You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘British Museum’ category.
Female figure sculpture approximately 20,000 years-old
Due to popular demand the exhibition, Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind, has been extended to 2 June 2013. See also the video, Sculptures of the female form. “Jill Cook exhibition curator [at the British Museum] and artist Ghislaine Howard explore these representations of women in Ice Age and contemporary art.”
Building work at the new £135m Conservation Centre and Exhibition Gallery at the British Museum
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent on The Evening Standard, reports today that -
A giant new conservation and exhibition centre at the British Museum is on time and on budget to open next year - despite the worst efforts of the winter to derail the project.
Presenting a progress report today, museum director Neil MacGregor showed how the steel frame of the £135 million Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery was made in just six months, after a full year of digging 19 metre-deep basements. A total of 4,369 trucks were needed to take away earth - and extra staff had to be hired for snow-clearing in the harsh winter. Work also had to stop when high winds made it too dangerous to use the two tower cranes. But Mr MacGregor said 80 per cent of funding had now been raised, and the museum was on schedule to present its first exhibition, on the Vikings, in the 70-metre-long gallery in March 2014.
State-of-the-art facilities for science, conservation and storage would be open by June next year. The gallery is being named in honour of a £25 million gift from the Sainsbury family.
Ice Age art
arrival of the modern mind
A catalogue compiled by Jill Cook, Senior Curator in the Department of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum, to accompany the Ice Age art exhibition there. “This ground-breaking book explores the extraordinary sculpture and drawings created during the last European Ice Age, between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago – the oldest known figurative art in the world.”
Hardback, with a dust jacket, the book packs in over 300 illustrations (most in colour) along with diagrams and maps. The book has 288 pages, including 5 pages of Notes, a Further Reading list and an Index. This is a must-have book for anyone interested in art in general and the art of our prehistory in particular.
Please support the British Museum by buying directly from them.
Caveman and shopping trolley by street artist Banksy
An unverified report found on Facebook claims the above (allegedly by Banksy) was, “…secretly placed in one of the British Museum’s galleries, where it hung for three days. After its discovery the Museum took the unusual step of cataloguing the piece and later adding it to its collections.”
True or not it brought a smile to our lips.
A 26,000 year-old carving, in mammoth ivory, of a woman’s face.
Image credit Moravian Museum, Anthropos Institute, Czech Republic
One of the artefacts now on show at the British Museum in its Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind exhibition which runs until the 26 May 2013.
Part of a helmet discovered near where the Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon artefacts was found in 2009
Image credit Staffordshire County Council/PA
The Guardian reports today that -
Most of a collection of new items found close to where the Staffordshire hoard was previously discovered have been declared a treasure trove. The 81 items of gold and silver, which date from the seventh century, will now be handed to the British Museum’s valuation committee, which will assess their worth, the South Staffordshire coroner, Andrew Haigh, told an inquest in Stafford. It will then be up to Staffordshire county council and neighbouring councils to raise the money to buy the items for the nation. If the money is raised, the pieces are likely to end up in museums with the original Staffordshire hoard, which was found in a field near Lichfield in 2009 by metal detectorist Terry Herbert.
Full story here. See also the video on BBC NEWS UK here.
The 500 year-old reliquary engraved with the names of the Magi and images of Christ and St Helena
©
Trustees of the British Museum.
A story to start the festive season: Writing in The Guardian on Friday, 21 December, Maev Kennedy reports that -
A 500-year-old gold reliquary, beautifully engraved with the names of the Magi and images of Christ and St Helena, which was found by a four-year-old playing with his father’s metal detector, has gone on display for the first time at the British Museum. It would once have been brilliantly coloured, with enamel work filling in the letters and decoration, and may once have contained a relic of the cross. It probably dropped from the neck of some wealthy and pious person, and lay undiscovered in the field for half a millennium.
James Hyatt, from Billericay, was four when he found the pendant two years ago one Sunday afternoon in Hockley, Essex, while he was out with his father Jason. The little locket was jammed shut when found. After conservation work by Marilyn Hockey at the museum, the back panel slid open again for the first time in centuries – but there was nothing inside except some fibres of flax, probably once grown locally. James’s find was genuine buried treasure though. It was officially declared treasure by a coroner’s inquest, and has now become one of the permanent treasures of the British Museum’s medieval gallery.
