a home."He said it also painted a "fascinating picture" of life on the farm including bills for shoes, buttons and buckles to clothing materials like corduroy, calico and linen.Image source, Martin ShieldsImage caption, Prof Carruthers said the documents painted a "fascinating picture" of life on the farm"It shows Jean Armour's domestic economy including what foods they were growing at Ellisland with receipts for seeds including cabbage, beans and linseed to quantities of beer and honey consumed," he added."This material is a real game changer for our knowledge of Ellisland and its future conservation."Dr Pauline Mackay, co-director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies, said the "exciting discovery" was particularly timely with plans to being taken forward to redevelop the farm."It will also enable us to contemplate further how we might use XR (Extended Reality) technology to compose and access important Burns-related sites, and to illuminate their evolution from the 18th Century to the present day," she added.Image source, Robert Burns Ellisland TrustImage caption, Plans are being developed to make Ellisland a world class heritage attractionLord Dalmeny, son of the 7th Earl of Rosebery, said his great-grandfather Archibald Primrose had been a "keen collector and historian" and Burns enthusiast.However, he said it was only through the expertise of the University of Glasgow team that they had realised the full significance of the Burnsiana book.Joan McAlpine, business development manager with the Robert Burns Ellisland Trust called it an "incredible discovery" at the "perfect time" as plans were moving forward to make the site a world class heritage attraction. | Art and Culture |
The infamous street artist has revealed his latest work which appeared in Margate, Kent, at the beginning of the week.
It shows a woman dressed in 1950s-style clothing wearing cleaning gloves.
She’s pushing someone, presumably her husband, into a discarded freezer but all you can see is his legs poking out the end.
However, the piece is a commentary on the massive issue of domestic violence in the UK and abroad.
On closer inspection, the woman can be seen to be sporting a black eye and has seemingly had a tooth knocked out.
The image, also shared to his almost 12 million Instagram followers, also shares the artwork’s name ‘Valentine’s Day Mascara’.
This marks the first work the elusive artist has claimed since his surprise stint working in Ukraine in October and November last year.
It is his first back in Britain for over a year since he produced thousands of t-shirts to raise money for the Colston 4 in Bristol when they were being taken to court at the end of December 2021.
The work is typical of Banksy’s style and pairs together the environment, an overturned dumped freezer, with his art to make a commentary on social or political issues.
It first appeared Monday morning and was spotted by locals, kickstarting speculation that it might be another Banksy - but it wasn’t claimed until today.
Local resident Amy Richardson told BristolLive she first saw it first thing on Monday morning after a broadband van was driven away from the spot, and it was there behind.
It is not the first time Banksy has created art in Kent, back in 2017 he made a piece which depicted a man on a ladder chipping away a star from the EU flag.
Nor is it the first time the celebrated street artist has marked Valentine’s Day either as three years ago he released a new take on The Girl with the Balloon - one of his most renowned pieces.
This time, on a wall on a house in Bristol, he showed the girl bursting the balloon with a catapult which shed rose petals down the wall. | Art and Culture |
The winners of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards have been announced, with Edgar Martins named as Photographer of the Year for his series, Our War.
The project is an homage to Martins' friend, photojournalist Anton Hammerl, who was shot and killed during the Libyan Civil War in 2011.
Martins chose to reflect on the question: how does one tell a story when there is no witness, no testimony, no evidence, no subject?
"It is a huge honour to be recognised - and although I am philosophical about awards and the subjective nature of someone's choice, knowing that there were over 180,000 entries to this year's Professional competition is very humbling," says Martins.
"In this case, it is also quite an emotional experience because I get to honour my friend on a world stage and bring attention to the family's plight to find his remains."
Martins' work triumphed in the Portraiture category of the Professional competition.
Here are the other category winners, alongside comments from the photographers.
Architecture & Design
Cement Factory by Fan Li
"Tieshan cement factory is located in Guilin City in Guangxi, south China.
"The factory was built in 1996 and played an important role in Guilin's economic development and urban construction.
"However, because it was originally located in the Li River scenic area, the cement factory has now been relocated, leaving behind the old buildings, water towers, pools and railway tracks."
Creative
The Right to Play by Lee-Ann Olwage
"The Right to Play creates a playful world where girls are shown in an empowered and affirming way.
"For this project, I worked with girls from Kakenya's Dream in Enoosaen, Kenya, who have avoided FGM [Female genital mutilation] and child marriage - showing what the world can look like when girls are given the opportunity to continue learning in an environment that supports them and their dreams."
Documentary projects
The Women's Peace Movement in Congo by Hugh Kinsella Cunningham
"Nearly 20 years on from a conflict that killed five million people and upended tenfold more lives, the Democratic Republic of Congo is once again sliding into chaos.
"Pairing rare visuals of the front lines with portraits and in-depth stories from women, this long-term project follows activists as they mobilise.
"While media crews come in briefly to shoot scenes of war and displacement, I have spent many months in hard-to-access areas, covering conflict and documenting the slow work of peace from a unique perspective."
Environment
Miruku by Marisol Mendez & Federico Kaplan
"Miruku focuses on the Wayuus, an indigenous community from La Guajira, Colombia's coastal desert.
"Commissioned by 1854/British Journal of Photography and WaterAid, the project examines how a combination of climate change issues and human negligence have led its various members to experience a stifling water shortage.
"We framed the story from a female perspective to get a better understanding of how gender inequality and climate vulnerability interrelate."
Landscape
Event Horizon by Kacper Kowalski
"At the start of winter, I set out on a journey in search of harmony.
"When I could, I flew over frozen bodies of water, fascinated by their icy forms.
"Between January and March I made 76 solo flights in a gyrocopter or a motorised paraglider, covering approximately 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles), spending 200 hours in the air.
"My photographs were taken above bodies of water near Tricity in northern Poland."
Portfolio
James Deavin
"This portfolio was shot in the first half of 2022 in Saudi Arabia, where I was based at the time.
"Given more time, I think these pictures would have fallen into more defined projects or narratives, perhaps relating to the large migrant worker and expat population (of which I was part), or Saudi car culture.
"As it is, I believe this collection shows my style and technique as a photographer - there is no deliberate connection between the images, other than I was searching for special photographs that could eventually develop into projects."
Still Life
The Sky Garden by Kechun Zhang
"Three years ago I settled down in Wenjiang and there is a tree nursery within walking distance of my home.
"Exotic trees and rocks from all over the world can be seen there, including Japanese black pines and maple trees.
"There are workers lifting these trees and rocks with mobile cranes every day, transporting them and planting them in newly-built parks, neighbourhoods or streets in the city.
"I walk through the woods and take photographs when the trees and rocks are being lifted into the air. Together, these images create the Sky Garden series."
Sport
Female Pro Baseball Player Succeeds in All Male Pro League by Al Bello
"Kelsie Whitmore is the first female professional baseball player to play in an all-male pro league.
"She plays outfield and pitches for the Staten Island Ferryhawks in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.
"Her debut in the Atlantic League was as a pinch runner and she became the first woman to start an Atlantic League game, when she played as a left fielder.
"Later, she was the first woman to pitch in an Atlantic League game - and on 3 September 2022, Kelsie became the first woman to record a hit in association with major league baseball."
Wildlife & Nature
Cities Gone Wild by Corey Arnold
"Cities Gone Wild is an exploration of three savvy animals - black bears, coyotes and raccoons - that survive, and even thrive, in the human-built landscape while other animals are disappearing.
"I tracked these animals in cities across America to reveal a more intimate view of how wildlife is adapting to increased urbanisation."
The Open competition celebrates the power of single images.
Dinorah Graue Obscura has been named Open Photographer of the Year 2023 for her photograph titled Mighty Pair, entered in the Natural World & Wildlife category.
The image shows two crested caracara birds, on a tree branch in southern Texas, USA.
Long Jing, of Yunnan Arts University, has been awarded Student Photographer of the Year 2023 for his series titled Keep the Yunnan Opera.
Jing went behind the scenes to show the dwindling groups of performers and spectators at performances in southwest China.
Hai Wang, also from China, won Youth Photographer of the Year 2023 for an image on the theme, Your Everyday.
The photograph depicts rows of brightly-coloured, empty chairs set up for a school ceremony which was cancelled because of the Covid pandemic.
Alessandro Cinque is announced as the first-time winner of the Sustainability Prize.
This brand new prize, developed in collaboration with the United Nations Foundation and Sony Pictures' Picture This initiative, recognises the stories, people and organisations whose actions highlight one of the United Nations' environmental Sustainable Development Goals.
Cinque won for his series Atrapanieblas (Fog Nets), which documents an innovative solution helping to tackle chronic water shortages in Lima, Peru.
All photographs courtesy of 2023 Sony World Photography Awards.
An exhibition of the winners and shortlisted images takes place at Somerset House, London from 14 April to 1 May 2023. | Art and Culture |
AMSTERDAM -- The blockbuster exhibition of paintings by Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer closed its doors for the final time on Sunday, with the art and history national museum of the Netherlands hailing the show as its most successful ever.
The Rijksmuseum said the exhibition that drew on collections around the world to bring together 28 of the 37 paintings generally ascribed to Vermeer attracted 650,000 visitors from 113 countries during its 16-week run that started in early February.
The large number of visitors — including French President Emmanuel Macron, movie director Steven Spielberg and Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis — came despite the museum limiting numbers to ensure everybody got a good view of masterpieces such as “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and “The Milkmaid.”
“Vermeer is the artist of peacefulness and intimacy. We wanted the visitors to enjoy it to the fullest,” museum general director Taco Dibbits said. “This was only possible by limiting the number of visitors.”
The exhibition included seven paintings that had never previously been displayed publicly in the Netherlands, among them three from The Frick Collection in New York.
For art lovers who didn't manage to get their hands on one of the highly-sought-after tickets, six Vermeer paintings will remain on show in the Rijksmuseum's Gallery of Honor — four from the museum's own collection along with “The Girl with the Red Hat" from the National Gallery of Art in Washington and ”Young Woman Seated at a Virginal" from The Leiden Collection in New York. | Art and Culture |
Grim yet hopeful addition to National WWII Museum addresses the conflict's world-shaping legacy
The latest major addition to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans is called the Liberation Pavilion
A new, permanent addition to the sprawling National WWII Museum in New Orleans is a three-story complex with displays as daunting as a simulated Nazi concentration camp bunk room, and as inspiring as a violin pieced together from scrap wood by an American prisoner of war.
The Liberation Pavilion — set to open Friday with ceremonies including around 40 surviving veterans of the war — is ambitious in scope. Its exhibits filling 33,000 square feet (3065.80 square meters) commemorate the end of the war's death and destruction, emphasize its human costs and capture the horror of those who discovered the aftermath of Nazi atrocities. Films, photos and recorded oral histories recount the joys and challenges awaiting those who returned from battle, the international effort to seek justice for those killed and tortured, and a worldwide effort to recover and rebuild.
Underlying it all is the idea that almost 80 years later, the war's social and geopolitical legacies endure — from the acceleration of civil rights and women's equality movements in the U.S. to the formation of international alliances to protect democracy.
“We live in a world created by World War II,” Rob Citino, the museum’s Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian. said when asked what he wants the pavilion's visitors to remember.
It's a grim tour at first. Visitors entering the complex pass a shimmering wall of military dog tags, each imprinted with the name of an American killed in action, a tribute to the more than 414,000 American war dead. The first centerpiece exhibit is a large crate used to ferry the coffin of an Army private home to his family in Ohio.
Steps away is a recreation of the secret rooms where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam. Then, a dimly lit room of wooden bunks and life-size projected images of the emaciated survivors of a Nazi concentration camp. Nearby is a simulated salt mine, its craggy walls lined with images of centuries-old paintings and crates of statuary — representing works of art plundered by the Germans and recovered after the war.
Amid the bleakness of the pavilion's first floor are smaller and more hope-inspiring items, including a violin constructed by an American prisoner of war. Air Force 1st Lt. Clair Cline, a woodworker, used wood scavenged with the help of fellow prisoners to assemble the violin as a way of fighting the tedium of internment.
“He used bed slats and table legs. He scraped glue from the bottom of bits of furniture around the camp,” said Kimberly Guise, a senior curator at the museum.
The pavilion's second floor focuses in part on what those who served faced upon returning home — “the responsibilities at home and abroad to defend freedom, advance human rights, protect democracy,” said Michael Bell, a retired Army colonel and the executive director of the museum’s Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.
Black veterans came back to a homeland still marred by segregation and even violence against people of color. Women had filled non-traditional roles at home and abroad. Pavilion exhibits make the case that their experiences energized efforts to achieve equality.
“Civil rights is the fifties and women’s equality is more more like the sixties,” Citino said. “But we think both of those seminal changes in American society can be traced back in a significant way to World War II.”
Other second-level exhibits include looks at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the post-war emergence of the United States as a world superpower and the formation of international alliances meant to sustain peace and guard against the emergence of other worldwide threats to freedom.
“We talk about NATO or the United Nations, but I don’t know that most people understand that these are creations, American-led creations, from the war,” said Bell. “What our goal is, at least I’d say my goal, is to give the visitor a frame of reference or a lens in which way they can look at things going on in the world.”
The third floor includes a multi-format theater with moving screens and a rotating audience platform featuring a production of images and oral histories that, in Bell’s words, “really lays out a theme about freedom under pressure and the triumph of of the American-led freedom.”
Museum officials say the pavilion is the final permanent exhibit at the museum, which opened in 2000 as the National D-Day Museum — a project spearheaded by two University of New Orleans professors and historians, Gordon Mueller and the late author Stephen Ambrose.
It soon expanded to encompass all aspects of the Second World War — overseas and on the home front. It is now a major New Orleans tourist attraction and a downtown landmark near the Mississippi River, highlighted by its “Canopy of Peace,” a sleek, three-pointed expanse of steel and fiberglass held roughly 150 feet (46 meters) over the campus by towers of steel.
The Liberation Pavilion is the latest example of it the museum's work to maintain awareness of the war and its aftermath as the generation that lived through it dies off — and as the Baby Boom generation raised on its lore reaches old age.
