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Monthly Archives: September 2013
Clovis spearpoints likely were all-purpose tools
Topic: Clovis points- multipurpose tool
Clovis spearpoints, named for Clovis, N.M., where they were found among the bones of mammoths, represent the epitome of North American Stone Age weaponry.
They tend to be large, finely crafted and made from high-quality flint. Although they were long thought to be specialized mammoth-killing weapons, new research suggests they were more like general purpose Boy Scout knives.
If Clovis points were specialized tools designed specifically to kill big-game animals such as mammoths and mastodons, then the special kinds of flint used in their manufacture along with the exquisite craftsmanship simply might have been practical necessities for producing a reliable instrument used to kill big game.
It also is possible that the special qualities of Clovis points were due to ritual practices the makers believed would help to ensure the success of high-risk hunting ventures.
Clovis points certainly were used at times to kill both…
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Sacred or Secular, Old or New? The Cloisters in New York
What could possibly be modern about medieval architecture?
In New York, at the very top of Manhattan in a region of the island that used to be referred to as ‘God’s thumb’, there’s a huge park. Within Fort Tryon Park sits one of the most important collections of medieval art, sculpture architecture in the world. This is The Cloisters, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year it’s celebrating its 75th anniversary with two very different exhibitions. One is focused on a cluster of its most precious items: the unicorn tapestries produced in France in the fifteenth century. The other is the first contemporary art exhibition that The Cloisters has ever displayed, Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet. It consists of forty speakers configured in a circle, each of which plays a single part from the Tudor composer Thomas Tallis’ forty-part motet Spem in…
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Art History is not useless! A Great Blog Post by Dr Lucy Worsley
Do It 2013
Contemporary art and its institutions are subject to frequent accusations of irrelevance: that we live in a society where art is inaccessible, where the study and appreciation of art is a pastime for the elite and not much more. Art is, apparently, for the pseudo-intellectual, bourgeois middle classes or those collectors who pay extortionate amounts for whatever the latest celebrity-come-artist has trusted their way. Art is not for us.
Whilst this, unfortunately, appears to be the prevailing opinion towards the art world nowadays, there exist many attempts on the part of artists and curators to rectify this apparent snobbery by resituating the power into the hands of the public. Perhaps the most famous of these, Hans Ulrich Obrist’s ongoing Do It project, arrived at Manchester Art Gallery in July (it’s on until 22 September) and dominated the city’s International Festival.
Obrist and his colleagues have spent the last twenty…
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UoN Bike Hire and Free Bike Tagging
Well it is a busy time of year preparing for the arrival of students in a few weeks. We have the following highlights this month;
- 12th September – National “Cycle to work” day – it would be great if you could cycle in and encourage any friends and colleagues to cycle in this day. Please see details below about the bike tagging we are doing at University Park and Jubilee Campus. That is also a Dr Bike day at Sutton Bonington.
- Freshers week – we will be at Freshers Fair and in the Portland Building giving out cycling advice, come along and see us.
- Dr bike is here 9th, 11th, 12th, 17th and 27th September – for further details see below.
- Bike maintenance workshop – University Park – 17th September 2-5pm
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=703bb9c4492075351103167fd&id=301deea45f&e=f1ef412674
Introducing the Art Historians Out and About Pinterest board
An alumna’s guide to Nottingham’s arts scene
My name is Laura-Jade Klée and in 2011 I graduated with a degree in Art History at University of Nottingham and entered a new life of working full-time within the art world in Nottingham.
Whilst at university, I had spent some time assisting at various galleries and I had discovered the fantastic young arts scene in Nottingham. Many recent graduate artists stay in Nottingham after graduation and initiate exciting projects or start galleries and collectives- I had decided that I wanted to be one of them. I currently work within two galleries whilst also doing arts writing and curating site-specific artworks.
I am part of an art collaboration called Sidelong and together we explore the idea of the curated walk and re-interpret the landscape in unusual ways. We are inspired by psychogeography and fictionalized histories, and our work draws attention to intriguing features of the cityscape that are often overlooked…
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#wanderthoresby- Reflections on the legacy of Marie Louise Roosevelt Pierrepont, Countess Manvers
If, as the early 1960s advertising slogan stated, Thoresby Hall was the Heart of Sherwood Forest, then Marie-Louise Roosevelt Pierrepont, Countess Manvers was surely the Art. The Lady in the cream jacket, skirt and hat, that the residents of Thoresby Park would routinely come across seated amongst the trees, faithfully recording and cataloguing the life of the Estate in her water colour sketches much as one might do today on iPads and cell phones.
As someone who lived the first thirteen years of his life on Thoresby Estate, formative childhood years during which I observed and encountered the Lady in question at work, I offer this article in response to Nottingham University’s exciting “Wandering Thoresby” project. See also a previous blog post on #wanderthoresby outlining this project.
Born in 1889 as Marie-Louise Roosevelt Butterfield, the future Countess Manvers exhibited a passion for art at an early age. So it was…
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Looking at Van Dyck’s Lomellini Portrait
Normally, standing in front of a painting in the Scottish National Gallery during the Edinburgh Festival period is to be in the eye of a storm, akin to taking the part of a TV reporter doing a piece to camera surrounded by digitally speeded-up crowds. It was thus a nice surprise when late on a Sunday morning I found Van Dyck’s Lomellini family rehung away from their normal wall to accommodate the temporary show of American landscapes, and almost as lonely as when he painted them nearly 400 years ago.
I frequently see this painting but I’d never previously been struck so strongly by its air of unreality. Van Dyck’s portraits necessarily have an element of the stage-set as the sitters play a variety of roles. Yet on this occasion the Lomellinis seemed more aware of the game than usual. Their faces wore expressions that suggested a family environment different…
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The Digital Humanities Centre 