News and Writing on Art and Art History | 27th April

 News and Writing on Art and Art History | 27th April

Katrina Grant

Researchers looking for dirt on medieval books. Image via the BBC website.

The reading habits of medieval people have been studied by Dr Kathryn Rudy, of St Andrews University, by looking at the dirt marks on pages.

Fancy a touch of art history trainspotting? Bendor Grosvenor is asking his readers spot identifiable ‘unknown portraits’ in the collections posted online as part of the BBC Your Paintings project.

Conservation scientists at the Van Gogh museum investigate why his yellow hues are darkening.

Many fragments of the rare Egyptian Book of the Dead have been discovered by an Egyptologist in Queensland Museum.

National Gallery of Art in Washington extends its hours to allow for crowds coming to see not its latest blockbuster exhibition but a small exhibition on 18th century Japanese painting.

The newly refurbished Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney reaches 100,000 visitors three weeks after its reopening.

Another Pompeii wall collapses, despite new conservation initiative.

Did you know that in 1936 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition dedicated to fashion photographer Edward Steichen’s delphiniums? Yes, actual vases of flowers.

Iraqis enlist the French to help restore Le Corbusier’s forgotten Saddam-Era gymnasium.

Writer Orhan Pamuk says that state museums are antiquated and exhibitions should instead by intimate and local (as he opens his own museum based on his book the Museum of Innocence).

Rome’s MAXXI museum of contemporary art faces possible closure after only a few years of operation.

English Heritage sifts through molehills to find buried treasure – often in places where human excavation is not allowed.

Artists Rights Society claims compensation from director James Cameron over use of Picasso painting in Titanic 3D.

Tasmania’s Museum of New and Old Art announces a new exhibition ‘The Theatre of the World’, to open on June 23rd 2012 and run until early 2013. The museum’s website says that ‘The focus is on looking. Weave through the labyrinth galleries, and revel in the resonance between the sediments of different times and places.’

Calls for Papers

Narratives of Travel Writing and Architectural History –  3rd session of the Nomad seminar, November 9 2012, Ankara at the Middle East Technical University – CFPs due May 10th

Jobs

Lecturers in Medieval Art and Architecture, 300-1500 CE – University of York (closes 15th May)

Associate Lecturer A – World Arts: An Introduction to Japanese Prints – Birkbeck College, University of London (closes 4th May)

Lecturer in Western Art 1500 – 1800 – University of St Andrews (closes 17th May)

Lecturer in History and History of Art – University of Bristol (closes 11th May)

Associate Lecturer A: World Arts – An Introduction to Japanese Prints – Birkbeck College, University of London (closes 4th May)

Associate Lecturer A: Introduction to World Arts & Artefacts – Africa – Birkbeck College, University of London (closes 4th May)

 Curatorial Associate Paul Mellon Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (closes May 16)

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Arts and Humanities at American University Beirut  (no set closing date)

Henry Moore Foundation Post-doctoral Research Fellowships in Sculpture – (closes June 11)