Reconstructing the impossible: Diocletian and Split

Just no. And no again!

What is it about art, sculpture and architecture that really makes me tingle passionately? Why is it such an obsession with me? This latest lecture from the combined British-Croatian and Split based Croatian-British Societies, given by Goran Nikšić, Conservation Architect, Head of the Service for the Old City Core of Split, provides the perfect answer. He is an architect unravelling a historic architectural mystery; romantic nineteenth century myths are less interesting than the late antiquity/Roman life he is actually uncovering. As he talked about his findings, my brain tingle awoke and once again, I was gripped by an art story.

Revelations in glass

Eleanor Morgan

It's been my intention to write and record something about glass for a while now, primarily looking at it from a combined scientific and contemporary art point of view. For instance, Luke Jerram's mysterious shapes of viruses - ebola, MRSA and swine flu - crafted from glass, or the sculpture made from glass laboratory implements recently exhibited in the Wellcome windows. Then recently there was the stunning Glass Delusions at the Grant Museum which was partly inspired by nature's foray into silica based organisms. The inexplicable and unique scientific nature of glass makes it a perfect material of artistic endeavour, able to capture fragility, a human moment of stillness in a medium of movement.