Word: terrae
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...often makes Plessi’s flames seem positively tame. Sumo wrestlers fight amid a candy-colored geometric background in one room, while another man tries to walk on ice wearing spherical shoes and a human nipple is transformed into an evening bag. There are bronze garbage bags and terra-cotta plungers, photographs of rest-room graffiti and gorgeous formal painting. There’s even a flying steamroller...
...psychiatry at Yale, has spent the past 30 years immersed in the frontal lobe. In the early 1970s, working at the National Institute of Mental Health as one of the few women in the field, she became the first scientist to draw a comprehensive biological map of neuroscience's terra incognita, showing that its tangled web of neurons is actually a series of columns of highly specialized nerve cells...
Africa, its people already plundered by slavers, its animals by poachers and its mineral wealth by miners, is now yielding up its cultural heritage. Across the continent, artifacts are looted from museums, from universities and straight from the ground. Most of the objects--ancient terra-cotta and stone figures, brass and bronze sculptures, wooden grave markers, masks and doors--end up in the U.S. and Europe, where collectors prize such items as the 16th century Benin bronze castings whose technical finesse rivals works produced by Europeans of the same era. Among the most sought-after items are figurines from Kawu...
...museums have been robbed of hundreds of their most valuable items. In an infamous break-in at the National Museum in Ile-Ife in 1994, thieves with an inside contact smashed open 11 display cases. Their haul, which included some of the best-known 12th and 13th century Ife terra-cotta and brass heads--all uninsured--was worth about $200 million. It was the museum's third burglary that year. Nigerian traders also target villages like Kawu, buying artifacts from locals or encouraging rudimentary digging. "It's not exactly excavation," says Abiye Ichaba, head of research and documentation...
...makeshift nature of Cissokho's showroom may contribute to the bargains he is able to offer, but similar deals can be found elsewhere. An online auction by the Howard S. Rose Gallery in Manhattan featured a number of Noks, including a "fine large-size sculptural terra-cotta, low-fire ceramic human head" with a minimum required bid of just $2,300. A woman who answered the phone at the gallery insisted that the items were "certifiably genuine." When asked about Nigeria's prohibition on the export and sale of Noks, she replied, "Maybe they were here before this...