Stop Press

A compilation of media articles on heritage topics. Obviously, these all reflect the viewpoints of the authors.

31 March

• Nero's palace partially collapses in Rome
  stuff.co.nz, New Zealand
  A huge chunk of a 2,000-year-old gallery in the complex including Emperor Nero's fabled Golden Palace has collapsed, Rome's art officials said.

• Leonardo: An early Dr Strangelove?
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  Was the great Florentine artist and scientist who painted the Last Supper, designed the legendary Sforza horse and did the first great studies of human anatomy also a sinister military genius whose inventions caused horrible deaths in the wars of sixteenth century Europe?

30 March

• Haiti : la culture doit devenir la norme antisismique de la reconstruction, par Irina Bokova
  Le Monde, France
  Les donateurs et les partenaires internationaux du développement vont se rencontrer le 31 mars à New York pour coordonner leur riposte consécutive au tremblement de terre qui a ravagé Haïti le 12 janvier.

• Chichén Itzá, propiedad de los mexicanos
  Milenio.com, Mexico
  La zona arqueológica de Chichén Itzá es ya propiedad de los mexicanos, luego de que el gobierno de Yucatán compró la tarde de este lunes 83 hectáreas a un costo de 220 millones de pesos al hasta ayer propietario Hans Jurgen Thies Barbachano, uno de los herederos de la familia Barbachano, quien durante décadas tuvo la propiedad legal de la zona.

• Domus aurea: crollo, da domani lavori
  ANSA
  Domani inizieranno i lavori per mettere in sicurezza l'area della Galleria Traianea coinvolta nel crollo'.

29 March

• The stone spheres of Costa Rica
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  The stone spheres of Costa Rica - known locally as Las Bolas - have been the focus of University of Kansas researcher John Hoopes, who has evaluated the spheres for protection as a Unesco World Heritage Site.

26 March

• An architect’s snapshots of Africa’s cities
  Finanacial Times, United Kingdom
  Edwin Heathcote: In this exhibition, the architect David Adjaye is attempting to explore the diversity embodied in the African city, partly to document, but also partly to dispel the clichés, the notions of these extraordinary places as dystopian monocultures of poverty, of the lost cause.

24 March

• Fossil shows dinosaur caught in collapsing sand dune
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  Researchers have discovered a nearly complete fossil of a dinosaur which appears to have been caught in a collapsing sand dune.

• Rare manuscripts to be auctioned
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  A collection of manuscripts previously owned by kings, bishops and members of the aristocracy is expected to fetch up to £16m when it is sold at auction.

23 March

• Vatican to digitise manuscripts
  ANSA
  The Vatican is set to start digitising the thousands of manuscripts in the Vatican Library, the Holy See's daily announced Tuesday.

• Parcs de l'Ahaggar et du Tassili: L'Algérie dénonce « la biopiratérie »
  Algérie Culture, Algeria
  La ministre de la Culture, Khalida Toumi, dénonce le phénomène de « biopiraterie » qui est « un impérialisme vert, dont on a connu que les premiers effleurements », à l'occasion des journées d'information sur la conservation de la biodiversité dans les parcs de l'Ahaggar et du Tassili inaugurées hier à Tamanrasset.

• Staffordshire Hoard: What if it's you that strikes gold?
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  Will Gompertz: According to the 1996 Treasure Act, applied to the whole of the UK apart from Scotland, the first thing you must do is report your find to your local coroner within 14 days.

• Search engine collects historical resources
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  A search engine is being created to help historians find useful sources.

• Last supper 'has been super-sized', say obesity experts
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  The food portions depicted in paintings of the Last Supper have grown larger - in line with our own super-sizing of meals, say obesity experts.

22 March

• After Years of War and Abuse, New Hope for Ancient Babylon
  NY Times, United States
  The most immediate threat to preserving the ruins of Babylon, the site of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is water soaking the ground and undermining what is left in present-day Iraq of a great city from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II. A current study, known as the Future of Babylon project, documents the damage from water mainly associated with the Euphrates River and irrigation systems nearby.