“World War II is as close to the Civil War as it is to us. It’s a long time ago in human lives, and especially our media-drenched culture. A week seems like a year and 80 years seems like five centuries," said Citino. "I think the museum realized a long time ago it has a responsibility to keep the memory of this war, the achievement of that generation alive. And that’s precisely what Liberation Pavilion’s going to be talking about.” | Art and Culture |
By Katie RazzallCulture editorImage source, The National Gallery, LondonImage caption, Monet's The Water-Lily Pond, 1899, will be among the 12 paintings to be loaned by the National GalleryThe National Gallery will send some of its finest masterpieces around the UK for its 200th anniversary.Twelve famous artworks including Constable's The Hay Wain, Botticelli's Venus and Mars, and Renoir's The Umbrellas travel across the UK.Simultaneous exhibitions will open on 10 May 2024 at 12 institutions, putting more than half of the population within an hour of one of the masterpieces.Some of the paintings have never been loaned by the gallery before.The £95m bicentenary plans also include a blockbuster Van Gogh show, the creation of a new digital gallery to make the collection accessible around the world, a UK road trip of art workshops and a refurbishment of the National Gallery site at London's Trafalgar Square. Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller has been commissioned to create a work celebrating 200 years of public art.There will also be a "surprise" announcement closer to the bicentenary relating to one of the National Gallery's most famous works, Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Image source, The National Gallery, LondonImage caption, The National Gallery says it has exciting plans for one of its most popular paintings, Van Gogh's Sunflowers (1888)Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said art is "for all of us to share, not just the privileged few"."We've lost touch with that particular idea over the years, but it's something the National Gallery really understands and it's the central issue which guides me as culture secretary," she said. "I want everyone to have access to our world class art and culture, no matter who they are or where they came from." The 12 National treasures A Young Woman standing at a Virginal - Vermeer The Supper at Emmaus - Caravaggio The Toilet of Venus - VelázquezThe Fighting Temeraire - JMW Turner The Water-Lily Pond - Monet Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria - Artemisia Gentileschi The Umbrellas - Renoir The Hay Wain - Constable Whistlejacket - Stubbs Venus and Mars - Botticelli The Wilton Diptych - unknownSelf Portrait at the Age of 34 - RembrandtThe National Gallery was set up almost 200 years ago by Parliament to create a collection of paintings for the use of the public. But for much of the past two centuries, the only way that the public could see the art was in person in London. The entire collection has been moved only once, to protect it from German bombs rather than to engage with a wider audience. In World War Two, the paintings were transported to temporary sites in Wales before all 2,000 pictures were hidden in a former quarry in Snowdonia for safe keeping. The Manod Quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, was almost impregnable to bombing. In a top secret venture, works by Turner, da Vinci, Van Dyck and other Old Masters were packed into airtight, climate-controlled brick huts in a huge cavern in the heart of the Manod mountain until the war ended.Image source, The National Gallery LondonImage caption, Some of the National Gallery's works en route to Manod Quarry, in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd in 1941Image source, Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesImage caption, A painting of Cardinal de Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne is brought out for inspection at Manod Quarry in 1942It was many decades, though, before a National Gallery masterpiece returned to Wales. While the institution did loan works increasingly to others, you were sometimes more likely to see one of the gallery's Rembrandts or Monets in a museum abroad than in a gallery in the UK, despite the fact that UK taxpayers fund and co-own the collection.In recent decades, the gallery has stepped up its efforts to share its art more widely across the nation. After it bought a self-portrait by acclaimed 17th Century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi in 2018, the painting went on a tour of the UK, not to museums and galleries but to places where different kinds of people might actually see it.The work spent time in a GP's surgery in Yorkshire, a girls' school in Newcastle, a library in Glasgow and even a women's prison in Surrey. Image source, The National Gallery, London Image caption, Inmates in a women's prison had the chance to see Artemisia Gentileschi's Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (about 1615-17) in 2018The 12 masterpieces that are part of the bicentenary plans will be sent to 12 museums and galleries across the four nations of the UK. Two of the works have never been loaned by the National Gallery before. Botticelli's Venus and Mars and the 14th Century Wilton Diptych, one of the greatest pictures ever produced in the UK, will be seen for the first time in National Gallery history outside London. Image source, The National Gallery, LondonImage caption, Venus and Mars by Botticelli (circa 1485) is one of the paintings that are going on loan for the first timeImage source, The National Gallery, LondonImage caption, The work known as The Wilton Diptych (about 1395-9) is also going on loan for the first timeBut with only 12 paintings out of a collection now totalling around 2,400 being lent for the NG200: National Treasures exhibitions, the gallery's plans could be accused of being small-scale in outlook. And of the 12 on loan from May 2024, only one is by a woman. Artemisia Gentileschi's Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria will be on the road again, a sign she is viewed by the gallery as one of its most significant and popular artists. Art institutions around the world have been trying to address the lack of female artists in their collections. The National Gallery, which holds work from the 1400s to the 1900s, has already been found to have a particular problem, according to a recent study by Cambridge's all-female Murray Edwards College. Only around 1% of the works in the collection are by female artists.Dorothy Byrne, the president of Murray Edwards, said the "token woman" of the 12 artists on the list illustrates the issues revealed by her college's research. She said the other paintings depict women "as virgins, love goddesses and servants", adding: "This is an appalling representation of women to be sending round the country."The National Gallery is a historical collection, dating from a time when women artists weren't recognised, although it does regularly showcase the work of contemporary female artists in its galleries. It points out that NG200: National Treasures is one part of a wider plan to get its art out to audiences in the UK and across the world for its anniversary.Image source, The National Gallery, London Image caption, The Umbrellas by Renoir (circa 1881) is among the 12 paintings that will be lent to another institution in the UKDr Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, said it was "the most ambitious, national programme we have ever undertaken".It is "all about reaching out right across the nation", he said, adding: "A significant amount of the activities are in regional locations and are mostly free. We also want to reach out globally and promote the UK."The programme will open in May 2024. The 12 places that will host the 12 masterpieces will be announced in due course. | Art and Culture |
Archaeologists in the Andalucían city of Utrera have rediscovered a staggeringly rare Spanish medieval synagogue, which was later used over the course of seven centuries as everything from a hospital and a home for abandoned children to a restaurant and disco-pub.
The find, announced on Tuesday, makes the 14th-century building one of a precious handful of medieval synagogues to have survived the aftermath of the expulsion of Spain’s Jews in 1492.
References to the lost temple go back more than 400 years. In his 1604 history of Utrera, Rodrigo Caro, a local priest, historian and poet, described an area of the city centre as it had been in earlier centuries, writing: “In that place, there were only foreign and Jewish people … who had their synagogue where the Hospital de la Misericordia now stands.”
Caro’s assertion was verified at the end of last year when a team led by the archeologist Miguel Ángel de Dios discovered the Torah ark area and the prayer hall.
“It was like cracking hieroglyphics. Once we had that key, it all came together,” he said.
Speaking at a press conference at the site on Tuesday morning, Utrera’s mayor, José María Villalobos, said the two-year search had meant “we can now be scientifically certain that we’re standing in a medieval synagogue right now”.
He said the importance of the “extraordinary” find was difficult to overstate.
“Until now, there were only four such buildings in all of Spain – two in Toledo, one in Segovia and one in Córdoba,” he said. “This is an exceptional building that’s been part of Utrera and part of its inhabitants’ lives for 700 years. This building was born in the 1300s and has made it all the way to the 21st century.”
One of the key reasons for its survival, he added, was the fact that it had always been in use for one purpose or another.
He said the discovery had vindicated the city council’s not-always-popular decision to purchase the property for €460,000 (£410,000) four years ago, and that it represented “an opportunity for us to recover our history” and to attract researchers and tourists.
The plan is to open for public visits in parallel with the continuing archaeological works. Although the women’s area and the ritual bath have yet to be discovered, the site could yet give up many more secrets, according to de Dios. The next phase of the investigation would be looking to see if there was a rabbinical house nearby and perhaps a religious school.
But the significance of the find exceeds the merely architectural, he said.
“Apart from the heritage value – this is a building with an important history that was once a synagogue – the thing that makes me happiest is knowing that we can get back a very, very important part of not just Utrera’s history, but also the history of the Iberian peninsula,” he said. “The story of the Sephardic Jews was practically erased or hidden for a long time.”
While people know about Islamic Spain thanks to its myriad cultural, linguistic, gastronomic and architectural legacies, the story of the Jews who once called the peninsula home is far less familiar.
It was only in 2015 that the Spanish government passed a law offering citizenship to the descendants of the Jews expelled in 1492 in an attempt to atone for what the then government termed a historic mistake. More than 130,000 people applied for citizenship under the scheme before it ended in 2019.
De Dios hopes the discovery of the synagogue-cum-hospital-cum-children’s-home-cum-bar will help Spaniards reflect on their past and their present.
“This is like a window, or like a megaphone through which the Sephardic Jews can speak to us,” he said.
“If we’re so minded, we can listen and learn a lot of things about who we are and why we’re where we are. It’s an opportunity to think about where the Sephardic diaspora is now. It’s a unique opportunity and we shouldn’t get too hung up on the building and its four walls.” | Art and Culture |
How are ancient Roman and Mayan buildings still standing? Scientists are unlocking their secrets
In the quest to build better for the future, some are looking for answers in the long-ago past.
Ancient builders across the world created structures that are still standing today, thousands of years later—from Roman engineers who poured thick concrete sea barriers, to Maya masons who crafted plaster sculptures to their gods, to Chinese builders who raised walls against invaders.
Yet scores of more recent structures are already staring down their expiration dates: The concrete that makes up much of our modern world has a lifespan of around 50 to 100 years.
A growing number of scientists have been studying materials from long-ago eras—chipping off chunks of buildings, poring over historical texts, mixing up copycat recipes—hoping to uncover how they've held up for millennia.
This reverse engineering has turned up a surprising list of ingredients that were mixed into old buildings—materials such as tree bark, volcanic ash, rice, beer and even urine. These unexpected add-ins could be key some pretty impressive properties, like the ability to get stronger over time and "heal" cracks when they form.
Figuring out how to copy those features could have real impacts today: While our modern concrete has the strength to hold up massive skyscrapers and heavy infrastructure, it can't compete with the endurance of these ancient materials.
And with the rising threats of climate change, there's a growing call to make construction more sustainable. A recent UN report estimates that the built environment is responsible for more than a third of global CO2 emissions—and cement production alone makes up more than 7% of those emissions.
"If you improve the properties of the material by using … traditional recipes from Maya people or the ancient Chinese, you can produce material that can be used in modern construction in a much more sustainable way," said Carlos Rodriguez-Navarro, a cultural heritage researcher at Spain's University of Granada.
Is ancient Roman concrete better than today's?
Many researchers have turned to the Romans for inspiration. Starting around 200 BCE, the architects of the Roman Empire were building impressive concrete structures that have stood the test of time—from the soaring dome of the Pantheon to the sturdy aqueducts that still carry water today.
Even in harbors, where seawater has been battering structures for ages, you'll find concrete "basically the way it was when it was poured 2,000 years ago," said John Oleson, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada.
Most modern concrete starts with Portland cement, a powder made by heating limestone and clay to super-high temperatures and grinding them up. That cement is mixed with water to create a chemically reactive paste. Then, chunks of material like rock and gravel are added, and the cement paste binds them into a concrete mass.
According to records from ancient architects like Vitruvius, the Roman process was similar. The ancient builders mixed materials like burnt limestone and volcanic sand with water and gravel, creating chemical reactions to bind everything together.
Now, scientists think they've found a key reason why some Roman concrete has held up structures for thousands of years: The ancient material has an unusual power to repair itself. Exactly how is not yet clear, but scientists are starting to find clues.
In a study published earlier this year, Admir Masic, a civil and environmental engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed that this power comes from chunks of lime that are studded throughout the Roman material instead of being mixed in evenly. Researchers used to think these chunks were a sign that the Romans weren't mixing up their materials well enough.
Instead, after analyzing concrete samples from Privernum—an ancient city outside of Rome—the scientists found that the chunks could fuel the material's "self-healing" abilities. When cracks form, water is able to seep into the concrete, Masic explained. That water activates the leftover pockets of lime, sparking up new chemical reactions that can fill in the damaged sections.
Marie Jackson, a geologist at the University of Utah, has a different take. Her research has found that the key could be in the specific volcanic materials used by the Romans.
The builders would gather volcanic rocks left behind after eruptions to mix into their concrete. This naturally reactive material changes over time as it interacts with the elements, Jackson said, allowing it to seal cracks that develop.
The ability to keep adapting over time "is truly the genius of the material," Jackson said. "The concrete was so well designed that it sustains itself."
Using tree juice to make sculptures as strong as seashells
At Copan, a Maya site in Honduras, intricate lime sculptures and temples remain intact even after more than 1,000 years exposed to a hot, humid environment. And according to a study published earlier this year, the secret to these structures' longevity might lie in the trees that sprout among them.
Researchers here had a living link to the structures' creators: They met with local masons in Honduras who traced their lineage all the way back to the Mayan builders, explained Rodriguez-Navarro, who worked on the study.
The masons suggested using extracts from local chukum and jiote trees in the lime mix. When researchers tested out the recipe—collecting bark, putting the chunks in water and adding the resulting tree "juice" into the material—they found the resulting plaster was especially durable against physical and chemical damage.
When scientists zoomed in, they saw that bits of organic material from the tree juice got incorporated into the plaster's molecular structure. In this way, the Mayan plaster was able to mimic sturdy natural structures like seashells and sea urchin spines—and borrow some of their toughness, Rodriguez-Navarro said.
Studies have found all kinds of natural materials mixed into structures from long ago: fruit extracts, milk, cheese curd, beer, even dung and urine. The mortar that holds together some of China's most famous structures—including the Great Wall and the Forbidden City—includes traces of starch from sticky rice.
Luck or skill?
Some of these ancient builders might have just gotten lucky, said Cecilia Pesce, a materials scientist at the University of Sheffield in England. They'd toss just about anything into their mixes, as long as it was cheap and available—and the ones that didn't work out have long since collapsed.
"They would put all sorts of things in construction," Pesce said. "And now, we only have the buildings that survived. So it's like a natural selection process."
But some materials seem to show more intention—like in India, where builders crafted blends of local materials to produce different properties, said Thirumalini Selvaraj, a civil engineer and professor at India's Vellore Institute of Technology.
According to Selvaraj's research, in humid areas of India, builders used local herbs that help structures deal with moisture. Along the coast, they added jaggery, an unrefined sugar, which can help protect from salt damage. And in areas with higher earthquake risks, they used super-light "floating bricks" made with rice husks.
"They know the region, they know the soil condition, they know the climate," Selvaraj said. "So they engineer a material according to this."
Ancient Roman ... skyscrapers?
Today's builders can't just copy the ancient recipes. Even though Roman concrete lasted a long time, it couldn't hold up heavy loads: "You couldn't build a modern skyscraper with Roman concrete," Oleson said. "It would collapse when you got to the third story."
Instead, researchers are trying to take some of the ancient material's specialties and add them into modern mixes. Masic is part of a startup that is trying to build new projects using Roman-inspired, "self-healing" concrete. And Jackson is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to design concrete structures that can hold up well in seawater—like the ones in Roman ports—to help protect coastlines from sea level rise.
We don't need to make things last quite as long as the Romans did to have an impact, Masic said. If we add 50 or 100 years to concrete's lifespan, "we will require less demolition, less maintenance and less material in the long run."
© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. | Art and Culture |
Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have found an anthropomorphic statue depicting a Maya death deity from the Early Classic Period (AD 200-600)
The discovery was made during construction works of Section 7 of the Maya Train near the village of Conhuas in the Mexican state of Campeche. Conhuas is situated in close proximity to the ruins of Balamku, a Maya temple complex which contains one of the largest surviving stucco friezes from the Maya world.
The statue is sculptured from limestone and may depict Cizin, also spelled Kisin, the Maya god of death, whose name is believed to mean “Stinking One.” According to Lacandon myth, when a person dies, Cizin burns the soul on his mouth and his anus until the soul disintegrates into nothing.
The statue measures 25 centimetres in height and shows the deity with an erect tabular cranial modification in a seated position wearing a nose ring and mask. “It is a figure with stark features that appeals to mortuary motifs and would be linked to a deity of death,” said the head of the INAH.
Excavations of Section 7 on the Maya Train project, a 1,525-kilometre intercity railway that will traverse the Yucatán Peninsula, have also revealed 21,960 immovable sites that will be protected, in addition to 72,480 ceramic potsherds, 64 human burials, and 227 natural features associated with human occupation.
In April 2023, INAH archaeologists also announced the discovery of a statue of Kʼawiil during excavations of Section 7. Kʼawiil was the Maya lightning god also associated with serpents, fertility, and maize. Although depictions of Kʼawiil can be found in Maya reliefs and the Dresden and Maya codices of Mexico, only three statues of Kʼawiil have been previously discovered, all of which come from the city of Tikal in Guatemala.
Header Image Credit : INAH | Art and Culture |
A Chicago native was on a mission to prove the $30,000 painting he purchased at an antique store was created by the famed Raphael and 30 years later, artificial intelligence finds a 97 percent match.
Anthony Ayers bought the painting, known as the Flaget Madonna, in 1995 and four years ago, he commissioned an AI firm to analyze the paint and wood panels.
Art Recognition used its machine learning software to examine the brushstrokes, determining the famed Italian painted the faces of Mary and infant Jesus with high probability.
The firm trained its software with millions of artworks to verify the authenticity of art, and fewer than 10 percent of its clients have received higher than 95 percent.
While Ayers and his friends have spent more than $500,000 hiring specialists to analyze the paints and wooden panels, the last Raphael masterpiece sold for $48 million in 2009 - a sketch titled 'Head of a Muse.'
Ayers, however, died in 2022 at age 64, but his wife, Dawn Turco, is carrying on with her late husband's quest.
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance.
He was born in Urbino, Italy in 1483 and learned painting from his father.
Raphael died in Rome in 1520, leaving behind less than 200 works - all of which now would be worth a fortune.
The Flaget Madonna depicts Mary holding an infant Jesus while with their cousins Elizabeth and a young St John the Baptist.
Ayers had a gut feeling that the painting he purchased at a quaint shop in London was the real deal.
Turco, who was with Ayers when he discovered it, told the Wall Street Journal: 'Tony just knew it was something. He could not get it out of his head.'
Turco has been working with the 40 individuals who invested in Ayres's mission.
The team at Art Recognition first trained their AI to understand the difference between real works by Raphael and fakes.
The software then went to work, analyzing 16 parts of the Flaget Madonna and the painting as a whole.
Heat mapping shows the faces of Mary and Jesus came back as 96.57 percent and 96.24 percent attribution to Raphael, while the rest of the painting was not a match.
And it is believed that Raphael's assistance finished the rest of the painting.
