The paper argues that eye-catching elements in a Pompeiian home would have been important status symbols, with buildings designed to highlight some features while minimizing others. Using angled walls or building raised floors, for instance, would have made a home’s interior seem larger and more impressive. - Artnet
"A museum in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol dedicated to the 19th-century artist Arkhip Kuindzhi, whom both Russians and Ukrainians embrace as their own, was destroyed by an airstrike on Monday morning, Ukrainian media and the head of Ukraine's artists union reported." - The Art Newspaper
The dismissal came in the wake of a performance art mishap at the museum that saw Yaser Khaseb accidentally fall into a large, artist-designed pool of oil while performing an aerial act above it. - Artnet
In 1980, an art thief known as "Erik the Belgian" stole a set of half a dozen Flemish tapestries, created by a follower of Rubens, from a small-town church in northern Spain. Within two years, all six were retrieved, except for one 2'x2' fragment, now recovered and reintegrated. - Smithsonian Magazine
The region of Svaneti, a pair of protected valleys high in the Caucasus Mountains, was where the rest of the country sent its finest work when the armies of Byzantium or Persia or the Ottomans or Russia came a-conquering. Here's a look at where those treasures are kept today. - Apollo
"The tombs, which are believed to have housed senior officials from the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate period, date back to as long ago as 2700 BC. ... Archaeologists found not only well-preserved paintings, but also small statues and pottery as well as stone and wooden coffins." - Deutsche Welle
As bad as things often got after the wars started in 2003, art and artists in Iraq's capital never went completely dormant. Now galleries are starting to open and some artists who fled abroad are returning home. - Artnet
A careful examination of the 13 Pro noted visual glitches caused by the device’s intelligent photography, including the erasure of bridge cables in a landscape shot. “Its complex, interwoven set of ‘smart’ software components don’t fit together quite right,” the report stated. - The New Yorker
Among the UNESCO World Heritage monuments in immediate danger of destruction is the irreplaceable 11th-century cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv. - The Conversation
Ingrid Pollard, a British photographer known for her portraits and landscapes, says, "Everything about is fabricated for industrial rural use. The barbed wire, the telegraph pole, the tarmac. Stereotypes about Black people are constructed in exactly the same way." - The Observer (UK)
Sure, some people are making midlife career changes, but for others, it's social media - and the coronavirus, as with a young potter whose "unexpected lockdown hobby turned into a small business." - The Guardian (UK)
Our aesthetics just can't keep up. "The visual monotony of the crisis has put art departments at news organizations in a pinch. How do you keep covering one of the most important stories of our time when the story keeps revolving around the same virus?" - Slate
"Nearly ten years after the beloved cultural organization began, developing into one of the country’s leading venues for Black art, its two directors have departed, and the doors of its Arlington Heights location have shuttered." - The New York Times
