Art · Museums · Observations · People
One of the strongest impressions of this year: the series of Madonnas by Giovanni Bellini in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. Bellini painted this subject more than eighty times in the course of his life, so there is no better material for watching his mastery develop. The Madonnas
Art · London · Monarchies · Museums · Humour
The sinister portrait of Charles III by Jonathan Yeo, unveiled in 2024, in which the king's figure drowned in the crimson haze of the underworld, has made it into Buckingham Palace after all. The Royal Collection has accepted as a gift a large preparatory study for that portrait,
Architecture · Museums · Science · New York · Society
A cunning bacterium has been found in the cooling tower of the Guggenheim Museum, infecting people through clouds of vapour. The bacterium is called Legionella, and its history belongs to the twentieth century. It was isolated after 1976, when participants in a convention of the American Legion fell ill at
Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations
Portrait of a Senior Inspector. Art group "Rossiya". I very much liked this painting at the new exhibition in the Voznesensky Centre. The wall label states that the portrait on display belongs to a cycle of three images of senior inspectors of the group "Inspection Medical Hermeneutics&
Archaeology · Monarchies · Museums · Heritage
This small leather ball was found during the restoration of Stirling Castle in Scotland in the late 1970s and is considered the oldest surviving football in the world. It is almost 500 years old. The find is dated to the period between the 1540s and 1570s. The ball is stitched
NB! · Museums · Heritage · Society
Coming Up · London · Museums · Society · Ethnography
The British Museum has opened a most interesting exhibition on the USA. It is not, however, a parade of panegyrics for the 250th anniversary of the United States, but a reminder that many indigenous peoples were not at all delighted by American independence. Although the exhibition, Declaring Independence: USA 250,
Art · Museums · Heritage · Saint Petersburg
An exhibition of a single painting, "Titian. The Last Masterpiece: Saint Sebastian", has opened at the Hermitage. The end of the canvas's three-year restoration coincides with the 450th anniversary of Titian's death. The picture was painted in the technique of pittura a macchia,
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
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'