A 2,000 Year Old Mosaic Returns to Italy // Michael Heizer’s “City” // The Koh-i-Noor Diamond // Odesa, Ukraine & UNESCO

Hello everyone. Welcome back to BY AMARA. This is a weekly news show where I discuss contemporary events in the art and history worlds.

I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew.

For this show, we follow the format typically used by Western brides, something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

This week, we're going to be discussing a 2,000-year-old relic that's being returned to Italy,

A city built in the middle of the desert that took 50 (5-0) years to build,

One of the largest diamonds in history, and how to save a town from war. All that coming up on this episode of BY AMARA. Let's get to it.

Before I start, I want to just discuss some old news, so things that I discussed in our previous episode of BY AMARA. So I discussed ARCIV, which is like a group trying to decentralize the museum, which is kind of the central core tenant of the art and history world. So

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go check out that first episode. You can also check out their website arciv.net. So, like I mentioned last week, I applied to be a member at ARCIV, and I got accepted.

Woohoo! Yay, go me! So, I'm now a member of ARCIV, I'm in their Discord.

I haven't communicated really or anything with them yet 'cause we've been out of town, which I'll talk more about that in a moment. But I am very excited to be part of ARCIV. I look forward to being involved in all their decision making and stuff.

They seem very hands-on and very communicative about different things for now. I said for now, but I mean just they seem very communicative with things and kind of making sure everybody's in the know and making sure everybody feels welcome 'cause this is still very new. So,

I'm very excited. I hope that I guess I don't know really what I hope. It's funny because I'm not quite sure what it is I'd like to learn from ARCIV.

I think as time goes on and the more time I spend in their Discord and communicate with people and talk to people and things like that,

I feel like I'll have a better idea of sort of what I expect to learn and what I hope to learn. I'm very excited for the voting process. I was admitted right after they just acquired the fans from Madonna's Vogue shoot, I think, or something like that, or from the MTV music video.

It was something like that. I'll just put the still up here so you can see what it was from. But I missed that voting process just by like a day or so.

But

For the next one, I'm very excited to share that with you and kind of let you know how the whole process goes. It seems very easy and straightforward, so we'll see. I am happy thus far, so we will see how this goes.

Something else, too, we just got back, if you couldn't tell from my amazing tan, we just got back from Miami Beach. It was very fun. It was Jeff's 40th birthday.

Sorry I'm telling them you're 40.

But we just got back from Miami Beach. I absolutely love it there. If I could live there year-round, I'd be totally happy.

Tons of amazing Cuban food, amazing people, I don't know. There's just a vibe to Miami Beach that I really love and just all the wonderful people and everything, so anywho.

So, we just got back from Miami, so I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I recorded my first episode right before we left, so

Probably not the best idea to start a podcast right before you're going out of town, but here we are. Episode two, so. All that said, let's get into our first topic.

So, this week our something old is going to be a 2,000-year-old mosaic that's depicting Medusa. This was returned to the Italian government by US authorities this past week or the week before. There are many interesting things about this story, but the most interesting thing is how and where this mosaic was found.

So,

Let me give you a little bit of backstory. So, apparently, this mosaic had been cut into 16 individual pieces, and each piece weighed, I think, from 75 to 200 lb. So, this is a very large mosaic.

And it was kept in a storage facility in the LA area since the 1980s. So, what's that, like

40 years, almost 50 years? That's a very long time. The fact that this was in a storage facility isn't illegal, but the entire backstory to this piece is very sketchy.

So, the backstory is very sketchy because authorities received a tip from an attorney who knew the mosaic's owner. The piece apparently didn't have any provenance when authorities looked into it, which in the art and history and just any kind of like archival field, any kind of field where you're dealing with older sort of things, provenance is really important.

I worked as an archivist for a really long time, and we would have many different objects that did not have provenance to them, so then it's like, "Okay, where did this come from? How did we get this? What is this?

Why is there a human skull in this cabinet, and we have no idea who it is or where they came from?" It's a big problem. So,

That was a major red flag to US authorities, so they started working on the case in late 2020. They tried to locate the provenance of the piece first. They could only find two different records.

The first one was from 1909 when the mosaic was entered into the cultural property record. The only other listing was from 1959, and it was a newspaper ad, apparently looking to sell the mosaic.!

Man, like in the '50s, you could just list a 2,000-year-old mosaic in a newspaper. That is wild. If people tried to do that on like Instagram now when you're like thrifting and things like that, could you imagine if someone's like, "Oh, here's a sweatshirt from the '80s, and, oh, there's my 2,000-year-old Medusa mosaic.

Which one would you like?" Comment below! Like, could you imagine?

