Museums · Observations · Paris · Humour

Louvre keeps its second floor and 75% of decorative arts closed at a ticket price of 32 euros

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! · Observations

What Above All to Remember When Making Plans for the Future

Moscow · Observations · Heritage · Society · Nature

You know, when they started digging up all of Kolomenskoye in 2024 under the reserve's "improvement" programme, I made a private wager: would they, I wondered, tackle the matters that genuinely call for intervention?

You know, when they started digging up all of Kolomenskoye in 2024 under the reserve's "improvement" programme, I made a private wager: would they, I wondered, tackle the matters that genuinely call for intervention? The destruction, for instance, of the thickets of an invasive species, Sakhalin

Observations · Society · Humour

Plehve on Russia as a cart pulled by officials and on critics of the authorities

Russia is a huge cart, dragged along a wretched road by scrawny nags: the officialdom. On the cart sit the common folk and public figures, cursing the authorities for all they are worth and blaming them for the bad road. It is these gentlemen who ought to be taken off

Cinema · Books · Observations · Society · Humour

Among the presidential instructions following the meeting of the Council for Culture there turned up a touching one:

The Government of the Russian Federation, jointly with the Ministry of Justice of Russia, is to consider the question of drafting regulatory legal acts aimed at granting cultural organisations the right to use works created by outstanding Russian authors in cases of unjustified refusal by rights holders to grant such

Archive · Books · Moscow · Observations · Society

At the St Petersburg International Legal Forum, Deputy Minister of Culture Zhanna Alexeyeva announced that a closed repository for literature of a "destructive nature" is being created at the Lenin Library, and called it a "spetskhran"

First of all, it must be explained at once that the spetskhran has existed in the Lenin Library all along; nobody abolished this department with the collapse of the USSR, it was merely the regime of access and the principle by which it is filled that changed. Pornographic and extremist

Faith · Observations · Education · Society

Texas Board of Education adds Biblical texts to mandatory school reading list

The Texas Board of Education has added biblical texts to the compulsory school reading list. Pupils from the earliest grades through to the 12th will read the stories of Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, and extracts from the New Testament. I consider it a splendid neighbourhood for Dickens'

In the Press · Art · Observations · Society · Humour

Former Art Basel head Marc Spiegler writes a column on the dangers of commercialising art

I read a column by Marc Spiegler, who ran Art Basel from 2007 to 2022. A comical piece. He laments that galleries are struggling, that the market shrank by some ten per cent in 2024, and that young investors are buying bitcoin instead of paintings. Duremar, having caught a pond

Coming Up · Art · Museums · Observations · Education · Saint Petersburg

Elizaveta Zvantseva's art school exhibition at the Museum of Russian Impressionism to 4 October

In the house at 35 Tavricheskaya, one floor below Vyacheslav Ivanov's "Tower", where all Symbolist Petersburg gathered on Wednesdays, a drawing school operated from 1906. The school was founded by Elizaveta Zvantseva, a pupil of Repin and Serov. By the turn of the century the Academy

Architecture · Cinema · Observations · Heritage · Paris

Piscine Pontoise in Paris: Lucien Pollet's 1933 Art Deco Pool and Its 2023 Restoration

Perhaps some will recall one of the most beautiful interiors in Paris from Kieślowski's "Three Colours: Blue" with Juliette Binoche, and from "Amélie". This canary yellow belongs to the Piscine de la Butte-aux-Cailles... or rather, to the Pontoise swimming pool. The landmark

Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Heritage · Society

To the cautiously floated question "what is so important about the Electrozavod?", one might reply, so as to avoid explaining oneself to the valued fools, with a question of one's own: "is the city really in such need of new square metres of offices and h

To the cautiously floated question "what is so important about the Electrozavod?", one might reply, so as to avoid explaining oneself to the valued fools, with a question of one's own: "is the city really in such need of new square metres of offices and

Black-and-white photograph of a man in a white fencing suit holding an épée, the fencing mask pushed back on his head.

Observations · People · Humour

Fencer in a white suit with an épée and the mask pushed back on his head

Viktor Alexeyevich Krovopuskov: Soviet sabre fencer, four-time Olympic champion and seven-time world fencing champion. So here is a man with a telling surname