Architecture · Heritage · Paris
Preparations for the restoration of the Paris Opéra Garnier, opened in 1875, have uncovered toxic lead in the structure of the stage, so works planned to take two years will stretch to at least five. As yet no decision has been made on the method by which the lead is
Art · Observations · New York · Nature
If one is to recall how American painting began and what it portended, one must name the country's first major artistic movement, the Hudson River School. Its voice is usually presented as a hymn to untouched nature. But can you really not sense the anxiety in these majestic
Archaeology · Art · Observations · Heritage · Science · Nature
John Keats feared he might cease to be before his pen had gleaned his teeming brain, «before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain». Our concern is rather that, amid the informational din, the important things of the month should not get lost. Hence the regular digest: the
Science · Humour
The word "banderole" was borrowed from French. Banderole, "pennant, little ribbon", goes back to the Italian banderuola, "little flag". Bandera comes from the Italian word bandiera, "banner, flag". Banderuola and bandiera go back to the Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to
Museums · Observations · Paris · Humour
At the Louvre, as usual, everything is askew. The whole of the second floor is closed, as is 75% of the Department of Decorative Arts, the recently restored Richelieu wing, the art of Islam and the Roman antiquities. Do not ask whether 32 euros might be spent more ingeniously than
NB! · Architecture · Art · Museums
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · Ethnography
The Queen Mother's dolls' house from Glamis Castle in Scotland, the ancestral seat of the Earls of Strathmore, where Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future wife of George VI and mother of Elizabeth II, spent her childhood. Inside the future Queen Mother's house there are two
NB! · Observations
Faith · Art · Museums · People
Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is a former monastery turned psychiatric hospital. It was here that Vincent van Gogh admitted himself voluntarily in May 1889, a few months after cutting off part of his ear in Arles, and he spent a year here, until May 1890.
Art · Museums · Heritage · Society · Paris
Klaus Kallmann, aged 98, has spent nine years suing the Musée d'Orsay in Paris over Vincent van Gogh's 1889 painting "The Hospital Saint-Paul at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence" Kallmann insists that he remembers it from childhood on the wall of his grandfather'
Geography · Science · Nature
An Asteroid Fell into the North Sea, 130 km off the Yorkshire Coast. The dispute over the origin of the Silverpit crater went on for more than twenty years after its discovery. Scholars split into several camps: the first saw the trace of an asteroid, the second the shifting of
Faith · Art · Museums
The painting was executed in 1886 by Emmanuel Benner. Collection of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg