Ruined Building, Assouan, Egypt 1896

Curator: I’m immediately struck by the shimmering heat radiating from this watercolor. It’s like looking at a mirage. Editor: This is Denman Waldo Ross's "Ruined Building, Assouan, Egypt." The current location of the work is the Harvard Art Museums. Curator: There's a sense of impermanence, isn't there? The crumbling structure almost melts into the landscape. Perhaps it’s also a reflection on colonialism and the relics of empires. Editor: Absolutely. Ross, painting this in 1896, positions himself as an observer, a tourist gazing upon a landscape shaped by complex power dynamics. It could even be interpreted as a comment on the transience of power itself. Curator: I see that in the brushstrokes. Loose, gestural, as if the building is actively dissolving before our eyes, returning to the earth from whence it came. Editor: It serves as a quiet but potent reminder of the ebb and flow of history. Curator: Yes, a world where everything, even the mightiest empires, fades away, leaving behind only the ghost of a memory. Editor: And that Ross captures that so delicately in watercolor makes it all the more haunting.