20 March

• Ghost town revival
  Financial Times, United Kingdom
  Raphael Abraham: The historical comparison might seem a stretch but Malta is a place in which the past is ever present and it confronts the visitor at almost every turn – something that has led Italian architect Renzo Piano to note that “Valletta is full of ghosts”.

19 March

• World wakes up to digital divide
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  Jane Wakefield: The digital divide, like many other economic or social problems, is a global issue.

• National Trust lists historic book collection online
  M&H Online, United Kingdom
  Over 150,000 historic books from 160 National Trust properties have been catalogued online for the first time.

• Boston art theft remains biggest unsolved mystery
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  John Wilson reports on the biggest unsolved art theft. In the early hours of 18 March 1990, both paintings were ripped from their frames.

• Fresh dig at Staffordshire hoard treasure site
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  Another dig is to be held at the site of where the UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure was discovered.

• Velociraptor's cousin discovered
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  Victoria Gill: Scientists have discovered a new species of dinosaur that was closely related to the Velociraptor.

18 March

• Photographer Ristelhueber wins Deutsche Borse prize
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  For the past 25 years, Ristelhueber has examined the impact of human conflict upon architecture and landscape in places such as Bosnia and Iraq.

• Museums should concentrate on collections, says outgoing Tate Modern director
  The Guardian, United Kingdom
  Giles Tremlett and Charlotte Higgins: The outgoing director of Tate Modern, Vicente Todolí, is leaving Britain's foremost museum of modern art with a warning to the world's galleries not to forget the exhibits as they push forward with extension plans.

• 'Hobbit' island's deeper history
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  Jonathan Amos: Long before a 'hobbit' species of human lived on Indonesia's Flores island, other human-like creatures colonised the area. That much was clear.

17 March

• Uganda's Kasubi royal tombs gutted by fire
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  The tombs of Ugandan regional kings have been wrecked by fire, sparking huge protests amid claims of arson.

16 March

• 51 Headless Vikings in English Execution Pit Confirmed
  National Geographic, United States
  James Owen: Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young males found in the United Kingdom have been identified as brutally slain Vikings, archaeologists announced Friday.

14 March

• A Conversation With Philippe de Montebello
  NY Times, United States
  Carol Vogel: Philippe de Montebello, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has returned to New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts to teach.

13 March

• The New Guard of Curators Steps Up
  NY Times, United States
  Carol Vogel: Far from the stereotype of fusty academics, curators in their 30s and 40s are bringing eclectic backgrounds and a fresh eye to Manhattan’s museums.

• The Thrill of Science, Tamed by Agendas
  NY Times, United States
  Edward Rothstein: Science museums experiment in their struggle to define themselves.

• Out of Ruin, Haiti’s Visionaries
  NY Times, United States
  Holland Cotter: The Centre d’Art, where these artists once met with André Breton, Aimé Césaire and Wifredo Lam, was seriously damaged, as was the Musée d’Art Haitien.

• Restoring a Museum Piece, a Jungle Gym That Once Flew
  NY Times, United States
  Wendell Jamieson: At the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York, a Grumman fighter jet is painstakingly restored.

• New York’s Met, Replicating Art Works Bit by 3-D Bit
  NY Times, United States
  Randy Kennedy: In the last several years, the Met has been pioneering the use of three-dimensional imaging, using white-light scanners to collect millions of bits of information from the surfaces of dozens of objects in its collection.

• Thieves loot Lao city's Buddha statue heritage
  Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
  Norimasa Tahara: More than a 10th of the Buddha statues in Luang Prabang, an ancient city in north-central Laos whose urban district is a World Heritage Site, have gone missing in the past few years.

• A spellbinding Egyptian discovery
  Reuters
  Archaeologists in Egypt have found what they believe are hieroglyphic funeral spells guiding a mysterious 4,000-year-old queen in the afterlife.

