Yearly Archives: 2011

Documenting Merv

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CyArk completed a comprehensive digital documentation campaign at Merv in 2007 in conjunction with excavations in the grand bazaar undertaken by the University College London, the results of which are now available up on their website. This is Kind of a Big Deal for historians of Islamic architecture. CyArk’s work is a model for digital documentation projects: content includes spherical panoramas, point clouds from laser scans, architectural drawings, and GIS data associated with each digital artifact. In a perfect world, every architectural archaeological site would receive such comprehensive documentation before and after archaeological interventions or conservation.

Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia

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The new galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia have opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and reviews are popping up everywhere. Check out what people have to say:

The New York Times also has a really nice interactive special with panoramas and audio commentary, and the MSNBC photoblog has some good pictures of the new galleries.

For more on the Moroccan Courtyard check out this New York Times article.

Tangeh Savashi

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I just came across these photos of Tangeh Savashi in the Alborz mountains. Fatih-‘Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797-1834) had a hunting lodge nearby, and he commissioned the relief carving to commemorate his hunts in the valley. If this doesn’t scream Taq-i Bustan I don’t know what does.

(photos via Wikipedia)

Blogging for Butler!

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So, I’m writing about Judith Butler and…things…for the Bryn Mawr College Flexner Book Club Blog. This week I used too many adverbs and wrote about how Butler’s work can be useful for historians, taking as my example something totally unrelated to things I actually know stuff about: the Pendle witch trials.

I definitely want to do a post on the problems that Butler’s focus on language and embodiment poses for art historians. I’m currently reading Sara Ahmed’s Strange Encounters, so I going to be especially keyed in to encounters with others over the course of the lectures.

I’m also busy working on the draft for my Food Symposium Talk, which I’ll post as soon as it’s coherent for your vivisecting pleasure (writing about dead animals is starting to get to me).