Engineer's Daughter

iraqi national museum reopens

There is so much about the Iraq War that makes my heart hurt, but one of the more painful images for me was of the deputy director of the Iraqi National Museum sitting on the floor of his building among the broken and looted remains of myriad priceless artifacts with his head in his hands.  So it seems nothing short of a miracle to hear that the museum reopened a few weeks ago with many of its major pieces recovered (some by US troops no less) and restored.  However, Maev Kennedy says that there is a sad note that must be considered along with the happiness:

In the joyful headlines over the recovery of iconic pieces such as the 5,500-year-old Warka Mask, a serenely enigmatic alabaster head smiling faintly at the absurdities of human folly, it was almost overlooked that thousands of small metal and clay pieces, inscribed tablets and amulets, seal cylinders, easy to smuggle, hard to trace, of little commercial value but priceless to historians, have almost certainly gone for ever.

Still, what a wonderful thing to have some treasures and relics from thousands of years of culture back where they can be enjoyed by visitors.  And may the individuals who pilfered the smaller items and then did not return them be tormented by vengeful ghosts.

the rothschild butterfly collection

Talk about a Wunderkammer.  An amazing collection of butterflies assembled by brothers Walter and Charles Rothschild and donated to England's Harrow school are being auctioned off at a sale at Bonhams in May.  Numbering in the thousands, the winged critters had been stashed away in a room used by the Harrow's IT department where few visited.  Walter Rothschild had a severe addiction to collecting to the point where he almost ruined himself financially, but he was able to found London's Natural History Museum with his vast holdings as a result.  Mark Brown summarized parts of a recent article by filmmaker Hannah Rothschild about her great-great uncle Walter that she wrote for the Bonhams quarterly:

Between 1899 and his death in 1937, butterflies became the main focus of his attention. According to Hannah: "Nothing man-made - no painting by Ingres or Velázquez, none of the jewels of Catherine the Great nor the intricacies of Mughal art - can come to the shocking beauty of these creatures ... My great-aunt Miriam used to send out a Christmas card and got great pleasure from correcting those who assumed that the image of swirling colours could be a lesser known work of some famous Impressionist painter. 
'You are looking at the greatly magnified reproductive organ of a butterfly,' she would tell princes and statesmen with glee."

Even though I feel sorry for all the poor dead butterflies in the Rothschild collection, it's also impossible not to marvel at the sheer variety of their iridescent and unusually-shaped wings that were gathered from around the world and pinned so carefully in place.  Here's hoping the whole lot stays together and ideally ends up in a museum.

underwater museum in alexandria

The classics nerd in me did a little bounce of joy to see the images that have been released by architect Jacques Rougerie of the proposed underwater museum in Alexandria's harbor that will allow visits to Cleopatra's palace by the scuba-disinclined for the first time since the 5th century.  It's a brilliant idea to construct a fiberglass tunnel to the site instead of trying to move the fragile artifacts (which reportedly also contain remnants of the famous Alexandria lighthouse), though the project faces concerns about funding and whether proper site surveys will be conducted before construction begins.  Jack Shenker talked to Naguib Amin, local site manager for the Supreme Council for Antiquities, about some of the questions being raised:

Amin rejected claims that money would be better spent giving a makeover to the city's crumbling downtown buildings, most of which feature stunning colonial-era architecture. "We view the museum as an integral component of revitalising the city as a whole," he said.

If everything comes together properly the museum should be open to the public within five years, at which point I will be on the first plane to Egypt to go walk under the water.

khadambi asalanche's bequest to the national trust

When the Kenyan-born Khadambi Asalanche bought a home on London's Wandsworth Road in the 1980s, he found that his old Georgian house had a bit of an issue with damp.  He began putting pieces of wood up on the walls to combat the moisture, carving intricate designs into them himself, and it wasn't long before the project spread to the entire house.  Khadambi's designs incorporate elements from African, Islamic and British cultures, and Maev Kennedy talked to independent curator Giles Waterfield about what makes the house so striking:

"It has still a very strong sense of the man who created these interiors. It is such a gentle place, so soft and welcoming, and yet at the same time it could be seen as a statement of independence and individuality in terms of ethnic origin."

