Great news!! 🎉 🍾

I’m exhausted! Many hours there and I can’t even process it yet. Overall reaction: wow. I have nits to pick, but on the whole, it’s a huge step up for LACMA. Nice to see the ancient art get featured for a change.

That is correct. For thousands of years. You run the blockade, you can be fired on and/or boarded. I mean, Trump’s war is effing insane, but this is a proper blockade.

But … this is what blockades do. Block naval traffic. You run the blockade, you possibly get fired on. It’s an insane war that Trump has gotten us into, but that’s a blockade’s function (doesn’t matter if you’re unarmed).

LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries — insanely expensive but utterly astonishing Breaking every rule of museum design, architect Peter Zumthor has created a $724mn blockbuster for Los Angeles

www.ft.com/content/3ac8... LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries — insanely expensive but utterly astonishing

I have a reservation for this morning, so your review is very timely. I'm very interested in the ancient art collection, most of which has languished in storage for decades. The large scale sculpture from the Hearst Collection is finally dusted off, I see.

Interesting timing! Guess where I'm going this morning?

Nice! I think we should all have mummy portraits made so that someone, someday will know what we once looked like.

Seeing individuals with grey hair is a rare sight in mummy portraits. Most are youthful.

These portraits are really a mash-up of all three cultures: Egyptian, Greek (Hellenistic), and Roman. I usually refer to them as Romano-Egyptian, simply because Rome was the ruling entity at that time. But the Hellenistic influence is very clear, and many of the subjects were of Greek/mixed descent.

It's less a single account than a hashtag, so adding #HistoricalHottie will certainly categorize him appropriately.

Black and white headshot of the actor Vincent Riotta. He's mature here, face definitely middle-aged, and his hair silvering with age. A *very* Italian face.

I suddenly realized that he reminds me of the actor Vincent Riotta, whom many people would know from 'Under the Tuscan Sun'.

Fair enough: Roman-ruled Egypt. And they did so for a long time.

It’s suffered over the years, but the colors remain extremely vivid. 📸 me

My only hope was that a well-funded museum like the Getty would snap it up, but at that premium price - nearly triple the estimate - it’s probably been packed up and sitting in a freeport vault until it’s next sold. The shell game that is the art market …

This woman was a devotee of the goddess Isis, perhaps even one of her priestesses, so her faith would have been critically important to her. Hence the reason that she’s wearing clothing that is associated with adherents to that religion.

Property from Goucher College Mummy Portrait of a Man, Roman Egypt, Flavian Period, circa late 1st century CE. Painted with encaustic (pigmented wax) on wood (probably sycamore), his head turned to his right, and wearing a white chiton (tunic) and white himation (cloak) falling from the nape of the neck, his solemn face with full lower lip, long aquiline nose, translucent hazel eyes, bushy eyebrows, and furrowed brow, his wavy gray hair brushed forward above the forehead. 12 3⁄4 by 6 in.; 32.5 by 15.4 cm Auction page: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2026/master-paintings-sculpture-part-i/mummy-portrait-of-a-man-roman-egypt-flavian-period

This realistically rendered Flavian era mummy portrait from Roman Egypt gives us a rare look at an older person from that era. It has been on loan for over 70 years to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, but was recently sold at auction. Will it disappear into a private collection? 🏺

📸 Sotheby’s

That’s why I wrote it.

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Unless one comes after you! (hence the ritual breaking of the legs)

It *is*. It's the size of a fingernail - it boggles my mind, how someone could have carved that in antiquity. Lenses must have been used ... or just insanely good eyesight.

Just watched 'The Carlisle School of Gem Cutters' presented by Prof. Martin Henig for the Association of Roman Archaeology (ARA). Lovely carvings in miniature found in the drain of the Severan-era Roman baths at Stanwix. #AncientBluesky

Ah, I'd love to have one of his gems, but I don't even want to inquire - I'm sure my pocketbook would scream.

Egyptian faience standing hippo Egyptian artists decorated statuettes of hippos with images of Nile flora and fauna. Common motifs included lotus buds, flowers, marsh grass, lily pads, frogs, waterfowl, and insects. The lotus plants...

The ritualistic hunt of the dangerous hippo was key to ensuring immortality in the afterlife. Crippling a hippo's image was done to statues and even tiny amulets, as they were avatars which would exist in the afterlife with the tomb's owner. 🏺 2/

flic.kr/p/2rWdE3W

Small figure of a standing hippopotamus in hard brown and white stone, as an amulet, as seen through a magnifying glass. It has a large loop on the top of its back, through which a thin cord could be threaded. The small size, material, and workmanship make possible a Middle Kingdom date.

This stone amulet of a hippopotamus is so tiny that it can only be fully appreciated with a magnifying glass. Its legs were broken before burial, to ensure it posed no threat to the tomb owner in the afterlife. 🏺 1/

Egyptian, ca. 2008-1630 BCE. #BrooklynMuseum
📸 me

I’m right there with you!

I don’t know why the British Museum doesn’t sell replicas for the kiddies.

I really need to buy a replica Roman intaglio. It's just about my favorite art form.

An absolutely hellhole. I don't know how you do it. 😆

Wow - that's absolutely wonderful. Well, it says a lot about you, your sister, and your aunt. Congratulations to you all (and your sister's research is making my brain hurt, not necessarily a bad thing).