Famous Monuments Research Articles

Le Digital Humanities per lo studio e la comunicazione di beni culturali architettonici: il caso dei mausolei di Teodorico e Galla Placidia in Ravenna

The paper presents a series of methodological reflections on the following themes: survey, restitution, analysis and communication. The objective of the research was the critical reading of two of the most famous monuments in Ravenna and UNESCO heritage sites: the Mausoleum of Theodoric (ca. 520 AD) and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia (before 450 AD). From advanced and integrated survey data, 2D graphs and 3D models were elaborated for hypothesis testing and for the multimedia communication of the scientific contents identified during the work. This second topic of the paper is part of the experiments conducted by the research group on new modes of multimedia communication, interactive and not, based on virtual models as an edutainment tool for enjoying monuments and masterpieces of cultural importance.

The effect of Underground Water on Heritage Sites (A case Study on Graeco-Roman Cemeteries in Alexandria)

Egypt's heritage is one of the most important world's historical civilizations that can be traced from the prehistoric period to the various stages of world civilization. Egypt is famous for its ancient civilizations and earliest and most famous monuments of the world Ancient Egyptian Civilization is one of the sources of modern culture. It attracted and influenced other people of the Ancient world, especially the Greeks and the Romans. The heritage of this civilization is a testimonial writer of their contribution to human progress, development and welfare. Thus, this heritage deserves the best ways for protection and conservation.

Cultural heritage and tourism – an introduction

Cultural heritage and tourism – an introduction

Borum Eshøj Revisited – Bronze Age monumental burial traditions in eastern Jutland, Denmark

ABSTRACTBorum Eshoj is one of the internationally most famous monuments from the Nordic Bronze Age, key to understanding burial customs, social identities and societies. Its uniqueness is reflected in its extraordinarily well-preserved oak log coffin burials, its landscape setting in a distinct barrow group and its complex monumental architecture. Since 1988, new investigations have been conducted at the barrow group, and in 2011, the remains of the classic Borum Eshoj were investigated. The new investigation reveals a monument with an extraordinarily long and complex use-life. It demonstrates a consecutive construction procedure with basic building principles which provide a basis for reinterpreting the barrow and suggesting an initial burial ground compounded beneath one large barrow construction phase. The kerbstones were constructed before the barrow was finished, and the barrow partly covers the kerbstone construction. In a larger perspective, the new investigations indicate that Borum Eshoj, with it...

Bring the Bodies Up: Excavating Washington Square

If cultural anthropologists are correct that our relations with material objects (including the books that we love) are best understood as “entrapping entanglements,” as forged dependencies, it follows that our relations with places may be equally entrapping and entangling.1 One such place for Henry James was his birthplace at 21 Washington Place at Washington Square, which entrapped and entangled him in ways that are revealed, indirectly, in the only work of fiction he ever wrote that he named for an actual place. It is not a cheery story. Cruelty and sadism, familial punishment and revenge; dead children, deadened lives, ghostly relics hatching plots, and unwanted figures from the past returning as if from the grave; everyone and everything in the end tasting of ashes and ruin; and the heroine burying herself in her house on Washington Square, “for life, as it were.” It is Henry James’ American Gothic. Many critics have noted how closely the plot follows an entry in one of his notebooks in which he recorded a dinner table anecdote related by his good friend, the English actress Fanny Kemble, concerning her brother—named Henry—whom she exposed as a cad for attempting, unsuccessfully, to marry for money. But few have noted that none of the strikingly macabre elements in the story can be found there. There are dark forces in James’ American tale (one of the few he attempted) which extend beyond—or lie beneath—its drama. The palimpsest of Washington Square itself, its famous park and monument and architecture, what it preserves and what it conceals of its past, has its analog in the palimpsest of James’ own memory, as his own family history lurks beneath the surface of the story—or is buried beneath it. The reader needs a field guide to know where all the bodies are.

Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, and Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky. Two Manuscripts of “Alexandria” with Continuation in the Time of Troubles

The article introduces into scientific circulation the two manuscripts of the famous monument of the Old Russian literature “Alexandria Serbian” - translation of the medieval novel about the life and exploits of Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia. Both manuscripts - in the Russian State Library (the first third of the 17th century) and in the State Literary Museum (the first third of the 19th century) - contain original additions to the text made by unknown Old Russian scribes. The most interesting of them is inserted in the story of the death and burial of the great commander the lengthy Plach (Lamentation) of his wife Queen Roxanne. The study of this text demonstrates not only its closeness to the traditional Russian funeral widow Crying and Prichitaniya (Wailing), including Plach (Lamentation) of the widow of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich - Tsaritsa Irina, but also the semantic parallels with the quite famous laments of the wife of the eminent commander of the Time of Troubles in Russia Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky - Princess Alexandra Vasilievna and his mother Princess Elena Petrovna, included in the several literary monuments of the early 17th century, where the central place is occupied by the description of his sudden death at the feast, that immediately gave rise to the story of his poisoning. To the Time of Troubles in Russia pointed the original epilogue written to Alexandria in the both manuscripts.

Fracture Mechanics in Ancient Egypt

Probably the first extensive investigation in the field of fracture mechanics was developed by the ancient Egyptian in the period before 3500 BC. The application of this knowledge from investigation on the exact splitting of rock using the fundamental techniques led to the production of many world famous monuments including the pyramids. A description is provided of the unfinished obelisk still lying in the quarries of Upper Egypt. Method of extraction including ancient fracture technique and erection of huge rock sections are presented. Some recent innovative experiments and their result that can be related to the ancient technology are discussed.

“This Marble Head in My Hands”: Green Greeks and the Question of the Parthenon

Nobel laureate George Seferis once shared his nightmare wherein the Americans win the Acropolis in an auction and replace its Doric columns with tubes of toothpaste.1 In his dream, a bespectacled and cleanshaven man in a black suit holds an ivory mallet and decides on the future of the Parthenon. Seferis’s fears of rampant consumerism and cultural dilution are truer in the twentyfirst century than he could have imagined. Greece is in its seventh consecutive year of an economic recession underscored by deep salary and pension cuts. These days, as one walks around a country ravaged by financial depression, Seferis’s nightmare of losing the Acropolis to the highest bidder on a world stage feels more like a moot point than a ghoulish dreamscape.2 The last few winters in Greece have manifested such apocalyptic visions as those of the Parthenon, its most famous monument, enveloped in smoke. Waste has a choke hold on Greece’s crown jewel, the Parthenon, which serves as a constant reminder of the disenfranchisement of the poor to the benefit of the rich. Reflecting on the winter of 2013, reporter James Lewis writes, “People cut down the trees in the city parks for firewood. . . . The resulting wood smoke created the worst smog in decades, obscuring even the Parthenon.”3 Unable to afford heat, debtridden and disempowered Greeks are choosing cheaper and more toxic fuel alternatives.4 Beginning in 2008, wood, coal, and garbage burned by desperate Athenians has been filling the air with invisible and airborne fine particles and carcinogenic compounds that the Environmental Protection Agency (epa) deems extremely harmful; the small-

An introduction to the karst geomorphology of the Bisetun–Taqe Bostan historical region (northeast Kermanshah, Iran) with special emphasis on karst development as a serious threat for the UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Bisetun–Taqe Bostan crushed carbonate massif (northeast of Kermanshah City) is a historical region that includes several famous monuments. Several types of karst features, the surface kind especially, have been developed in the area because of high rainfall in the area, tectonic crushing and high purity of the rocks. The field survey showed that the major karst features are karren, including rillenkarren, trittkarren, and solution runnels. Some of the monument stones by it have been deteriorating. Cavities and caves, solution dolines, and karstic springs are other observed karstic features in the area. Cavities and caves present mostly at intersections of shear faults or joint sets, which are considered the main location of water seepage throughout the limestone mass. Dolines in the region can be divided into two groups including solution and collapse dolines. The first group involves deep and large dolines without surface deposit cover, whereas the second group includes shallow dolines with smaller sizes covered by soil layers. Dolines are not problematic for the monuments because of their relatively high distance from them. There are a number of karstic springs in the study area; the Bisetun and Taq-e Bostan springs are the most important among them. Both springs discharge at a fault surface in vicinity of the monuments. As a part of the present study, deterioration occurring in the monuments due to the karst development was investigated. Moreover, some physical and chemical preservation methods were proposed to protect the monuments.

