My Word with Douglas E. Welch

Thanks to Italy’s rich history, if you dig a little bit you’re sure to find something special—even in unexpected places. This was made clear in Verona, where the city has been excavating a privately owned vineyard since the fall. And now, their hard work has paid off as archaeologists have uncovered a pristine mosaic floor dating back to the 1st century CE.

It’s an incredible find in an area that’s long been recognized to house treasures from ancient Rome. In fact, according to local sources, the land was known to sit on top of Roman artifacts since at 19th century. Some mosaics, which are on display in a city museum, were already excavated from the site in the 1960s.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art gallery in the United States. It has over two million works of art in its permanent collection.

The Met 360° Project is a series of six 360° movies which allow you to explore the museum and some of its galleries. The videos include tours of the Great Hall, the Met Cloisters and the Charles Engelhard Court. As each video plays you can pan around 360°, just like you can in Google Maps Street View.

An interesting link found among my daily reading

They are either 12, 14 or 16 inches wide, they live just outside our doors, and they come in a variety of striking designs. So why has no one heard of coal holes?

Local historian Amir Dotan explores the streets of London to find the small metal discs you may not have noticed before, but may well have stepped over thousands of times.

James Ward introduces another curious talk about a subject that may seem boring, but is actually very interesting…. maybe.

When you think of the ancient world, you probably picture towering buildings of white marble, adorned with statues also made of white marble. You’re not alone — most people picture the same thing. But we’re all wrong.

Ancient buildings and sculptures were actually really colorful. The Greeks and Romans painted their statues to resemble real bodies, and often gilded them so they shone like gods. So why is seemingly every museum on planet earth full of white marble sculptures?

It’s partly an honest mistake. After the fall of Rome, ancient sculptures were buried or left out in the open air for hundreds of years. By the time the Renaissance began in the 1300s, their paint had faded away. As a result, the artists unearthing, and copying ancient art didn’t realize how colorful it was supposed to be.

But white marble couldn’t have become the norm without some willful ignorance. Even though there was a bunch of evidence that ancient sculpture was painted, artists, art historians and the general public chose to disregard it. Western culture seemed to collectively accept that white marble was simply prettier.

Today, art history is more concerned with accuracy than it is with what might look better. So teams of researchers use a combination of art and science to painstakingly create reconstructions of ancient statues, showing us the true colors of classical antiquity.