Tomb of Santa Claus / Found Artemisia Gentileschi painting / Historic moment for museum workers / Why are people protesting with art?

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Buy Amara. This is a weekly news show where I discuss contemporary events in the art and history world.

I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew. The format for this show is one that is typically used by Western brides. Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

This week though, we're going to be changing it up again, as always, it seems. So we're going to have two something olds and two something news. So this week, we're going to be discussing the tomb of Santa Claus, a hidden-in-plain-sight masterpiece, you know, that's like one of my favorite things, a historic monument, or a historic moment, rather, for museum workers, and why the hell are activists throwing things at famous art?

So we're going to be discussing all of that and more in this episode of Buy Amara. So let's get to it. Had to move my mic a little bit just to make sure it's like right here.

So I like to start the show with some updates. I don't have any unfortunately on everything that I've talked about in the past. Things move slowly, so that's just how it goes, I guess.

So it is post-Halloween right now. So happy post-Halloween. I need to take down all of my decorations, but I don't want to.

I like I've said it before, but I love Halloween. It's genuinely my favorite holiday. I just I go all out.

Oh, I mentioned in the last episode that Geoff and I might be going to a corn maze, and we did. It's in It's called Richardson's Farm, and it's in Spring Grove, Illinois. So it's literally like on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin.

It's really far north. It was very fun. I was pleasantly surprised.

I had no idea what to expect. I've never been to a corn maze before. I grew up in a desert in Arizona, so I have never seen corn like that before.

It was really fun, though. It was so much Sorry, that was very loud. It was really fun, though.

I got to see all this corn. It was like Okay, so let me just start from the beginning. It was a big farm area, like way out in the middle of nowhere.

So they had like lots of different like rides and things. It was kind of just like the Wild West. Like you pay an admission fee, and then you can just kind of do whatever.

And they had Oh, my god, Geoff and I were laughing hysterically. There was like this little train that you could ride around just in a circle, but it was going like I shit you like 50 mph. We only saw it because it was just like zoom.

We're like, "What the fuck was that?" And it was like everyone on it like their faces were like back, and their hair was blowing back, and it was the funniest fucking thing I think I've ever seen. So we're like, "We have to go on that." But yeah, it just takes you on this little like circle, and you go through this like tunnel that's a an old shipping container, like a repurposed one.

So anyway, it was very fun. We went into the corn maze, and it was so fucking dark. I guess I didn't know what to expect.

I thought they'd have lights in there or something. I don't know what. See, I naive desert lady brain.

But I was just like, "Oh, they'll have like lights and stuff, like street lights or something." It was so fucking dark. We didn't bring a flashlight because we didn't know what to expect. So we were using our phones, and then they were about to die.

I brought a GoPro with. So if I have any footage, insert footage here. Very, very dark.

We did end up buying a little flashlight from the gift shop just because I was like, "I cannot be in here in the dark." And then there were like other people, and I kept I watch so many horror movies. I kept thinking like someone's going to pop out of the cornfield and just like knife us or something. So I was just like, "I think we need to have a light source so we can at least like blind them and then like run away if we need to." But anyway, it was very fun.

It was safe. It was just a bunch of teenagers and stuff that were in there, and then us. But yeah, so we had a great time.

I cannot wait to do it again. Maybe we can even go before the end of the season, but we'll see. It might be too late by now, but that's fine.

That's all I have. I don't have any other updates, but corn mazes are fun. That is what I have decided.

Without further ado, let's just get to the show.

So it's a little early in the season, but we're going to start off by talking about Santa Claus, specifically the guy who inspired Santa Claus. So St. Nicholas, this was an actual person.

St. Nicholas was an early Christian bishop who lived between 270 and 343 CE. There are like many stories around his existence, which this will kind of sound like Santa Claus a little bit, hence why it became like the myth.

But St. Nicholas would give presents to like less fortunate kids or like parents, like families who didn't have a lot of money. There's even an old parable that he threw gold coins down the chimney of a family who was considering selling its daughters into sex work in order to provide for the family.

