PBS has now finished airing its series called Civilizations, a nine-part look at the global history of art, which is a well meaning but flawed production.
Author Archives: Michael Press
Michael Press is an archaeologist who writes on Middle Eastern archaeology, biblical studies, and how these fields are presented to the public. He received a PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in 2007. He blogs at textualcultures.blogspot.com and tweets @MichaelDPress.
Posted inArt
An Illegal Archeological Dig in the West Bank Raises Questions About the Museum of the Bible
The Museum of the Bible has been funding a number of scholarly projects, including an illegal excavation in the West Bank that will certainly influence how the public understands the Bible and the ancient world.
Posted inArt
The Colonialist Myth of the Frenchman Who “Saved” the Pyramids
The troubling story fits a tired orientalist theme: Europeans and Americans know more, and care more, about the culture and heritage of West Asia and North Africa than their own inhabitants.
Posted inArt
How Antiquities Have Been Weaponized in the Struggle to Preserve Culture
Surveying the reporting on Syrian antiquities over the last six years reveals a parade of errors, but it is noteworthy that most, if not all, of the errors cut in the same way: to inflate the threat ISIS poses to cultural heritage while ignoring the threat posed by other armed groups.
Posted inArt
As the New Museum of the Bible Opens, Questions About its Scholarship Remain
The Museum of the Bible has the potential to reach a much greater audience than any individual scholar and there is real concern that it will selectively use scholarship to promote an evangelical Protestant view of the Bible and religion.
Posted inArt
How a Mark Twain Travel Book Turned Palestine into a Desert
The Innocents Abroad, the most famous 19th-century account of Palestine, is in the end an elaborate, sustained joke at the expense of the peoples and places of the Mediterranean.
Posted inArt
Letting Go of Our Obsession with Memorials
Over the past 50 years we have encountered the incentive to value every material trace of the past more and more, like we are a society with collective hoarding anxiety.
Posted inArt
Dispelling the Myths Around the Hobby Lobby Antiquities Case
The Hobby Lobby case brings up several vital issues relating to cultural heritage, theft, and war in West Asia, and many of our responses have so far been misdirected.
Posted inInteractive
The Getty’s Online Palmyra Exhibition Falls into Orientalist Traps
A new online exhibition on the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra by the Getty Research Institute forgoes the city’s historical complexity to take an Orientalist approach.
Posted inArt
Raiders of the Lost Archive: How Newly Discovered Manuscripts of Afghanistan Ended Up in Israel
Why is the National Library of Israel adding hundreds of stolen medieval manuscripts from Afghanistan to its collection?
Posted inNews
The West’s Empty Fetish for Ruins
Bloomington, IN. — If you live in Indianapolis and have a family, you’re probably familiar with Holliday Park, located among the elaborate homes of a wealthy north side neighborhood of the city.
Posted inArt
Why Do We Care About Palmyra So Much?
Why recreate Palmyra’s Triumphal Arch and set it up in Western capitals? Why perform European art music in the ancient theater? The organizers suggest that each event is a show of solidarity with Syrians, but these gestures — Western groups drawing attention to ancient remains, primarily for Western audiences — seem like odd ways to accomplish this. Is there another way to explain these events?