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Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

  • “Brooks had always had an interest in art and, after marrying a farmer, she made her first butter sculpture in 1867 as a way to promote the product.”
  • “Hidden within Copenhagen’s Glyptotek art museum is a curious cabinet filled with 100 plaster noses.”
  • “… models and dioramas turned the skins of animals into more dimensional interpretations, although they still often got it wrong, like the overstuffed 1860s Horniman Museum walrus with not a wrinkle on its inflated body.”
  • “The problem was that Bouguereau didn’t die penniless, obscure and defeated. He died rich, famous and proud. Also, he definitely wasn’t a genius.”
  • “The same vase was discovered by archaeologists bearing traces of an ancient restoration, suggesting that it was damaged by some clumsy Cretan 4,000 years ago.”