Bowl with courtly and astrological motifs, Iran, circa late twelfth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchase, Rogers Fund, and gift of the Schiff Foundation, 1957.
• “The Nation’s Monuments Are Male, Pale, and Stale.” (Curbed)
• Revisiting Anton Refregier’s War and Peace. (Zócalo Public Square)
• On the Cory Book Service. (NewYorker.com)
• Returned: looted manuscripts from Mexico’s National Archive. (Hyperallergic)
• A so-called toilet goddess. (JSTOR Daily)
• “Before the British Empire and the Atlantic slave trade, Africans lived freely in Tudor England.” (History Today)
• On Man Ray. (The New Republic)
• “Squabbling sibling planets may have hurled space rocks when they were young.” (Science News)
• “If you want to teach the Texas constitution, you can’t avoid slavery. If you want to teach the history of the early twentieth century, you have to talk about Jim Crow and Juan Crow laws. These things are there in the records.” (Texas Monthly)
• “An obsidian ‘spirit mirror’ used by John Dee, an adviser to England’s Elizabeth I, traces its origins to Aztec culture.” (SmithsonianMag.com)
• On The Wedding Feast at Cana. (The New York Review of Books)
• This week in obituaries: Robert Richardson, Marcia Freedman, Colin Jones, Mohib Ullah, Jonathan Cooper, Kamla Bhasin, Mario Camus, Marie Wilcox, Carlisle Floyd, Roberto Roena, Mortimer Mishkin, Paula J. Clayton, Mel Gooding, Robert Schiffmann, Alan Kalter, Billy Apple, John Chilcot, Bernard Tapie, Barry Ryan, Todd Akin, Neal Sher, Antony Hewish, and Eddie Robinson.