Art · Museums · Society

In early September 2025 the US State Department, which is responsible for the American pavilion, formally notified the curator John Ravenal that his project with the artist Robert Lazzarini had been selected for the Venice Biennale

In early September 2025 the US State Department, which is responsible for the American pavilion, formally notified the curator John Ravenal that his project with the artist Robert Lazzarini had been selected for the Venice Biennale. The project was called History Maker, and its institutional partner and sponsor was the

Art · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Society

The vandals who tried to attach a propaganda photograph to Picasso's 1901 "Motherhood" and poured paint on the floor of the National Gallery have been found guilty of criminal damage

The vandals who tried to attach a propaganda photograph to Picasso's 1901 "Motherhood" and poured paint on the floor of the National Gallery have been found guilty of criminal damage. Sentence will be passed in the autumn. It is all, of course, very stupid and dreadful,

Observations · Mores · Society

Origin of the word client, from a Roman patron's protection to paid services

I do not usually comment on shameful stories like the one that took place in a Georgian hotel. But for the completeness of this disgraceful drama it must be observed that the word “client” originally denoted a person under protection. The Latin cliens goes back to the verb cluere, “to

NB! · Books · Moscow · Humour

Quotations from Great Men

Quotations from Great Men. The Lenin Library

Two men sit on a wooden bench while two stand behind it. All have long hair and wear colourful jackets. Beyond an iron fence are flower beds and a statue.

NB!

Four young men by a park bench in front of flower beds

Archive · London · Pop Culture

The Beatles’ spontaneous photo shoot of 28 July 1968, remembered as Mad Day Out

On 28 July 1968 the Beatles, instead of working in the studio, staged a spontaneous shoot at various places around the city, with no script, no route and hardly any preparation. The aim was to recover from the gruelling recording of their ninth album and at last to document new

Aristocracy · Observations · Education · Pop Culture

West Heath Girls School and the Scottish Ancestry of Tilda Swinton

Just learned that Tilda Swinton and Diana Spencer were in the same class at West Heath Girls School, a boarding school near Sevenoaks in Kent. Tilda Swinton remembered boarding school as a very lonely place. West Heath Girls School was a prestigious, though not first-rank, private school for girls.

Black and white studio photograph of a nude figure seen from behind, seated on a folding tripod stool.

Archive · Art · People

Studio photograph by Ray Fisher, American photojournalist and portraitist

Training Postponed. A photograph by the American photographer Ray Fisher (1924-2020), taken in the second half of the twentieth century. Fisher was known above all as a photojournalist and the author of portraits of politicians, musicians and public figures, yet his studio work demonstrates a different approach

Coming Up · Faith · Museums · Science · Paris

Exhibition “Believing and Healing” at the Paul Éluard Museum in Saint-Denis until 15 November

At the Paul Éluard Museum of Art and History in Saint-Denis, housed within the walls of a former Carmelite convent of 1625, 400 metres from the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the burial place of the kings of France, the exhibition "Believing and Healing. And Deliver Us from Evil&

Faith · Observations · Society

A call to young people to become missionaries and rebel against inertia and apathy

Leo XIV has recorded a video message to the young Catholics of a small Andean community in Peru, telling them: "The Church needs your holy rebellion" But not a rebellion against what you may have thought. Rather, against the "sofa youth", benumbed and comfortably settled in

Archaeology · Architecture · Faith · The East · Heritage

Speaking of the Syro-Hittite Iron Age temple of Ain Dara in Syria, it is famous first and foremost not as the closest known architectural parallel to the biblical Temple of Solomon, though that is a fact, but for the gigantic footprints in its stone

Speaking of the Syro-Hittite Iron Age temple of Ain Dara in Syria, it is famous first and foremost not as the closest known architectural parallel to the biblical Temple of Solomon, though that is a fact, but for the gigantic footprints in its stone. The prints are a little

Archaeology · The East · Heritage · Society

Looting and military construction destroy the sites of Ain Dara, Palmyra and Apamea

A survey of 200 archaeological sites in Syria has established that in 2015-2025 59% of them were looted, 118 out of 200, almost five times more than in 2011-2016, when 26 of the 200 sites suffered. Traditionally, looting at these places means pits dug by hand. But they

Alexandr Radayev