The hidden paintings of Angkor Wat

The temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one of the most famous monuments in the world and is noted for its spectacular bas-relief friezes depicting ceremonial and religious scenes. Recent work reported here has identified an entirely new series of images consisting of paintings of boats, animals, deities and buildings. Difficult to see with the naked eye, these can be enhanced by digital photography and decorrelation stretch analysis, a technique recently used with great success in rock art studies. The paintings found at Angkor Wat seem to belong to a specific phase of the temple's history in the sixteenth century AD when it was converted from a Vishnavaite Hindu use to Theravada Buddhist.

The Jablonna conference on gravitation: a continuing source of inspiration

First of all I would like to welcome all of you at the main campus of the University of Warsaw—my University. Especially warmly I would like to welcome the youngest participants who for the first time participate in a big international conference. I do understand howyou feel, I do understand your anxiety. Fifty one years ago Iwas able to observe the International Jablonna Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, that later was classified as the GRG-3 conference. In June of 1962, I got my Master of Science degree in physics. My thesis advisor, Professor Leopold Infeld, was the Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee of the Jablonna conference. Professor Infeld asked me to help with such simple tasks as cleaning the blackboard, make sure that chalk was always available, but also—and this was really important—every morning to collect participants who were staying in hotels in Warsaw into a special coach and bring them in time to Jablonna, and in the evening bring them back to Warsaw. So that is how I ended up listening to all lectures and discussions and more. Now looking back from the perspective of half a century I think that the Jablonna Conference was the most important scientific conference that I attended so far. The opening session of the Jablonna conference was held at the Staszica Palace in Warsaw, a short walk from where we are now. It is an easy recognizable building, in front of it is the famous monument of Copernicus (Fig. 1). The first talk was delivered by Professor J. L. Synge on “Relativistic interpretation andmodification of Newtonian models”. On Fig. 2 is Professor J. Synge delivering his talk and, in the first row (from the left) Professors L. Infeld, V. Fock, J. Anderson, T. Newman, R. Penrose and B. Hoffman, and on the far right Dr. Roza Michalska-Trautman. After the first talk,

Using Geospatial Imaging Techniques to Reveal and Share the Secrets of Stonehenge

Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous prehistoric monument in the world. Begun as a simple earthwork enclosure, it was built in several stages with the unique lintelled stone circle being erected in the Neolithic period around 2,500 BC. Today Stonehenge, together with Avebury and other associated sites, forms the heart of a World Heritage Site (WHS) with a unique and dense concentration of outstanding prehistoric monuments. In 2011 English Heritage embarked on a new survey of the monument using a range of geospatial imaging techniques. Undertaken by the Greenhatch Group, a commercial survey company based near Derby, they used a combination of laser scanning and photogrammetric approaches to generate the scale and detailed level of outputs required by English Heritage. This paper will describe the background to this project and its context within previous survey activities at the site. It will explain the data acquisition technology and processes undertaken on site, the datasets derived from post-processing and their filtering and analysis within both subsequent research projects. Alongside a description of how the data is currently being exploited and proposed future applications within the conservation and management of the site, it will finish by considering the impact of developing geospatial imaging technologies.