11 March

• Antigua, Guatemala: Doors of perfection
  Telegraph, United Kingdom
  Trevor Stutely: Cradled by the soaring peaks of the volcanoes Agua and Fuego, the Guatemalan city of Antigua is among the finest examples of Spanish-era architecture in the Americas, a place of baroque churches and rigorously maintained colonial homes.

10 March

• Google to digitise ancient Italian books
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  The Italian government has signed a deal with Google to put the contents of two national libraries on the internet.

• Ancient Tribal Meeting Ground Found in Australia
  Discovery News, United States
  Australian archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be the world's southernmost site of early human life, a 40,000-year-old tribal meeting ground, an Aboriginal leader said Wednesday.

9 March

• Rights battle over Polaroid sale
  The Art Newspaper, United Kingdom
  Charlotte Burns: Former judge urges artists to go to court over original contracts before June auction.

• More than a set of prints
  The Art Newspaper, United Kingdom
  Mark Haworth-Booth: It was a misfortune for the Polaroid Collection to fall into the hands of a crook. To sell it off would look like carelessness.

• Primitive Agricultural Tools Found in Villa Clara
  CubaHeadlines.com, Cuba
  A new archeological discovery of primitive tools in the area surrounding the Cedro Lagoon in the province of Villa Clara is giving rise to new theories of the existence of ceramist agricultural settlements in the northern region of Villa Clara.

• Giotto frescoes 'rediscovered' in Florence chapel
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  Frescoes painted some 700 years ago by the Italian artist Giotto have been rediscovered in a chapel in Florence.

8 mars

• Focus on Malabar's Mediterranean links
  The Hindu, India
  The existence of a large number of port-holed cists and dolmens in Palakkad, Wayanad and Idukki districts seeks to show that the megalithic people who lived in these parts of the world were navigators who migrated to Kerala from the Mediterranean region by sea route.

4 March

• New art restoration technology wows the world
  Business Weekly, United Kingdom
  The world-renowned Hamilton Kerr Institute has joined forces with Cambridgeshire company, SmartDrive to provide revolutionary technology which will enable art restorers, curators, gallery visitors and web-users to view masterpieces in a way never seen before.

3 March

• Terracotta Warriors Safe after Chile Earthquake
  CRIEnglish, China
  Chinese relics, including some of the famed terracotta warriors, on display in Chile since December have survived the quake that rocked the South American country on Feb. 27.

• Documenting the Damage in Chile
  New York Times, United States
  An 8.8-magnitude quake struck Chile early Saturday morning, shaking the capital of Santiago, bringing down buildings and setting off tsunami warnings along the Pacific rim. New York Times readers are sharing their photographs of the quake's aftermath, and are invited to submit photos.

• Le sarcophage d'une reine inconnue découvert en Egypte
  Le Monde, France
  Une mission archéologique française a découvert près du Caire le sarcophage en granit rose et au couvercle en basalte d'une reine jusqu'ici inconnue de la VIe dynastie, a annoncé mercredi 3 mars le service des antiquités égyptiennes.

1 March

• Destruction at Museum of Contemporary Art
  CNN, United States
  These images were taken on the third day after the quake in front of the MAC - Museum of Contemporary Art - here in central Santiago. 

• Firms head to Haiti
  The Real Deal, United States
  New York City architecture and construction firms are heading to Haiti in an effort to help rebuild the devastated Caribbean nation, which was hit with a magnitude 7 earthquake in January.

• Huge head of pharaoh unearthed in Egypt
  BBC News, United Kingdom
  A colossal red granite head of one of Egypt's most famous pharaohs has been unearthed in the southern city of Luxor, officials said.

• Heritage versus mining
  Mail and Guardian, South Africa
  Yolandi Groenewald: A battle royal looms over the awarding of coal-mining rights adjacent to world heritage site and national park Mapungubwe, with the Department of Environmental Affairs smack in the middle.

updated on: 11 May, 2010