Nina’s Blog 2023: Stones of Florence
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Nina’s Blog 2023: Stones of Florence

Like all of Italy, except a bit more so, Florence is all about stone. Green and white marble bricks cover the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (popularly called the Duomo) to breathtaking effect. Carved lions guard steps of palazzos and gardens, statues of saints decorate outside walls of churches, and stone lintels, bricks, and…

Nina’s Euro Blog 2023: Chasing Art in Paris
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Nina’s Euro Blog 2023: Chasing Art in Paris

Paris is not very user-friendly this spring because ongoing strikes are affecting daily life to a great degree. I was planning to see Vermeer’s The Astronomer—a painting that was not included in the loan exhibition at the Rijksmuseum—which is often described as a “companion” to The Geographer, featuring the same model and a similar scientific…

Food for the Soul: “Rembrandt & His Contemporaries” Exhibition in Amsterdam

Food for the Soul: “Rembrandt & His Contemporaries” Exhibition in Amsterdam

By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout While many art fans might not be able to get tickets to the sold-out Vermeer show at the Rijksmuseum, there is another exhibition of exquisite Dutch Baroque art in Amsterdam that is ongoing at the same time at the nearby museum called Hermitage Amsterdam. The star of this…

Food for the Soul: Women Alone – Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum

Food for the Soul: Women Alone – Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum

By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout The sold-out, long-touted, once-in-a-lifetime Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is in full swing—crowds of lucky ticket-holders are thronging through a few small rooms. But perhaps this is the right space to exhibit these intimate, delicate pictures that hung forgotten for 200 years until they became the…

Food for the Soul: Peeking into the Artist’s Mind — An Interview with Henryk Waniek

Food for the Soul: Peeking into the Artist’s Mind — An Interview with Henryk Waniek

By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout Even though most of the artists I admire are from the 20th century—from David Hockney to Leonora Carrington, and from Gerhard Richter to Francis Bacon—I’m usually not able to post about them here because images of their art are still under copyright. It is, therefore, a rare treat…

Food for the Soul: Global Trade Part V – Europe

Food for the Soul: Global Trade Part V – Europe

By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Even before Roman soldiers started building and then marching on the roads of the empire, expanding the imperial trade across all the outposts, there were well-worn trading paths that led to Rome. Etruscans, who preceded the Romans on the Italian peninsula, had been trading extensively with northern lands….

Food for the Soul: Oscar Contenders 2023 — Part 2

Food for the Soul: Oscar Contenders 2023 — Part 2

By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout A few weeks ago, we highlighted a few early and interesting contenders for the Best Picture crown at the upcoming Academy Awards. Here we present the remaining candidates following the announcement of the nominations on Jan. 24. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE This movie is an outlier in…