LAUSR

This slim volume provides a glorious pictorial record of the now-famous Lod mosaics. I was fortunate to see the mosaics in situ during the summer of 2009 and to curate the first exhibition of the mosaic, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between September 28, 2010 and April 3, 2011. The principal floors then embarked on a prolonged world tour (8), being exhibited at 8 other venues in America and Europe (cf. figs. 2-3, photographs of the installations at the Louvre in Paris and the Altes Museum in Berlin). The lifting of the mosaics in the fall of 2009 (delayed until after an official visit by the Prime Minister of Israel) provided much valuable information about the techniques and practicalities of mosaic working (45 and 70-71; fig. 52). It also revealed the existence of what is called here “a second mosaic”, which would be fully exposed in 2014 (46-48 and 94-98). The mosaics are now back in Israel in storage; it is planned to return all of them to Lod so that they can be displayed “on the original spot” in a purpose-built museum to be named the Shelby White and Leon Levy Lod Mosaic Center (8),1 where they will doubtless prove to be a major tourist attraction.