The ballroom of Queen Victoria’s Buckingham Palace has been brought back to life through Pepper’s Ghost: a 19th-century illusion recreated by Hollywood animation whizzkids. The dancing, music and colour scheme has been revived inside the palace ballroom as part of an exhibition for the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth. The 1856 ball celebrating the end of the Crimean War has been recreated using a Victorian technique called Pepper’s Ghost. Film is projected upwards and then reflected off a near-invisible glass screen set at 45 degrees, making dancers seem to appear magically in the room. Scientist John Henry Pepper’s trick stunned and terrified people in theatres when it first came out. The palace’s original wallpaper, friezes, windows and

Artemis Gallery, one of the world’s premier sources of authentic, expertly researched antiquities and cultural art, will conduct a July 20 timed online auction to benefit the Boulder Walk to End Alzheimer’s Disease. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available exclusively through LiveAuctioneers. “In association with Balfour Senior Living Team, we are donating 100% of the hammer price to the ‘Walk,’ which is the world’s largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s care, support and research,” said Teresa Dodge, executive director of Artemis Gallery. The auction will start at 12 p.m. Eastern Time (10 a.m. Mountain Time) and consists of 110 lots of fully vetted ancient and ethnographic art. All will be offered without reserve, meaning each piece will sell for the highest bid, regardless of the amount. “Collectors are sure to find some

Fifty years after a mighty rocket set off from Florida carrying the first humans to the Moon, a veteran of the Apollo 11 crew returned to its fabled launch pad Tuesday to commemorate “one giant leap” that became a defining moment in human history. “We crew felt the weight of the world on our shoulders, we knew that everyone would be looking at us, friend or foe,” command module pilot Michael Collins said from the Kennedy Space Center. He and Buzz Aldrin, who piloted the module that landed on the Moon’s surface, are the two surviving members from the mission that would change the way humanity saw its place in the universe. Their commander Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, died in 2012 aged 82. The spacecraft took four days to reach the Moon, before the module known as the “Eagle” — whence the iconic phrase “the Eagle has landed” — touched the lunar surface on July 20, 1969.

One of the rarely seen highlights of the McNay’s collection is a group of more than 70 drawings by members of the Kiowa tribe in Oklahoma. A selection of these soulful works on paper are now on view in the Charles Butt Paperworks Gallery as part of the new exhibition, We’re Still Here: Native Americans Artists, Then and Now. The earliest of these drawings—dating to the 1880s—are by Silver Horn, perhaps the most famous of all the Kiowa artists. His art chronicles Kiowa life and culture on the Plains, particularly the population’s struggle for existence during famine and war. “It is rare that we have a chance to see one Silver Horn drawing, so this selection of nearly 20 is a great opportunity to see and appreciate these works that not only document Native American life on the plains but are also incredibly beautiful works of art,” said Lyle Williams, McNay Curator of Prints and Drawings.