New Exhibits Archives - Page 24 of 29

The Colors of Ancient Marble Statues

A free exhibition at Stanford University reveals the bright colors that once covered the ancient sculptures of Greece and Rome. From the Stanford Report:

With the silent attentiveness of a physician, Ivy Nguyen passes her hands over the recumbent white lady in the darkened lab. She cradles a handheld black light in her fingers.
Under the Stanford sophomore’s skillful watch in the Cantor Arts Center lab, long-dead colors on marble come alive after two millennia.
The results of Nguyen’s painstaking efforts are on display in “True Colors: Rediscovering Pigments on Greco-Roman Marble Sculpture” at the Cantor. The exhibition runs until Aug. 7. Admission is free.
Though we still think of ancient Greece and Rome in terms of white marble sparkling under a hot Mediterranean sun, the new exhibition shows at least one Greco-Roman lady as she was meant to be seen – in Technicolor. Not everyone may take to Stanford’s painted lady, but first impressions can change. “It’s very different – some have called it kind of garish,” admitted sophomore Nguyen, but she confesses that she’s gotten used to it.
We’ve always known that ancient statues were painted: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a vase, circa 360-350 B.C., depicting a man painting a statue of Herakles. The most important evidence is on the statues themselves – traces of paint that time did not wash from the creases and crevices in porous marble.

The full story includes a photo and a video.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Greece, New Exhibits, Technology

New Exhibit: 19th Century Photography of the Holy Land

Art Daily has a story on an upcoming exhibit at the Getty Villa in Malibu, California:

In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography on view at the Getty Villa from March 2 through September 12, 2011, features some of the first photographic images of the eastern margins of the Mediterranean. This region is one of the most photographed places on earth, with subjects ranging from architectural sites to evocative geography, scenes of pastoral life, and its people. The photographs on view in this exhibition reveal what the travelers of the 1800s discovered on their journey: a landscape of belief, at once familiar yet still mysterious.
In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography features rare, early daguerreotypes, salted-paper prints, and albumen silver prints, created between the 1840s and 1900s by the leading photographers of the time, including Felice Beato, Maxime Du Camp, Auguste Salzmann, James Graham, Louis Vignes, Frank Mason Good, and Frederic Goupil-Fesquet. Due to the delicate nature of photographic materials that cannot be displayed for long periods, this exhibition features more than 100 photographs in total, divided into two installments, each on view for three-months.
Organized into five sections—Jerusalem, Early Views, Peoples of the Bible, Travels in Bible Lands, and Expeditions Beyond the Dead Sea—the photographs, made for study by scholars or produced as souvenirs as well as works of art, were presented by photographers and publishers in ways designed to foster viewers’ religious identification with the region. Subjects include Bethlehem, Nazareth, Petra, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Damascus Gate, Saint Stephen’s Gate, the Ecce Homo Arch, the Al Aqsa Mosque, Walls of the Temple Mount, The Garden of Gethsemane, the Dome of the Rock, the River Jordan, the Pool of Hezekiah, and Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

The story continues here.

HT: Explorator

Tagged New Exhibits

Noah’s Ark Theme Park Announced

From MSNBC:

A full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark will be the biggest feature of a creationism-themed amusement park expected to open in 2014 in northern Kentucky, Gov. Steve Beshear announced Wednesday.
The $150 million park will be built by a for-profit group called Ark Encounter LLC, which is partnering with Answers in Genesis, most widely known for its high-tech Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., Beshear said at a Capitol news conference.
Site selection is not decided, he said, but the organizers have options on 800 acres in Grant County off Interstate 15, about 40 miles from the Creation Museum, which is outside Cincinnati, Ohio. The Ark Encounter website says the park will go in the Grant County site.
“Bringing new jobs to Kentucky is my top priority, and with the estimated 900 jobs this project will create, I am happy about the economic impact this project will have on the Northern Kentucky region,” Beshear said in a prepared statement.
The park is expected to draw 1.6 million visitors a year, Beshear said, citing a feasibility study by America’s Research Group.
In addition to the full-size ark, the complex will include a walled city, live animal shows, a children’s interactive play area, a replica of the Tower of Babel, a 500-seat special effects theater, an aviary, a journey through biblical history, and a first-century Middle Eastern village.

The story continues here. The official site of Ark Encounter is here. Answers in Genesis has issued a press release here. There are several images available here.

My family had the opportunity to visit the Creation Museum mentioned above this summer. We thought it was excellent and would highly recommend a visit. This new park will certainly spark more conversation, as it brings closer to home questions such as (1) did Noah build such an ark for a local flood; (2) would all of the animals fit inside; and (3) how much faith would it take for one man to persevere in the construction. It’s interesting how much opposition there is today to the establishment of a theme park; I can’t imagine that Noah faced any less of a snarky, sneering response.