Lincoln's Body: The President in Popular Films of the Sesquicentennial

Lincoln's Body:The President in Popular Films of the Sesquicentennial Craig A. Warren (bio) The sesquicentennial of the American Civil War has made Abraham Lincoln a cinematic phenomenon. As Americans contemplate the 150th anniversary of the conflict, filmmakers have turned to Lincoln—perhaps the central figure of those years—as a means of commemorating and interpreting the war. Of late, he has emerged as the subject of several television movies and at least one straight-to-rental zombie picture. More notably, the president's life and legacy inspired three major motion pictures early this decade: the 2010 courtroom drama The Conspirator, followed in 2012 by the action-fantasy film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the political drama Lincoln. As expected, scholars have critiqued the historical accuracy and social vision of each film. Yet, few have compared how these works represent the president's physicality, body language, and attire. What values are signaled by different portrayals of Lincoln's face and body? And how do casting, posture, and wardrobe convey messages about the sixteenth presidency and its achievements? By examining Lincoln's embodiment across the three major films, we can better understand how filmmakers wish to interpret Union and Emancipation for early twenty-first century audiences.1 Nearly a century and a half after his death, the image of Abraham Lincoln permeates American society in both obvious and unexpected ways. Stamped on U.S. currency, Lincoln's likeness can be found in billfolds and piggy banks from Alaska to Florida. If few Americans pause to study the president's profile on the humble penny, far grander representations draw widespread appreciation. At the Lincoln Memorial, arguably the most revered of all monuments in Washington, D.C., a marble rendition of the Great Emancipator ponders the new millennium from his elevated seat. More than fifteen hundred miles away, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Lincoln's granite visage participates in the Mount Rushmore pantheon of American presidents. Complementing his face as it appears on cash and [End Page 146] statuary, photographs of the sixteenth president inundate schools and public spaces, and artists and historians comment at length about the man's "extraordinary" countenance. A recent picture book, Lincoln, Life-Size (2009), features enlarged photographs of the politician's lined and poignant face. These blown-up images, the publisher intones, grant readers an "unprecedented window into Lincoln's soul." For those wishing to see Lincoln impersonators, opportunities exist at battlefield reenactments, museums, and historical society events. Nationwide, the Association of Lincoln Presenters promotes 150 "living Lincolns," gaunt and bearded men who don the iconic stovepipe hat to "educate, entertain, and inspire" their fellow citizens. The face of George Washington may be immediately familiar to most Americans, but few have a sense of the first president's physique. By contrast, Lincoln's body is as famous as his head. Long, lean, angular, and often awkward, it is an essential part of his popular image. Indeed, the most famous monuments to Lincoln portray his form from head to toe.2 The ubiquity of Lincoln's image in the popular imagination poses a challenge to filmmakers wishing to represent him on the screen. Viewers have deep-seated expectations for how Honest Abe should look, and how his body should occupy the space around him. Moreover, most audiences are accustomed to seeing Lincoln frozen in photographs, drawings, bronze, and stone. No matter what choices a director makes, a moving, breathing, speaking Lincoln will upset standard ways of engaging the president—and perhaps lead viewers to resist the presentation. In many respects, director Robert Redford eludes the problem in The Conspirator, a film about the trial and execution of Mary Surratt, the woman who owned the boarding house where those plotting against Lincoln often met. The movie poster for the film features the marble face of the Lincoln Memorial, but Lincoln himself is almost entirely absent from the screen. In an early sequence that portrays John Wilkes Booth's attack on the president and the immediate aftermath, Redford shows Lincoln only from a distance or in momentary glimpses. The late Gerald Bestrom, a longtime Lincoln impersonator, assumed the role of the wounded president for these limited shots...

Emanations and Islamic architectural interactions between Iran and Indian subcontinent

Following expansion of Islamic territories toward India, Iranian Islamic architecture also found its way to Indian subcontinent as well as to Far East. Studying the effects of Iranian Islamic architectural arts and the results of its development and maturity in the subcontinent can be considered as a feedback in architectural arts interaction mainstream of the two sides. Muslims constructed their first buildings as soon as they got into Indian subcontinent. Remnants of a mosque from eighth century AD in Indus valley is a sign of this era. In twelfth century AD, the more Muslims arrived to the subcontinent, the more remnants were left. After ages, in an era known as Mogul Empire (Indian Gurkani), the architecture of the subcontinent flourished mainly under the influence of Iranian arts. Historical monument of Taj Mahal is a famous Islamic architectural monument in the world, which was constructed at this era by Muslim masters and architects some of whom were Iranian. Khorshid Palace (sun house), in Kalat Nader city of Iran, is also among those unique monuments which was built in Afsharid dynasty after subjugating India by Nader Shah, combining mastery of Indian architects with Iranian architecture. In this article, we first discuss entrance of Islam to Indian subcontinent, and mention periods of Muslims‘ governance especially during Indian Gurkani. Then the effect of Iranian arts in Indian Gurkani courts on one hand, and footprints of Indian architecture in Khorshid Palace on the other hand, particularly in its decorations, will be discussed.

A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe: re-threading the sequence of a vandalised monument

Great Zimbabwe is one of the most iconic sites in southern Africa and indeed the world, but like so many famous monuments it has suffered from the attention of early excavators who have destroyed key categories of evidence. Chronology is crucial to understanding the development of the various elements of Great Zimbabwe and its relationship to other important regional centres such as Mapungubwe. A number of radiocarbon dates are available, however, and in this study they have been combined with the limited stratigraphic information and with datable imports to provide a Bayesian chronology of the site and its structures. Construction of the stone walls probably began at the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century AD, reaching its peak in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although occupation continued up to at least the sixteenth and probably into the seventeenth century AD. These results indicate that occupation at Great Zimbabwe must have overlapped with that at Mapungubwe, and argue for a polycentric model of sociopolitical complexity in this region of southern Africa during that crucial formative period.