The painting is now held in a vault on the outskirts of Chicago after centuries of traveling worldwide.
Dr Carina Popovici, Founder and CEO of Art Recognition, told ArtDaily: 'Through brushstroke artificial intelligence, we offer objectivity and accessibility to clients, which has been missing in the field of art evaluation for many years.
'Art history, provenance, chemical analysis, and other methods are all critical to the full understanding of an artwork, but attribution decisions should not be left solely to the subjective human expert’s eye.'
Dr Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor of art history emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, investigated the painting after the AI's analysis.
He determined that it was from Raphael's studio, and significant parts of the work were attributed to the artist himself.
And an examination of the Art Analysis and Research looked at pigment and provenance reinforced Silver's views.
'The technical and art historical analyses align to suggest that the core of this painting is likely to have been designed by Raphael, with the obvious participation in the work by a lesser, secondary hand,' Silver told ArtDaily. | Art and Culture |
Ahead of this year's Memorial Day weekend, Miami Beach took a new approach: The city's tourism department recruited local artists of color to put together a series of exhibits specifically for black visitors. The theme was "ReFrame," which the city described as an attempt to reframe the Memorial Day narrative in Miami Beach. Octavia Yearwood, an artist who curated the event, told New Times she wanted to highlight people of color's contributions to Miami Beach and the city's history of segregation.
In the days leading up to Memorial Day weekend — sometimes referred to as Urban Beach Week — the city promoted the art installations on its website, through email, and on social media. But while the exhibits were on display over the weekend, City Manager Jimmy Morales personally requested the removal of a piece by artist R. Jackson memorializing Raymond Herisse, a young black man who was fatally shot by Miami Beach Police over Memorial Day weekend in 2011.
"The purpose of the ReFrame cultural programming this past weekend was to create an opportunity for inclusiveness and mutual exchange. The City Manager felt that the panel in the one particular art installation regarding the incidents of Memorial Day weekend in 2011 did not achieve this objective," Melissa Berthier, a city spokeswoman, said in an email. "After a discussion with the curators, the piece was removed." (RE: Miami Beach first reported the news yesterday.)
The artists of ReFrame originally posted a sign saying the piece had been removed at the request of Miami Beach Police. But in an Instagram post Monday, the person behind the @reframemiamibeach account said Deputy Chief Rick Clements denied police had asked for the artwork to be taken down. Jackson and Yearwood did not respond to calls and emails from New Times on Tuesday.View this post on Instagram
This piece by @rjacksonworks serves as a memorial for Raymond Herisse who was killed in an officer-involved shooting, swipe to see wall text. We were asked to remove this work from the I See You Too exhibit. While we are unsure as to who exactly requested removal of this piece, we were told it was at the behest of @miamibeachpd so today we had a candid conversation with Deputy Chief of Police Rick Clemons and it was made clear to us that they did not censor this exhibit.
The tribute to Herisse was part of an exhibit called I See You Too at a gallery on Lincoln Road. The installation, which featured art by Jackson and Loni Johnson, was meant to "explore the effects of propaganda and misinformation on the public's perception of minorities." By Tuesday, the event page was no longer active on Miami Beach's website, although a cached version is still available.
Although police apparently had nothing to do with the removal of Jackson's artwork, the piece was critical of past actions of the Miami Beach Police Department. A description beside the work explained that a Miami Herald investigation found the police's narrative of the 2011 shooting was "inconsistent, contradictory, and missing key information."
"This memorial is to honor Herisse, to affirm #blacklivesmatter and call into question the excessive force, racial discrimination, violence, and aggression often present in interactions between police and unarmed Black civilians," the placard stated.
Shannon Ligon, an attorney for Herisse's family, criticized the city for removing the artwork. "I'm really appalled by that," she said. "If anything, I think it's important that you memorialize situations like [Herisse's death] just so they don't happen again."
The act of censorship could have a chilling effect on the city's future collaborations with black artists. At least one artist, photographer Johanne Rahaman, has already criticized Miami Beach for its approach. Rahaman, whose name was originally listed in promotional materials and then removed, told the Miami Times she believed the art show was an attempt to "culture wash" Urban Beach Week. (Rahaman says she has never been affiliated with ReFrame.)
"Urban Beach is hip-hop," she told the paper. "If you erase that, then you are really getting rid of the event."
Statement from Octavia Yearwood and Jared McGriff, ReFrame Miami Beach Production Team:
The ReFrame Miami Beach production team was engaged by The City of Miami Beach’s Tourism and Culture Department to present a program during Memorial Beach Weekend, we together approached this project with a question, “How can art and culture step in as a mediator to tell stories from different points of view?” Given the fraught relationship between The City of Miami Beach and local and visiting communities of color, we agreed on programming that would spark crucial conversations about inclusion, Blackness, trust and surveillance. Curated by Octavia Yearwood and Naiomy Guerrero, with artists Loni Johnson and Rodney Jackson, the exhibition "I See You, Too” opened on Friday, May 25 as one of several activations about how propaganda and misinformation have compromised us.
On Saturday, May 26, The City of Miami Beach told Yearwood that we needed to remove the memorial of Raymond Herisse at the behest of the Miami Beach Police, due their being offended by the memorial, or the entire exhibition “I See You, Too” would be shut down. We requested a conversation with the offended parties.
Our request for a conversation was not accepted and another demand for removal was articulated. The installation was removed under threat of consequences that would have further limited our expression.
We stand by our artists and their first amendment rights. When The City underwrote the exhibition, they approved of the curatorial direction and did not ask for curatorial review. This incident was an act of art censorship, and while we as curators removed the artwork, it was removed under duress.
We are currently speaking with our creative team, reaching out the family of Mr. Herisse, and advisors to determine the best next steps. We thank the many artists and leaders who have reached out with their support and who stand against art censorship.
This story has been updated to clarify that photographer Johanne Rahaman is not affiliated with the ReFrame art project. | Art and Culture |
How ceramics are telling the story of 14th century Chinese trade
The history of Chinese trade is sometimes still a bit of a mystery due to the lack of historical records. This is where archaeologists are relying on ceramics to tell the story.
Analysis of high-quality glazed ceramic pottery, called celadon, has shown that this greenware was produced in the Zhejiang Province in China from the 12th to the 15th century on a scale that was unparalleled anywhere in the world at that time.
The research, conducted through a long-standing partnership between Durham University and the Palace Museum in Beijing, found that the trade in this product was one of the earliest 'global' manufacturing and export industries.
Large-scale production
The study indicates that this high-quality and highly valued ceramic was used across China as a tableware and exported across the Indian Ocean as far as East Africa, Arabia, Egypt and Iran.
The researchers say the phenomenal scale of production within the kilns at Longquan in the Zhejiang Province is solid testimony to China's technical skill and development at this time.
The pieces of ceramics, which can often be precisely dated, contain a wealth of largely untapped information on the extent of trading networks through time.
They show not only the significant scale of the production but also a level of integration between the Chinese domestic economy and overseas trade and consumption, demonstrating China's economic reach and power during the later 13th and 14th centuries.
The work is published in the journal World Archaeology.
More information: Ran Zhang et al, Longquan celadon: a quantitative archaeological analysis of a pan-Indian Ocean industry of the 12th to 15th centuries, World Archaeology (2023). DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2023.2216183
Provided by Durham University | Art and Culture |
The thrum of bare feet pounding the earth erupts across the darkened theatre. Four women charge over the stage, eyes bright and defiant, whirling their limbs and hips as if made of liquid adrenaline. With each exultant gesture, each primal pulse, the women suspend a dream of freedom in the air – a vision of Africa without colonisation.
Bikutsi 3000, which had its Australian premiere at Perth festival, is an afro-futuristic performance by Cameroon artist Blick Bassy that packs a bold political punch: centring women as the agents of emancipation from Africa’s treacherous history of imperialism, with dance as their only weapon. Among the ensemble of African women are two local Aboriginal dancers, Liani Dalgetty and Kristyn Lane, who join in the celebratory march towards freedom.
“In many ways, the patriarchy has failed us,” Bassy says, speaking from his home in Bordeaux. “When I was writing this story, I wanted to create a world where women could lead Africa, not through violence, but by taking us back to our roots, our language, our traditional values … it’s about remembering who we are.”
The return of international shows like Bikutsi 3000 to Perth festival, which daringly ask us to reimagine global history, is a welcome shift after the fruitful but entirely homegrown Covid years. The 70th anniversary theme is Djinda, the Noongar word for stars, and this year Perth festival is opens its arms to stars from all over the world including Björk, the Icelandic pop icon bringing her immersive extravaganza Cornucopia; US band Kronos Quartet, who are collaborating with Noongar composer Maatakitj (Dr Clint Bracknell); Virginia Gay’s acclaimed retelling of the classic play Cyrano, presented by Melbourne Theatre Company; as well as a host of global literary and musical stars from poet Kae Tempest to Saharan psych-rock legends Mdou Moctar.
If the murmurs are true, the extraordinary cost of presenting Björk resulted in a pared-back program this year – but even so, what it does offer is certainly world-class, and the people of Perth are embracing it. The fourth program curated by the artistic director, Iain Grandage, is a continuation of his emphasis on First Nations truth-telling; the bedrock of the festival which, he says, has a deeply grounding impact and allows other artists to feel comfortable in telling their stories.
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This approach is exemplified in Djoondal, the free opening event taking place at Lake Joondalup, a place steeped in ancient dreaming stories of the cosmos, which is described by Noongar people as their “mirror to the stars”. Enveloping audiences in a hypnotic bubble of light, dancing drones and pulsating Aboriginal techno beats, Djoondal breathes new life to the story of the spirit woman with the long white hair who created the milky way, and whose name lives on in Joondalup.
Created by a team of artists led by Ian Moopa Wilkes, the brains behind last year’s Perth festival performance Noongar Wonderland, Djoondal adopts a Noongar-futurism approach – a mode of storytelling which expresses Indigenous perspectives of the past and the future, often reimagining a reality in alignment with ancient knowledge.
While comparisons may abound with Ilona McGuire’s Moombaki, the ultra-slick Noongar storytelling drone show by presented by the Fremantle Biennale, Djoondal sets out to achieve something entirely different. It gathers together the past and the future in a tough knot of wonder, splicing ancient practices with contemporary challenges and leaving audiences to ponder how Indigenous knowledge could vastly improve our future. As the young woman who gingerly addresses the audience at Djoondal’s conclusion says: “We are not the problem, we are the solution.”
Presented at Perth Concert Hall, the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra’s Music of the Spheres is a decadent feast of classical arias and new works paying homage to universe. The shining star of the show is undoubtedly Gumbaynggirr and Yamatji woman Emma Donovan, whose rich, velvety jazz vocals are utterly disarming in such a formal setting. Her original piece, Yira Djinang, reflects First Nations’ cosmological wisdom and is sung partly in her father’s Noongar language: “Look up to the sky now … the place of the long silver hair.”
Another unassumingly magical performance comes from the WA Youth Theatre Company (WAYTCo) with Seven Sisters, a play performed under the cosmic veil of night, in which young actors grapple with the boundless nature of time and the weight of an uncertain future. Co-directed by emerging Noongar-Greek theatre maker Cezera Critti-Schnaars and the WAYTCo artistic director, James Berlyn, Seven Sisters will unfold over the four weekends of the festival, each at a different outdoor venue.
The performance starts with a layered chorus of voices calling out their understanding of the Seven Sisters dreaming story. A young actor with cerebral palsy laments that if something as perfect and miraculous as the milky way exists, how can they live in the same universe? Another speaks of their angst at not fitting into their family, of being “a gay alien floating on a rainbow”, while one expresses their grief over a gnawing sense of disconnection from their homelands in the Congo and Tanzania.
A particularly poignant moment comes from Makaela Rowe-Fox who, instead of gazing at the black abyss above, looks straight ahead to an audience of primarily older theatregoers: “As easy as it might be to tell you about how beautiful the stars are, I can’t do that if I can’t fucking see them!” She talks of sky-glow obscuring the stars, about capitalism, the ecological crisis and, ultimately, the disproportionate pressure this places on young people. This uncomfortable truth hangs in the air.
“I’m sick of being told I’m the future. Like stars, old people are from the past but they’re also our future,” she calls out. “The future, isn’t young. It’s ancient.”
Perth festival continues until 5 March | Art and Culture |
Archaeologists have discovered a major Palaeolithic cave art site, arguably the most important found on the Eastern Iberian Coast in Europe.
Over a hundred ancient paintings and engravings, thought to be at least 24,000 years old, have been found in a 500 metre-long cave in 'Cova Dones' or 'Cueva Dones' -- a site located in Millares near Valencia in Spain.
The cave site is well-known by locals and often visited by hikers and explorers, but the existence of Palaeolithic paintings was unnoticed until researchers from the universities of Zaragoza and Alicante (Spain), and affiliated to the University of Southampton (UK), made the exciting discovery in June 2021.
Findings of a study into the cave art, which highlight its true significance, are now published in the journal Antiquity.
Dr Aitor Ruiz-Redondo, Senior Lecturer of Prehistory at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) and research affiliate at the University of Southampton (UK) comments: "When we saw the first painted auroch [extinct wild bull], we immediately acknowledged it was important. Although Spain is the country with largest number of Palaeolithic cave art sites, most of them are concentrated in northern Spain. Eastern Iberia is an area where few of these sites have been documented so far.
"However, the actual 'shock' of realising its significance came long after the first discovery. Once we began the proper systematic survey we realised we were facing a major cave art site, like the ones that can be found elsewhere in Cantabrian Spain, southern France or Andalusia, but that totally lack in this territory."
The research team of Dr Ruiz-Redondo, Dr Virginia Barciela-González, Senior Lecturer of Prehistory at the University of Alicante (Spain) and Dr Ximo Martorell-Briz, research affiliate at the University of Alicante (Spain), have painstakingly documented over a hundred 'motifs', or designs, at Cova Dones so far.
The large number of motifs and the variety of techniques involved in their creation make the cave the most important Palaeolithic cave art site on the eastern Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, it is probably the Palaeolithic cave with the greatest number of motifs discovered in Europe since Atxurra (Bizkaia), in 2015.
The study highlights there are at least 19 confirmed animal representations, including hinds, horses, aurochs, and deer. Unusually, the majority of the paintings have been made using clay.
Dr Aitor Ruiz-Redondo explains: "Animals and signs were depicted simply by dragging the fingers and palms covered with clay on the walls. The humid environment of the cave did the rest: the 'paintings' dried quite slowly, preventing parts of the clay from falling down rapidly, while other parts were covered by calcite layers, which preserved them until today."
Although painting in clay is known in Palaeolithic Art, examples of its usage (or preservation) are scarce. In Cueva Dones, however, it is the main technique.
The researchers say their investigations are at an early stage and there are still many areas to survey and panels to document -- so they are likely to reveal more art in the coming years.
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A lost BBC interview with street artist Banksy has been unearthed, more than 20 years since it was recorded.
The recording includes Banksy comparing his approach to art - which involves producing graffiti undercover at speed - to microwaving meals.
"It's quick," the Bristol artist said, adding: "I want to get it done and dusted."
The full interview can be heard on BBC Radio 4's The Banksy Story, which is available on BBC Sounds.
A bonus episode of the podcast was specially recorded after the interview was discovered.
It is one of the earliest known radio interviews with the artist, who is often described as "mysterious" and "secretive" by the press.
Banksy's real identity has never been revealed, but the interview gives his fans, which include many A-list celebrities, a rare chance to hear his voice.
The artist - at the time in his 20s - was interviewed by former BBC arts correspondent Nigel Wrench in the summer of 2003, to mark the opening of Banksy's Turf War show in east London.
An edited version was aired that July on the BBC's Radio 4 PM programme. However, not all of the material was used.
Many years later, Mr Wrench was listening to The Banksy Story podcast, and this prompted him to recover the full interview on a minidisc in his house.
The never-heard-before material includes Banksy's defence of vandalism as art.
"I'm not here to apologise for it," he told Mr Wrench. "It's a quicker way of making your point, right?
"In the same way my mother used to cook Sunday roast every Sunday and says every Sunday, 'it takes hours to make it, minutes to eat'."
"And these days she eats microwave meals for one and seems a lot happier. I'm kind of taking that approach to art really. I want to get it done and dusted."
When pushed on whether graffiti is vandalism and illegal, Banksy had this advice for people:
"Go out! Trash things! Have fun!", he said, adding that others, in turn, could paint over your work.
"Other people, they can change it. They can get rid of it," he said.
