Friday Links: art destruction, maligned seagulls, and poetic apples

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:

• Archaeologists are planning to use thousands of 3D cameras to create full digital record of the ancient city of Palmyra, under threat of destruction by ISIS. (You may also be interested in our own comment on the recent events in Syria.)
• By now, you’ve probably had your fill of the video of the twelve-year-old accidentally destroying a renaissance painting. But have you seen the photo of a 6,000-year-old tomb in Spain that was replaced with a picnic table? Yes? Then you might be interested in this listicle of seven other painful art blunders. While you’re at it, you might as well revisit our blog posts on the day Velázquez’s Venus was vandalized and the many travails of the Mona Lisa.

• We can’t help wondering if John James Audubon was pranking us by painting five birds that have never been seen in the wild. And speaking of painted birds, there’s one whose depiction in medieval and early modern art is rare: the much-maligned seagull.
• An artist has transformed centuries-old Japanese Ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) into animated gifs that sometimes include surprising, modern imagery. (We’ve written about some scary, albeit static, Ukiyo-e in the blog.)
• And finally, here’s a poet who “publishes” her work on apples.