Gardeners (Les Jardiniers). Gustave Caillebotte. 1875-1877. Private collection. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Until about the end of WWII, if you lived in a house or at least in a ground-floor apartment, chances were that you had some sort of kitchen garden space. If you were lucky enough…
Christ Driving Moneylenders from the Temple. Church of St. Aignan (1899). Chartres, France. Photo: Reinhardhauke Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout If you need to impart important messages to people who cannot read, then your choices include talking to them directly or showing them pictures—preferably images rendered in long-lasting materials such as…
Florence cathedral. Photo: Nina Heyn By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout In 1504, when Leonardo da Vinci was mostly done with living in Florence, he accepted an important commission to decorate Palazzo Vecchio (which served as the meeting hall for the Florentine Grand Council) with a fresco depicting the historic Battle of Anghiari fought…
Rembrandt. Landscape with the Good Samaritan (1638). The Princes Czartoryski Collection, National Museum, Kraków. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Europe has many places that are a perfect combination of art and history. One city that possesses this ideal combination in spades, but is less visited than it deserves, is Kraków…
Marc Chagall. I and the Village (1911). MoMA. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the world’s largest contemporary and modern art assemblage, has been in the avant-garde of modern art collecting for almost a century. Founded in 1929 by three enterprising society…
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres – Portrait de Comtesse D’Haussonville (1845). The Frick Collection, New York. Photo: ©The Frick Collection, Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout So many people love the experience of visiting New York. I don’t. I’m overwhelmed by the stone jungle of office towers and the incessant noise of construction, police sirens,…
Barbara Hepworth. Sphere with Inner Form, 1963. Bronze. Barbara Hepworth Museum, St. Ives, UK. Photo: image (c)2003 Graham Rogers at Wikipedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Imagine that you are a mother of a four-year-old boy as well as newborn, underweight triplets. You are living in a damp, badly heated basement in…
Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, the Rainy Day (Rue de Paris, Temps du Pluie ), 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Impressionism owes a huge debt to Gustave Caillebotte but hardly anyone today knows his name. By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Musée D’Orsay is one of the most…
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Self-Portrait, 1791. Oil on canvas. National Trust, Ickworth House, UK. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout When we think of the French upper classes just before the French Revolution, what comes to mind are those impossible panniered gowns, powdered wigs, rouged cheeks, and ostrich feathers. Which is…
Olga Boznańska. Self-Portrait, 1908. Pastel, gouache on cardboard. National Museum, Warsaw. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Even casual museumgoers are familiar with such female artists as Georgia O’Keeffe or Mary Cassatt—celebrated painters whose art is prominently displayed in major Western galleries. Fewer art lovers are familiar with someone like Olga…