Turkey-Syria earthquake: the race to save damaged heritage sites

This week: Turkey and Syria. As the countries reel from the devastation of the 6 February earthquake, how can communities and agencies protect damaged heritage? We talk to Aparna Tandon from Iccrom, the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, about culture’s significance in the humanitarian response to the crisis.

Disasters & destruction

Here's how you can help the post-earthquake aid effort in Turkey and Syria through art

Chinma Johnson-Nwosu

As Alice Neel: Hot off the Griddle arrives at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, we take a tour of the show’s key moments with its curator, Eleanor Nairne.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is a Germantown “eye-dazzler” blanket, made between 1895 and 1905 by a Diné weaver from the Navajo Nation. It’s part of a new show at the Bard Graduate Center in New York, Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest. Hadley Jensen, the curator of the exhibition, tells us more.

• Disasters Emergency Committee’s Turkey-Syria Earthquake: dec.org.uk; a PDF of Aparna Tandon’s handbook First Aid To Cultural Heritage In Times Of Crisis is available for free at iccrom.org.

• Alice Neel: Hot off the Griddle, Barbican Art Gallery, London, until 21 May. The book accompanying the exhibition is published by Prestel, priced £24.99 or $29.95.

• Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest, Bard Graduate Center, New York, until 9 July. An online exhibition featuring an interactive catalogue has approximately 250 items from the American Museum of Natural History’s collection of Navajo textiles will be available later this month at bgc.bard.edu.