Friday Links: Game of Thrones, humiliated Hercules, and more

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:

• How do you clean a Jackson Pollock? Very carefully.
• Is it in good taste to have images of nudes in your bookplates? Depends. Do they meet all these requirements? (You may remember that we have a soft spot for bookplates.)
• And speaking of nudes and good taste, this statue of Hercules is getting rather unusual treatment.
• Perhaps you’ve already tried Snapchat’s Face Swap filter with your friends, but have you tried it on ancient statues?
• The Carta Marina was one of the most precise depictions of any part of Europe in the 16th century. Except for a few details, like the leviathan and the monstrous water pig.

• Game of Throne’s production designer reveals the show’s architectural inspirations. The linguist who invented Dothraki, the show’s language, assures us that it has consistent grammar and phonology. And evidently the characters were based on real medieval figures. (Reminder: this is not the first time we come up with artistic justifications for our obsession with the show.)
• A man digs in his backyard and accidentally finds a “perfectly preserved” Roman villa.
• After ISIS destroyed many of the features of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, a team of archaeologists has created a replica of the city’s Arch of Triumph in London, based on 3D scans of the structure.
• A growing body of research suggests that boring buildings and bland cityscapes exact a physical and mental toll on residents.
• What are we to make of memorials celebrating historical figures who stood for concepts we now find morally ambiguous?