Want your art in the Guggenheim? Here’s your chance!

by Sean McLachlan on

The Guggenheim and YouTube have teamed up to find the world’s most artistic short videos.

YouTube Play is a contest for Youtube videos that show something truly inventive and different. No fan vids or farting dogs need apply. Two hundred finalists will be judged by a panel of art experts and culled down to 20 to 25 videos that will be shown in a special exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York City. It will be the first of a biennial competition.

This will attract a lot of creative entries, especially by video artists and animators. Wouldn’t it be nice if some of the finalists showed the wide world in all its glory? A good travel video such as this one of The Amber Fort in Rajasthan can hold its own against more consciously artistic works. Not only are there some beautiful shots, but the video subtly explores the relationship between heritage and tourism.

So get the cameras rolling and make a video that deserves to be shown in one of the world’s leading modern art museums. But hurry up, submissions close July 31!

Photo courtesy Enrique Cornejo via Wikimedia Commons.

Cleopatra exhibit premieres in Philadelphia

by Sean McLachlan on

Cleopatra was the last great pharaoh of Egypt, and its most famous. Her name is synonymous with beauty, mystery, and power, yet not much is known about her. Her enemies erased most details of her life and even her tomb is lost.

Two teams of archaeologists have been searching for clues about the enigmatic woman, and the treasures they’ve found are the subject of a major exhibition opening tomorrow at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia called Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt.

Cleopatra VII, who lived from 69-30 BC, was the last of the Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals in 304 BC. She was also the last pharaoh of an independent Egypt. For a time she was the lover of Julius Caesar, but she changed allegiances (and beds) to join forces with Mark Anthony to carve out an empire of their own. Julius Caesar’s successor Octavian defeated them in battle and they took their own lives, and Egypt became part of the Roman Empire.

The exhibition showcases more than 150 artifacts never seen before in the United States, from giant statues fished from the sea to a government document that may include a note written by Cleopatra herself. The artifacts come from two different excavations. One is run by Dr. Zahi Hawass at the temple of Taposiris Magna, about 30 miles west of Alexandria. Hawass believes this may be the final resting place of the famous lovers.

The other excavation is directed by Dr. Franck Goddio, a French underwater archaeologist who has explored the harbor of Alexandria and the coast of Egypt and discovered Cleopatra’s palace and the two ancient cities of Canopus and Heracleion, which had sank into the sea after a series of earthquakes and tidal waves nearly 2,000 years ago.

The exhibition takes on an ancient subject with modern technology, including multimedia exhibits and a chance to interact with social media such as Twitter and Foursquare while seeing the displays. Following the links gives the visitor more information about Cleopatra and a discount coupon they can send to their friends.

Neither team has found solid evidence for the location of Cleopatra’s burial place, so Egypt’s most alluring woman will retain some of her mystery for the time being. Their finds, however, have thrown new light on the life and times of one of Egypt’s greatest female pharaohs.

Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt will remain at the Franklin Institute until January 2, 2011, before heading out on a tour of North America.

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Exhibit highlights 1001 inventions of the Muslim world

by Sean McLachlan on

A new exhibit at London’s Science Museum explores the often-forgotten contributions to science from Muslim scholars.

1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in our World follows the contributions of Muslim civilization from the 7th to the 17th centuries. After the disintegration of the Roman Empire, scientific study lapsed in Europe, but soon dynamic civilizations based in the Middle East took up the slack. From important centers such as Damascus and Baghdad came developments in medicine, mathematics, astronomy, geography, and a host of other studies. Muslim scholars were the first to build gliders, the first to create free public hospitals, and the first to use carrier pigeons s a means of quick, long distance communications.