So he's like, "Hey, you don't need to do that. Have some gold." So there are many other stories like this about St. Nicholas and like all of his tales of generosity, which is why Santa Claus is now like this charitable figure kind of thing.

So anyway, the reason why we're talking about Santa Claus, though, is because of the Church of St. Nicholas in Demre, Turkey. And there are a lot of different churches of St.

Nicholas, but we're going to be talking about this one specifically. And we're talking about this one specifically because it's believed that an empty tomb that was found within the church during excavation work may have actually been St. Nicholas's original resting place like when he died.

That's kind of cool. Like I'm not religious at all in any sort of capacity, but I still think that's pretty cool. So St.

Nicholas's body was believed to have been placed in this church in Demre, Turkey, but then it was removed by Crusaders in 1087 CE because why not? They just fucked everything up. And then his body was transferred to Bari, Italy.

So not only did archaeologists find this hidden tomb, but they also found these really beautiful mosaic floors. Or actually, I should back up a little bit and provide you with some more context. So there was an old church on the site where this Church of St.

Nicholas is now that was from the 3rd century CE, so like Byzantine-era church. This spot, however, flooded because of rising sea levels, sometime in the Middle Ages. So then this other church in like the I think it was 7th or 8th centuries, they built this other church on top of this flooded one.

Now archaeologists are excavating into this 3rd century church. So they found that tomb, they found a fresco of Jesus in there, too, apparently. And now they found these 3rd century mosaic floors, which if you know anything about Byzantine-era things, especially their mosaics, they are phenomenal.

They are absolutely beautiful. I remember the first time I came into contact with Byzantine artwork, it was actually at the Art Institute of Chicago. They had a whole beautiful exhibit about it.

I have a book on it, actually. It was phenomenal to see. Just some of the most beautiful stuff.

And like I said, I am not a I'm not religious at all in any capacity, but it was just so beautiful and moving. It was like, "Wow. Like I get it.

Like I get how people could have been like swept up in this in the days of yore, I guess." But we're not going to talk about religion right now. But the artwork itself, just if you look at the technical craft of it, is phenomenal. It's absolutely beautiful.

So what's really cool, like I mentioned, this tomb is believed to have been the resting place of St. Nicholas. So what's interesting about this being St.

Nicholas's resting place is that this 3rd century church that's under that medieval church that I talked about, St. Nicholas was actually the bishop there. So he walked upon these mosaic floors and stuff like that.

There's an archaeologist who was quoted in an article that I found who was like, "Holy shit. This is so cool." He didn't say exactly that, but that was the gist of it. So excavations have been going on at this church since 2017, primarily because it was believed that this was St.

Nicholas's original resting place. They had these surveys that were done, so they were able to see into the floor and see that there were like these empty like spaces, which would be tombs. And this particular church has been a UNESCO World Heritage site, which we've talked about other UNESCO World Heritage sites in episodes past.

But this has been one since 1982. It's just a really cool story. It's really neat.

I love Byzantine artwork and things like that. It's just so beautiful, like I said. So anywho, once these mosaics are completely unearthed, they will be exhibited to the entire world, which will be very cool.

I might have to make a pilgrimage, a non-religious pilgrimage there or something.

So this week we're going to be talking about another hidden-in-plain-sight masterpiece, which is one of my absolute favorite things, like when it's just literally a an artwork. Sorry, I was just so excited. But literally when there's an artwork that it's like, "This could be it, but it might not be." And then it turns out to actually be this famous artwork, painting, person, whatever, it's really freaking sweet.

So unfortunately, though, this piece was only identified like seriously because of a massive tragedy that happened. In August 2020, there was a massive explosion in Beirut in Lebanon, and that killed 145 people and injured thousands and left thousands homeless as well. In addition to the loss of life, many, many, many buildings and homes were damaged, including the Sursock Palace and Museum, which is the building that we're going to be talking about today.

So the palace is a historic mansion / art museum. The Sursocks are a very wealthy family in Lebanon, and in this art museum mansion kind of thing, they collected a lot of different Italian Baroque artwork as well as 19th and 20th century Lebanese paintings. So with this explosion that happened in 2020, much of the palace, which had just reopened in 2010 after the after repairing damage from the Lebanese Civil War.

So it just had like 10 years, which is a decent amount of time, but it's still like, "We just finished like restoring this, and now it's blown to bits again." It was largely destroyed, including many different artworks that were in there as well. And amongst the wreckage was this 17th century mystery painting. So this piece had extensive damage, and it looked like a piece of Swiss cheese, just because there were so many different holes in it.

But this actually worked out for the piece in question because it was sent to be restored at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. When restoration experts were working on it, they were like, "Holy shit, we think this was made by Artemisia Gentileschi." How cool is that? I love Artemisia.

I think most females in the art space have a proclivity for Artemisia Gentileschi, just because she's one of those rare female masters, like old master kind of things. So it's just really neat that yet another piece of Gentileschi's oeuvre can be like identified and then it can be shown to people like me who are big Gentileschi fans.

This painting, it's very, very big. She did a lot of really massive artworks throughout her life. So this particular painting depicts a scene from the myth of Omphale, or Omphale, however you pronounce it, and Hercules, in which Hercules is forced to become Omphale's servant for a year.

So this myth has been recreated in a wide variety of different artistic mediums throughout history, like poetry. I think there's a play about it as well, or an opera. Sorry, an opera, not a play.

And a bunch of different artwork. It makes sense that Gentileschi would paint this particular story because she really focused on like female empowerment paintings. That's what we would call it today, but just like instances where the woman is in power in these scenarios and things like that, which we can tie that back to her life story and things like that.

We can also see that in like her Judith Slaying Holofernes painting as well. That's like a quintessential beautiful piece, especially if you look at it in the midst of Caravaggio's version of it, too. Really cool.

You see her Judith is such a badass, and she's just like, "I'm going to kill this motherfucker. I don't care." Anyway, that's a topic for a different time. So this painting that is the hidden Gentileschi painting, like I said, it's currently being restored at the Getty Museum in LA, and I think it's supposed to be Yeah, it's supposed to take until 2024 to complete this restoration.

Once it's finished, though, it's going to be on display at the Getty next to another rediscovered masterpiece of Gentileschi's that was found in 2019, titled Lucretia. That'll be really cool to see them next to each other. Maybe there could even be like a whole Gentileschi retrospective or something like that, especially as more pieces come into play.

There is an art historian in Lebanon, I forget his name. His first name is Gregory. I remember that.

But he essentially did his whole graduate work studying the collection at the Sursock, which is where this Gentileschi painting was before it when it was destroyed. He did his whole graduate work looking at the Sursock collection to see if any of them were Gentileschi paintings, and he actually has identified a couple, including this one he believed it was, which, shocker, it is.

So we need to listen to this guy and see what else he said about Gentileschi paintings because there might be a little treasure trove there, which would be really cool. Hopefully, there are more Gentileschi paintings to come.

Our first something new this week is a hopefully landmark decision for museum workers. So a couple weeks ago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which I'm just going to call the PMA from now on because that's a lot of words to say, they reached a landmark agreement between the museum and the union. So workers began striking on September 26th, and their strike lasted 19 days.

This strike actually, though, started like 2 years prior in August 2020. A lot happened in August 2020. A lot happened in the past few years.

So this started in August 2020, though, when workers voted to unionize. Negotiations between the museum itself, like the higher ups, and then the workers have been dragging on for 2 years because the union and the museum couldn't come to an agreement on salary increases. The union rejected the PMA's initial offer of wage increases totaling 8 1/2% over the next 10 months and then 11% by July 1st, 2024.

The new deal, though, actually includes retroactive salary increases to July and 14% raises over the next 3 years. Also, workers will get lower healthcare costs and 4 weeks paid parental leave, and the minimum hourly wage for a museum worker is set to increase from $15 to $16.75, which that's a huge jump. Like, that's amazing.

The contract had a 99% majority vote in favor of all proposed items. So definitely a landslide like, "Yes, we will do this." At the time of the strike, unfortunately, the museum had apparently hired scabs or people like to break pick-up picket lines to do the labor of the people who were out picketing. So these people went into the museum and installed the blockbuster exhibition Matisse in the 1930s that's supposed to come out soon.

