Museums News
Dating of a birch tar sample identified recently on one of two horned helmets housed at the National Museum of Denmark which were discovered in 1942 in a peat pit in eastern Denmark indicate that the helmets were ritually deposited in the bog around 900 B.C., some 1,500 years before the Viking Age with which the helmets have long been associated. The helmets also bear symbols resembling the eyes and beak of a bird of prey. Feathers are thought to have been fastened to the ends of the helmets’ horns with birch tar. Each helmet may have also been fitted with a mane of horsehair. Helle Vandkilde of Aarhus Universitet explained that bulls’ horns and birds of prey were used as symbols of the sun
Museums News
Turner Prize–nominated artist Tracey Emin will establish an art school and museum in her seaside hometown of Margate in England. She plans to house the school, titled TKE Studios, in a former bathhouse and mortuary located near her 30,000-square-foot studio, which was formerly a commercial printer. The Times of London first reported news of the school on Wednesday.
Margate has long been afflicted by a high poverty rate, though officials there have been efforts to turn around its reputation, in part by luring art spaces. In 2011, Turner Contemporary, an art space that hosted the Turner Prize show in 2019, was opened in the city.
Museums News
Mister Merry's Play Lighter with Bubble Gum Cigarettes, 1965, 'especially developed and tested for young children' from the Strong - National Museum of Play collection.
Museums News
A Victorian archery outfit belonging to Mrs Fanny Giveen, c.1855, now part of the collection of the Museum of London
Museums News
The Philadelphia Museum of Art faces ownership challenge over classic 20th-century work of modernism. Heirs to the estate of artist Piet Mondrian claim "Composition with Blue" painting is Nazi loot. A masterpiece of modernist art that has been in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for almost 70 years has been characterized as “Nazi-looted art” by representatives of the artist’s heirs who plan to challenge museum ownership in court, although the artist never objected during his lifetime. The painting, Composition with Blue, a 1926 work by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, was purchased in 1939 by famed collector A.E. Gallatin, who acquired it from the Buchholz Gallery in New York, a sales outlet favored by the Nazis. The museum said they would “vigorously defend
Museums News
Banksy offers to raise £10m to buy Reading prison, where Oscar Wilde was once imprisoned, so it can be turned into an arts centre. The street artist has promised to match the jail’s £10m asking price by selling the stencil he used to paint on the Grade II-listed building in March, a move campaigners hope will prevent it from being sold to housing developers. Banksy’s contribution, together with Reading borough council’s, would bring the offer for the former jail to an estimated £12.6m. The Bristol-based artist said Wilde was “the patron saint of smashing two contrasting ideas together to create magic,” adding: “Converting the place that destroyed him into a refuge for art feels so perfect we have to do it.” Banksy’s mural depicted a
Museums News
Following a split from Britain, Barbados revealed plans to open a David Adjaye–designed heritage district paying homage to the transatlantic slave trade. Included in it will be a new museum housing a collection of British slave records and a memorial adjacent to a burial ground where the remains of 570 enslaved West Africans were found.
Museums News
Billionaire NY financier Michael Steinhardt agrees to turn over $70m in antiquities plundered from Egypt, Greece and Syria - and dating back 8,000 years. His collection included a Hellenistic stag's head drinking vessel dating from 400 BC worth $3.5 million, and three 'Death Masks' believed to be more than 8,000 years old which were crafted in the Judean foothills and worth $650,000. Steinhardt 'knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers, and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection,' said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. Over 15 years, Prof Christos Tsirogiannis, a leading archaeologist, has identified more than 1,550 looted artefacts within auction houses, commercial galleries, private collections and museums. A former
Museums News
Hertfordshire Bronze Age axe hoard found by 13-year-old detectorist. A 13-year-old girl uncovered a hoard of Bronze Age axes on her third metal-detecting trip. Milly was scouring a field near Royston, Hertfordshire, when she made the find - the first of 65 artefacts dating from about 1300BC. When her father dug out the first one, Milly said they joked it might be an axe - and it was. Archaeologists were called in to excavate the entire hoard, which will be sent to the British Museum, London. Milly, from Suffolk, had only recently taken up her father's favourite hobby of metal-detecting. The pair were on an organised trip when they came across the first axe head. "It was my third time out and I didn't quite
Museums News
In a ceremony this morning marking the repatriation of three Nigerian artworks, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) entered into a shared agreement to collaborate on mutual loans of Benin objects and other “exchanges of expertise and art.”
In Ceremony, Met Museum Officially Returns Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
The museum and the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments entered into a shared agreement to collaborate on mutual loans of Benin objects and other “exchanges of expertise and art.”
