Category: Art History

  • Ancient Roman eats/Art insurance skyrockets/ATM permanently displays balance/Elgin Marbles returned?

    By Amara is a weekly art and history podcast hosted by Amara Andrew. Each week, we’ll take a quick look at the goings on in the art and history world.

    This week, we’re looking at what ancient Romans ate at sporting events, art insurance rates are skyrocketing around the world, an ATM that permanently displays your bank balance, and are the Elgin (Parthenon) Marbles going to be returned to Greece?!

    🎧 Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

    MY MINIMALIST PODCAST KIT

    For links to all the tools I use to make my podcast happen, check out the post here!

    Who is Amara Andrew?

    Hi there! My name’s Amara and I’m a videographer, historian, illustrator, and creator living in Chicago.


  • FINALLY, a successful case of ancient items being returned home! A few weeks ago, 6 ancient artifacts were returned to Turkey from the United States! 🥳

    Transcript

    I finally have a repatriation story with a currently pleasant ending!

    On October 22, 2022, six ancient artifacts that had been stolen from Turkey were returned from the United States!

    It’s unclear when these items were actually stolen from Turkey, but the 6 items included:

    • A human-sized bronze statue of Roman emperor Lucius Verrus from the 1st or 2nd century CE,
    • sarcophagus fragments from the ancient city of Perge in Anatolia,
    • Attis and Apollo figurines from the early Roman and Hellenic periods,
    • a Kasura-type idol from the early Bronze period,
    • and a terracotta slab from the Phrygian period.

    While these items were returned as part of this joint effort, this initiative was actually started one lone woman. And this one lone woman was actually Turkey’s first female archaeologist, the late professor Jale Inan.


  • These ancient statues were found underwater…but they were actually supposed to be there?! 😱

    Transcript

    We’re talking about 2 dozen bronze statues that were found underwater in Tuscany.

    These statues were found in the town called San Casciano di Bagni, which makes sense because these were found in the ruins of an ancient bathhouse.

    Archaeologists have been excavating in this area since 2019. They’ve also found a bunch of other things, including coins and other smaller statues.

    So, the statues that we’re talking about now, though, most of them depict ancient Greco-Roman gods and goddesses. It’s believed that these used to adorn a sanctuary before their ritual immersion in thermal waters.

    So, these statues were supposed to be underwater!

    I also can’t help but be curious what this water tastes or smells like….


  • Happy Monday! Here’s something to ponder at the start of your week: do you think we’ll ever find *all* the ancient things? 🧐

    Transcript

    What happens once we’ve found all the ancient things? Can that actually happen? Will we ever run out of ancient things to find?

    Is everything, then, in museums? Is it in the trash? This is just a random thought, but it was just something I was thinking about.

    Especially when thinking about the fact that there are more people on the planet now than there have ever been. So, does this mean that the likelihood of us being able to dig up all the ancient things is higher?

    After all, nothing lasts forever.


  • 24 bronze statues were found underwater and were almost perfectly preserved. Archaeologists believe these may have been preserved for two reasons!

    Transcript

    We’re talking about two dozen beautiful bronze statues that were found underwater in Tuscany.

    What’s amazing about these statues is, not only that they were found, but that they were found very well preserved. So, archaeologists are actually crediting the 6,000 bronze, silver and gold coins that were covering these statues for preserving them.

    I’m not a chemist, so I’m not entirely sure how this works, but apparently archaeologists are crediting these coins for the preservation of these statues!


  • Fake dinosaur skeleton / 483 ancient Celtic coins stolen / Marie Antoinette’s furniture at auction!

    By Amara is a weekly art and history podcast hosted by Amara Andrew. Each week, we’ll take a quick look at the goings on in the art and history world.

    This week, we’re looking at a fake dinosaur skeleton, 483 ancient Celtic coins stolen from a museum in Germany, and Marie Antoinette’s furniture sold at auction!

    🎧 Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

    MY MINIMALIST PODCAST KIT

    For links to all the tools I use to make my podcast happen, check out the post here!

    Who is Amara Andrew?

    Hi there! My name’s Amara and I’m a videographer, historian, illustrator, and creator living in Chicago.


  • Not only did each of these paintings sell for over $100 million each, but they were also part of an art collection that fetched almost $2 billion cumulatively!

    Transcript

    In Episode 3, I discussed the Paul G. Allen that was going up for auction at Christie’s in November.

    There were 5 paintings in this auction that brought in over $100 million per piece. These paintings were:

    • Paul Cezanne, La Montaigne Sainte-Victoire, $130,790,000
    • Vincent van Gogh, Verger avec cyprés, $117,180,000
    • Gustav Klimt, Birch Forest, $104,585,000
    • Paul Gauguin, Maternité II, $105,730,000
    • Georges Seurat, Les Poseuses ensemble (petite version), $149,000,000+

    🎧 Listen to the full episode here.


  • This has been called the most expensive private art collection ever sold and for good reason 🤯

    Transcript

    In Episode 3, I discussed the Paul G. Allen collection that was going up for auction at Christie’s in November. The estimate was that everything that was sold would all fetch $1 billion cumulatively.

    Well, the auction was split into two separate parts: November 9th and November 10th. On the 9th, it surpassed the $1 billion mark. The total total for the day was $1,506,386,000.

    So, on the second and final day of the auction, the total from that day was $115,863,500.

    For both parts of the auction, all sales totaled $1,622,249,500.

    🎧 Listen to the full episode here.


  • Ancient underwater statues/Happy repatriation story/AI-generated art banned/How to piss off Banksy

    By Amara is a weekly art and history podcast hosted by Amara Andrew. Each week, we’ll take a quick look at the goings on in the art and history world.

    This week, we’re looking at ancient underwater statues, a repatriation story with a happy ending, AI-generated art is banned from largest anime conventions in the U.S., and how to piss off Banksy.

    🎧 Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

    MY MINIMALIST PODCAST KIT

    For links to all the tools I use to make my podcast happen, check out the post here!

    Who is Amara Andrew?

    Hi there! My name’s Amara and I’m a videographer, historian, illustrator, and creator living in Chicago.


  • Even though it’s been identified as being hung upside down, curators are hesitant to turn “New York City I” by Piet Mondrian right side up…but why? 🤔

    And, is there *actually* a right and wrong way to hang this piece?

    Transcript

    A museum curator at Germany’s Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20 museum announced that the exhibition’s highlight piece, “New York City I,” has been displayed upside down since it was first seen in public in the 1940s.

    There are actually two versions of “New York City I.” One of them is painted and it hangs in the Pompidou in Paris. That one, apparently, is proper side up.

    The other one, though, was made of adhesive tape and is the one that’s seemingly upside down.

    The curator saw a photo of the artists’ studio taken in 1944 that showed “New York City I” on an easel in the background with the tightly grouped yellow, blue, and black stripes at the top.

    Now, knowing this, you’d think they’d turn it upright, right? It’s a little more complicated than that.

    Turning it over to the correct side up could actually damage the artwork because it’s made of adhesive tape. Turning it upside down, the gravity would, essentially, just pull it apart.

    🎧 Listen to the full episode here.