The exhibition is divided into sections such as Home, Town, and Market, each highlighting different contributions to science and daily life. Also discussed is how civilizations in the Middle East preserved many ancient Greek and Latin books in Arabic translations when they were lost in Europe. Later they were translated back into Greek and Latin so Renaissance scholars could read them, thus bringing much of Europe’s heritage back to Europe.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a replica of a 13th century clock by the Arab scholar Al-Jazari that stands more than twenty feet high and celebrates the diversity of knowledge by having an Indian elephant holding up an Egyptian phoenix, Arab figures, a Persian carpet, and Chinese dragons. The clock runs on moving water following a system invented by the Greeks.

In an interview with the BBC, Professor Salim Al-Hassani, one of the exhibition’s organizers, suggested that science lapsed in Islamic civilization after the twin blows of the Crusades and the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols. Much of the Muslim world was taken over by the Ottomans, a bureaucratic state that stifled scientific initiative. Then the scientists of Renaissance Europe adopted their learning and progressed it further, much like the Muslim world took the learning of the Classical World and developed it.

1001 Inventions runs until April 25. Admission is free.

Museum Junkie: Futurism at the Tate Modern

by Sean McLachlan on

“Today we are founding Futurism, because we want to free our country from the smelly gangrene of its professors, archaeologists, tour guides and antiquarians.”

On February 20, 1909, the front page of the Italian newspaper Le Figaro was taken up with the Manifesto of Futurism, a new movement of artists, poets, and performers who revolutionized modern art. They rejected all the past–traditional painting, museums, history, religion, marriage, and just about everything else they could think of while embracing modernity in all its forms. They loved movement, anarchy, technology. When World War One started in 1914, they hailed it as the first modern war and formed the Lombard Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists and Automobilists. Their Manifesto stated that war was “the world’s only hygiene.”

The energy of their work, shown here in Impressions in a Dance Hall (1914) by Belgian Futurist Jules Schmalziguag, soon captivated the art world.

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Futurism is a new exhibition at London’s Tate Modern that studies the development of this movement. The exhibition covers the movement’s origins in Italy and its rapid spread across Europe from England to Russia. What started with painting soon made its impact felt in sculpture, literature, architecture, even music. Part of Futurism’s success was the artists’ shameless self-promotion, with more than fifty manifestos coming out in the five years after the initial one in La Figaro. Some of these manifestos and Futurist literary magazines are also on display, along with paintings from the competing movement of Cubism, The Futurists were opposed to Cubism, of course, because it took attention away from them, and were in the habit of calling Picasso a “boor.” They called themselves boors too, so it’s hard to tell if they were really insulting him, or themselves, or neither, or both.

The Futurists would have loved seeing their work in the Tate Modern. The building is a converted power station with a soaring central space that was once taken up by a massive turbine. The museum is filled with modern art, installation pieces, and video displays. This ultramodern setting may have even made the Futurists forget that museums were nothing but “graveyards”.

“Museums, graveyards!” the original Manifesto fomented. “They’re the same thing, really, because of their grim profusion of corpses that no one remembers.”

Futurism started at the Tate Modern on June 12 and runs until September 20.

Museum Junkie: Royal Ontario Museum hosts Dead Sea Scrolls

by Sean McLachlan on

Visitors to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto this summer will have a chance to see the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

“Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World” will showcase some scrolls that have never before been seen by the general public as well as numerous artifacts from the period. There will also be a series of lectures by leading religious and secular scholars.

The scrolls, found in caves near the Dead Sea, date from about 150 BC to 70 AD. and include all the books of what is now known as the Old Testament. Many are close to later versions of the same books of the Bible, but there are a few surprises as well. The collection of scrolls includes some previously unknown psalms as well as numerous Apocryphal books that were never incorporated into the standard version of the Bible. Some of the more accepted books, such as Exodus, are quite different from later versions. Controversy has raged over the scrolls since their first discovery, but one thing they do prove is that there were several different variations of the Old Testament until the books became canonized in about 100 AD.

In an interesting article in HalogenLife, Dr. Risa Levitt Kohn, the curator of the exhibit, said that the scrolls concern themselves with philosophical issues that we still wrestle with today.

The show starts June 27 and runs six months.