Missing Pieces

Almost three quarters of the golden age of Hollywood has been lost. Preservation only began when film came to be seen as art.

Could a pair of ancient looking coins reveal the existence of a previously unknown Roman emperor?

In 1820 the discovery of an ancient Greek statue with missing arms posed more questions than answers.

Aristotle’s lost treatise on laughter is a serious business. Could laughter lead to the downfall of society?

The question of reconstruction was a thorny issue in postwar Germany, where celebrations of the ‘glorious’ past took on a different hue.

Did two paintings by the Italian master Caravaggio end up in a backstreet shop in Avignon?

Missing fragments of the written record are made all the more conspicuous by their absence.