This is one of my favorite x-rays of an animal mummy in our collection. You’ll get to see this ibis mummy and many others in our upcoming exhibition Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt. In anticipation of this exhibition, conservators have been reviewing our animal mummies for stability. We’ve also been reviewing our past x-rays, CT scans and other analysis with colleagues from other institutions to compile as much information as possible. 

This x-ray and additional CT scans suggest that this is a male Sacred Ibis, and that all of the internal organs were removed. Radiocarbon dating of the linens suggests this mummy is from 410-200 B.C.E.

Gregory Euclide’s “Preservation Paradox” at Hashimoto Contemporary.

Opening on Saturday, September 8th, 2018 at Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco, California is artist Gregory Euclide’s solo exhibition, “Preservation Paradox.”

Euclide utilizes his signature assemblage and relief-style sculpture to tell the story of the “Preservation Paradox.” His newest series of works, titled Scrapes, are masterfully rendered yet meticulously abstracted landscape paintings which investigate the environmental cost of art materials.

Says Euclide of the series, “Acrylic paint, a petroleum product, is used to generate the illusion of land or water when in a pile or scraped across the surface, as well as thinned out and used to generate the illusion of landscape.”  The Scrape series is a study not only of landscape painting, but of paint itself. Thick swaths of acrylic paint serve as both figure and ground, revealing the material’s unpredictable nature as well as its ability to be manipulated into representations of nature.

The exhibition will be on view until September 29th, 2018.