Twenty three days and counting. On December 22, the U.S. government shutdown over President Donald Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion in funding to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico. Democrats (and some GOP members) refuse to approve the funding, calling the wall immoral, unnecessary, and “a giant …
This weekend, the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) met in Katowice, Poland with the aim of reaching a global climate agreement. Almost 200 hundred nations’ diplomats were in attendance, and all agreed to track their annual …
Last month, the Medford Public Library, in the town where Tufts University is located, announced an auction of “surplus goods”. The goods turned out to be a number of Native American religious objects, including shaman’s masks and rattles and a totem pole, all of …
The Maasai have been part of a process of cultural decolonization at Oxford’s famous Pitt Rivers Museum. The Living Cultures initiative is a collaboration between the museum, a Maasai community based campaign group called Oltoilo Le Maa, and community development organization InsightShare. This initiative began …
A year ago this month, Christie’s Auctions sold Salvator Mundi, one of about twenty known paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, for over $450 million, shattering all previous auction records and becoming the most expensive painting to ever be sold. The identity of the mysterious over-the-phone buyer …
Six years after the art heist of the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, one painting has possibly reappeared in Romania under strange circumstances. The painting, Picasso’s Tête d’Arlequin, was one of seven works by masters including Matisse, Monet, and Gauguin valued at over $23 million. Until the …