A gold-and-silver Iron Age necklace discovered by an amateur digger was one of 749 found treasures reported today by the British Museum as part of the annual Portable Antiquities Scheme.
The necklace, or torc, was dug up in a field near Newark in Nottinghamshire, England, by a man who had set out looking for a crashed World War II aircraft, the British Museum said in a press release. Dubbed the “Newark Torc,” it’s valued at 360,000 pounds ($540,000), the priciest single find in the program’s recent history, and now belongs to Newark Heritage Service, the release said.
The 749 finds for the year 2007 compare with 665 registered in 2006 — 282 of which have now been acquired by museums across Britain, the release said.
The program has recorded some 360,000 archaeological finds, most of them thanks to metal-detector users, and the rest by people who made chance discoveries as they walked, gardened, ploughed or did everyday work.
The finds must be reported if they are “treasure” — gold and silver pieces that are more than 300 years old, and groups of coins. Both the finder and the landowner are rewarded as an incentive for them to report. (Bloomberg)

We’ve all heard stories of Babylon. But then that’s hardly surprising - no other city has been so vilified. Which is no bad thing as far as this once proud capital of a flourishing empire is concerned. Because a villain, as any lover of literature well knows, is more vividly beguiling than his virtuous foil. Take Milton’s Satan as the most famous example. He is far more compelling than his pious God. Which is why, though hundreds of years have passed since this sprawling Mesopotamian metropolis crumbled back into the dust of what is modern-day Iraq, its legends - the tower of Babel, the mad Nebuchadnezzar, the feast of Belshazzar and the eponymous whore - remain like great monuments on the horizons of the imagination.
But how true are these tales?
This week the British Museum opens Babylon: Reality and Myth. It is the last in a sequence of three shows on the subject that have taken place this year, as a trio of European institutions - the British Museum, the Pergamon in Berlin and the Louvre in Paris - have teamed up, pooling loans and expertise, to create shows that can not only fascinate a broad public but offer a serious opportunity for scholarship as well.
Now, as the British Museum curators are passed whatever is the Mesopotamian equivalent of the baton - that beautiful carved onyx sceptre would probably do - they create their own distinct (but related) version of the show. Their most notable decision is to narrow the historical focus. They look at the story of Babylon through the spyhole of the 40-odd years from 605 to 562BC, during which the great Nebuchadnezzar ruled. These were the years in which the city’s greatest monuments were constructed, including the fabled hanging gardens (one of the ancient world’s seven wonders), and in which Jerusalem was captured and its people taken prisoner. It was in this narrow time frame that most of Babylon’s legends find their source. (Times)

Artist Marc Quinn, whose gold statue of model Kate Moss with her legs tucked behind her head is currently outraging traditionalists at the British Museum in London, is now creating furniture made from marble.
Quinn sold 25 pieces of his rough-hewn Carrara marble “Iceberg” furniture from the booth of the Carpenters Workshop Gallery during the five-day DesignArt London fair.
Prices ranged from about 12,000 pounds ($21,000) for a coffee table to 79,200 pounds for a desk. The “sculptures that you can use”, as CWG calls them, are decorated with exotic flowers in colored marble inlays.
“We’ve been selling like crazy”, said Julien Lombrail, partner in the London-based design-art dealer. “It’s a lot easier to understand than art. And it’s cheaper”.
London-based Paul Insect’s glass-topped “Skelli” table, supported by a bronze skeleton wearing Playboy Bunny ears, was the center of attention at the booth of London dealer Kenny Schachter, of ROVE. The table, part of an edition of three and priced at 50,000 pounds, was later sold to a Russian collector, Schachter said.
A group of 11 abstract tapestries by Alexander Calder at the booth of Paris design dealers Galerie du Passage sold for 12,000 euros ($16,000) each, gallery assistant Tezan Jolly said.
The tapestries, designed by Calder in the 1970s to raise money for Guatemala after an earthquake, were kept in perfect condition in a warehouse. (Bloomberg)