I made myself laugh. That was stupid, but anyway. So, even more surprising about this, though, is that the mosaic had very minimal damage to it considering like it was besides being chopped up into 16 pieces, that is a lot of damage, but besides that, each individual piece didn't have a ton of damage to it, so that was really cool.

That was really cool. That's like the worst thing you could say.

If my students ever wrote that in their paper, I'd be like, " maybe elaborate a little bit more." Don't just say, "That was really cool." But, besides all that, the pieces that like the 16 separate pieces were largely intact, so that's really great. Like I'm proud to hear that. So, yeah.

The mosaic pieces are currently being cleaned and restored in Italy by professionals, so stay tuned. I hope to have more updates on that, but we'll see what we are allowed to know.

I looked back at the footage and I looked really, really bored when I was playing that interstitial music, but I was just focusing really hard, trying to make sure I got it, so I felt like I should dance for you a little bit. Anyway, so our something new this week is a piece by Michael Heizer. So, he's an artist who specializes in land art and was also part of the Earthworks movement and things in the 1970s.

He creates these really big, beautiful, massive, site-specific sculptures using the land or incorporating natural materials into the land and stuff like that. Google it. I'll also have a couple pictures up here.

If you're listening to this, Google it. If not, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see the photos right here. He makes very beautiful art.

I remember learning about him in grad school and I thought he was fabulous. So,

The something new, he's been building a piece called "City" for 50 years! Since the 1970s, since the Bee Gees were walking around, since Sid Vicious was walking around, love him or hate him. Since the 1970s, he's been working on this piece.

It finally opened a couple weeks ago. So, it just opened to visitors on September 2nd, so I'm a little late reporting on it. Sorry.

So,

There really isn't a lot known about this piece yet, but we know a few things. It's very, very large. It measures over a mile and a half long, which is very big.

Normally, his land art is very sizable, but this is like very big. It's actually rumored to be one of the largest artworks in the world, so I guess time will tell if that's actually true.

So, this piece is supposed to be modeled after ancient cities, so not a modern sort of cityscape with skyscrapers and things like that. Instead, it's a bunch of different geometric shapes. So, I saw a lot of triangles in the photos that I saw, I saw a lot of organic sort of forms and things like that.

It looks very pretty, very expansive, a variety of different things that come out of the ground and that are incorporated in the ground and everything. It cost $40 million to produce this piece, and that came from a wide variety of different like sources, whether art benefactors, like art aficionados and things like that, or various different institutions.

So,

That money was to build it and then also to preserve it, so I think I read other institutions are going to be donating money, so then that can also be used to like take care of this piece. I have no idea if this piece is going to be around for forever, if it's just a temporary sort of piece. I kind of hope it's for forever.

It seems like it is, but you never know. That would be really cool. So, how do you get to it, or where is it?

Good question.

If you want to visit it, you literally have to go into the middle of the desert in Nevada, or Nevada, however you however you pronounce it. I switch back and forth, so you'll hear multiple different ways that I say it. So, it's sort of near Alamo, Nevada, I guess, which is about two hours north of Las Vegas.

You also need to book a reservation.

But, here's the catch: only six reservations will be accommodated daily, and each reservation costs $150. But, if you live nearby, in either Lincoln, Nye, or White Pine Counties, you can go for free. I think there is a limit on how many people from each specific county can go there, but

If you live nearby and you're fascinated or curious or love art or whatever, you should seriously take advantage of that and go check it out. I would love to go out there, just because we got back from a trip right now, I don't think it's quite in the cards, but that would be a very neat thing to see. I'm just looking at some of the photos I have right here, and it looks very, very cool.

I feel like it would be a transformative sort of experience, kind of like how people talk about what is it, Burning Man, just going. I know it's different, but

I don't know. It seems really neat, so how do you feel about City? Let me know in the comments below.

So, our something borrowed this week, sorry, that was a very hard cut. So, our something borrowed this week, again like I did last week, it's going to be something stolen. This, however, is going to be a bit more serious of a topic.

This is something that's been debated for a very long time. Now that the Queen of England has died, rest in peace, what will happen to the Koh-i-Noor diamond? So, I'm not going to go into the entire background of the diamond, 'cause it's there's a lot to it, a lot of names, a lot of dates, a lot of facts and figures and things like that.

I don't know the entire whole story. I'm going to be very honest with you. I know most of it, but I'm going to try to keep it very, very brief right here, so just to provide you some background to the diamond and things that are happening right now.

So, this the Koh-i-Noor diamond is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world. It weighs 105 carats, and it measures roughly like 1 and 1/2 in by 1 and 1/2 in by an inch in thickness, so it's very large. It's in the center of the Queen of England's crown, been there for a very, very, very long time.

It was actually larger when it was first found, which I'll talk about that in a moment, but then it was cut down throughout different times, so now it's just this like little, still very, very large, diamond. So, it's alleged that the Koh-i-Noor diamond was mined from the Kollur Mine in India sometime around the 14th century, or even before that, 'cause it was documented in the 14th century.