That is a huge middle finger to the people who are picketing and protesting out in front of the museum. So that is going to be a very sore subject, and it further hurts the relationship between these two parties and these two factions. So despite the scabs being hired to install this exhibition, this is a huge deal for museum workers, not only at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but also just museum workers in general across the country.

Hopefully, this will allow people to have more of a feeling like we can actually fight and win to have livable wages and things like that and benefits. The museum field, like I've mentioned in previous episodes, is absolutely horrific. That is one of the main reasons why I don't work in it.

I did for a little bit, and I was like, "F this. I'm out of here." It's just you don't make a lot of money. It's very much a thankless job.

It's very competitive, and you have the same five people you went to grad school with all competing for the same jobs and everything. Museums are very can be very beautiful places. They can also be very horrible places.

So having this way that workers were able to figure out and unionize and make sure that they can get livable things like benefits and livable wages, which it's still very low, but it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully, things can just get better with time. I feel like this is a big step toward that.

So I just wanted to celebrate that. I think that's really great. You get out there, if you are a museum worker, get out there and make change because nobody is they're not going to give it to you.

You do have to, unfortunately, like fight for it like this, but things can happen. So just hopefully that can be good news for you.

So there have been a lot of activist protests in art museums lately. By the time this episode comes out, I know there will probably be like 10 others in this time span. But why art museums?

This is a question that a group of museum directors kind of tried to figure out or at least have a discussion about at a panel titled Museum of the Future Between Aesthetics and Social Responsibility at the Qatar Creatives that was held at the Islamic Museum of Art in the capital city of Doha. I almost got all the way through it without messing up a word.

I got close, though. So included in the panel were Adam Weinberg from the Whitney Museum in New York City, Tristram Hunt from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Arturo Galansino from the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, and Zeina Arida from the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar. So one of the main questions that was debated was whether or not museums should take a stand on social issues globally, not just locally.

So the heart of that question, though, is who does the museum serve, the establishment or the public? And this is a question that many museums have talked about for a while. It's part of like institutional critique, which we'll talk about that in a minute, which is something that artists do is to critique the museum, which I struggle with a little bit because you are showing these works in the museum that you are critiquing.

But I get it. But there are some tricky things to it, and a lot of people have published a bunch of stuff. I'm not going to bore you to death with that.

In response to this question of who do museums serve, either like their benefactors, I say the establishment, but essentially their benefactors or the public, Weinberg of the Whitney Museum in New York City acknowledged that their money, quote, "comes from corporate sources, private sources." But then he stated that at the same time, they show art, they, quote, "show art that is very much often counter to funders and supporters." So the Whitney is funded by private money, I'll just call it, but then they show art that maybe questions these ideas and questions class and social and all these different things, which we can tie that back to her life story and things like that.

He also, though, stated that he didn't believe it was the Whitney's role as a museum to stand up and give their take on every single issue. Instead, he believes that a museum should be the, quote, "microphone for the artists who want to stand up and address those issues." He further stated that the museum would then be further politicized, even though museums are political in their own right.

I get what he's saying is that, you know, the Whitney would kind of be this like, quote unquote, "blank canvas" for the artists to come and discuss whatever they want to. It isn't that, though, like just generally broadly speaking. You typically have some of the same issues that are being discussed by the same people, if that makes sense.

But museums are inherently political. Everything is political, whether or not you are political. Like, I don't think of myself as a political person, but I do I am political because I do have certain beliefs that are political.

Like you can't get away from it. You can't get away from politics at all. Even if you think you aren't political, you are just by where you live, who you are, what you drive even, what you make, what you do.

Everything is political, unfortunately. I hate to break it to you. Hunt from the Victoria and Albert Museum also backed up Weinberg's thoughts about this, stating that the museum should be vehicles for political protest and not actually like have their own say or thoughts and opinions or something.

Like specifically, they're talking about social media. Hunt further stated, quote, "I regard museums as civic institutions playing their role in society as providing a frame and context for the political and social discussions while remaining highly trusted." Like I said, I also kept thinking about institutional critique when I was reading this because that's like one of the main formats that critiques the institution while also being included in the institution.