Museums News
Greek prime minister tries to broker deal for return of Parthenon marbles. The Greek prime minister has demanded that the 2,500-year-old Parthenon marbles be returned to Athens and has repeated an offer to loan some of his country’s treasures to the British Museum in an attempt to broker a deal. Kyriakos Mitsotakis told the Daily Telegraph that the sculptures, belong in the Acropolis Museum at the foot of the Periclean masterpiece. The leader made the proposal ahead of talks in London with the British prime minister on Tuesday. Boris Johnson has previously ruled out returning them on the grounds that the antiquities were acquired legally. Mitsotakis said: “Our position is very clear. The marbles were stolen in the 19th century; they belong in the Acropolis
Museums News
Actor Christopher Walken just painted over original Banksy artwork 'by accident'!
Banksy had painted one of his signature rats on the set of the BBC drama 'The Outlaws' which is directed by Steven Merchant and filmed in their home city of Bristol.
A spokesperson for the show said: “We can confirm that the artwork at the end of 'The Outlaws' was an original Banksy, and that Christopher Walken painted over that artwork during the filming of this scene, ultimately destroying it.”
Written and directed by the co-creator of 'The Offfice', Stephen Merchant, 'The Outlaws' follows a group of minor criminals forced to complete a community service sentence.
Museums News
Museums News
Details from Galileo’s first telescope (17th century), on display at Museo Galileo in Florence.
Museums News
Museums News
Museums News visited the always wonderful Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London, coordinated by Yinka Shonibare, MBE. Inclusivity was a key theme to this year's exhibition and the submitted works were incredibly inspiring.
Highly recommended.
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Museums News
Museums News visited Anicka Yi's must-see 'In Love with the World' installation at Tate Modern, London.
Floating in the air, Yi's autonomous machines – called aerobes – are based on ocean life forms and mushrooms. They re-imagine artificial intelligence, and encourage us to think about new ways machines might inhabit the world.
Music by Con Artist · The art of Con Chrisoulis
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Museums News
This is the Crepereia doll, once owned by a young woman called Crepereia Tryphaena and currently housed in the Centrale Montemartini Museum, Italy. Crepereia Tryphaena was a young Roman woman, presumably about 20 years old, whose sarcophagus was found during the excavation works started in 1889 for the foundations of the Palace of Justice and for the construction of the Umberto I bridge over the Tiber in Rome. This extraordinary ancient Barbie doll is made of ivory, which got darkened by water. The head and torso are carved in one piece, while the limbs are designed so with movable joints. This denotes an extremely high level of craftsmanship. The doll might have been originally dressed since - unlike its trunk - its hands, feet and
Museums News
Museums News visited the Ron Mueck retrospective exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac, London.
Thematically thought-provoking and technically impeccable, the sculptures, both the miniatures and gigantic ones, provided awe-inspiring glimpses into the mundanity, and vulnerability, of everyday life. Highly recommended.
Museums News
Japanese artist and director Nobumichi Asai and a team of creative developers produced a real-time face tracking and projection installation. During the performance, two models sat in the centre of a stage as 3D projection-mapped visuals appeared on the surface of their skin. Glowing lines, ghoulish motifs and robotic montages are among many of the effects that adapt to the contours of the model’s faces. 🎃👹👺
Nobumichi Asai's work has been exhibited at the Triennale Milano Museum.
Museums News
Museums News just visited this year's inspiring Royal Academy of Arts' Summer Exhibition, coordinated by Yinka Shonibare, MBE.
A report on the thought-provoking exhibition will follow.
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Museums News
Free conference on current museum practices from the National Museum of Ireland:
Have you ever wondered how ideas of the nation were collected, visualised, manufactured, articulated, displayed and performed in national museums in the past and in the present day?
Cost: Free
Where: Online via Zoom
Information: bit.ly/3aTiGfA
Register: zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_J0v3vcNgQWeM-E3oyZkGyw
National Museums - Narrating the Nation | Decorative Arts & History | National Museum of Ireland
A two-day international conference organised by the National Museum of Ireland and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Friday 29 October and Friday 5 November 2021.
Museums News
An amateur diver discovered a 900-year-old Crusader sword off the coast of Israel dating back to the Middle Ages. Experts believe the site is home to several archaeological treasures. The meter-long blade was lying on the Mediterranean seabed off the Carmel Coast in 5-meter-deep (16-foot-deep) water, encrusted with marine organisms. The man, identified as Shlomi Katzin, was on a weekend dive in northern Israel when he noticed the sword's distinctive hilt and handle after the undercurrent shifted the sand concealing it. Worried that his discovery might be buried or stolen, he took the sword and gave it to government experts, receiving a certificate of appreciation for good citizenship. "The sword, which has been preserved in perfect condition, is a beautiful and rare find and evidently
Museums News
Banksy's auction record was re-set today when his painting 'Love Is in the Bin' sold for $25.3 million at Sotheby's. The painting famously began to shred itself immediately after being sold at auction in 2018.
