Birth of the Virgin. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1479-85). Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The majority of figures in paintings, especially those created before the 20th century, are male. The paintings show men heroically fighting or representing religious or mythological figures, men hunting, or men suffering…
“Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence…
Effects of Good Government in the City. Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1339). Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, Italy. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The United States is preparing for the November 3rd presidential election amid the most polarized debate in living memory about what is right and wrong and what kind of…
What we did with Inception for the heist genre is what Tenet attempts to bring to the spy movie genre – director Christopher Nolan By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Tenet was supposed to be a Warner Bros. blockbuster for one of the hot mid-July weekends you might spend in a shopping mall cooling…
Strange Garden (Dziwny Ogród). Józef Mehoffer (1903). National Museum, Warsaw. Photo: Public Domain Wikimedia Commons. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout There are very few advantages of a global lockdown other than decreased pollution, but perhaps one of them is our renewed appreciation of gardens. A lot of us have favorite gardens. It might…
Boxer of the Quirinale. C. 330-50 BC. Palazzo Massimo alla Terme. Rome. Photo credit: Nina Heyn. In the history of art, any recovery of a lost masterpiece is a happy event, but such events are more rare than an art loss. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Sometimes, there is hope for a lost…
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. Rembrandt van Rijn (1633). Stolen in 1990 from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston. Photo: Public Domain Wikimedia Commons. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Since antiquity, artworks have been the first thing to be looted. By the turn of the 19th century, the collection of war trophies…
The Stonebreakers. Gustave Courbet (1849). Dresden Gemäldegallerie. Destroyed in 1945 during an air raid. Photo: Public Domain Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Art gets lost, stolen, or destroyed all the time. Thousands of works have been destroyed by fires and wars or simply by someone changing their mind, like Rockefeller being…
Gustav Klimt. Beethoven Frieze (detail). Vienna. Photo: Public Domain Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth date is unknown but his baptism, that most likely took place no later than a day later, has been recorded as December 17, 1770. This year, therefore, it is a round 250 year…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout A lot of us are still stuck at home, often unable to travel or work. To alleviate boredom, many media outlets recommend shows to watch, but these recommendations usually focus on American TV shows. So, here is a different list. Instead of watching traditonal U.S. cop shows, full…