Shredded artwork
During the interview, Banksy also appears to confirm his first name. When Mr Wrench asked if it was "Robert Banks", the artist replied: "It's Robbie."
Banksy rose to prominence through a series of graffiti pieces that appeared on buildings across the country, marked by their satirical themes.
He's one of the world's most famous artists, but despite this he chooses to keep his identity, officially at least, unknown.
In 2018, he stunned the art world when his Girl With Balloon painting "self-destructed" in London, immediately after it had been sold at auction.
Girl With Balloon was originally stencilled on a wall in east London and has been endlessly reproduced, becoming one of Banksy's best-known images. | Art and Culture |
Of all the early rock-and-roll progenitors, Little Richard arguably best embodied the spirit of the music—its rebellious temperament, its cross-racial appeal, its youthful ecstasy. He imbued the piano with rhythm and blues, frenetically pounding on the keys to generate an up-tempo sound that matched his gospel-influenced vocals. His music crossed the color barrier, finding unique purchase with white audiences; his unabashed Blackness and flamboyantly androgynous style struck the status quo like a battering ram. He directly inspired acts like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, whose members viewed Little Richard as a borderline-religious icon, and his influence could be felt through the stage presence of myriad later artists, including David Bowie and Prince. But like too many influential Black artists of his generation, he never quite received his due during his lifetime.
Sadly, Lisa Cortés’s new documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, makes the case for Little Richard’s unimpeachable greatness in the driest format imaginable: a soup-to-nuts biography that plays like a history lecture. The film takes the standard music-documentary approach—a mixture of archival concert footage, B-roll, and television appearances interspersed with talking head commentary from a variety of scholars and contemporaries. We dutifully learn about Little Richard’s early experiences in various churches, the development of his stage antics, the risqué origins of his first hit, “Tutti Frutti” (it’s about anal sex!), his sexual debauchery and drug addiction, and so forth. Cortés occasionally features brief performances of Richard’s songs from current musicians, which attempt to convey the music’s evergreen nature, but otherwise this is a by-the-book glossy profile that drags at nearly 100 minutes.
I Am Everything transparently aspires to teach younger generations about Little Richard and argue for his continuing relevance, so it’s somewhat understandable that it adopts a holistically educational approach. After all, how many people are currently familiar with 1950s rock-and-roll mythologies, let alone people like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the “godmother of rock and roll,” and musician Billy Wright, who was Little Richard’s direct artistic influence—or the existence of the Chitlin’ Circuit, a series of performance venues that catered to Black entertainers?
Yet the film’s monotonous, chronological presentation of facts can’t help but run counter to its aims, even as the mostly Black talking heads strive to accurately frame the musician as a radical character. Since the operating assumption is that the audience isn’t aware, for example, that the concept of the “teenager” was a midcentury phenomenon, or that the youth’s postwar angst and desire to break free from the era’s social and sexual repression inspired widespread interest in rhythm-forward music, it’s difficult to experiment with structure or form, even if that would best pay tribute to Little Richard’s groundbreaking techniques.
The handling of Little Richard’s queerness—both his embrace of his sexual identity and his subsequent rejection of it—represents I Am Everything’s most compelling and frustrating qualities. Commentary around his gender performance frequently brings the best out of the film, such as when writer Zandria Robinson succinctly argues that the South is “the home of all things queer,” and that queerness isn’t just about sexuality—it’s “about a presence in a space that is different from what we require or expect.” Little Richard’s effeminate appearance was a complicated double-edged sword: His pancake makeup and pompadour hairstyle counterintuitively garnered him a passionate white female audience, because he presented as accessible and nonthreatening.
At his height, Little Richard weaponized his sexuality as both a provocation and a marketing tool, and often wore it as a badge of honor. But his religious upbringing and his recurrent forays into evangelicalism led him to publicly denounce homosexuality on multiple occasions, including as late as in 2017. His oscillating pride and self-loathing are a key part of Little Richard’s story, and while I Am Everything addresses the personal contradictions head-on, the film ultimately has too many irons in the fire to give the topic proper consideration. It’s easy to imagine a version of I Am Everything that exclusively focused on Little Richard’s sexuality; that might have provided the film with more focus, and elevated its most thoughtful moments.
Like many music documentaries of this ilk, the archival footage, most of which is widely available and has been featured in various other documentaries or compilations, is the big draw. It’s unquestionably electric—there’s still nothing like watching him actually yowl “a wop-bop-a-loo-mop, alop-bam-boom!” or bang on the piano like it’s a drum. Even the snippets of his various interviews, however inconsistent they may be, portray the man as a magnetic, self-possessed figure who cut a swathe through 20th-century norms. While I Am Everything does an adequate job of explaining Little Richard, it can’t hold a candle to actually watching him do his thing. Every time the film cuts away to an ethnologist detailing the historical milieu or Billy Porter earnestly describing the effect Little Richard had on his career, it ironically paints the man as a relic rather than situating him as a present-day concern.
Little Richard had to witness his career become sidelined in real time as many of his contemporaries profited from, and were lauded for, his achievements. I Am Everything does its damnedest to try to rectify this inequity, but only serves to create greater distance between him and his audience. | Art and Culture |
Unlike many of his contemporaries—and many artists who have come since—Rembrandt enjoyed unusual success during his life. Many of the Dutch master’s works were known throughout the Netherlands and Europe, and his students went on to be influential in the Dutch Golden Age.
Due to his celebrity status, the discovery of any unknown pieces by the 17th-century painter would generate buzz throughout the art world.
Henry Pettifer, an expert in old masters at Christie’s auction house, just found two.
“What’s extraordinary is that the paintings were completely unknown,” Pettifer tells Lianne Kolirin of CNN. “They had never appeared in any of the Rembrandt literature of the 19th or 20th century.”
The two paintings, last seen by the public nearly 200 years ago, depict plumber Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and his wife Jaapgen Carels. The couple lived in the Dutch city of Leiden, and they remained connected to Rembrandt throughout his life. Their son married Rembrandt’s cousin, and the son from that marriage is believed to have trained under Rembrandt.
“They were very much from Rembrandt’s own inner circle,” Pettifer tells Leo Sands of the Washington Post. “We should regard [the portraits] as personal documents rather than formal commissions.”
The family sold the pieces at auction in 1824 to the ancestors of the current owners, a British family whose name remains undisclosed.
The current owners had no idea that their collection included these extremely rare portraits. During the pandemic, Pettifer was reviewing their collection when he stumbled across them.
“The family liked the pictures but were never certain that they were by Rembrandt and never really looked into that,” Pettifer tells the Washington Post. “They have been quietly sitting in this collection, effectively hidden away from any attention at all.”
Signed and dated 1635, the two “exceptionally rare” pieces are a little under 8 inches tall and 6½ inches wide, according to a statement from Christie’s. “I think they are the smallest portraits that he painted that we know of,” Pettifer tells CNN.
Rembrandt had moved to Amsterdam to begin his art career in earnest only a few years earlier, in 1631. He had a habit of spending outside his means, which led to financial difficulties in his later years. Still, he made an indelible mark on the artists who came after him across Europe. Francisco Goya, the 18th-century Spanish artist, once said, “I have had three masters: Nature, Velázquez and Rembrandt.”
Following the discovery, experts at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum evaluated the portraits, verifying that they were Rembrandt’s.
After making brief stops in New York and Amsterdam, the newly discovered pieces are expected to sell for between $6.25 million and $10 million at auction in London on July 6. | Art and Culture |
ROME -- An ancient Roman imperial palazzo atop the city's Palatine Hill was reopened to tourists on Thursday, nearly 50 years after its closure for restoration.
The nearly 2,000-year-old Domus Tiberiana was home to rulers in the ancient city’s Imperial period. The sprawling palace allows for sweeping views of the Roman Forum below.
The public is now able to tour it, following decades of structural restoration work to shore the palace up for safety reasons. Excavations uncovered artifacts from centuries of Roman life following the decline of the empire.
The director of the Colosseum Archeological Park, which includes the Palatine Hill, in a written description of the restored palazzo, dubbed it “the power palace par excellence.”
On the eve of the reopening, the official, Alfonsina Russo, quoted a first-century Roman poet as saying the sprawling palace seemed “infinite” and that "its grandiosity was just like the grandiosity of the sky.”
Although the domus, or residence, is named after Tiberius, who ruled the empire after the death of Augustus, archaeological studies indicated that the palace's foundations date from the era of Nero, shortly after the fire of 64 A.D that devastated much of the city.
After the demise of the Roman Empire, the residence suffered centuries of abandonment, until when, in the 1500s, the Farnese noble family developed an extensive garden around the ruins.
Thanks to the palazzo's reopening to the public, visitors today can get a better idea of the path ancient emperors and their courts enjoyed en route to the domus.
The English word “palatial” is inspired by the sumptuous imperial residence atop the Palatine, one of ancient Rome's seven hills.
The domus, built on the northwest slope of the hill, is considered to be the first true imperial palace. Besides the emperor's residence, the complex included gardens, places of worship, quarters for the Praetorian Guard that protected the ruler and a service district for workers that overlooked the Roman Forum.
Excavation and restoration work, carried out also during the coronavirus pandemic when for months tourism was at a minimum, helped archeologists piece together what Russo calls centuries of history in a place that “somehow went forgotten.”
On display for those visiting the reopened domus is a selection of hundreds of artifacts that were found, including objects in metal and glass. Statues, other decorations and ancient coins were also dug up. | Art and Culture |
A centuries-old gold disc found in Denmark has revealed the earliest known mention of the Norse god Odin and shown he was being worshipped at least 150 years earlier than previously thought.
The disc, known as a bracteate, was unearthed in a treasure trove in Vindelev, central Denmark, in 2020, alongside Roman coins that had been reworked into jewelry.
It was displayed to the public at a museum near the discovery site and only recently made available to academics who were able to establish its significance.
Odin is one of the primary gods of Norse mythology, a pre-Christian pagan belief system central to Viking society.
“This is the smoking gun for Odin’s presence in Scandinavia as early as the 5th century,” Simon Nygaard, an assistant professor in pre-Christian Nordic religion at Aarhus University in Denmark, told NBC News on Wednesday. “In the proper sense of the word, it’s historic.”
Nygaard, who was consulted about the interpretation of the inscription on the bracteate, added that finding a runic inscription that includes Odin's name was “spectacular.”
Before the Vindelev hoard’s discovery, the oldest mention of Odin was a brooch found in southern Germany from the latter half of the 6th century.
The disc features an inscription: “He is Odin’s man,” said Krister Vasshus, a linguist who helped to decipher the runic inscription. He added that it also features a name or nickname “Jaga” or “JagaR,” who was likely the king or ruler of the place where the bracteate was made.
This “can tell us something about the relationship people had with their gods and possibly even how divine rulership was organized in Scandinavia at this time,” he said.
Although it was known that Odin had existed as a concept or deity for centuries before the bracteate was created, Vasshus said it was “very exciting indeed.”
“The carver knew exactly how to shape the runes to make them perfect, simply perfect,” he added. “They are exquisite.”
The bracteate also displays a swastika, an ancient symbol used throughout the Iron Age and later co-opted by German nationalists and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.
Odin appears in multiple pre-Christian barbarian belief systems across northern Europe in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west. He was known as Wōden to the Saxons who colonized England in the 5th and 6th centuries, and as Uuôden in Old Dutch.
Some traditions place him as the father or ruler of the gods. The Prose Edda, one of the main sources of Norse mythology, refers to Odin as the "Allfather."
“Odin is highest and eldest of the Æsir [the primary group of Norse gods]: he rules all things, and mighty as are the other gods, they all serve him as children obey a father,” it says.
The Edda was based on Old Norse tradition but was written in 13th century Iceland long after Vikings had converted to Christianity.
Odin's sons included Thor, the god of thunder, the inspiration for Marvel's comic book series and movie series of the same name.
Some modern Icelanders still follow the Old Norse pagan religion: work began on a temple honoring the gods in 2016.
Vasshus said the bracteate may have been buried to hide it from enemies or as a tribute to appease the gods.
"It’s a very large amount of gold, so it must have been a very serious situation that they wanted improve," he said.
“We know that in 536 A.D. there was an enormous volcanic eruption and there were at least two more that blocked the light of the sun. There must have been famine in the areas that relied on grains and cereals,” he said. “We also know that in 541 A.D. there was a plague similar to the Black Death.”
He added that at that time “Scandinavia was predominantly an area where they relied on oral tradition, so it was not a very literate society and we have very few written sources from this part of the world at this period of time.”
As a result, he said, the disc, “pushes our knowledge a bit further which is very exciting.” | Art and Culture |
Dozens of pieces of Angkorian crown jewellery stolen from Cambodia, many never seen by the public, have been returned after resurfacing in London, the Cambodian culture ministry said on Monday.
The trove includes crowns, necklaces, amulets and other treasures from the Angkor period, which ran from the ninth to the 14th century AD, when the Khmer empire was a dominant force in south-east Asia.
The ministry said officials in Cambodia received the 77 pieces from the family of British antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford.
Latchford died in 2020 while awaiting trial in the United States for art trafficking, and his family reached an agreement with Cambodia the same year to return his collection of Khmer antiquities.
The collection, which arrived discreetly in Cambodia on Friday, features “gold and other precious metal pieces from the pre-Angkorian and Angkorian period including crowns, necklaces, bracelets, belts, earrings and amulets”, the ministry said.
As Cambodia was ravaged by civil wars and a genocide by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, thousands of antiques were looted and sold through dealers in Thailand and Hong Kong to wealthy buyers and museums in Europe and the US.
US prosecutors have been pushing to return many of the works in recent years.
In 2021, Cambodia received five lost stone and bronze artefacts from the Latchford family.
Last year, the US also returned to Cambodia 30 looted antiquities, including bronze and stone statues of Buddhist and Hindu deities that were carved more than 1,000 years ago.
Cambodia’s culture minister, Phoeurng Sackona, appealed to individuals and museums around the world to return stolen artefacts to the country to contribute to the “reconciliation and healing of Cambodians who went through decades of civil war”. | Art and Culture |
From mocking kings and priests to encouraging audiences to get drunk, newly discovered texts at the National Library of Scotland have shed light on the role played by minstrels in medieval society.
Containing the earliest recorded use of the term “red herring” in English, the texts are part of a booklet known as the Heege Manuscript. Dr James Wade of the University of Cambridge, who discovered them, said echoes of minstrel humour can be found “in shows such as Mock the Week, situational comedies and slapstick”.
“The self-irony and making audiences the butt of the joke are still very characteristic of British standup comedy,” he added.
Throughout the middle ages, minstrels travelled between fairs, taverns and baronial halls to entertain people with songs and stories. Although fictional minstrels are common in medieval literature, references to real-life performers are rare, and the Heege Manuscript is among the first evidence of the life and work of a real minstrel.
Wade, from Cambridge’s English faculty and Girton College, said that most “medieval poetry, song and storytelling has been lost”.
“Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art,” he continued. “This is something else. It’s mad and offensive, but just as valuable. Standup comedy has always involved taking risks and these texts are risky! They poke fun at everyone, high and low.”
The texts consist of a tail-rhyme burlesque romance entitled The Hunting of the Hare, a mock sermon in prose and an alliterative nonsense verse The Battle of Brackonwet. They were copied circa 1480 by Richard Heege, a household cleric and tutor to a Derbyshire family called the Sherbrookes, from a now lost memory-aid written by an unknown minstrel performing near the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border.
Wade believes the minstrel wrote part of his act down because its many nonsense sequences would have been extremely difficult to recall. “He didn’t give himself the kind of repetition or story trajectory which would have made things simpler to remember,” Wade said. “Here we have a self-made entertainer with very little education creating really original, ironic material. To get an insight into someone like that from this period is incredibly rare and exciting.”
The Hunting of the Hare is a poem about peasants, “full of jokes and absurd hijinks”. Wade said that one scene is reminiscent of Monty Python’s “Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog” sketch.
The sermon addresses the audience as “cursed creatures” and includes fragments from drinking songs. “This is a minstrel telling his audience, perhaps people of very different social standing, to get drunk and be merry with each other,” Wade said. The sermon also contains the first recorded use of the term “red herring”, when three kings eat so much that 24 oxen burst out of their bellies, sword fighting; the oxen chop each other up until they are reduced to three “red herrings”.
The Battle of Brackonwet features Robin Hood as well as jousting bears, battling bumblebees and partying pigs. The poem names several villages close to the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border and includes a “skilful demonstration of alliterative verse and a clever double entendre”.
