While my writing schedule shamefully gathers dust…

…here are two articles from the New York Times archives on architecture in Georgia. In one, written in 2013, the author asks whether Tbilisi’s new skyline (along with the modern marvels cropping up in Kutaisi and beyond) are “slapdash commercialism ruining the culture’s authentic history or a step toward a more progressive society.” In his…

The Mother of All Statues

“Heavy Metal Motherland.” Historian Nina Tumarkin coined this term in The Living and the Dead to describe the woman-as-nation statues that rose across Soviet republics during and after World War II. Best known and often recalled are Kiev’s “Mother Motherland” (1981) and Volgograd’s “Motherland Calls” (1967), two gargantuan figures crowning memorial centers to the Great…