Category: visual

“Faced with the apparent impotence of governments and international agencies to stop ISIS’ fanatical levelers, other cultural organizations are trying to create 3-D records of heritage sites to preserve them, at least in digital form, for future generations.”

“The cost is estimated at €250m. It would be an astonishingly ambitious project for any country – but for Greece, which has suffered so much in recent years, is it foolhardy? When Greek people are hungry, surely €250m could cover a lot of meals for children and supplies for hospitals.”

“In recent years, both M+ and the larger project have been troubled by delays and the departures of high-level staff members. More worrying now are concerns that M+ may not be able to maintain the curatorial independence and distance from politics necessary for a world-class museum to thrive.”

“Some might say that the theory proposed by Manichev and Parkhomenko is very extreme because it places the Great Sphinx in an era where there were no humans, according to currently accepted evolutionary patterns.”

“What do you do if, in a city of high-profile collectors of multimillion dollar art, your treasure is too precious to neglect, but not valued enough to attract the support needed to maintain it?”

“Our work shows that predicting human cognitive abilities is within reach for the field of computer vision.”

In an era that consumes images faster than ever, when architects can effortlessly access an endless stream of renderings and photos, which snippets of inspiration are “fair” game?

“The Museum of Modern Art has announced one of the largest monetary gifts in its history, a $40 million unrestricted donation from the Chicago hedge-fund billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, whose name will now adorn one of the museum’s best-known buildings, the 1964 black steel-and-glass East Wing, designed by Philip Johnson.”

“Recently, a painting in the British Royal Collection was cleaned, revealing the younger van Ostade’s own lowbrow humor in the figure of a man urinating in front of a dog. Now the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena is sharing a similar discovery: Its newly restored 1641 Isack van Ostade painting of peasants butchering a pig shows a man defecating in the corner.”

“Some, like the Venetian Lagoon in Italy, are widely familiar, while others – ever heard of Estonia’s Patarei Sea Fortress? – are not. Each was nominated by members of Europa Nostra’s network and voted on by a panel of experts in disciplines including history, archaeology, architecture, and conservation.”