Flashmob Recreates Rembrandt's The Night Watch in a Dutch Shopping Mall

http://www.openculture.com/2013/04/flashmob_recreates_rembrandts_the_night_watch_in_a_dutch_shopping_mall.html

Christian Iconography

For students in VAFA192 Art History After 1450 -- here's a great resource for researching the attributes of the Christian Saints.

J. R. Stracke, "Christian Iconography," Augusta State University (accessed 2/7/13) <http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/index.html>

British Museum -- Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind

From the British Museum regarding their new Ice Age art exhibition:

"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.

These exceptional pieces will be presented alongside modern works by Henry Moore, Mondrian and Matisse, illustrating the fundamental human desire to communicate and make art as a way of understanding ourselves and our place in the world.

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.

One of the most beautiful pieces in the exhibition is a 23,000-year-old sculpture of an abstract figure from Lespugue, France. Picasso was fascinated with this figure and it influenced his 1930s sculptural works.

Although an astonishing amount of time divides us from these Ice Age artists, such evocative pieces show that creativity and expression have remained remarkably similar across thousands of years."

7 February – 26 May 2013
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/ice_age_art.aspx

Free Met Publications now online

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has just launched MetPublications, a major online resource that offers unparalleled in-depth access to the Museum’s renowned print and online publications, covering art, art history, archaeology, conservation, and collecting. Beginning with nearly 650 titles published from 1964 to the present, this new addition to the Met's website, www.metmuseum.org/metpublications, will continue to expand and could eventually offer access to nearly all books, Bulletins, and Journals published by the Metropolitan Museum since its founding in 1870, as well as online publications.

Good timing for students working on their Museum Paper and Research Conference!

NYC exhibition created by Bucks faculty member

The mythical symbolism of the tree of life gets a new interpretation with Long After the Fall, a one-night only art installation created by Richard Gabriele, who teaches drawing and art history at Bucks County Community College, and KMel Robotics. The exhibition features flying robots, a golden egg, and more.  The opening is from 6-8 PM on September 27 at the IMC Lab located at 56 West 22nd Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY.

First dictionary of Demotic Egyptian

From John Noble Wilford, "Dictionary Translates Egypt Life," New York Times (Sept. 17, 2012):

"Demotic was one of the three scripts inscribed on the Rosetta stone, along with Greek and hieroglyphs, enabling European scholars to decipher the royal language in the early 19th century and thus read the top-down version of a great civilization’s long history.

Now, scholars at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago have completed almost 40 years of research and published online the final entries of a 2,000-page dictionary that more than doubles the thousands of known Demotic words. Egyptologists expect that the dictionary’s definitions and examples of how words were used in ancient texts will expedite translations of Demotic documents, more of which are unpublished than any other stage of early Egyptian writing."

This is a timely subject for students interested in the art of ancient Egypt!

A Demotic Egyptian writing sample at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.

Here's the full article with a link to the Oriental Institute:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/new-demotic-dictionary-translates-lives-of-ancient-egyptians.html?smid=pl-share

Winslow Homer at the PMA

Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and The Life Line is a new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, September 22, 2012 - December 16, 2012.

Winslow Homer, The Life Line, 1884

In addition, Winslow Homer's studio in Prout's Neck, Maine, is now owned by the Portland Museum of Art and open for tours.  Here's a recent article in the New York Times.

Winslow Homer's studio, Prout's Neck, Me