Khadambi died of cancer in 2006 but left the house to Britain's National Trust, and the group hopes to raise the money necessary to open it to the public for all to enjoy.  See more pictures of the extraordinary interiors here.

china: journey to the east

The year I lived in England I discovered very quickly how easy it was to pop on a train from where I was situated in Coventry and two hours later find myself in the midst of London.  My first stop always was (and still is) the British Museum, where it's possible to immerse yourself in your pick of any number of world cultures.  The Asian rooms have always been particular favorites of mine, chock full of images of serene bodhisattvas and fierce warriors, and now the better to reach those who live outside the capital the Museum has organized a touring show called China: Journey to the East that will make stops at venues around England for the next few years (including the Herbert near my old stomping grounds in Coventry).  The exhibition collects objects from 3000 years of Chinese history and seeks to give further insight into this country with its rich cultural history and current complex (and sometimes troubling) character.  You can see some highlights from the show here, and don't miss the delicately-painted shadow puppets estimated to be from somewhere between 1850 and 1950.  I want the tiger.

to the wire: the seaton delaval hall appeal

Britain's National Trust has just a few days left to raise the remainder of the funds needed to purchase Seaton Delaval Hall, a genuine baroque masterpiece in England's Northumberland county designed in 1718 by John Vanbrugh.  The house has a rich history, and the Trust is taking input from residents of the region for how they would like to see it used, though if they miss the year-end deadline and the property goes on the open market its future would be much more uncertain.  I'm rooting hard for the Trust, and in the meantime taking a virtual ramble through Seaton Delaval's moody corridors thanks to the online gallery here.  There are some neat videos on the National Trust site as well.

byzantium at the royal academy

Founded in 330 CE by Emperor Constantine at a time when the Roman Empire stretched from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Sinai Peninsula, Constantinople would remain the center of the Byzantine Empire for the next thousand years until it was captured by Ottoman forces in 1453.  The new Byzantium exhibition at London's Royal Academy brings together hundreds of objects from Constantinople and elsewhere around the Empire, including rare icons like the one at right portraying a likeness of Christ with saints Sergios and Bacchos.  Many of the pieces come on loan from the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum of Arts in Kiev and also from the Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai desert, whose monks have sent art that had never previously left the building.  Curator Maria Vassilaki spoke to Maev Kennedy about how the monastery is the one place in the world where Byzantine Christianity is still practiced:

"It is the only place where you can still see these wonderful objects in the place where they were made, still serving the purpose for which they were made."

My favorite of the monastery icons that I've seen is that of the heavenly ladder of St John Klimakos, where winged demons are lassoing some unfortunate souls and dragging them off the rungs to certain spiritual doom.  You can see that bizarre image and some other objects from the exhibition in the gallery here.

victorian buildings under threat

Every year the Victorian Society in Britain releases a list of their top ten endangered buildings in the hopes of encouraging their preservation, and their choices for 2008 are all examples of some truly gorgeous architecture.  The Stonebridge School in north-west London, pictured right, was built in 1898 and is still used by two schools but has been marked for redevelopment by the local council.  It literally hurts my heart to think it might be ripped down, but many of the buildings on the Society's list have structural problems and I'm sure it's considered more economical to start over rather than preserve.  You can see more pictures here, including an impressive old mill in Huddersfield and the Moseley Road Baths in Birmingham.

britain's prehistoric rock art

I have always been fascinated by archaeology and looking at what ancient cultures leave behind, especially when there is an element of mystery.  For example, what compelled a prehistoric individual to inscribe those circular grooves pictured at right into a stone in Britain?  A new website called England's Rock Art has been created to catalog as many of the country's ancient carvings as possible, both to increase awareness about their existence and to preserve them for future generations.  From Jonathan Jones's Guardian blog:

As our gallery of rock art shows, we have for too long made too little of this ancient British art, much of which is found at exposed sites in Northumberland and County Durham. A lot of Neolithic art has been destroyed by quarrying, as if it didn't matter. In reality it is a national treasure, a unique window on the minds of our ancestors. Only through art like this can we connect with the imaginations and feelings, the psychic universe of Britain's early inhabitants. It's an art to search for in the countryside, perhaps even to discover unknown examples of. Don't you just want to put on your hiking boots and go looking?

I will never forget how awesome it was to walk amongst the standing stones when I had a chance to visit Avebury, imagining the people who put them there 5000 years ago.  I was also remembering the crazy Children of the Stones series that scared the tar out of me when it ran on Nickelodeon when I was a kid, but that's a story for another post.

england's endangered heritage sites

As much as I am a passionate cheerleader for bleeding-edge modern architecture, it also breaks my heart when old buildings and historical sites threaten to fall apart from disrepair, are vandalized or are simply bulldozed for new development.  Over in the UK the conservation organization English Heritage released a report yesterday that one in twelve of protected heritage sites in that country is "at high risk of neglect or decay or inappropriate change."  The Guardian has a gallery of some of the most endangered sites here, which range from ancient standing stones to a gorgeous Victorian train station to mid-century apartment buildings.  Expedition to the Cratcliff Rocks Hermitage in Harthill, anyone?