As someone who once thought about becoming a lawyer, and turned to art instead, I am always intrigued by conjunctions of the two, so I was fascinated to discover that a book has just come out that examines the iconography of Lady Justice and her blindfold. Randy Kennedy’s review in the New York Times says [...]
Archive of posts filed under the History category.
CFP: The Book in Art and Science
Sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the Library of Congress, the Corcoran College of Art + Design, and the Folger Shakespeare Library and Institute, the nineteenth annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP), “The Book in Art & Science,” will be held in Washington, DC, Thursday, 14 July [...]
Portraits of the Human Brain
Carl Schoonover’s article/Photos of the Human Brain on The Huffington Post reminded me of how much I am looking forward to reading his book Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century“Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century which looks at the fascinating history [...]
Article: Louvre Agrees To Chemical Analysis Of “Mona Lisa”
The Louvre has collaborated with the Laboratoire du Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility to perform a quantitative chemical analysis on the Mona Lisa, 1503-06, and the faces of seven other works by the artist. Using x-ray fluorescence, researchers analysed the composition and thickness of [...]
Lecture on György Kepes and Frank J. Malina
Interesting lecture on Roger Malina’s site. It is his Keynote Lecture from “The Pleasure of Light exhibition and conference, an exhibition that presents the pioneering interdisciplinary concepts of György Kepes and Frank J. Malina through the course of their lives, creations and enduring influence. Lots of wonderful photographs in the presentation.
Book Review: A Mysterious Masterpiece: The World of the Linder Gallery
Edited by Michael John Gorman, Reviewed by Amy Ione A Mysterious Masterpiece. The World of the Linder Gallery introduces the Linder Gallery painting to a broad audience through an in situ conversation of six specialists and generalists who discuss the work in the owner’s (Ron Cordover’s) living room. Thus, it is an unusual book about [...]
Article: French scientists crack secrets of Mona Lisa
San Francisco Chronicle: Full article here ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press, 07/16/10 The enigmatic smile remains a mystery, but French scientists say they have cracked a few secrets of the “Mona Lisa.” French researchers studied seven of the Louvre Museum’s Leonardo da Vinci paintings, including the “Mona Lisa,” to analyze the master’s use of successive ultrathin [...]
Old Masters and Modern Science
I do not post as much as I would like to these days, but do feel compelled to note this recent review by Michael Kimmelman in today’s New York Times, titled Old Masters and Modern Science. It looks at an exhibition at the National Gallery in London about the chemistry of painting. According to Kimmelman, [...]
Ann: Turning the Pages: Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus
The National Library of Medicine is proud to announce its next online Turning the Pages project featuring the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, the oldest surviving surgical text: http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/smith/smith.html . The Smith Papyrus was written in Egyptian hieratic script around the 17th century BCE but probably based on material from a thousand years earlier. This collaborative [...]
Lecture: Leonardo da Vinci’s Science, Technology, and Art
The Getty Center | Harold M. Williams Auditorium | Date: Sunday, April 18, 2010 | Time: 3:00 p.m. | Admission: Free; reservations required. Call (310) 440-7300 or “Make Reservation” here. Jonathan Pevsner, professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and scientific consultant to the Discovery Channel’s Doing DaVinci series, explores Leonardo’s wide-ranging [...]
