Archaeology · Art · Books · Monarchies · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Science · Society
“What is our life? A tale we shall not recall twice, once it has been told,” runs the thought from Byron’s “Don Juan”, and so at the end of every month we reassemble the key publications that can be reread and kept in memory. Archaeology and the origins of
Art · London · Museums · Paris · People
The artist Julio Le Parc, a pioneer of the second wave of kinetic art, died in Paris on 30 May at the age of 97. Le Parc worked with light, mirrors, movement and optical effects: suspended mobiles, vibrating light installations, mirrored rooms, environments of projected light that "came to
Books · Society
The International Biographers Organisation has named the winner of the 2026 Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2025. It is Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade. The jury noted her original approach to Stein's life and work and her contribution to the very understanding of the
Archaeology · Geography · Palaeontology
In two elite burials on the Pacific coast of Panama, El Caño and Sitio Conte, dating to around AD 800–1000, five emeralds mined in Colombia more than 1,000 years ago were found alongside gold, pyrite mirrors and fossilised megalodon teeth. It turned out that the stones had travelled
Faith · Observations · Mores · Society
Catholic Salesian nuns from San Antonio, long-standing fans of the Spurs basketball club, blessed their favourite player Luke Cornet before the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. It is curious that the Oklahoma City Thunder, for their part, have been holding a public prayer of invocation before every home
Art · Observations · New York · Pop Culture · Humour
Brooklyn artist Jeremy Olson has dressed the windows of the Hermès flagship on Madison Avenue in New York as a surrealist installation: a body sinking into a sofa, surrounded by biomorphic furniture and lamps. Hermès wanted to play on its signature motifs and the equestrian theme, hence the appearance of
Faith · Society · People
30 May marks the 595th anniversary of the execution of Joan of Arc in the Old Market Square in Rouen. Today the day is observed in France as a national holiday, and in the Catholic Church as the Memorial of Saint Joan of Arc. Formally, she was charged with heresy,
Faith · Books · Observations · Science
IMLI RAN has published a two-volume study, "F.M. Dostoevsky's Novel Crime and Punishment: The Current State of Scholarship", edited by T.A. Kasatkina. It is the fourth book in the "current state of scholarship" project on Dostoevsky: before it came The Idiot
Cinema · Books · Heritage · Paris
The French are to make a film about the Louvre robbery. The director is Romain Gavras, and the source is a book by three journalists from Le Parisien, Le Monde and Paris Match, entitled Main Basse sur le Louvre, or “A Hand on the Louvre”, published by Flammarion this week.
The East · Monarchies · Observations · Heritage · Society · Humour
The Fund for the Royal Private Collections commissioned an appraisal of roughly a thousand objects. Under suspicion are a golden amulet necklace and historical weapons from Indonesia, acquired in the colonial era. I can just picture how the Dutch East India Company would have laughed at so modest a discovery.
Museums · Observations · Heritage · Ethnography
I read that the museum of tiny Martha's Vineyard, off Cape Cod in Massachusetts, is returning to Hawaii a canoe, a pestle for pounding baked taro root, a grass skirt and a piece of tapa, the traditional unwoven cloth made from tree bark, which the indigenous peoples of
Science · Education · Society
In Vietnam, Fabrication of Research Data and Plagiarism Are to Be Punished with a Lifetime Ban from Science. On 25 May the Ministry of Science and Technology announced the penalties awaiting dishonest scholars: the return of grants, a public apology, and an entry recording the violation on the national digital