Archaeology · Faith · The East · Art · Museums · New York
An alabaster figurine from a Parthian-period necropolis, probably depicting Ishtar, the Akkadian goddess of love, fertility and war. The central female deity of the Mesopotamian pantheon is shown as a beautiful girl with a high bust and a narrow waist, ruby eyes, a headdress in the form of a
Archaeology · Monarchies · Museums · Observations · Mores · New York · Humour
This couch is assembled from fragments, some of which come from the imperial villa of Lucius Verus near Rome and date to the 1st-2nd centuries AD. It is kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The glass inlay may not correspond to the original, but the bone panels are
Coming Up · London · Museums · Observations · New York · People
Speaking of remains, do you remember my writing about my favourite philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, whose mummified body and head are on display at University College London? Well, for the first time in 186 years the philosopher's body will leave London and travel to the USA, where it will
NB! · Art · Science · New York · People
The wife of the artist Konenkov, Margarita Ivanovna, was a Soviet intelligence officer and worked in New York for 22 years. One of her most famous operations was the attempt to recruit Albert Einstein
Art · Heritage · New York · Society
In 2014 it was reported that Dmitry Rybolovlev, the former owner of Uralkali, had sold his last major Russian asset, Voentorg. But, as it turned out three years later, the billionaire still had something worth having left in Russia. In 2017 he began selling off his famous collection of European
NB! · Art · New York · Pop Culture
Christie’s sells the highly controversially attributed “Salvator Mundi” by da Vinci for $450.3 million, four times what it was bought for. The previous record was set by Picasso’s “Women of Algiers”, which went for $179 million
NB! · Art · Monarchies · New York
NB! · Geography · Heritage · New York · Nature