By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout For 15th-century Europeans, sub-Saharan Africa was to a great extent terra incognita until Portuguese explorers started venturing further and further south along the continent’s western coast. These expeditions culminated in 1497 with Vasco da Gama’s voyage all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope and on…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout There are bigger world problems than this, but you may have noticed that your favorite sheets are not in stock at Ikea—it is the global trade disruption, compliments of the pandemic. As “out of stock” notices affect our ability to obtain our favorite snacks, shoes, a sofa or…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The Oscar season in Hollywood is like the Baltic sea after a storm, when crumbs of precious amber are churned up to the surface. Various movies that would perhaps go unnoticed at any other time are being re-released and submitted by their producers. That’s how you can discover…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Art serves many social purposes, such as creating a magic ritual, preserving memories, announcing praise or condemnation, revising history, and (obviously) providing esthetic enjoyment. It’s no wonder, then, that art has also been used to warn people of the potential consequences of their actions. The British Museum houses…
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” ~ Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes (1911) By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The struggle between the forces of good and evil lies at the root of all religions. In India, one of the most…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout There are some languages, like German, Polish, and Latin, that have many grammatical cases (so-called declensions) and three genders. You must know exactly what you are going to say before you say your sentence, or it will never come out right. You cannot change your mind halfway. Painting…
Poster for the Suffragette movement. Mary Lowndes (1909). Published by Brighton and Hove Women’s Franchise. Artists’ Suffrage League. Photo: Public Domain Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout If an individual stands up to bullies or resists violence, it is called personal courage. When a group does it, it is often called a…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout March 18, 1990 was the St. Patrick’s Day holiday in Boston. The streets were full of revelers, and the police had their hands full with traffic control. Two mustachioed policemen who knocked on the doors of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Fenway Street were readily admitted by…
Aerial shot of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. ©Academy Museum Foundation By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout It took years of false starts, changes of leadership, delayed construction, and other birthing pains, but it is finally here—a museum devoted to the craft, art, and history of moviemaking. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures…
Robert Henri. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1916. Oil on canvas. Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout In a press release issued in 1930, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney announced that she was launching a museum of American art because “…not only can the visiting foreigner find no adequate presentation…