Historical overview of penal institutions of imprisonment in the period from the earliest times to 1917

The article deals with the creation and development of a system of institutions of the penalty of imprisonment to the most famous monuments of the Russian and Ukrainian law.

Malacofauna of the Forum Romanum and adjacent ancient Roman monuments

Land snail assemblages found among the most famous and popular historical monuments of ancient Rome are the subject of this study. Malacocoenoses found beneath walls of ruins in antique places, among grass and other short vegetation, in places visited by thousands of tourists, are usually ignored by naturalists and thus are only rarely examined. They develop in specific habitats, being under constant and strong human impact. The living fauna is accompanied by thanacocoenoses composed of numerous shells. Species associated with open or even xerothermic habitats as well as mesophile ones, accepting both sunny and shaded habitats, are the main components of these assemblages.

Sandpaintings

Sandpaintings Don Lago (bio) The sand was full of footprints. There were lizard tracks, with a zigzagging line where the tail had dragged and swished. There were mouse tracks and jackrabbit tracks wandering from flower to flower, bush to bush. There were beetle tracks and spider tracks. There were raven tracks in a cluster where a raven had landed briefly. There were the tracks of rocks, rocks journeying across a quarter of a billion years. For a quarter of a billion years this sand had been sandstone, hard and well buried. Before that this sand had been sand dunes hundreds of feet deep and hundreds of miles wide, sand washing down from distant mountains, sand blowing on the winds from a nearby ocean. Only geo-recently had this sandstone been unearthed. It felt the sunlight again, the rain again, the wind again. It dissolved back into sand. When this sand had last felt the imprint of animal feet, they had been the feet of small lizards. This sand had never known the footprints of dinosaurs, for the dinosaurs hadn’t evolved yet. It had never known the footprints of mammals or birds, ants or butterflies. Now the sand was reading the news of a quarter of a billion years: Earth had flourished with new forms of life. The news included a creature who could look at sand and see in it images and meanings much larger than footprints. I wandered off the trail to a slope of deeper sand, leaned down, and reached out my finger. I traced a line in the sand. I drew a spire, tall and straight and thin. I drew a larger monolith, taller than the spire. I drew the lower cliffs that connected them, and the slopes beneath them. I filled this outline with vertical lines to emphasize the skyward reach of the monolith and spire. I looked up at the real landscape, at the real monolith and spire. My drawing was a nice little image of them. I was looking at Monument Valley, full of spires and monoliths, buttes and mesas, rock and sand. It was full of empty space, without [End Page 142] which the monuments would not be themselves, defiant of high and empty space. I was looking at the most famous monument of Monument Valley, an image seen in numerous movies, calendars, and posters. In his 1939 movie Stagecoach, director John Ford sent his stagecoach around and around this monument, pretending it was on a long journey across the West, leaving viewers imagining that the West held endless monuments like this. This monument is called West Mitten Butte, which is west of the similar-looking East Mitten Butte. The name “mitten” refers to the thumblike spire and the handlike monolith. These names were given by a Colorado-born, childhood-mittened, white pioneer, not by the desert-born Navajos who had lived here for centuries. Yet the Navajos did recognize the monuments as hands, the dormant hands of the gods. The Navajos have their own names for these monuments, names full of time and generations, living and dying, sun and wind and rain and sand, pinyon trees and horses, gods and ceremonies. West Mitten Butte is the only part of Monument Valley that holds a hiking trail open to the public, a three-mile loop. Aside from a rough and sandy driving loop, the rest of Monument Valley is private, for it is still a home to many Navajos, who live in hogans among the monuments, herding sheep and weaving rugs and performing ceremonies as they have for generations. I was starting out on the hike, dropping from a ridge, down a sandy slope, and onto the valley floor. I was being followed. I was being followed by footprints, deep and distinct in sand that had gone without rain for weeks. I was adding a new shape to all the other shapes that only cells, with their geometrical skills, could make against the formlessness of sand. Yet the wind was already quickening, this early in the morning, already starting to blur my identity, erase my journey. Already the wind was starting to erode my picture of the monument back into mere sand...