So like Fred Wilson is one of my favorite artists who does that. He's done a lot of really phenomenal work like Mining the Museum and then also, oh, what the hell is it called? Guarded View.

Also, Fred Wilson's Guarded View, that's what it was. I was close. So just talking about this idea of being sort of the blank slate and allowing artists to get their message across in a platform, I think that's hugely valuable, and I think that's really great, but just making sure that everybody can do that is a big issue, and I know that's something that institutions are saying that they're working on, so that's a big whole other topic.

So the other two panelists, Galansino and Arida, believe that museums do need to take positions on these issues, though, and that they aren't these neutral vessels or vehicles, that they should actually have a voice and an opinion on all these different matters, so it's a very divided issue or a very divided concept that some museums are going to be like, "Absolutely, no.

We're not going to comment on anything," and then some other institutions are going to be like, "Be like, absolutely, we're going to comment on everything." I think it just depends on the institution. And then further along in their conversation on this panel, the question of how to deal with the current climate protesters within museum spaces came up.

So Weinberg from the Whitney responded, quote, "It's people putting themselves on a stage in order to bring attention to something. But you have to ask, does this really change anything? Does this really open up a question?

And also, is it an understanding of how art functions even in its time?" That is a very interesting take on this, because I've gotten so many messages in the past few weeks and days of people being like, "What do you think about this? And how do you feel about these climate protesters?" I have my own thoughts and opinions on it, but I am not involved in it directly.

Obviously, here I am. So I have it from my perspective of where I am at in my life, and I'm not part of any of these activist groups like that. I just have to wonder, what is this protesting?

So they are the Just Stop Oil protesters. I have to wonder, you know, are these institutions that the people are protesting at, are they like pro-oil benefactors or something? Does the artwork that they're protesting on, like using that artwork, I mean, is it that there's some sort of oil tycoon tie to that?

Is it just because these are oil paintings that they're protesting that, which is really foolish? Or like Weinberg from the Whitney said, is it just to get attention called to something, which I feel like if you glued your hand to the oil executive's desk, you could still get that kind of attention. So I just I guess I don't follow the logic as much, other than to get into headlines.

I personally don't find it a successful thing. Maybe you do, which if you do, let me know in the comments below. I'm very curious to hear everybody's opinions.

I think that there are different ways to go about this. You're making more work for the people who are not executives at these museums. Like people have to clean these up.

These are the workers who are getting paid $15 an hour or something who have to deal with this. They have to deal with your stupid ass and getting you out of the institution. People who make maybe a little bit more have to clean up these paintings, and then everyone else has to figure out how do we protect this artwork.

So I feel like this is making a lot more work for people who have absolutely nothing to do with whatever it is you are protesting, which that isn't even coming across clearly either. Yeah, I don't know. I personally don't think it's very successful.

I have a lot of other thoughts and opinions, but I'm curious to hear other people's takes on this and things like that. It has worked because we are talking about it now, but otherwise, I don't know if it's actually going to be successful in the long run to get their message across. Hopefully, this will be the last we have to talk about this.

I like I said, I feel like there'll probably be 10 more instances by the time this actually comes out on Wednesday. So we'll just have to wait and see. I really hope that no artwork is irreversibly damaged.

So far, so good. If it does get irreversibly damaged, I guess it's just part of its story then, just like if a piece of artwork gets damaged like the Artemisia Gentileschi that's all messed up now from the explosion in Beirut that we talked about earlier. That's just my two cents.

Those are my two cents. Whatever. You know what I mean.

I would just say, "Stop it."

Okay. So that'll do it for this episode of Buy Amara. So those are just all my own personal thoughts, opinions, and beliefs, so take them as they are or don't, whatever.

If you liked this episode, please make sure to like it and subscribe, and yeah, if you liked this episode, like it, like I just said. If not, I hope you have a good day and let me know your thoughts below in the comments. I'm curious to hear everybody's perspectives on this, because maybe it's something I just haven't thought of, which I'm very much open to.

Yeah. So that's it. I'm Amara Andrew, and never stop creating.