Architecture · Art · Moscow · Museums · Heritage · Paris

A Brief Review of the Key Publications of the Last Two Weeks of February

A brief review of the key publications of the last two weeks of February. We have spoken about new exhibitions, unique museum collections and the repatriation of art, and touched on pressing questions of the Russian art market and of architectural heritage. 📌 The Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow and the

NB! · Observations · Paris

Paris Jetem

Archive · Cinema · Moscow · Observations · Society · Paris

Children wiping car windows at a Moscow intersection, as in 1990s films

Little Street Musicians of Montmartre, 1937. Remember how, in the films of the 1990s, children earning a living on city streets by washing car windscreens at junctions and selling chewing gum and flowers were a common sight? Then they vanished from view for a while, as the economic situation changed.

Archive · Faith · Art · Books · Paris

Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana, an eleventh-century book

The rider on the pale horse is Death. Exhibition at the National Library of France

Architecture · Heritage · Mores · Paris

The Le Train Bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, a historic monument

The popular French restaurant Le Train Bleu, at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, is officially classed as a historic monument. The refined establishment takes its name from the famous luxury passenger train that ran to the French Riviera. But at the outset it was simply a buffet, the lavish

Painting of a child in a white Pierrot costume and black cap hugging a large black cat standing on its hind legs.

Art · Paris · Nature · Humour

Théophile Steinlen’s 1889 painting “Pierrot and the Cat” and his link to the Paris cabaret Le Chat Noir

Leave the Cat Alone, Boy! “Pierrot and the Cat”, 1889, a painting by Théophile Steinlen, the Swiss artist and adherent of Art Nouveau, who was a lively presence in the cultural life of Paris, not least thanks to his collaboration with the famous cabaret Le Chat Noir

Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Science · Paris

The Paris Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology compared with the Fersman Museum

Yes, my favourite museum in Moscow is still the Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Neskuchny Garden. Let us compare it with the Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie in the Jardin des plantes in Paris, which occupies a building of somewhat grander proportions, yet looks almost like the Fersman Museum. The

Architecture · Faith · Art · Museums · Society · Paris

Digest of channel posts from the first two weeks of February on Paris, culture and history

A guide to the posts published on the channel in the first two weeks of February. Besides a great many posts about Paris, there was cultural news, surveys of social problems and astonishing stories from the past. 📌 The story of Saint Plautilla, who handed her veil to the Apostle Paul

Faith · Art · Museums · Paris · Pop Culture

Wooden figure of Saint Mary Magdalene by Gregor Erhart, La Belle Allemande, 1510, Louvre collection

And photographs of Nicole Kidman from Vogue Australia, 1994, shot by Rocky Schenk

NB! · Faith · Art · Paris

The Conversion of Saint Paul, Laurent de La Hyre, 1637

The Conversion of Saint Paul, Laurent de La Hyre, 1637. Notre-Dame de Paris

NB! · Architecture · Art · Paris

Niko Pirosmani in the courtyard of Dover Street Market, which has settled in the Marais, in the Hôtel de Coulanges, where Madame de Sévigné once lived

Aristocracy · Books · Monarchies · Paris

Maximilian Voloshin's poem about Madame de Lamballe's head on a pike above the Paris crowd

That supple, passionate body The crowd trampled underfoot for me, And mocked it, and stripped it… And at the body I did not Dare to look… But I was hacked off from the body, Flung, scraps Of inflamed flesh, upon a stone… And the Parisian rabble Carried me off in