Role of the Middle East in the Development of Photography

Dr Luke Gartlan, of the School of Art History, has co-edited, with Ali Behdad, the volume Photography’s Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation. This publication is part of the Getty Research Institute’s ‘Issues & Debates’ Series. In addition to the co-authored Introduction, he contributed the article ‘Dandies on the Pyramids: Photography and German-Speaking Artists in Cairo’. The book explores European and non-European photography in the Middle East and India and how it influenced the development of photography generally.

The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland: A History

Dr Annette Carruthers of the School of Art History has compiled an authoritative book, The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland: A History (Yale University Press, 2013), the most detailed account to date of the arts and crafts movement in Scotland. Arts and Crafts ideas appeared there from the 1860s, but not until after 1890 did they emerge from artistic circles and rise to popularity among the wider public. The heyday of the movement occurred between 1890 and 1914, a time when Scotland’s art schools energetically promoted new design and the Scottish Home Industries Association campaigned to revive rural crafts.

Legends about the Ark of the Covenant published

An bas-relief image of the Ark of the
Covenant from the Auch Cathedral, France

A newly translated text, the "Treatise of the Vessels" (Massekhet Kelim, in Hebrew), claims to reveal where treasures from King Solomon's temple were hidden and discusses the fate of the Ark of the Covenant itself. The earliest known copy of the text is from the seventeenth century and it is unknown how long before this it was composed. The Ark of the Covenant is a chest that, when originally built, was said to have held tablets containing the 10 commandments; it was allegedly housed in Solomon's Temple. The translated text, which is a collection of entertaining legends about the lost treasures of the Temple, says that the "treasures were concealed by a number of Levites and prophets" writes Prof. James Davila of the School of Divinity in the book "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha More Noncanonical Scriptures, Vol. 1" (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013). Prof. Davila is the first to translate the full text to English.