Full article here. And with that, wishing a -
Merry Christmas
and a
Happy New Year to all Our Readers
The second largest hoard of Roman solidi (gold coins) ever found in Britain
Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, is record as saying on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website that -
It is clear from the discoveries reported this year that the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme goes from strength to strength. The ITV series this year shows just how much these finds have captured the public’s imagination and changed our understanding of the past. It is a scheme which is envied the world over. I am very grateful to the Department for Culture Media and Sport for continuing to support the Scheme and to Treasure Hunting magazine who have continued to publish PAS reports. And to other generous funders such as The Headley Trust, Institute for Archaeologists and the Heritage Lottery Fund who support staff to ensure that the Scheme can continue its vital work. As well as the funding bodies who have helped acquire Treasure finds.
Richard Abdy, Curator of Roman Coins as the British Museum, writes of the second largest hoard of Roman gold coins (shown above) ever found in Britain that -
The discovery was made by a metal-detectorist near to St Albans, Hertfordshire, and reported to his local Finds Liaison Officer. In October 2012 the findspot was excavated by a team of archaeologists from St Albans City and District Museums Service and altogether 159 coins were recovered. The coins date to the late 4th to early 5th century AD (after AD 408 regular supplies of Roman coinage to Britain ceased) and were mostly struck in the Italian cities of Milan and Ravenna and issued under the Emperors Gratian, Valentinian II, Theodosius I, Arcadius and Honorius. The largest hoard of Roman solidi was found at Hoxne in Suffolk in 1992 and comprised 565 solidi. Richard Abdy said: “This is a hugely exciting find. During the period of the Roman occupation of Britain, coins were usually buried for two reasons; as a religious sacrifice to the Gods, or as a secure store of wealth, with the aim of later recovery. The late date of the coins suggests their burial could have been associated with the turbulent separation of Britain from the Roman Empire c. AD 410″.
The Hoard will be on view in the Citi Money Gallery at the British Museum from 4 December. More here.
Female figure sculpture approximately 20,000 years-old
The British Museum announces its Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind exhibition which begins on the 7 February 2013 and runs until 26 May 2013.
Discover masterpieces from the last Ice Age drawn from across Europe in this groundbreaking show. Created by artists with modern minds like our own, this is a unique opportunity to see the world’s oldest known sculptures, drawings and portraits.
Ice Age art was created between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago and many of the pieces are made of mammoth ivory and reindeer antler. They show skilful, practised artists experimenting with perspectives, scale, volumes, light and movement, as well as seeking knowledge through imagination, abstraction and illusion.
Details of the exhibition here.
I AM GREEK AND I WANT TO GO HOME
INDEPENDENT MOVEMENT FOR THE REPATRIATION OF LOOTED GREEK ANTIQUITIES
by
Ares Kalogeropoulos
Web design skoumas © iamgreek.gr 2012
The arguments for and against the restitution of the Parthenon Reliefs (the Elgin Marbles) continue unabated. Should the reliefs be returned to their place of origin in Greece or remain at the British Museum. Ares Kalogeropoulos believes passionately that they should be repatriated and writes on his website the following -
In mid-August 2009 the photographer and composer Ares Kalogeropoulos visited the British Museum in the city of London in Great Britain. Entering and passing through countless Greek rooms in the museum he saw something that inspired awe in him but also caused him great pain. Awe at the infinite beauty of the Classical Greek works, and pain that these items were all so far from the mother earth that had given birth to them. Room 18, named by the British as the Parthenon Room was what made him take out his camera and start capturing evidence of the most heinous of cultural crimes to be perpetrated in recent history: the sacrilegious defilement of the greatest monument and symbol of world culture, and the illegal retention in a foreign place of 65% of the artefacts that had decorated it. Far from the sun and sky of Athens. Broken, humiliated and above all, HALF of the monument. Pieces of the Parthenon, which has stood there in Athens for thousands of years, now fixed and hanging without any meaning at all.
This photographic archive remained in his computer until the middle of February of 2012 when it came to light because of an internal desire of the artist to express himself by making known this cultural crime to the world.
THE MOVEMENT
The first photograph was uploaded to Ares Kalogeropoulos Facebook profile in February of 2012. This photo was followed by many others that were posted daily to the profile and were then broadcast by thousands of people at an impressive and stunningly increasing rate.
There was only one message and it was clear:
“I AM GREEK AND I WANT TO GO HOME”.
It may have started as a personal expression of the artist seeking justice by projecting such an historically important cultural problem but public support through postings and actions turned it into a movement.
Ares Kalogeropoulos
More here. See also our earlier post here.
