Arts news

A group of archaeologists has uncovered new evidence suggesting that elusive red ochre pigment in Cave of Ardales in Spain was applied by Neanderthals. Their findings, published in a recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), are a key contribution to a long held debate in the archaeological community over the paintings’ origins. 
The study, “The symbolic role of the underground world among Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals” by Africa Pitarch Mar

When the executive director of the ACLU, Anthony D. Romero, delivered a cautionary TED Talk titled “This Is What Democracy Looks Like” in early 2017, his presentation was, in essence, an art history lecture on Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes known as the Allegories and Effects of Good and Bad Government, painted between 1337 and 1339 for the town hall in the Republic of Siena. Projected on the screen behind Romero was an image of the effects of Bad Government, where we see a dev

Sandpaper can be used for everything from shaping wood to polishing metal. It’s an essential tool not only for handymen but also for woodworkers, jewelry makers, and artists. The most basic variable when choosing sandpaper is the grit, a rating of the size of the abrasive particles on the paper’s surface (the higher the number, the finer the particles). While knowing what grit you need for a particular job is important, you also must consider quality. Inferior resins or adhesives can

The Impressionist art collection of Dallas oil tycoon and philanthropist Edwin L. Cox will be sold at Christie’s in November. The group of 25 works including paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Gustave Caillebotte, and is expected to fetch $200 million. The sale will mark the first time that many of these works have been seen publicly since before World War II.
Cox died at the age of 99 in November. The Texas billionaire served on the board of the museums such as the National Gallery of Art

A Dutch man is currently facing attempted robbery charges for the failed theft of ancient Roman coins from one of Germany’s largest archeological museums.
In 2019, a group of men broke into the Rhineland State Museum with the intention to steal the Trier Gold Hoard, a collection of over 2,500 solid gold coins. While the defendant was apprehended, his two accomplices are still on the run, according to Deutsche Welle.
The group entered the museum by scaling scaffolding and prying open a wind

In this episode of the Artelligence podcast (above), artist James Allister Sprang asks Sharon Hayes who her work is for. “At the heart of the work, it’s a conversation,” Hayes says. “I don’t want to limit that to queer art or to queer artists or to queer people even.”
Hayes is currently exhibiting her five-channel video My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You (2016) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the show “New Grit: Art in Philly.&rdqu

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The Headlines
IN A BIG WIN FOR NEANDERTHALS, a new paper marshals fresh research that they painted stalagmites in a cave near Málaga, Spain, more than 60,000 years ago (before modern humans were in Europe). The theory has been debated since it was proposed in 2018, the Guardian reports; some scholars have maintained