Proposed Ark Encounter theme park

Tagged New Exhibits

Sarcophagus of Queen Helene on Display

The most impressive tomb in all of Israel from any of the biblical periods is the “Tomb of the Kings.” Despite its modern name, the tomb actually belonged to Queen Helene of Adiabene, a royal convert to Judaism from a Mesopotamian kingdom. Her tomb was constructed about a decade after the crucifixion of Jesus a few hundred meters north of the Garden Tomb. Gaining access to the tomb today is more difficult than the average tourist site, but it is well worth it.

Tomb of Queen Helene of Adiabene, aka Tomb of the Kings

One thing you will not see at the tomb, however, is Queen Helene’s sarcophagus. This 2,600-lb (1,200 kg) stone coffin was shipped to the Louvre following the tomb’s excavation in the 1860s. I’ve hunted around the French museum looking for this sarcophagus, but without success. The object has been safely stored in the basement for years and years. Nevertheless, the French were reluctant to loan the sarcophagus to Israel where people could actually view it. After a year of negotiation, the sarcophagus has arrived at the Israel Museum where it will be on display for four months as part of the exhibition, “Breaking Ground: Pioneers of Biblical Archaeology.”

Queen Helene is not mentioned in the New Testament, but there is a connection. Josephus (Ant. 20.2.5) writes that she supplied food for Jerusalem during the famine that is mentioned in Acts 11:27-30.

During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) 29 The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.

Haaretz tells the story and provides a photo. For more about the tomb itself, including photos and links, see this page at BiblePlaces.com. Several years ago, archaeologists working in Jerusalem claimed that they located her palace in the City of David.

Tagged Jerusalem, Museums, New Exhibits

Chalil Raad: Arab Photographer in Palestine

In connection with a new exhibit at Tel Aviv’s Nachum Gutman Museum, Dana Schweppe has a profile in the weekend magazine of Haarezt on the Christian Lebanese photographer Chalil Raad who lived and worked in Jerusalem from 1891 to 1948. The article wrestles with whether Raad betrayed the Arab Palestinians because he also took photos of Jewish Palestinians (as they were then known).

[The land of Palestine] could look like an exotic biblical land, like a wonderful wasteland, like a ripe fruit waiting to be picked. All that was needed was the right lens. This was the prevailing mentality when Chalil Raad (whose first name is often given as Khalil ) first picked up a camera and learned to use it. The idea was to photograph Eretz Yisrael not as it was, with its vibrant Palestinian towns and villages, but as the West world wanted to see it: mostly empty and available for the conquering.
[…]
“The Zionist and Palestinian narratives [in Raad’s work] exist in parallel but do not converge into a dialogue,” Sela says. “The photographs tell about two different places that do not interface, even though this is one small country. Each side describes its own fantastical reality.” What sets Raad apart, Sela says, is that his work incorporates both narratives.
[…]
Raad, too, “transgressed” by depicting the country from a viewpoint that Edward Said would decades later term “Orientalism.” He photographed a young Palestinian woman working in a field and titled the result “Ruth the Gleaner”; an Arab in a kaffiyeh evokes the New Testament parable of the prodigal son; and three Palestinians next to a tree are said to be at Gilgal, where the manna ceased to fall. But Raad went beyond the photographic mainstream. He was the first photographer who created an Arab-Palestinian identity by photographing both the Arab community and the rich local life. He photographed the society in which he lived – villages and cities, commerce and industry, agriculture and family life – and informed it with a presence that had never before been reflected in photography.

Raad sounds like an interesting figure and I would love to see his photographs. I wonder, however, if the political angle is overplayed a bit here and Raad was more inspired to photograph scenes he found interesting and people who paid him than he was to contribute to some larger political agenda.

Individual and undated photographs lend themselves beautifully to the viewer creating whatever narrative he wishes.

Tagged Museums, New Exhibits

Archaeological Display in Tel Aviv

How many archaeological sites do you suppose there are in Tel Aviv?

From Haaretz:

The Tel Aviv municipality may soon launch a broad initiative to restore and display archaeological artifacts across the city, deputy-mayor Meital Lehavi told Haaretz.
The plan, to be done in close cooperation with the Antiquities Authority, intends for large local artifacts to be presented in parks, squares and other public areas. The pilot for the program will be launched in 10 parks around the city already located close to archaeological sites.
While the plan has not been finalized and has yet to be confirmed by the municipal administration, Lehavi said a delegation from the municipality will visit the state archaeological storehouses in two months to select exhibits for display.
“When people hear ‘archaeology’ they automatically think of cities like Jerusalem, Megiddo or Akko,” Yossi Levi, the central district archaeologist for the Antiquities Authority said. “But Tel Aviv-Jaffo alone has about 128 archaeological sites, which is a lot. Fifty of them are even visible to the naked eye. As these are sites people travel through anyway, the idea is that they can be turned into public exhibits at a minimal cost.

For more details, see the article in Haaretz.

Tel Gerisa (aka Napoleon’s Hill), with buildings of Tel Aviv in distance

Tagged New Exhibits