Richard Whiddington

5 days ago | news.artnet.com | Richard Whiddington

Hollyhock House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s eclectic Los Angeles masterpiece, is under threat of closure and losing its UNESCO World Heritage Site status amid drastic budget cuts proposed by the city’s mayor Karen Bass. The mayor’s $13.9 billion budget, which was first put forward on April 21, aims to close a $1 billion deficit brought about by a reduction in tax revenue, liability payouts, and the recovery efforts involved in the recent fires.

5 days ago | news.artnet.com | Richard Whiddington

As the Roman emperor Augustus set about controlling the central Alps in the late 1st century B.C.E., a military outpost was established in his name on the banks of the Rhine. In time, with the frontier against unruly Germanic tribes pushed ever northward, Augusta Raurica developed into a thriving commercial hub at the intersection of multiple trade routes. Today, Augusta Raurica boasts the title of being Switzerland’s largest archaeological park.

6 days ago | news.artnet.com | Richard Whiddington

After 175 years, Gustave Courbet’s slow procession of mourners still stirs even the hardened modern heart. Most obviously, this is because it unflinchingly confronts mankind’s eternal subject and does so on an immense, human-sized scale. But poignancy rests in the details: the freshly dug grave that extends into the viewer’s plane, the dog that has wandered innocently into the scene, the young boy beneath the processional cross who gazes up at an elder, asking for reassurance.

1 week ago | news.artnet.com | Richard Whiddington

To the archaeologist’s eye, the volcanic hill in western Hungary looked promising. Rising nearly 1,500 feet above a broad river basin, the site offered a dominant position over the surrounding landscape. Although the lower reaches had been excavated in the late 19th century, the plateau of Somló Hill itself had remained untouched by either quarrying or archaeology. And so, in early 2023, Hungary’s National Institute of Archaeology began surveying the hill.

1 week ago | news.artnet.com | Richard Whiddington

In 2023, a curious vellum-bound manuscript from the 1580s appeared at auction in the U.K. for the first time. Across more than 100 pages an unnamed author explored the qualities, processes, and cultures of British cheese, making it Britain’s earliest-known book on the subject.