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Podcast
The Apollo 40 under 40 podcast: Mohamad Hafez
The Syrian-born, US-based artist talks to Gabrielle Schwarz about his sculptural dioramas of cities ravaged by war – and offers a message of hope for the future
Art news daily
The week in art news – Amnesty report points to massacre in Ethiopian town of Axum
Plus: Swiss museums reopen next week, while UK museums must wait until May | Experts confirm message on The Scream is by Munch | and National Gallery in London and Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin update Hugh Lane bequest deal
Experts confirm Edvard Munch wrote secret message on The Scream
Experts have confirmed that the writing on The Scream is in Munch’s handwriting
The week in art news – head of Indianapolis Museum of Art resigns after controversial job ad
Plus: National Gallery in London launches design competition to rethink Sainsbury Wing, and more stories
Reviews
Vein glorious: an epic history of marble, reviewed
For millennia, marble was taken to be a gleaming reflection of the heavens – and, in Fabio Barry’s new book, it regains its divine mysteries
Of Meissen men – the brittle business of porcelain
An ambitious new book scrutinises the production of ‘white gold’ in Europe – from its early alchemical mysteries to your everyday crockery
12 Days
Bag, Mosul, (1300–1330), northern Iraq © The Courtauld Gallery, London
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For each of the 12 days of Christmas we have asked Apollo staff and contributors to select the artistic highlights that they are most eagerly anticipating in 2014. The Muse Room will return with its regular daily blogs on 7 January 2014. From all of us at Apollo, happy new year!
Bag, (1300–1330), Mosul, northern Iraq © The Courtauld Gallery, London
Possibly the world’s oldest surviving lady’s handbag has been scrubbed and polished to go on show at the Courtauld Gallery. It was given to the collection in 1966, by the artist and collector Thomas Gambier Parry’s grandson. Star of the show’s 40 global loans, the ‘Courtauld Wallet’ is a brass container exquisitely decorated in gold and silver with scenes of courtly life. Exhibition curator Rachel Ward says it is simply ‘one of the best pieces of metal inlay work in the world’.
Why has this masterpiece remained mostly unpublished and unseen, then? Not just because it needed a scrub, but mainly because academics could not agree on when or where it was made or for whom. So, being cautious by nature, they kept quiet. Dr Ward risks all to say: 1300–1330 at Mosul in Northern Iraq, probably for a woman in the Il-Khanid court, which traces its ancestry to Genghis Khan.
‘Court And Craft: A Masterpiece From Northern Iraq’ is at the Courtauld Gallery from 20 February – 18 May 2014.
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