So, the diamond was used by many different royals in the Indian court.

In the Indian court, your rank and your importance was judged by your jewelry, not your clothing, like in traditional European kind of settings and things like that. So, your importance like rank, like I said, was judged by not only the color of whatever your gemstone was, but the setting, the size, all these various different things.

So, the Koh-i-Noor

Was a lot larger, like I said, so that was like the prime piece of jewelry that you could have. As I mentioned, this diamond was owned by many different royals in the Indian courts until the Second Anglo-Sikh War. So, at the end of this war in 1849, two events happened.

The British conquered the Punjab Kingdom, and the last Treaty of Lahore was signed.

With this treaty, the diamond was officially ceded or given to Queen Victoria. But, here's the kicker, that treaty was signed by a 5-year-old child. So, Duleep Singh was five when he was put into power.

His mother served as his regent, or like the equivalent of a regent, which means that she was in control. But

Duleep was kept separate from his mother and from any other members in the court, so he was only allowed to interact with English people because the English took over. So, you have this young boy who doesn't know what is going on, you have members from a distant foreign land telling you, "Hey, you need to do this," and then this signs over the diamond.

It's a very sketchy history. It's a very sketchy way that it was given to Queen Victoria. In addition, Duleep Singh was also forced to convert to Christianity and was forced to move to England.

It's a very messed up story and a very messed up thing to do to a child, to put it mildly. There were also many other things that would happen, but I'm just trying to keep this short. So, technically, yes, the royal family does own the Koh-i-Noor diamond.

However, it was done in a sketchy way. Morally and legally though, I would argue that they should not have it. Now that Queen Elizabeth has passed,

I think that this would be a great way to sort of, you know, clean the slate, remove specific artifacts that you shouldn't have, get rid of your pieces of colonial power, if you will, so that diamond. There are also a bunch of other things that countries have asked for as well, including the Elgin Marbles, the Great Star of Africa diamond, and the Rosetta Stone, just to name a few.

So, personally, I think this is a very good time to sort of wipe the slate clean and get rid of these things that all their countries are asking for back. But that is my own two cents. I don't know the entire story, I will fully admit that.

I don't know the entire story of every little intricate thing possible. I personally am not an expert in repatriation. I would honestly have no idea where to start.

However,

Looking at certain historical instances, I would say needs to be returned immediately to the people of India. I know that other countries are it's a little contested. Other countries are claiming to also want to own the diamond, so just a lot of things to keep in mind, but I think no time better than the present to wipe the slate clean.

So, finally, our something blue this week is going to be a very beautiful blue building. Let me just get into it. UNESCO announced that it supports a bid by Ukraine to add the historic port of Odesa to its World Heritage List of protected sites.

So, in addition to being a major port and transit hub for Ukraine's grain exports, it also houses the Odesa Fine Arts Museum.

This is a 19th-century palace that houses over 12,000 works of art, or at least it did before the war. Let me give you a little bit more backstory. This museum is only 7 mi away from the front line of Russian invasion.

Thankfully, most of the collection was removed by museum staff a long time ago, months ago, for safekeeping, but part of the building has actually been destroyed by Russian artillery fire, or maybe not destroyed, but damaged heavily.

So, if Odesa is added to the World Heritage List, the city would legally be protected under the Geneva Convention, which means that if Russia attacked the city in any sort of way, then there would be severe consequences to pay, so I really hope that does not happen. I wish that none of it happened, but here we are. So, according to UNESCO, over 175 Ukrainian cultural and historical sites have already been damaged by the Russian invasion, so since February.

These include monuments, museums, libraries, and religious buildings, so hopefully Odesa can be added. I'll keep you up to date on that and let you know all those things, but it's very interesting to be living we're constantly living in history, but it's interesting to see things like this still happening, even though we hear about it in our old like World War II studies and things like that.

It's just it's interesting. You would think we're a little bit past this, but I suppose we are not as a society,

But yeah. So, I will keep you updated on that. I really hope it gets added.

I hope that all the conflict can be resolved, and yeah, I don't like conflict, so. Anywho, okay, so that'll do it for this episode of BY AMARA. If you liked this episode, be sure to like it, subscribe on my YouTube channel, or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, not shilling any podcasts.

Send me any stories you find particularly interesting. I'm always on the lookout for very juicy sort of interesting art historical stories, only art historical stories. Thanks so much for listening, I really appreciate it.

I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I think that's about it, so, again, thank you. My name's Amara Andrew, and I will see you in the next episode. Okay, bye!

Oh, and never stop creating. I almost forgot, so never stop creating. You, all of you.

Okay, that'll do it now, bye!