Wade said: “We shouldn’t assume that popular entertainers weren’t capable of poetic achievement. This minstrel clearly was.”
Wade’s study is published on Wednesday in The Review of English Studies journal. | Art and Culture |
Kanye West Loses Honorary College Degree For Antisemitic Hate 12/8/2022 10:39 AM PT Kanye West has lost friends, business deals and billions of dollars for his hatred, and now he can add losing an honorary college degree to his woes ... cause the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has taken it away. According to a school letter, obtained by TMZ, honchos decided to rescind Ye's degree, stating, "His anti-Black, antisemitic, and incendiary statements, particularly those directed at Black and Jewish communities, are disgusting and condemnable". The letter, written by President Elissa Tenny, continues, "As a community, we know that there are varying opinions on what our School’s response should be––even as we all agree that his behavior is indefensible." The disgraced rapper was awarded an honorary doctorate back in 2015 for his accomplishments and contributions to art and culture, but Tenny notes, "his actions do not align with SAIC’s mission and values." As we reported, Kanye was on "Infowars" last week claiming his love for Hitler and Nazis. Students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago had reportedly started an online position to pull the honorary credential, racking up over 4k signatures. | Art and Culture |
Sarsina is a sleepy, rural town of barely 3,000 residents straddling the pristine Apennine mountains in Italy’s Emilia Romagna region, surrounded by stunning views and grazing sheep.
While it has a glorious past, as a strategic defensive outpost for the Roman Empire and the birthplace of the famed playwright Plautus, today there’s not much to do beyond hiking and birdwatching.
And though both locals and holidaymakers would agree that a rustic, slow-paced lifestyle is part of Sarsina’s charm, its residents were nonetheless excitedly awaiting the construction of a development including a new supermarket, fitness center and playground. But it was not meant to be — at least, not as originally planned.
That’s because workers at the site on the outskirts of town in December 2022 unearthed the ruins of an ancient Roman temple — or ‘capitolium’ — dating back to the first century BC.
In early July, a first look at the underground treasure came to light: a single imposing structure of horizontal sandstone blocks and marble slabs, 577 square meters wide, which researchers have identified as the podium above which the columns and walls of an ancient temple were built.
And what has come out of the ground so far could be just the tip of the iceberg.
“We have unearthed three separate rooms, likely dedicated to the triad of gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva,” lead archaeologist at the excavation site Romina Pirraglia told CNN. “The excavations are still underway… and we have already identified an older, deeper layer of ruins dating back to the 4th century BC, when the Umbrian people (an ancient Italic tribe who predated the Romans) lived in the area. The entire temple could be even larger than what we now see.”
According to Pirraglia, the discovery of a capitolium — the main temple in an important Roman city, and a hub for trade as well as religious and social interactions — further confirms the strategic role Sarsina played during the Roman Empire. The town was built in a key mountainous area close to the Tuscan border and overlooking the Savio river, an important waterway connecting central and northern Roman cities.
The discovery of the temple has pushed local authorities to revise their building plans. Federica Gonzato, superintendent of archaeology, fine arts and landscape for the provinces of Ravenna, Rimini and Forlì-Cesena, which includes Sarsina, is adamant in wanting to preserve the ruins and further research its great past.
“We will not tear it down to make room for modern structures, this must be very clear. Previous urban plans will be changed, we will find new construction sites for recreation and sports,” Gonzato said. “The temple is an incredible finding that sheds light on how ancient Roman towns rose and fell across time.”
What makes the discovery exceptional is the temple’s unique state of preservation. “The marvelous quality of the stones have been spared from sacks, enemy invasions and plunders across millennia thanks to the remote location of Sarsina, a quiet spot distant from larger cities,” Gonzato added. “Temples such as this one (were) regularly plundered, exploited as quarries with stones and marble slabs taken away to be re-used to build new homes. But Sarsina’s capitolium podium structure is practically untouched, with its entrance staircase well-preserved, and this is extremely rare.”
Gonzato believes the discovery will further research on demography and urban transformations in ancient times. And there’s more to the site than just the temple’s podium. Pirraglia said there are signs that the building was reused in medieval times. An ancient water drainage system was found alongside medieval tombs and hearths indicating that locals likely inhabited it, or used the site for other social purposes.
“This is the beauty of Italy: wherever you dig, some hidden treasure comes out of the ground. Wonders never cease to amaze us,” said Gonzato. | Art and Culture |
Seeing is believing, right? That is a phrase used repeatedly by Mamoru Iriguchi and co-star Gavin Pringle in What You See When Your Eyes Are Closed/What You Don’t See When Your Eyes Are Open (★★★★☆). It is an amusingly hand-stitched investigation into ways of seeing, performed in one of Summerhall’s small basement rooms at the Edinburgh fringe. The production treats the challenges faced by people who are blind or visually impaired as a creative resource. The costumes are bold, the lines distinct, the faces larger than life and, in the most idiosyncratic way, everything is captioned and described. It is surreal and, despite its deliberate repetitions, never predictable.
If seeing really was believing, we would accept that the man in the outsize Mamoru Iriguchi mask, his grey suit outlined in thick black lines, his enormous glasses showing sleeping eyes, was indeed Mamoru Iriguchi. We would also surmise that the giant cyclops standing in the centre of the room, in a bushy coat of orange tassels and a purple head concealing a live video projector behind its gigantic single eye, was his husband, Gavin.
In fact, it is the other way around. In the dark of the night, when eyesight is unreliable, they have mistakenly put on each other’s clothes. Cue a hasty costume swap. But not before some initial thoughts on watching and being watched and a repeated dream-like sequence in which man and monster do battle, observed from a television studio where the newscaster reads a script that spews out of the cyclops’s mouth like tickertape.
To add to the tension – or do I mean jollity? – we join in by singing action-movie theme tunes before getting to our feet to consider our own use of sight. Iriguchi has been reading James J Gibson’s study of animals seeing other animals in The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979) and he asks us to consider our own field of view. How much do we rely on peripheral vision, how often do we swivel our necks to keep someone in sight and how do we get a sense of a three-dimensional object?
He slips back into his dreams, recalling his Japanese childhood and his mother’s favourite stars – Elvis Presley, James Dean – whom we can still see because of film, itself a kind of dream. Perspectives shift and the projector dances across the walls in a production that is as eccentric as it is thoughtful.
“I prefer radio to TV because the pictures are better,” is a phrase attributed to the late broadcaster Alistair Cooke and it is one Canada’s Ghost River Theatre appears to have taken to heart. To “see” its engrossing production at Assembly Checkpoint of Tomorrow’s Child (★★★★☆), an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury short story published in 1948, you are blindfolded and led, three at a time, into an auditorium equipped with 10 speakers surrounding the audience.
With direction and sound design by Matthew Waddell and Eric Rose (who worked on the adaptation with David van Belle), we are catapulted into the futuristic year of 1988 when a trip to the maternity hospital begins with a helicopter moving in from a distance, its faint hum turning into a cacophony of rotor blades as it circles us.
Expectant parents Polly (Anna Cummer) and Peter (Tyrell Crews), moving dreamily around the space, have an appointment for a hi-tech birth. Quite what takes place on the ward is down to your imagination, but the industrial barrage of scrapes, grinds and judders, sound layered upon sound, suggests it is something very technical.
A little too technical as it turns out. Dr Wolcott (David van Belle) brings the bad news: their baby boy has been accidentally delivered into the fourth dimension. All they can see of him is all that you, blindfolded and alert, can see with your mind’s eye. | Art and Culture |
HELSINKI -- A new exhibition showing the works of Touko Laaksonen, better known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, adds a personal touch to the late Finnish artist whose homoerotic drawings of muscular men gained a following in the gay community from the 1950s.
“Tom of Finland — Bold Journey,” which opens Friday at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, features Laaksonen's drawings, archive material, personal clothing items as well as memorabilia, letters, publications, magazines and films.
Laaksonen's cheerful, sexually explicit works made an impact in the art world at a time when homosexuality was illegal or classified as a disease in countries around the world, including his native Finland. The Nordic country has since embraced the artist, who died in 1991, as a national icon.
“Tom is one of our national heroes who deserves to be seen as one of the most well-known Finnish artists of the 20th century,” said Kiasma museum director Leevi Haapala.
He said Tom of Finland had emerged as one of the country's best known pop culture brands, along with the Moomins, the comic strip characters created by Finnish writer and illustrator Tove Jansson.
“His art has been liberating and empowering for countless gay men and sexual minorities for decades,” the museum said in a statement.
The chiseled male characters depicted by Laaksonen, including lumberjacks, bikers, sailors, soldiers and policemen, “exude vitality, joy and pride,” Kiasma said.
The retrospective of Laaksonen's works is compiled by the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles and the Kiasma museum, which is part of the Finnish National Gallery. It is the largest exhibit of his works ever shown in his native country.
“There are sort of two different men; Touko had his own biography and Tom had his own biography, and they sort of paralleled,” said Durk Dehner, the president and co-founder of the Tom of Finland Foundation.
Haapala said Laaksonen's works had directly influenced several well-known artists like Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber and David Hockney, and may have even inspired music acts like the Village People.
In Finland, his art is now embraced far beyond the gay community.
“In this polarized time, I think we need iconic figures like Tom to remind us of tolerance," he said.
The exhibition runs through Oct. 29. | Art and Culture |
The presidents of Poland, Israel and Germany have jointly commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at a ceremony in the Polish capital.
Poland’s Andrzej Duda used his speech to hail the Jewish insurgents as a “symbol of bravery, determination and courage, our heroes, who fought for a free Poland”.
His Israel counterpart, Isaac Herzog, likewise described the ghetto fighters as “a symbol of heroism” during “humanity’s darkest hour” and “a symbol of the thousand-year history of Polish Jews”.
Germany’s Frank–Walter Steinmeier, meanwhile, expressed his “deep shame” at the “terrible crimes that Germans committed here” and “asked for forgiveness”. During his visit, Steinmeier was handed a copy of Poland’s claim for German war reparations by a Polish government minister.
Prezydent @AndrzejDuda: Nigdy nie wolno nam zapomnieć o męstwie i postawie polskich Żydów z warszawskiego getta i o Polakach, którzy walczyli po jego drugiej stronie. Każdy, kto sieje nienawiść, depcze drugiego człowieka, depcze po grobach Bohaterów i tych, którzy pomagali 🇮🇱🇵🇱 pic.twitter.com/09PrWzhjVg
— Grażyna Ignaczak-Bandych (@GIBandych) April 19, 2023
Warsaw’s ghetto, established in 1940, was the largest created by Nazi Germany. At one point it held around 460,000 Jews captive in an area of 3.4 square km (1.3 square miles).
In 1943, the Germans began the liquidation of the ghetto, deporting its inhabitants to the gas chambers of Treblinka extermination camp. That prompted Jewish underground fighters to launch an uprising that began on 19 April 1943 and became the largest single act of Jewish resistance during the war.
Hundreds of Jewish fighters, with support from the Polish underground resistance, took on the might of the German army for almost a month before being brutally suppressed.
Thousands of Jews were killed during the uprising, with tens of thousands more deported to extermination camps afterwards. The ghetto was then razed to the ground.
New photographs from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising have been released after being discovered in an attic by the family of a Polish firefighter who smuggled a camera into the ghetto to secretly take them https://t.co/jtkUUMvmBl
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 19, 2023
This year’s 80th anniversary was marked by a variety of commemorations and other events around Warsaw, including a new exhibition at the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
In an annual tradition, thousands of volunteers handed out paper daffodils for people to wear. The flower has become a symbol of the uprising after one of its leaders, Marek Edelman, who survived the war, placed daffodils at the uprising monument in Warsaw on each anniversary.
Also as in previous years, sirens were sounded and church bells rung around the city for 60 seconds at noon to mark the anniversary.
Dziś w samo południe na 60 sekund uruchomione zostały syreny alarmowe w stolicy. Zabiły też dzwony. Dla upamiętnienia 80. rocznicy powstania w warszawskim getcie. Rozpoczęły główne obchody.https://t.co/ZoaNzFoHI4 pic.twitter.com/horbByxx0S
— tvn24 (@tvn24) April 19, 2023
Afterwards, the three presidents spoke to an audience of over 1,000 – including Holocaust survivors, foreign officials, and Polish government ministers – on Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Square.
“Today we bow our heads low before the heroes of the Ghetto Uprising, those who fought against hatred and Nazism for their freedom and dignity, Polish Jews, Polish citizens, who never gave up, never lost their spirit, who are a great example for all of us to this day,” said Duda.
That includes being an example for “every soldier who defends the borders of Israel and for us Poles who guard the borders of Poland, for all those who serve in the Polish army”, he added, noting that many Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors went on to help establish the state of Israel.
A mural of women who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has been unveiled in the city.
Today's anniversary events were dedicated to the "essential but forgotten" role played by women in what was the largest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust https://t.co/vdSOTX8RKb
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 19, 2021
Speaking after Duda, Herzog said it would have been hard for the insurgents to believe that, 80 years later, the presidents of Poland, Israel and Germany would together be paying tribute to their heroism.
He thanked Duda for his “enormous efforts dedicated to commemoration” and expressed his hope that “the destruction that has befallen Poland and many other countries is a platform for dialogue between Poland and Israel, for deepening friendship between our nations”.
Poland and Israel have been locked in a number of diplomatic disputes in recent years over Holocaust history, most recently with regard to Israeli youth study trips. However, the two countries’ governments recently reached an agreement that is intended to allow those visits to resume.
The Israeli opposition and historians have criticised an agreement with Poland on Holocaust study trips, the text of which has now emerged.
They say groups will visit sites that ignore crimes by Poles against Jews and even glorify some who committed them https://t.co/mv8PF2VGDF
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 11, 2023
Finally, Steinmeier took to the stage. While “it is hard to come here as a German and as president of Germany…I am grateful and humbled by the fact that I can participate in these commemorations,” he said. “I bow my head to the brave fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto.”
“Their courage still influences us today,” added Steinmeier. “Their message is to preserve the memory and pass it on so that what happened does not happen again…That is why it is so important for us Germans to remember…I am here today to say that we Germans are aware of our responsibility.”
During his visit to Warsaw today, Steinmeier was handed by Piotr Gliński – a deputy prime minister and culture minister – a copy of the report that has formed the basis for Poland’s claim that it is still owed war reparations by Germany. Berlin has rejected that claim, arguing that the issue of reparations is already legally settled.
🇵🇱🇩🇪 Wicepremier @PiotrGlinski przekazał prezydentowi Niemiec Frankowi-Walterowi Steinmeierowi „Raport o stratach poniesionych przez Polskę w wyniku agresji i okupacji niemieckiej w czasie II wojny światowej 1939-1945” i publikację poświęconą polskim stratom wojennym w kulturze. pic.twitter.com/Xq3JxXXqoB
— Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego (@kultura_gov_pl) April 19, 2023
Main image credit: Marek Borawki/KPRP
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. | Art and Culture |
Hidden details of Egyptian paintings revealed by chemical imaging
Portable chemical imaging technology can reveal hidden details in ancient Egyptian paintings, according to a study published July 12, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Philippe Martinez of Sorbonne University, France in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Liège, Belgium.
Ancient Egyptian paintings are commonly thought to be the result of highly formalized workflows that produced skilled works of art. However, most studies of these paintings and the process that created them take place in museums or laboratories.
In this study, Martinez and colleagues use portable devices to perform chemical imaging on paintings in their original context, allowing for analysis of paint composition and layering and for the identification of alterations made to ancient paintings.
Two paintings were analyzed in detail, both located in tomb chapels in the Theban Necropolis near the River Nile, dating to the Ramesside Period. On the first painting, researchers were able to identify alterations made to the position of a figure's arm, though the reason for this relatively small change is uncertain.
On the second painting, analysis uncovered numerous adjustments to the crown and other royal items depicted on a portrait of Ramesses II, a series of changes that most likely relate to some change in symbolic meaning over time.
Such alterations to paintings are thought to be rare among such art, but the researchers suggest that these discoveries call for further investigation. Many uncertainties remain about the reasoning and the timing behind the alterations observed, some of which might be resolved by future analysis. This study also serves to prove the utility of portable chemical imaging technology for studying ancient paintings in-situ.
The authors add, "These discoveries clearly call for a systematized and closer inspection of paintings in Egypt using physicochemical characterization."
