Full-funded (home or international) collaborative PhD studentship (Kew and Royal Holloway, University of London) available. Deadline 8 May.
Topic: ‘Just acquisitions? Law and ethics over time in Kew’s overseas plant collecting history’ #Skystorians
A photo of a text panel from the Bayon Temple in the Angkor complex, with this text highlighted in blue: “In 1933, the Jaya Buddha Mahanath statue pieces were discovered at the bottom of the well by French archaeologist, Georges TROUVÉ”
Nominative determinism of the week:
This is good (and impressively concise)
In other news regarding art world residences, the former director of the Louvre has exactly the kind of home you’d imagine
A photograph of the interior of the home of Sir Antony Gormley, showing a hallway with a ping pong table in its middle
TONY SUPREME
Yeah this is a fair assessment. Also get your point about the repeated mispronunciation by anglophone commentators
I hear the stress on the first syllable
unsure! www.youtube.com/shorts/r57Az...
why is google search so good but google books search so bad?
I am giving a (free!) talk at the V&A Museum on 3 June with @shreyagupta.bsky.social @libertypaterson.bsky.social & Niti Acharya, on the history of institutional collecting. Sign up to attend here: www.vam.ac.uk/event/Yq2NZK...
A painting: Remedios Varo's "Simpatía (La rabia del gato)". A surrealist scene. A woman sits at a table, looking down at an orange cat with its hind legs held aloft in the air. A glass of water has spilled on the table; the water runs off, creating a river on the floor.
Today I'm looking at: Remedios Varo's "Simpatía (La rabia del gato)" aka Sympathy (the cat's rage).
Today I learned that @theguardian.com is running a contest for “Invertebrate of the Year”. At a time of increasing climate crisis, of course the tardigrade—which has survived all 5 great extinction events—should win www.theguardian.com/environment/...
A pair of black shoes on the floor of a Waterstones. The shoes’ owner is nowhere to be found.
In Waterstones. What’s the story here then
And here’s the research article in The British Art Journal britishartjournal.co.uk/recovery-of-...
I’ve read it but haven’t logged it on my Goodreads, but I’d give it 5 stars
Does Norman Foster think Manchester United are relocating to Dubai? www.theguardian.com/football/202...
Some of us will go to an art gallery this weekend. Maybe it will help us reflect or inspire us. Isn’t that part of a life well lived? ... But what if you didn’t? What if there were no galleries, theatres, publishers or concert halls? What if we got rid of art? www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
What about the good half 😏
Ceal Floyer's Working Title (Digging), a stereo sound installation that aurally represents the act of shovelling dirt. Two speakers lying face up on the floor, in opposite corners of an otherwise blank room in a gallery. A CD play, connected to both speakers by wires, sits in another corner.
Today I'm thinking about Ceal Floyer's Working Title (Digging), a stereo sound installation that aurally represents the act of shovelling dirt. freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de/en/blog/acqu...
I think it’s one of the best emoji because it is so versatile
Oh I can certainly imagine
A (now outdated) sign outside the British Library in London which reads: Please take care, Piazza slippery. Please take care. Piazza can be slippery in wet/icy conditions. British Library Estates."
The new sign outside the British Library, which reads: "Please take care, the Piazza can be slippery in wet or icy conditions."
A sad day: RIP to the @britishlibrary.bsky.social's vaguely Italian-sounding, impressively laconic sign which greets visitors on the entrance piazza. Replaced with this much more conventionally grammared yellow sign. Interesting to note the continuing commitment to capitalising "piazza".
"The painting had been hanging in the National Museum in Gdańsk, when on 24 April 1974, a cleaner knocked it from the wall, the frame broke, and she discovered the painting had been replaced with a photograph." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
Will be in New York next week for the College Art Association annual conference #CAA2025 — so looking for NYC recommendations
I would bet on this being a verbatim play at the Almeida within 10 years
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
A label from the British Museum exhibition “Silk Roads”. It reads: Byzantine connections in a desert palace - Also from Jordan, this section of a vibrant mosaic once decorated the floor of Qusayr Amra, an Umayyad 'desert palace' built for royal entertainment. Mosaics in early Islamic architecture drew from Byzantine traditions, sometimes reusing tesserae (small blocks) taken from churches. Wall paintings at this site also reference Byzantine art in their figurative imagery. Qusayr Ama was one of the desert complexes that the Umayyad caliphs constructed. Many were built along major routes connecting the Silk Roads, and may have provided respite for travellers.
To the tune of “we found love in a hopeless place”