Ever since she made her debut as a skinny 14-year-old in Calvin Klein jeans, Kate Moss has been queen of the world’s catwalks and glossy fashion magazine covers.Now she has another crown: the most popular artist’s muse of modern times. Lucian Freud, Banksy, Chuck Close, Alex Katz, Gary Hume and Stella Vine, among others, have been captivated by her and she has even drawn herself in lipstick.
Yesterday, Marc Quinn’s life-size gold sculpture of the 34-year-old model joined the collection of artworks inspired by Moss.
Quinn’s statue was unveiled as part of “Statuephilia”, a British Museum exhibition of contemporary art. The metallic Moss, Siren, is thought to be the largest gold statue since the time of ancient Egypt. The 50kg solid 18-carat gold statue, insured for £10m, was created by Quinn as part of a series featuring the model. His 2006 sculpture, Sphinx, featured Ms Moss in another yoga position. Siren will be on display to the public at the museum from tomorrow until January.
Quinn, who hopes to show the image across the world, suggested she had an abstract appeal for artists. “This sculpture is about the abstractions that rule our lives, the desire for money, immortality, for beauty. Kate Moss is a cultural hallucination we have all agreed to create.
“She is the only person who has the ubiquity and silence that is required in an image of divinity, that has been created through time, so that we can project onto it,” he said.
James Fox, co-curator of the display at the British Museum, agreed artists had become fascinated by the zeitgeist spirit she represents. “It’s not about Kate Moss in its accuracy to her character. It’s using her likeness that has become so iconic to explore broader themes, to make a familiar face unfamiliar,” he said.
“What Quinn might be doing here is creating her in a cult-like form, in a solid-gold state, as a comment on celebrity culture and how it has mythologised Moss like a goddess, feverishly,” he said. (THE INDEPENDENT)

The Duke of Sutherland has recently confirmed that he wants to sell 2 prestigious pieces of his collection, the Bridgewater, lent since 1945 to the National Gallery of Scotland. Two masterpieces by the famous Italian artist Tiziano Vecellio, which portray Diana, goddess of hunting, have been offered on sale to two outstanding buyers who have joined their forces to secure these two wonderful canvases: the National Gallery of Scotland itself, located in Edinburgh, and London’s National Gallery. “Diana e Atteone” and “Diana e Callisto” were probably conceived by the artist between 1556 and 1559 for the sovereign of Spain Phillip II, who apparently appreciated their elegant erotic impetus. The two pictures belonged to a series, dedicated to Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, which over the years was broken up and distributed to various museums in the world, which included also the canvases “Diana”, “Venere e Adone” (both in Madrid, Museo del Prado), “Perseo e Andromeda” (Wallace Collection, London) and “Il ratto di Europa” (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston).

It’s easy to assume that ancient history is, well, ancient history, the dusty province of antiquarians poring over old texts and artefacts. What more is there to learn about classical Greece and Rome?
Think again. The British Museum’s magisterial new exhibition about the life and times of Publius Aelius Hadrianus, ruler of one of the mightiest empires the world has ever seen, reveals the extent to which our understanding of the ancient world is fashioned from fragments of historical evidence.
It also reveals how it is constantly evolving, as hitherto unknown objects are discovered. Ancient history may be the stuff of marble statuary, but, it turns out, it is anything but set in stone. (Telegraph)

THE GETTY MUSEUM PAYS TRIBUTE TO BAROQUE PORTRAIT SCULPTURE OF BERNINI’S GENIUS

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the most relevant artist of all baroque art, the one who was able to embody and translate in images the ideals and thrills of his era, dominating undisputed the Roman artistic scene for more than sixty years, becomes “peace ambassador” between Italy and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. After various confrontations, ended at the beginning of the year, on the restitution by the US museum of stolen Italian masterpieces (the Getty displayed 40 pieces that came from the illegal market and therefore belonged to our country), the exhibition dedicated to Bernini is a ploy to sign a new chapter on cultural relations between Italy and the United States.

Considered for many years a trivial product of the mass subculture, the tradition of graffiti-art, Writing and Street Art intended in the broader sense of the term, has now broken into the art system. In Italy, for instance, the first space that housed this type of art was the Prada Foundation, which hosted Barry McGee.