Sensitive to Art & its Discontents

A team of three professors and 24 students have unearthed a second-century statue of Hercules in the Ancient Greek city of Philippi. The “larger-than-life” work depicts the bare body of the youthful Roman god and once included a lion, a club, and a wreath, according to the Greek Ministry of Sports and Culture, which announced the discovery in mid-September.

Professor Natalia Poulos of the Aristotle University in Philippi led the excavation with help from fellow professors Anastasios Tantsis and Aristotle Menzos and a group of undergraduate students, post-graduate students, and doctoral candidates.

Per a statement from the Greek Ministry of Sports and Culture, the statue was found in a town square and adorned a building that may have been a public fountain.

That building, however, was constructed at least 700 years after the Hercules statue was created, in the eighth or ninth centuries CE during the Byzantine period. The Ministry reported that the practice of including Classical sculptures in Byzantine architecture has been seen in Constantinople.

Philippi — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2016 — was founded in 356 BCE by King Philip II (the father of Alexander the Great). It was a thriving Ancient Greek city before being taken by the Ancient Romans in 42 BCE, but continued to thrive for centuries, becoming a cultural center during the emergence of Christianity in the region. The archaeological site features a Roman-era forum as well as examples of early Christian churches.

This summer, archaeologists found a fragment of another enormous Hercules statue — a gargantuan marble head — in the famed 60 BCE Antikythera shipwreck off the Greek Mediterranean coast. The head likely belonged to a decapitated Hercules statue at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

We are fighting for ourselves and the working standards we deserve, but we are also fighting for the heart and future of the institution.

The 65-year-old man was reportedly angry that he was not granted a meeting with the Pope.

On October 12, the award-winning art critic, poet, and Hyperallergic editor will examine nature through the contrasting visions of a 19th-century landscape painter and a 20th-century abstractionist.

This week: New York’s disappearing alleys, Wolfgang Tillmans’s fading star, Velma Dinkley is gay, and more. 

The technology isn’t available for public use, but Meta (formerly Facebook) released a series of eerie sample clips based on prompts like “cat watching TV” and “spaceship landing.”

Inspired by the creation story of DeFeo’s monumental artwork “The Rose,” Lyn’s musical piece debuts at the New York City venue this October.

There’s high demand in the country for the nostalgia-soaked Instagram videos of sister duo Zainab and Sakina Sabunwala.

Gustav Klimt: Gold in Motion transforms a historic bank in Manhattan into the unlikely setting of an immersive art experience one visitor called “mesmerizing.”

This free online event celebrates Sánchez, the recipient of the Artists’ Legacy Foundation’s 2022 Artist Award, and his decades-long multimedia practice rooted in activism.

Masterworks of American Landscape Painting at the Center for Figurative Painting makes clear that the term “landscape” has been widely interpreted.

The artist’s work quietly asks: How do we read and write the world we live in?

Warsaw Gallery Weekend and Fringe Warszawa hope to offer long-term solutions for a thriving art scene in Warsaw when skyrocketing inflation and a lack of affordable studio spaces have become the new norm.

Elaine Velie is a writer from New Hampshire living in Brooklyn. She studied Art History and Russian at Middlebury College and is interested in art's role in history, culture, and politics. More by Elaine Velie

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Hyperallergic is a forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking about art in the world today. Founded in 2009, Hyperallergic is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.