The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is an urban legend focused on a loosely-defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
For centuries, scientists have struggled to explain why hundreds of ships disappear when they reach the Bermuda Triangle. This area in the Atlantic Ocean is home to approximately 300 vessels, with several of these ships capsizing under mysterious circumstances. Today, experts are diving into these crystal clear waters to visit some of the abandoned shipwrecks and determine why they never made it to dry land.
Archaeologists Vinzenz and Ulrike Koch Brinkmann have spent the last 40 years dedicated to the study of polychromy—or “many colors” in Greek—in ancient sculpture. Once a fringe area of study, their research combats the misconception of white purity in ancient Greece and Rome. They reflect on the marble bust of Caligula and how the reconstruction of its former color can help us better understand history.
“The underworld, the afterlife, is fairly dank, dark, shadowy; quite frankly, it’s a bit boring. Somewhat like waiting at a bus depot.”
Homer’s Odyssey depicts an afterlife that is relatively dull, with heroic actions and glory reserved for the living. Nonetheless, people in Southern Italy in the fourth century BCE were captivated by the underworld and decorated large funerary vases with scenes of the afterlife—the domain of Hades and Persephone, where sinners like Sisyphus are tortured for eternity and heroes like Herakles and Orpheus performed daring feats.
Little is known about precisely how these vases were used and seen in death rituals. A new book by Getty Publications, Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife in Ancient South Italian Vase Painting, brings together 40 such vases and explores new research on them.
In this episode, Getty Museum curator of antiquities David Saunders discusses these enormous and often elaborate vases, explaining the myths they depict and what is known about the ways in which they were used. Saunders is editor of Underworld.
This short film by Martin Mulcahy was created for the launch of the 2022-23 exhibition of the Made In Chicago Museum, currently running at Klairmont Kollections, 3117 N. Knox Ave., Chicago, IL.
The film, the museum exhibit, and the corresponding online museum, highlight the many “everyday objects” manufactured by Chicago companies between 1900-1970, bringing to life the stories behind them and the legacy of items we might otherwise view as obsolete (or at best, “vintage”).
The Made In Chicago Museum was founded and curated by Andrew Clayman, and design elements of the exhibit, including this short film, are the work of Chicago designer and filmmaker Martin Mulcahy. For more, visit https://www.madeinchicagomuseum.com/
Henri Matisse’s landmark painting “The Red Studio” documented the artworks displayed in his workspace just outside Paris as it existed in 1911. For the first time since then, almost all the individual pieces depicted in his painting have been reunited for an installation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Correspondent Rita Braver reports.
Is there a novel more revered—and more famously unread—than James Joyce’s Ulysses? Despite its complexities, this love letter to Dublin, published a century ago, is a very readable chronicle of everyday life and everyday struggles. It’s a book about marriage, sex, religion, food, art, loneliness, companionship, and so much else. It’s a book, that is, about life. We hope that the following essays will send you on a quest to discover, or rediscover, this most staggering of epics.
Henry Moore achieved international fame as a sculptor, despite once being denounced for promoting ‘the cult of ugliness’. And he also remained a most unassuming man, finds Laura Gascoigne, as two new exhibitions of his work prepare to welcome visitors.
Sculptors are very rarely household names, but no one who lived through the 1960s could be unfamiliar with the name of Henry Moore. At the height of his international success, Moore’s monumental public sculptures in prominent locations — from the 12ft-high Knife Edge Two Piece (1962–65) outside London’s Houses of Parliament to the 26ft-long Reclining Figure (1963–64) outside the Lincoln Centre in New York, US — became such a feature of the urban landscape that they appeared in cartoons in the popular press. For a Modernist abstract sculptor, that was fame.
In the 1950s, Moore added a new subject to his signature themes of the mother and child and the reclining figure. As a young man, his first sight of Stonehenge by moonlight, in 1921, had left an indelible impression; 30 years later, he began a series of large bronze totemic forms recalling prehistoric monoliths.
Henry Moore with three of his Upright Motives c.1955.Photo: Barry Warner
In this five-minute animated video, journey back to the 6th-century BCE workshop of the Athenian master Andokides and witness an ancient artist’s moment of creative ingenuity. For generations Athenian vase painters had employed black-figure technique, in which the figure is painted in a mixture of clay and water called slip and details are incised with a sharp tool.
At some point—we don’t know precisely when or why—a vase painter had the idea to reverse the scheme, leaving the figures the color of the clay and painting details with a brush. We now call this red-figure technique. Learn how ancient vase painters created vases in both styles and marvel at the technical virtuosity of the multi-step firing process that contributed to their distinctive, high-contrast look.
Bill Whitaker saddles up for one of the last enduring symbols of the Old West, a Wyoming cattle drive that travels the same route pioneered 125 years ago.
Upper Green River Valley, Wyoming
Predating most federal land management agencies, the Green River Drift cattle trail has been continuously used since the 1890s by the Upper Green River Cattle Association ranchers to get cattle from spring pasture on the desert to summer pasture in the forest. Chilly fall weather causes the cattle to “drift” back out of the forest to return to their home ranches. The trail, 58 miles long with 41 miles of spurs, crosses BLM, State of Wyoming, National Forest, and private properties. It has played a pivotal role in the development of ranching in the area as well as in the development of relationships between Federal agencies that manage grazing allotments and private property owners. The Drift was listed on the National Register in November, 2013. Because it is still being used much as it has for more than 100 years, the Drift was listed as a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP), the first ranching related TCP in the nation.
This year, events are taking place across the country to celebrate the 1,900th anniversary of the construction of Hadrian’s Wall (the eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that this most-famous Roman landmark has also featured, in some capacity, in every issue of CA since January).
This month our cover story considers whether the Romans too may have commemorated the Wall’s construction – and we also have an opinion piece asking how sure we can be about its date.
From monumental stonework to modern quarrying, we next head to Bedfordshire to learn about archaeological investigations at Black Cat Quarry, carried out before extraction works began on the site. There, excavations have revealed an impressive multi-period landscape, including Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements, a significant Roman farmstead, and what may be the remains of a Viking ‘fort’ referred to in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
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