Pre and Post Convention Tours at the Conference Destinations: Adding Pleasure to Business Tourists in Agra

It is widely accepted fact that convention tourists look for some leisure activities at the end of their business trips. Sometimes they are accompanied by their friends or families to add on their experience of visiting such destinations. This research paper identifies the benefits which destinations and business tourists can gain while participating in any convention or conference. While the main focus of a business tourist is to attend the convention or business meeting, but the tours offered to the business tourists pre and post convention, can bring benefit to all the stakeholders. The paper tries to find out these benefits and see how these pre and post convention tours can bring economic benefits to destinations. Agra is known world over for its world famous monuments. So the business travelers can be offered a leisure trip along with their work. To analyze the role of these tours on the economic development, the types of tourists who do and do not extend their visit, will also be studied. The role of convention, hospitality, and tourism professionals can be considered in motivating business tourists to extend their duration.

BUENOS AIRES, CITY OF STATUES

1 2 4 Y B U E N O S A I R E S , C I T Y O F S T A T U E S B O N N I E C O S T E L L O Everyone told me I’d love it – the dance, the food, the sports, the blend of cultures, the Old World charm, and the New World vitality. YetduringmytendaysinBuenosAires(anescapetosummerduring a paralyzing Boston winter) the city seemed strangely frozen, or at least immobile. This certainly had a lot to do with economic stagnation , corrupt government, stony bureaucracy, the eroding social institutions, neglected infrastructure, the spectacle of desperate poverty amid lavish, aimless wealth. Not to mention a heat wave that caused repeated power outages throughout the city. (The traf- fic lights would suddenly grow dark, creating gridlock and pedestrian paralysis on the Avenida 9 Julio, one of the widest streets in the world.) These are the conditions that drive so many Argentines to a feeling of bronca (the word basically means really frustrated and angry, or ‘‘pissed’’). But perhaps it was also the monuments. If you take the standard bus tour – the one that picks up tourists at six di√erent downtown hotels, moving less than a mile in thirty minutes until you finally head down to Libertador, where you could easily have walked in ten – the word you will hear more than any other from the guide with the microphone at the front of the bus is monument, or, as our particular guide pronounced it in 1 2 5 R Spanglish, muonoment, as in ‘‘on your left you will see a muonoment to Carlos Pellegrini,’’ without a word to enlighten us as to the backstory of this looming e≈gy. There are probably more statues per square mile in Paris, but somehow they make a stronger collective impression (as statues, not as commemorated persons) here in this so-called Paris of South America. Buenos Aires is cluttered with public monuments, and for the most part nobody cares anymore what or whom they honor. (Nothing unique to Buenos Aires about that!) Perhaps because it was the Christmas holiday and most of B.A.’s porteños (locals) who could had left the city, it seemed to belong to these forgotten memorials (and to the intimidating and ubiquitous street dogs). Anything can be a monument, of course. Buenos Aires has embraced the pop artist Claes Oldenburg’s blow-up scale, but without his irony. Still life is a favorite genre. One of the city’s most famous monuments is a giant flower, Floralis genérica, in United Nations Square, commissioned and paid for by Lockheed. The sixty-sixfoot -high piece of metal includes a light-sensitive element that causes the petals to open and close according to solar activity, turning pink at sunset. (Often the mechanism is out of order, however.) Does it stand for anything other than naturaleza muerta? Perhaps if we had thought about scale in terms of an aerial view (Lockheed’s), the flower would have seemed less grotesque. In Buenos Aires, the body itself is treated like a monument. There are more nip-and-tuck surgeons, lifting bottoms and enlarging busts, than anywhere else in the world. Argentina’s signature art form, the tango, brings dance very close to sculpture. Not surprisingly, Buenos Aires has many monuments to the tango legends. There are, of course, several statues to those who made tango famous: particularly Carlos Gardel, whose tango songs pervaded the radio in the twenties. He reaches out his hand in serenade to that remote and eternal beloved, the Audience. (This is a favorite pose as well of Argentine politicians – living and bronzed – Evita on her balcony crooning to the crowds.) The most famous statue of Gardel is the one in the Abasto neighborhood where he grew up. Mute though he is, he holds a cigarette burning between his bronze fingers – an ember ever replenished by admirers . Gardel died in an airplane crash at the height of his career (Lockheed again?) and was mourned as if he were Napoleon. 1 2 6 C O S T E L L O Y The city has recently erected a monument...