More information: Philippe Martinez et al, Hidden mysteries in ancient Egyptian paintings from the Theban Necropolis observed by in-situ XRF mapping, PLOS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287647
Journal information: PLoS ONE
Provided by Public Library of Science | Art and Culture |
"If we talk about the impact of the war on the archaeological heritage... in the broad sense of the word, then it can be characterized as catastrophic."Serhii Telizhenko is a researcher with the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) Institute of Archeology, who is currently based in Kyiv. He is one of many archaeologists from Ukraine forced to watch the nation's history be destroyed by war.Since Vladimir Putin's Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, the impact on the country's archaeological heritage has been devastating—countless precious objects and sites have been damaged or destroyed and museums looted.Pavlo Shydlovskyi, a researcher with the Department of Archaeology at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, is working to understand what has been lost and told Newsweek the full extent of the damage remains unclear."The goal of Putin's war against Ukraine is not only the seizure of its territory and subjugation of the Ukrainian people, but also the destruction of their identity, history and public memory," he said. "For this reason, objects of cultural heritage have become a special target for the enemy."
In this combination image, Vladimir Putin is pictured on January 3, 2023 alongside a photograph taken on September 28, 2022 showing Polovtsian stone sculptures—dated to the 9th-13th centuries—on Mount Kremenets in Izyum, Kharkiv region, which have suffered damage during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Getty
The main cause of damage is direct military operations at the front—which include rocket attacks, artillery shelling and mortar fire. "Such actions cause the most terrible damage to landscapes, and with it, to archaeological sites," Shydlovskyi said.The construction of military facilities and infrastructure, such as dugouts and trenches, have also scarred the landscape.Furthermore, ancient structures like hillforts and mounds have been utilized on both sides, given that they are outstanding points on the landscape—useful from a military perspective."Barrows—or burial mounds—from the Early Iron Age to the Late Middle Ages, were traditionally built on the highest parts of the terrain, and, accordingly, now they are a convenient place for modern military facilities," Shydlovskyi said.What has been destroyed?Archaeological sites in Parutino, Khortytsia Island, Shestovytsya, Chernihiv, Vyshgorod and numerous others in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions have been wrecked, Fedir Androshchuk, director general of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, told Newsweek.Telizhenko told Newsweek priceless collections in the cities of Rubizhne and Severodonetsk in the eastern Luhansk region, as well as in Lyman and Mariupol in the neighboring Donetsk region, have been seriously damaged or completely destroyed.In one notable case of archeological vandalism, the Russian military shelled a group of stone statues near the city of Izium, in the Kharkiv region, that date back to the Middle Ages, destroying a thousand-year-old female figure. The statues were constructed by the Polovtsians, a group of nomadic warriors from the Eurasian steppes who were an influential force in the region during the 11th and 12th centuries.Shydlovskyi said the biggest issue for domestic archaeology has been the looting of museum collections. "The losses are incredible. Hundreds of regional local history museums were looted. Among the most famous are the museums of Kherson, Melitopol and Mariupol.
An exposition at the Archaeological Museum of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv that was damaged by rocket fire on October 10, 2021. P. Shydlovskyi.
"The collections of the Kherson Museum of Local History, together with other museums of the city, were systematically transferred to occupied Crimea, which testifies to the large-scale theft of our heritage by the Russians."The Melitopol Museum of Local Lore was particularly notable for the presence of a collection of Scythian gold artifacts, traces of which have now been lost, Shydlovskyi said.The Scythians were nomadic warriors originally from Central Asia who migrated to what is now southern Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., establishing a powerful empire centered on modern-day Crimea. Skilled in the art of war and horsemanship, these ancient peoples are also known for their distinctive metal artifacts, made from gold, bronze and iron, among other materials.The Mariupol Museum, meanwhile, kept unique archaeological collections, including artifacts excavated from the Mariupol Neolithic cemetery in the 1930s. The cemetery contained more than 100 human burials dating to more than 7,000 years ago, accompanied by an array of objects including stone tools and bone jewelry."The museum itself suffered a lot as a result of the fighting that took place directly in the city, and those exhibits that survived were looted by the occupiers—it is reported that the remains were transported to occupied Donetsk," Shydlovskyi said.Importance of archaeological heritageExperts said the risks to the country's archaeological heritage amid the ongoing conflict have profound implications for the future."Ukraine is already losing its archaeological heritage, which, at first sight, may not be as spectacular as say the pyramids in Egypt, but is also extremely important for humanity," Telizhenko said."Destroying an archaeological site now may distort some aspects of our knowledge in the future. Information is to some extent a weapon that countries such as Russia are aggressively trying to use to justify their territorial claims. Archeology, as a historical science, helps in refuting such intentions."Archaeological expeditions in the country have largely ground to a halt since the escalation of the war and many international projects—which researchers in the country largely depend on—have been canceled."Undoubtedly, the brutal aggression of the Russian Federation had a negative impact on the conduct of archaeological research," Shydlovskyi said.
Satellite image of a field near Birukove, Luhansk region, that contained three ancient burial mounds. In 2014, a stronghold was established on the mounds, which was later completely destroyed as a result of artillery and mortar fire.
Serhii Telizhenko/Google Earth
Many practicing archaeologists in the country have been internally displaced, have fled the country—in the case of women and older individuals (men aged 18 to 60 years are subject to military mobilization and prohibited from leaving)—or found other work.Several archaeologists have joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or the Territorial Defense Service "and are now defending our lives in different parts of the country," Shydlovskyi said.Despite the upheaval of the war, archaeologists who remained at their workplaces continue to write publications, participate in scientific conferences—primarily online—and teach where possible, while a small handful of research expeditions have taken place in 2022.As the war continues, the focus of archaeologists in the country has shifted to collecting information about damaged or destroyed objects and sites, as well as the preservation of the country's heritage.Archaeologists have been monitoring satellite images and social networks, as well as data received from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, to keep track of archaeological sites and the degree of damage they have suffered, Telizhenko said.
Defensive structures at an archaeological site in the Kyiv region. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have been forced to construct fortifications at archaeological sites around the country, partially destroying them in the process.
I. Zotsenko/Institute of Archaeology of the NAS of Ukraine
Rescue excavations have also taken place at some locations during the war, Androshchuk said."In order to know at least an approximate effect of the war on the archaeological heritage, it is necessary to start the process of recording the destroyed parts of the landscape," said Shydlovskyi, who is among the experts involved in a public initiative aimed at preserving Ukraine's archaeological heritage.Monitoring that heritage amid the war—or conducting other types of research—comes with significant challenges, though."The front-line territories of the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions are currently inaccessible for any field work due to direct threats to life and health," Shydlovskyi said.But even in the de-occupied territories of the Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv and Mykolaiv regions, work is significantly complicated by limited access in areas where the military and security services are operating. "When carrying out work in the de-occupied territories, there is a significant danger of encountering mine barriers," Shydlovskyi said. "There is also the danger of artillery and mortar attacks, and the infiltration of groups of saboteurs. This especially applies to the border territories of Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions, which are constantly shelled from the territory of the Russian Federation."Despite the efforts of archaeologists in Ukraine, there is often little that can be done to protect many historic sites and objects as the conflict continues to rage."The ongoing war shows that archaeological sites can't be protected against the Russian threat," Androshchuk said. "Russia does not respect international laws and negotiations." | Art and Culture |
Street musicians singing Russian songs in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv could soon face problems. Likewise, bars and restaurants playing Russian background music may end up getting in trouble.
The reason is that Kyiv city council has issued a temporary ban on performing or showcasing Russian-language art and culture — such as books, music, plays and concerts — in public. This ban also encompasses cultural and educational programs. The restriction not only applies to works by Russian authors and creators, but to all cultural products publicly presented in or translated into Russian.
Ukrainian MPs said the move was designed to protect Ukraine from Russian influence. "Russia is the language of the aggressor and it has no place in the heart of our capital," said Vadym Vasylchuk, the deputy chairman of the Standing Committee on Education and Science, Youth and Sports.
Mere symbolism?
The move is backed by Ukraine's Vidsich (Defense) movement, which began calling for a ban on the Russian language and Russian goods, films and music in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea. "A ban on Russian-language cultural products is necessary," Vidsich activist Kateryna Chepura told DW. "This is an additional lever for activists working to boycott everything Russian, so we can say: shut it down, remove Russian from public life."
The Kyiv city council ban, however, is temporary, lending it a symbolic quality only. A permanent, legally binding ban would require support from Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
As a result, Chepura calls Kyiv's temporary ban "an ineffective instrument, because you cannot be held accountable for disregarding it." She regards it as a "moral factor encouraging people who do not want to continue tolerating Russian music on the streets or in theater."
In fact, certain Russian-language cultural products are already prohibited in Ukraine. The bans date back to September 2019, when the first restrictions were imposed in the region of Lviv. Subsequently, other cities like Ternopil and Zhytomyr in the Volhynia region, followed suit.
Cause for controversy
Human rights activist Volodymyr Yavorskyy of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, however, said such bans are discriminatory and unconstitutional. "These are illegal decisions, because local authorities have no right to regulate such issues and impose such bans," Yavorskyy told DW. "That is why they have no legal consequences." The judiciary, he added, had already deemed such local bans illegal.
A person violating the Kyiv city council moratorium on Russian cultural products cannot be held accountable, Yaworskyy said. "These bans issued by local authorities are nothing but political gestures — only the Ukrainian parliament can turn such bans into law." Only then, he said, would they become legally binding and enforceable.
In June 2022, the Ukrainian parliament already banned publicly playing songs by Russian artists. The restriction does not, however, apply to Russian singers who condemn Russia's war against Ukraine. Recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also signed a law banning the import and distribution of Russian books. It was passed by parliament last year.
Regardless of whether or not local bans are in place, playing Russian music in public is bound to cause controversy. Take, for instance, a recent disagreement between a 17-year-old busker and Ukrainian MP Natalya Pipa. She complained when the teenager performed songs by Russian rock legend Viktor Tsoi on the street in Lviv, who in return insulted the woman, saying he was allowed to play whatever music he liked. Later, however, the busker published a video in which he apologized to the lawmaker.
Another altercation occurred in the village of Pohreby, in the Kyiv region. There, a young woman was thrown out of a cafe for complaining that the establishment was playing a song by Russian pop singer Grigory Leps supporting Russia's war against Ukraine.
Do not copy Russian aggression
Yevgenia Belorusets, a Ukrainian artist, translator and author who works in Ukrainian Russian and German, says the Russian-language ban is discriminatory. "These bans perpetuate the myth that Ukrainian culture is always being discriminated against," she told DW. "This then supposedly gives it the right to discriminate against other forms of cultural expression."
"Ukrainian-language culture knows too well how discrimination feels," she added. "It should not try to overcome this trauma by inflicting similar pain on others." The creator said Ukraine should not mirror Russian aggressors and refrain from "projecting Russia's aggressive intentions onto Ukraine's complex cultural situation."
Belorusets said language bans could divide Ukrainian society, warning that "it's getting harder and harder to talk about this in Ukraine, because doing so is immediately labeled as a hostile act." Ukraine's future as a democratic state, she said, depends on granting everyone their rights and accepting their own complicated past. "The challenge consists in accepting competing views within society."
This article was translated from German. | Art and Culture |
Researchers have discovered that an ancient gold disc found in southern Denmark includes the earliest written reference to the Norse god Odin, revealing that he was worshiped up to 150 years earlier than previously thought, according to a report.
Piece of jewelry — which dates to the 400s AD — was uncovered in Vindelev in central Denmark in 2020 amidst a treasure trove that included Roman coins. For years it was publicly displayed at a museum near the site before academics had the opportunity to study it, according to NBC News.
A runic inscription with a reference to Odin, one of the primary gods in the Norse pantheon in the pre-Christian Germanic world, has upended academics’ understanding of the pagan religion.
“This is the smoking gun for Odin’s presence in Scandinavia as early as the 5th century,” Simon Nygaard, an assistant professor in pre-Christian Nordic religion at Aarhus University in Denmark, told NBC News on Wednesday. “In the proper sense of the word, it’s historic.”
Nygaard said that the inscription on the disc — known as a bracteate — is nothing short of “spectacular.” The previous oldest reference to Odin was found on a brooch in Southern Germany from the latter half of the 6th century.
“He is Odin’s man,” the disc reads, according to Krister Vasshus, who helped decipher the runes. He told NBC it additionally features a reference to a man named “Jaga” or “JagaR,” believed to be a king or ruler wherever the bracteate was forged.
Odin was worshiped as a deity for centuries before the disc had been made, but the “exciting” discovery “can tell us something about the relationship people had with their gods and possibly even how divine rulership was organized in Scandinavia at this time,” Vasshus said.
“The carver knew exactly how to shape the runes to make them perfect, simply perfect,” he added. “They are exquisite.”
The Prose Edda, a main source for Norse mythology compiled in Iceland in the 13th century, refers to Odin as the “Allfather,” who ruled over man and other Norse gods, known as the Æsir.
The bracteate also includes an inscription of a swastika — an ancient religious symbol found throughout Europe and Asia throughout the Iron Age until it was integrated as a Nazi symbol in the 20th century, according to NBC.
The piece of jewelry, along with the other gold unearthed at the Denmark site, may have been buried to hide it from enemies or as a tribute to appease the gods during a time of plague and famine, Visshus suggested.
“It’s a very large amount of gold, so it must have been a very serious situation that they wanted to improve,” he said.
“We know that in 536 A.D. there was an enormous volcanic eruption and there were at least two more that blocked the light of the sun. There must have been famine in the areas that relied on grains and cereals,” he said. “We also know that in 541 A.D. there was a plague similar to the Black Death.” | Art and Culture |
The Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz has proposed in a letter to the British Museum that it return one of its ancient Assyrian treasures to Iraq in exchange for the donation of his fourth plinth sculpture to the UK.Rakowitz’s contemporary interpretation of an Assyrian winged bull, known as a lamassu, decorated in tins of date syrup, appeared on the plinth in Trafalgar Square from 2018 to 2020.He has tentatively agreed to gift the sculpture to Tate Modern on the basis that it shares custody with Iraq. But, as part of the deal, he said that the British Museum should return one of its two Assyrian lamassu sculptures, which were discovered in Nineveh by the Victorian archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard.Rakowitz said returning one of these treasures would help replace a 700BC lamassu, which had stood at the Nergal Gate in Nineveh. It was left in place by Layard but deliberately destroyed by Islamic State fighters in a raid on Mosul Museum in 2015. Rakowitz’s proposal is expected to be on the agenda of a visit to London next month by Iraq’s new minister of culture, Ahmed Fakkak, when he is expected to be given a tour of the British Museum.In a letter to the British Museum, setting out his bargain, Rakowitz said: “As I pondered my gift to the nation of Great Britain, I began to fantasise that it could be attached to a second gift: the return of one of the British Museum’s lamassu to the country of Iraq, to replace what was destroyed by Daesh [or Islamic State]”.The letter went on: “Given all that has been destroyed in Iraq, and the intersection of that destruction with the west’s insatiable appetite for the objects of the east while not always, if ever, extending that concern to its people, this return of an original would be more than just restitutive. It would be restorative.”Rakowitz said the British Museum initially dismissed the idea when he first suggested it in 2020. He was told the museum had helped to produce replicas of the originals. Rakowitz said: “I thought to myself, this is fucking insane. Where’s the dignity of sending back these things that are basically a husk of the original.”But since then other experts at the museum have been more sympathetic, Rakowitz claimed. He said: “I’ve had a generally good relationship with some of the people in the British Museum, who are not ventriloquised by the overall attitude that things can’t go back. The discussions and demands are about breaking through some of the language that protects these objects and institutions.”Rakowitz said Tate Modern was also lobbying behind the scenes to try to make it happen. He said: “The Tate informally agreed that they would put pressure on the British Museum to return one of the lamassu. The leadership of the Tate was very sympathetic to it.”When he approached officials in Iraq’s foreign ministry about exhibiting his sculpture, Rakowitz said they were keen to see the ancient lamassu returned to Iraq.“They loved the lamassu,” he said referring to his work, “but they also didn’t want to let the United Kingdom off the hook, and that they wanted the real ones back. London now have one lamassu too many so one of them needs to go back to Iraq.”Eleanor Robson, a professor of ancient Middle Eastern history at University College London, said the British Museum appeared to be softening its stance on returning treasures to the country of their origin, amid discussions about the future of Parthenon marbles. “The mood music seems to be changing,” she said.Robson, who is also chief investigator at the Nahrein Network on post-conflict cultural recovery in Iraq and the host’s of Fakkak visit, said: “The refurbishment of Mosul museum is very high on his agenda – it was very badly damaged by Daesh. There’s a lot of planning about what might go inside it. One possibility is that Michael’s lamassu might come and visit. It will be for the minister to decide.”It is unclear whether the minister will press for the original lamassu to be returned to Iraq.Robson added: “It’s good that we’ve got people like Michael, coming to stir things up and getting the debate going.”The British Museum would not commit to handing back either of its lamussu to Iraq, but did not rule out loan deals. A spokesperson said: “We were closely involved in supporting Iraqi requests for replica lamassu for the exterior of the university library in Mosul and, more recently, the Basrah Museum, where we have been working in partnership for over a decade. Future collaborations may well include cooperation on exhibitions and loans, which the museum would welcome.” | Art and Culture |
13 years ago today, Project Avdhela was launched to create a digital Library of Alexandria-style archive of everything related to the culture of the Aromanians, the Aromanian-speaking ethic group of the southern Balkans. Launched in Bucharest at the Bucharest Peasent Museum, it has gone on to catalogue hundreds of works of literature, song, and poetry. READ more, and listen to some of the music… (2009)
The Avdhela Project’s library includes a large number of books digitized page by page from Aromanian authors such as Caragiu Marioțeanu, Tache Papahagi, Ionel Zeana, and George Vrana. Also included are poems by Aromanian poets such as Nushi Tulliu.
In 2012 the non-profit financed a documentary called Iho that focused on the lives of four octegenarian musicians from a small village called Cogealac.
MORE Good News on this Date:
- Happy 81st Birthday to Pete Best, the first drummer hired by The Beatles during their earliest years to play live in Hamburg and England—who later was replaced by Ringo Starr (1941)
- Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discovered an extraordinary skeleton, nicknamed ‘Lucy,’ in Ethiopia’s Awash Valley–the 40% complete female Australopithecus afarensis that provided a huge treasure of scientific evidence (1974)
- The United States and Soviet Union agreed to the INF treaty that eliminated the entire class of short- and medium-range nuclear missiles from both countries (1987)
- The entire leadership of the hard-line Communist Party in Czechoslovakia resigned after more than a week of protests against its policies to make way for democratic changes (1989)
- Pubs in England and Wales were granted the right to stay open 24 hours a day (2005)
And, 154 years ago today, Scott Joplin, the African-American composer and pianist dubbed the “King of Ragtime,” was born in Texas to an ex-slave. One of his first and most popular pieces, “Maple Leaf Rag”, became ragtime’s first influential hit, and is still instantly recognized today.
Especially after his father left the family, the Joplins struggled financially, but 11-year-old Scott was tutored in music for 5 years free of charge by German-Jewish music professor Julius Weiss after Weiss recognized the family’s extreme poverty and the boy’s unique talent. Before he died at age 48, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, a ragtime ballet, and two operas (one of which, Treemonisha, was finally produced in full, to wide acclaim, in 1972).
His music was repopularized in the Oscar-winning film The Sting that featured several of Joplin’s compositions, most notably “The Entertainer”. In 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize. (1868)
27 years ago today, Ireland narrowly voted to legalize divorce, ending a 58-year-old ban. The Catholic Church was strongly against the amendment, but told their congregations that they could vote for the amendment in good conscience, and it would not be a sin to do so. The referendum was passed 50.28% to 49.72% and became the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. (1995)
80 years ago today, Billy Connolly, the Scottish comedian, musician, who was knighted at Buckingham Palace for his services to entertainment and charity, was born.
Born into poverty and abandoned by his mum at age 4, Connolly found great joy in making people laugh. As an actor, he starred in A Series of Unfortunate Events, Brave, Mrs Brown, The Boondock Saints, and The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013. (1942)
163 years ago today, the British naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species explaining his theory of evolution. The first edition—which has been voted by publishers and librarians as the most influential academic book ever written—introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a tree-like branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on expeditions to South America in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research and experimentation, and showed how natural selection is a scientifically testable mechanism.
Within two decades widespread scientific agreement solidified that evolution had occurred, and by the mid-20th century Darwin’s concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to modern evolutionary theory—and the unifying concept of the life sciences.
Modern evolutionary theory continues to develop, but his writings still explain the diversity of living organisms and their adaptation to the environment; makes sense of the geological record; and hold up under modern genome analysis.
Because of church teachings at the time, his theory was much maligned, but clergymen later came to accept natural selection, explaining it as an instrument of God’s design. The Vatican stated its official position in 1950, which held that evolution was consistent with Catholic teachings. Darwin, himself, believed at the outset that God had been creating life through the laws of nature. WATCH an animation about how little finches were crucial to his discovery, and how pepper moths evolved due to pollution… (1859)
(See Also: Children’s Books About Charles Darwin)
SHARE The Milestones, Memories, and Music… | Art and Culture |
After 47 appearances, the London international mime festival is taking its final bow as a large-scale, multi-venue extravaganza. From now on, physical and visual theatre productions under its umbrella will appear at venues around the UK throughout the year. Why the change? No reason has been given. The festival’s current directors, Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig, simply say that future plans will be announced on the website “in due course”.Festival stalwart David Glass and his ensemble embody, in some respects, the ethos of the event: international, inclusive, innovative. This year, in collaboration with the Italian company Topi Dalmata, led by Margherita Fusi and Silvia Bruni, he presents The Brides.Over 70-plus minutes, seven brides in white gowns are marshalled around the stage by a duenna-like creature dressed in a black, hooped skirt and long, black veil (François Testory). A soundtrack jump-cuts jaggedly between a variety of pop and classical numbers. Storytelling, usually a strong aspect of Glass’s work, is here weak. The brides function mostly in chorus formation, striking attitudes that evoke classical statuary, or bouncing around with animalistic abandon, grunting the while.At one point they take turns to mount a chair and mime having sex, or so it seems; elsewhere, they fight and pull one another’s hair (from head and pubis). These overblown, overlong episodes threaten to stifle moments of wit and humour (deft use of a picture frame as if it were a camera enclosing Hitchcock-style melodramatic scenes is one).The programme tells us that “overseen by the Death Bride [Testory]” they pass through “the spring, summer, autumn and winter of their lives [and] await a Groom, who may never come”. The impression that these “brides” need a male figure to achieve completion is communicated all too powerfully, shattering Glass’s stated aim “to empower and support female voices”.When it started in 1977, the London international mime festival was intended as one-off showcase for non-text-based theatre. A catalyst for much of what is exciting and challenging in British theatre today, it has placed diversity and innovation at its core from the start, with British companies such as Three Women, Black Mime Theatre and the British National Theatre of the Deaf appearing alongside companies from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (as was), India, Japan, Switzerland and more. Complicité (then called Théâtre de Complicité) presented its first show, Put It on Your Head, at the festival in 1984, while, in 1987, Kneehigh came up from Cornwall to make its London debut with Fool’s Paradise.Workshops have been another significant component of the festival’s programme, bringing together audiences and artists to explore forms presented on the stage, and to learn from some of the greatest names in physical theatre (Jacques Lecoq among them). When the work is fragmented and diffused, this great mixing and mingling and sharing of ideas will be lost. That is a loss to us all. The Brides is at Jacksons Lane, London, until 29 January The 2023 London international mime festival continues until 5 February | Art and Culture |
A painting has been saved for the UK in recognition of its “outstanding significance” for the study of race and gender in 17th-century Britain, it will be announced on Friday.
The anonymous artist’s portrait of two women – one black and one white, depicted as companions and equals with similar dress, hair and jewellery – has been bought by Compton Verney, an award-winning gallery in Warwickshire.
Titled Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies, the work, part of the English school dating to about 1650, appears to be a moralising picture, criticising the use of cosmetics in altering a person’s natural appearance.
Their faces are covered in curious beauty patches that were fashionable at the time and which the painting’s inscription condemns as a sin of pride, a widespread opinion in the 17th century.
Wearers of such patches or spots – made of silk or velvet – risked provoking the wrath of God. Part of the purpose of the patches was to hide imperfections or signs of disease. The white sitter wears black patches of various shapes and the black sitter has white ones.
The painting was at risk of permanently leaving the UK after being auctioned in Shropshire in 2021. A temporary stop to allow a UK institution to acquire it was placed by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest.
The independent body, serviced by the Arts Council, advises the secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on whether a cultural object intended for export is of national importance under specified criteria.
Noting that its departure from the UK would be a “misfortune”, the committee’s report stated: “The depiction of a black female sitter in a 1650s painting was highly unusual … inviting important debate about race and gender during the period.”
It added: “It visualises in a way that no other painting of the period does the early modern debates concerning the morality of cosmetics use; discourses on ideal beauty and blackness; issues concerning gender hierarchy and female agency; as well as attitudes to race and ethnicity, especially so in an age that witnessed increasing global contact through trade and colonial expansion.”
An unidentified owner had intended to take the painting overseas unless a UK buyer could be found.
The picture, an oil on canvas measuring 640 x 750mm, was unknown to scholars until it surfaced at auction from the estate of the sixth Lord Kenyon. It had an initial valuation of between £2,000 and £4,000, but it sparked such intense interest that it sold for £220,000.
Now it has been acquired by Compton Verney for more than £300,000, with £154,600 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and £50,000 from the V&A purchase grants. Compton Verney covered the rest through an acquisition fund established by the sale of a painting several years ago.
Two Ladies will now undergo conservation and extensive study to understand its complex narrative by the Yale Centre for British Art at Yale University, before going on public display next year.
Compton Verney is based in a Grade I-listed Georgian mansion within 120 acres of parkland designed by the 18th-century landscape architect Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. With its permanent collections, it is an accredited museum and registered charity.
Geraldine Collinge, its CEO, said: “The painting fits so interestingly with our collections. We’ve got portraits and folk art, where we’re thinking about different ways of showing people. For us, it opens up a conversation about who’s in portraits and why certain people aren’t in portraits.”
She added: “We don’t know who the women were. The fact that it’s two women – one is black, one is white – is particularly interesting for us now and they were stories that were deliberately not told.” | Art and Culture |
A new interactive 3D reconstruction of ancient Rome is giving viewers the opportunity to virtually transport themselves back in time and explore the capital of the Roman Empire as it was during its heyday.
Called Rome Reborn: Flight over Ancient Rome, the digital model presented by Flyover Zone, an educational technology company, offers both a bird's-eye view and on-the-ground perspectives of ancient Rome and its many historical monuments, including the Colosseum, Pantheon, Baths of Caracalla and the Roman Forum, as they may have appeared in A.D. 320, right before the capital city was moved to Constantinople, which was later followed by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, according to a statement.
At its prime, Rome would have had a population of 1 million — making it one of the most populous cities in Europe — and a skyline peppered with approximately 7,000 buildings spread across 5.3 square miles (13.7 square kilometers).
This virtual version of the city is decades in the making and is the brainchild of Bernard Frischer, a digital archaeologist at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. Frischer initially came up with the idea in 1974 while he was the Rome Prize Fellow in Classics at the American Academy in Rome.
During his studies, Frischer visited the Museum of Roman Civilization and saw a physical model of ancient Rome. He knew he could make a better, computerized version himself.
"I remember looking down from a balcony at the physical model while in Rome and taking photos of it," Frischer told Live Science. "I used this as the inspiration for the reconstruction and I thought it would be nice if I could digitize it."
Over the course of several decades, Frischer worked with a team of archaeologists and historians to ensure that his replica was accurate while also consulting a variety of historical texts that recorded what the capital of the Roman Empire would have looked like in fourth century Europe. He also worked with engineers who scanned the original museum model, which served as the groundwork for the digital city, which is on a scale of 1-to-25.
Frischer described the entire research process as "tedious" but in the end, the project was worth the effort.
"I looked at old site plans and photographs of ruins and put it all together," Frischer said. "I wanted to have a visualization to bring people up to speed to see what the city would've looked like instantly. In two hours of exploration, people today will know more than what a PhD student would've known in the 1970s."
The first version of Rome Reborn launched in 2007 followed by two subsequent versions released in 2008 and 2018. For the new, fourth version, which launched Wednesday (Nov. 8), the team added in new and updated recreations of some of the monuments that weren't included in previous versions, such as the Baths of Caracalla, the temples on the Capitoline Hill, the Stadium of Domitian (modern-day Piazza Navona) and the theaters of Balbus, Marcellus and Pompey the Great.
"I hope that people's curiosity is aroused and that they start the process of falling in love with antiquity in general, but to the city of Rome specifically," Frischer told Live Science. "I want people to see the beauty and the grandeur and the innovation of ancient Rome. It was above and beyond other cities during that time."
Rome Reborn: Flight over Ancient Rome version 4.0 is currently available for download. Flyover Zone also offers 13 other virtual tours on Yorescape.com, including the Acropolis in Athens and the Tomb of Ramesses VI in Egypt. Normally an annual subscription is $49.99 but for the Nov. 8 launch, the Yorescape app is offering a free, one-week trial subscription.
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Jennifer Nalewicki is a Salt Lake City-based journalist whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics and more. She covers several science topics from planet Earth to paleontology and archaeology to health and culture. Prior to freelancing, Jennifer held an Editor role at Time Inc. Jennifer has a bachelor's degree in Journalism from The University of Texas at Austin. | Art and Culture |
A Russian art museum in Málaga has been saved from possible closure by a British enthusiast after she offered to exhibit her private collection of 76 works by Russian artists.The works, dating from 1876 to 1980, belong to Jenny Green, who began collecting Russian art 20 years ago. In the 1960s Green was one of a group of people behind Granny Takes a Trip, the trend-setting Kings Road boutique in London.It is the first time the collection has gone on public display and includes works by Venetsianov, Ivanov, Aivazovsky, Repìn, Serov, Bakst, Benois, Kandinsky, Serebriakova, Larionov, Goncharova, Chelischev and Essaian.“With the exception of seven small works, this represents my entire collection,” Green said at the inauguration of the exhibition, which runs until 5 June.As well as the Green collection, the Museo Ruso is hosting the exhibition For Sale, a study of exile by the Ukrainian couple Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.The Museo Ruso, which is housed in a former tobacco factory, was founded in 2015 and is essentially the Spanish wing of the Russian State Museum in St Petersburg, and its first European offshoot.The museum’s permanent and temporary exhibitions draw on the St Petersburg institution’s vast collection of more than 400,000 works. The Museo Ruso had mounted 40 exhibitions and had attracted 750,000 visitors before the Russian invasion of Ukraine threw the project into jeopardy.When the war broke out, the museum had four exhibitions open: War and Peace in Russian Art, the Russian Vanguards, Mayakovsky, Artist and Poet and Dostoevsky on his bicentennial.The museum initially hoped they could mothball the works but it soon became clear this was not tenable and the art was returned to Russia in early May.Shortly afterwards the museum put on a Picasso exhibition but has struggled to keep going.José María Luna, the museum’s director, says that as its relationship with the St Petersburg museum has been “interrupted”, the future lies in private and public collections such as Green’s.“Our commitment to bring Russian art to Málaga is unchanged and we now need to find another way of doing it,” Luna said. “Russian culture isn’t responsible for what’s happening. Cancelling Russian culture doesn’t solve anything. Malevich and Tchaikovsky aren’t to blame for this situation and we will continue to work with culture as a bridge between people.“We’re working with collections in Spain and Europe to cover our requirements in 2023 and, if necessary, in 2024. Our relationship with the St Petersburg is suspended but we have a contract until 2025 so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”In recent years Málaga, long seen by many merely as a entry point to the Costa del Sol, has refashioned itself as a cultural destination. As well as a museum of contemporary art and one dedicated to Picasso, who was himself a malagueño, there is an offshoot of the Centre Pompidou and the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga. | Art and Culture |
From an Orkney village engulfed in sand 5,000 years ago to a medieval city swept off a cliff and languishing in the depths of the North Sea, Britain is scarred with the haunting remains of places lost to memory. And yet, though we cannot see them, many of these places have had formative influences on its history, and their disappearances begin to explain why Britain looks the way it does today.
Join Dr Matthew Green, as he guides you through key turning points in Britain’s history - the Black Death, Reformation, Enlightenment and more - and draws on four years of his original research to paint a vivid and detailed picture of a Britain that no longer exists.
He will guide you through the sights, sounds and tribulations of vanished places, from the buried city of Trellech to the abandoned sea-mountain of St Kilda. Experience former settlements across the breadth of Britain and discover how these places came to meet their tragic fate.
With the aid of striking maps, prints and photographs, Matthew will resurrect these lost towns and settlements, evoking their unique layouts and describing in dramatic detail the experiences of their former dwellers - many of whom tried, but failed, to resist the tides of change. This class will also explore how and why places are disappearing from Britain's landscape today and what the past might reveal about the future.
Course content
- The Neolithic period: how the coming of agriculture ended 2.5m years of nomadic hunter-gathering existence, producing settled communities like Skara Brae on Orkney, preserved in sand for over 5,000 years
- The Norman conquest: how some towns and cities born during the medieval urban boom failed, such as the ghost town of Trellech in the Welsh Marches, uncovered by moles in 2002
- Medieval climate change: how the ravages of extreme weather, as the Medieval Warm Period gave way to Little Ice Age, laid waste to the cities of Old Winchelsea and Dunwich
- The Black Death: how the ghost streets of Wharram Percy in the Yorkshire Wolds were scorched into the grass following its abandonment after the Black Death
- Reformation and Renaissance: how places like the half-drowned city of Dunwich, with its ruined monasteries, captured enquiring minds
- Enlightenment: how self-sufficient societies, such as St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides, were doomed by philosophical voyagers in pursuit of ‘natural man’
- War: how the demands of international war hollowed out some 20% of Britain’s landmass, including villages in Norfolk and Suffolk Brecklands
This course is for …
- Anyone curious to learn more about Britain’s history
- Artists inspired by the haunting beauty of ruins and lost settlements
Tutor profile
Dr Matthew Green is a historian, writer and broadcaster with a doctorate from Oxford University. He has appeared in documentaries on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, and has written historical features for the Guardian and Financial Times. He is the founder of Unreal City Audio, which produces immersive tours of London as live events, podcasts and apps. His first book was London: A Travel Guide Through Time. Follow him on Twitter.
Matthew’s new book Shadowlands: A journey through lost Britain was released in March 2022. If you live in the UK, you can purchase a book and ticket for the combined price of £64 including P&P.
Course Details
- Date: Tuesday 9 August 2022
- Time: 6.30pm-9pm BST
6.30pm BST | 7.30pm CEST | 10.30am PDT | 1.30pm EDT
This masterclass is available globally. If you are joining us from outside the United Kingdom, please use this time zone converter to check your local live streaming time.
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All Guardian Masterclasses are fully accessible but please contact us at [email protected] if you have any queries or concerns. | Art and Culture |
More than a decade ago, British archeologists were left stunned when they found the remains of a 16-year-old Anglo-Saxon girl in Cambridgeshire.
The girl was laid to rest in the village of Trumpington between around AD 650 and AD 680 while wearing a stunning gold and garnet cross.
Now, scientists have analysed the girl's skull to create a life-like reconstruction of what she looked like prior to her untimely death.
The new reconstruction shows she had a fair face with pale skin, a petite nose, strong cheek bones and one eye slightly lower than the other.
Little is known for certain about the 'Trumpington girl', but experts think she migrated from Germany to England as a young girl as a part of an early Christian group to spread the teachings of Jesus.
Previous analysis indicated that the Trumpington girl had suffered from illness but her cause of death remains unknown.
But her ornate cross – which combines gold and beautiful inset gemstones known as garnets – suggests she was a member of the aristocracy, if not royalty.
Along with the cross, the facial reconstruction will go on display at a new exhibition at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology that opens on Wednesday (June 21).
The facial reconstruction was created by forensic artist Hew Morrison, based on measurements of her skull and tissue depth data for Caucasian females.
The lack of DNA analysis means Morrison could not be sure of her precise eye and hair colour, but it's hoped further DNA studies will reveal this for certain.
'It was interesting to see her face developing,' said Morrison, who also recently reconstructed the face of a pregnant ancient Egyptian mummy.
'Her left eye was slightly lower, about half a centimetre, than her right eye; this would have been quite noticeable in life.'
Isotopic analysis of her bones and teeth reveals the girl moved to England from somewhere near the Alps some time after she turned seven years old.
Once the girl had arrived in England, the proportion of protein in her diet decreased by a small but significant amount – although there is nothing yet to suggest this had anything to do with her death.
'She was quite a young girl when she moved, likely from part of southern Germany, close to the Alps, to a very flat part of England,' said Dr Sam Leggett, previously part of the Cambridge team and now at the University of Edinburgh.
'She was probably quite unwell and she travelled a long way to somewhere completely unfamiliar – even the food was different. It must have been scary.'
The Trumpington burial site made the headlines in 2012, following a series of excavations by Cambridge's Archaeological Unit in Trumpington Meadows.
It became one of 15 known Christian 'bed burials' – where the deceased person has been laid to rest on a bed – in the UK, although this number has since risen to 18.
Based on clues from the small number of bed burials discovered, the custom was likely reserved for high-status women during the early Anglo-Saxon period (7th century).
The presence of the cross in the grave still raises the question of whether the young woman had an official role in the fledgling Christian church.
It commonly accepted that Christianity in Britain originated when Saint Augustine came in AD 597 on a Pope-sanctioned mission to convert the pagans.
'It seems that she was part of an elite group of women who probably travelled from mainland Europe, most likely Germany, in the 7th century, but they remain a bit of a mystery,' said Dr Leggett.
'Were they political brides or perhaps brides of Christ? The fact that her diet changed once she arrived in England suggests that her lifestyle may have changed quite significantly.'
Upcoming DNA analysis may also reveal traces of an infection or a genetic disease that could pinpoint her cause of death, Dr Leggett said.
Artefacts from the woman's burial including her famous cross will be shown at the new exhibition at Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA).
Also displayed will be delicate gold and garnet pins connected by a gold chain, which were found near the teenager's neck and likely secured a long veil to an outer garment of fine linen, and the burial bed's decorative headboard.
The free exhibition, 'Beneath Our Feet: Archaeology of the Cambridge Region', will run from June 21 until April 14 next year. | Art and Culture |
Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images
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People dancing on the dance floor at Club Re:mise in Berlin on Oct. 7, 2023.
Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images
People dancing on the dance floor at Club Re:mise in Berlin on Oct. 7, 2023.
Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images
BERLIN — For those who haven't experienced it, a night at a club in Berlin can be reduced to a math equation whose first variable is the best club you've been to.
"Berlin nightlife is, let's say, what you've experienced, multiply that by 10," says Zak Khutoretsky, otherwise known by his DJ pseudonym, DVS1.
"Berlin nightlife is very free," he says. "It's trying to push artistic boundaries. It's trying to push personal boundaries. It's trying to let people experience music, art and culture with some rules. But those rules are created to have no rules."
Khutoretsky, who holds a residency at the Berlin club Berghain, says he's heard complaints lately from club owners and promoters in Berlin about declining numbers of club-goers. Even Berghain, typically an anomaly because it draws crowds from around the world, has raised its cover charge to deal with rising costs. He thinks fewer Europeans are making quick clubbing trips to the city due to the financial hit of the pandemic.
"So where a casual weekend to Berlin before the pandemic was a simple decision and paying the cover and eating food and taking taxis and then getting home before you have to go to work on Monday was a really easy thing to do within Europe," reasons Khutoretsky, "I think it became harder after the pandemic."
Berlin Clubcommission chair Lutz Leichsenring says before the pandemic, a third of tourists came for the city's nightclubs, and they typically spent $1.6 billion per year while they were here.
Rob Schmitz/ NPR
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Lutz Leichsenring, chair of the Berlin Clubcommission, says Berlin clubs are losing revenue due to inflation, minimum wage increases and the cost of energy. He's in talks with the city of Berlin to seek help.
Rob Schmitz/ NPR
Lutz Leichsenring, chair of the Berlin Clubcommission, says Berlin clubs are losing revenue due to inflation, minimum wage increases and the cost of energy. He's in talks with the city of Berlin to seek help.
Rob Schmitz/ NPR
In 2021-2022, 5.5 million tourists came to Berlin, 30% fewer than pre-pandemic numbers.
But declining tourism isn't the only problem.
"You have inflation, you have an energy crisis and you have also the rise of the minimum wage," says Leichsenring, whose group represents Berlin's clubs, is funded by them and acts as a lobbying body for them in front of the city and federal government. "There's also less demand because fewer people are in the city. People don't spend so much money because of the inflation. It's a very critical time."
A critical time, too, because of how Berlin is developing as a European metropolis.
"I think that in Berlin, much more than in other big cities, there's a deep connection between the nightlife and urban development," says Tobias Rapp, a culture writer for Der Spiegel and author of the book, Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno and the Easyjet Set.
Rapp says Berlin's club scene is an outgrowth of how the city developed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany's reunification more than three decades ago.
"In the years after reunification, one-third of East Berlin was empty," recalls Rapp. "There was nobody living there. It was a ghost town. So young people like me and others, we took spaces. You have an empty warehouse or an old factory that is empty, and you go in and you squatted, and you say, 'This is ours.' And you have this huge space and you say, 'What can I do with this?' You make a party."
Berlin's clubs evolved from life on the margins to trendsetting culture destinations
In the early 1990s in East Berlin, nightclubs popped up in abandoned breweries, power stations and bomb shelters. None of this was safe, and Rapp considers it a minor miracle there wasn't a horrible fire or other accident inside one of these makeshift clubs.
Eventually, investors and the city began to take note — they worked together to build legal, licensed clubs and other businesses began to arrive, too.
"The side effect was it was good for the value of the properties," says Rapp, "because in lots of areas that were rundown, that were empty, that were not nice, that didn't have a good reputation, you suddenly had galleries, bars, nightclubs that gave these areas certain value."
And with that came young renters who turned into middle-aged homeowners with children. And as housing prices have risen, Berlin's transformed, gentrified neighborhoods have become less comfortable with the city's clubs and their subculture.
Just down the block from Berlin's infamous fetish and sex club, the KitKatClub, Undine, a resident who's critical of the club and would only give her first name for fear of retribution from club-goers and the club owner, points out the detritus of the previous evening.
"You should take a photo of all this trash the clubbers have left behind," she says with a sour face. "Nobody picks it up. Nobody cares. I've complained several times to the police about the noise and rowdiness in the early hours of the morning from this club."
Complaints like this are on the rise in Berlin as the city's housing prices go up and urban spaces become tighter. But for Zak Khutoretsky, the DJ, it's clear who should get a free pass.
"Who was there first?" he asks. "If the club was there first, why can't the club be protected in the same way that if an apartment building was there first and a club moved in? Well, in this case, the clubs were there first. The culture was there first. And I think it's important to protect those things."
The Berlin Clubcommission is, in fact, seeking the type of protection that the city offers its museums, opera houses and other cultural institutions, so that it can survive its current and any future downturns. Such protection includes city subsidies and tax breaks.
Near midnight on a Thursday at Berlin's Berghain club, there is no line. Maybe it's too early; maybe times are tough. Despite this, when Andrea Sibaja and her friends approach the bouncer, he shakes his head, directing them to the way out.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
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Andrea Sibaja, Jordan Inijuez and Darian Chacon, friends from Costa Rica, outside Berghain, Berlin's most famous club. Sibaja and Inijuez, visiting from Boston, had always wanted to experience Berghain, but on this day, bouncers at the door rejected them, sending them on their way.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
Andrea Sibaja, Jordan Inijuez and Darian Chacon, friends from Costa Rica, outside Berghain, Berlin's most famous club. Sibaja and Inijuez, visiting from Boston, had always wanted to experience Berghain, but on this day, bouncers at the door rejected them, sending them on their way.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
They're Costa Ricans who live in Boston, and they flew to Berlin because Berghain was on their bucket list.
"I'm one of those people that usually wears black and I feel like, oh, maybe I'm part of that. I want to hang out with people that have the same vibe as me and.... Rejected!" Sibaja says, shaking her head.
Sibaja is still in a state of shock and lingers outside in the cold, watching others casually walk inside, past the bouncers who just turned her and her friends away. When she hears that Berlin clubs are complaining about fewer club-goers, she drops her jaw.
"But at the same time, they reject you," she says. "So you're like, well, what's the point? I'm coming all the way here for this, and then they're turning their back on you. I'm just going to spend my money somewhere else now."
Esme Nicholson contributed to this report from Berlin. | Art and Culture |
Over the course of a storied career, the director Martin Scorsese has used gangsters—particularly those connected to the Mafia—as a way to talk about America. Coded in the ring-a-ding patter and bloody outburst of Goodfellas or Casino is a simulacrum of our country’s make-or-break greed, its manic excess, its ornate history of violence. Though he has made other kinds of movies, Scorsese has returned to the criminal fringes again and again, seemingly unable to shake his fascination with America’s dark economy.
With 2019’s The Irishman, it seemed that maybe Scorsese was closing a loop, crafting a wintry portrait of a gangster at his end. But for his next act, the director has merely gone further back in time to examine another organized brutality. With Killers of the Flower Moon, which premiered here at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, Scorsese adapts David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller, a chronicle of the murders of Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma. Over three and a half hours, Scorsese maps out a sprawling injustice, adding another piece to his grand collage of a nation’s cruelty.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a World War I veteran of simple aims who has arrived in Osage County to work for his uncle, William Hale, a wealthy and respected rancher played with creeping slime by Robert De Niro. Hale isn’t in the oil business, but he’s surrounded by its wealth. The Osage people have discovered oil on their land, and have been granted access to much of its profits. Their home is one of the most monied places per capita in the world, its residents chauffeured around in fancy cars, bedecked in fine furs and jewelry on their way to and from well-appointed homes.
The Osage oil boom was a rare instance of Native Americans finding themselves in control of resources, which of course was anathema to many of the white people flocking to the county to work the oil fields. Their barely clandestine efforts to steal this Native wealth are grimly laid bare in Killers of the Flower Moon, perhaps Scorsese’s most tragic, condemnatory film to date.
Ernest meets a rich Osage woman, Mollie Kyle, who catches his attention for her serene beauty and playfully cool demeanor. She’s played by Lily Gladstone in a performance of quiet, but forceful, dignity; Mollie is, in some senses, the hero of the film, though she is sidelined by illness both natural and manufactured. Killers of the Flower Moon suggests a true affection between Mollie and Ernest, perverted by the rapacious predation of Ernest and his clan. The film tracks the systematic dehumanization of Mollie, her family, and her community as they are dispatched one by one—with guns and poison and bombs—and their oil rights are transferred to white people, often the husbands of Osage women.
It’s a genocide in miniature, essentially, through which Scorsese addresses the much larger displacement and eradication of Native Americans. Unlike his other mobster pictures, Killers of the Flower Moon is never giddy about its violence. Some scenes have a propulsive energy, but the film is often as solemn and ruminative as Silence, Scorsese’s whispery epic about extreme faith. Still, by the end, the film has spoken plenty loudly about the long horror of colonialism, its horrifying reach and ruin. | Art and Culture |
Two men stand at opposite ends of the stage. One wants to cross the waters, represented by a mirrored shard on the floor. The other bars his way, demanding money or sounding doubtful warnings of the journey’s danger.
Marc-Emmanuel Soriano’s play, translated from French by Amanda Gann, is a stripped-down, devastating drama about migrant lives hanging in limbo. Directed by Alice Hamilton and produced by the Clarisse Makundul company, it is full of poetry and nail-biting dread.
No country is specified in the play. The refugees stay nameless with an identity that shifts from one minute to the next, like the waters on this godforsaken beach. We learn only of their desperate need to escape a volatile land and their dream of arriving at a safer one, just visible on the horizon.
The water in between could be the Channel or the ancient river Styx. Death certainly fills its waves and its vivid description comes with petrifying pauses, forcing a reflection on just what the journey entails for those seeking harbour.
There is an incantatory quality to the script that becomes hypnotic, its power matched by mesmerising performances. Wisdom Iheoma is, alternately, the narrator and the would-be voyager. The figures he plays stay vague – they could be any of us. Ola Teniola is the gatekeeper who stops him, the fisherman who warns against it and the ferryman who packs in too many people on his boat.
Largely driven by narration, with some scenes enacted in dialogue, it becomes a highly effective form of oral storytelling. The actors barely move at times; each movement, when it comes, is well spent.
Sarah Beaton’s set design works with the lighting by Jamie Platt and sound by Daniel Balfour to convey a sense of risk and action. The actors remain stock still as we hear the sound of a body lurching into the water, and feel the shock of darkness after a dinghy capsizes.
The script cleverly inverts the classic narrative of heroic endeavour: this migrant is a desperate adventurer who knows that “before becoming a hero he will have to survive as a hunted creature”. In just over 60 minutes, it feels as epic and mythic as Greek tragedy. | Art and Culture |
Subsets and Splits