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Category Archives: History
London History: Elizabeth Tower – Big Ben’s 5 Secrets
Big Ben is the nickname for the Great Bell of the striking clock at the northeast end of the Palace of Westminster. The nickname is frequently extended to refer also to the clock and to the entire clock tower.
In 2012, the official name of the tower was changed to “Elizabeth Tower” to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond (60th year as queen) Jubilee.
Previews: Smithsonian Magazine – December 2022
The Sweet and Sticky History of the Date
Throughout the Middle East, the versatile fruit has been revered since antiquity. How will it fare in a changing world?
This Guatemalan Village Is Becoming a Work of Art
To help boost its appeal to tourists, local residents are transforming their lakeside town into a living art installation
Abstract Art: ‘Collage’ By Willem De Kooning (1950)
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter Elaine Fried.
Views: A Cultural Tour Of Weimar, Germany (DW)
Weimar is world-famous. A number of important philosophers, musicians, and literary figures used to live here – including renowned poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. Weimar Classicism attracts tourists even today. But the city of Thuringia is also home to a dark chapter of German history. There, the Nazis built built one of their largest concentration camps, Buchenwald, where a total of around 266,000 people were imprisoned.
Archaeology: The Hathor Temple In Dendera, Egypt
However, one structure dominates the site, a vast stone temple, 140 feet wide with an entrance hall boasting 24 gargantuan columns. Venture into this remarkable temple and discover the ancient hieroglyphics that cover every inch of its surface in brand new episodes of Lost Treasures of Egypt, Sundays at 8pm, on National Geographic UK.
Fall 2022 Art Exhibitions: ‘Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition’ At The Met
A self-referential art concerned with the nature of representation, trompe l’oeil (“deceive the eye”) beguiles the viewer with perceptual and psychological games that complicate definitions of truth and fiction. Along with Cubist paintings, sculptures, and collages, the exhibition presents canonical examples of European and American trompe l’oeil painting from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.
Preview: The Burlington Magazine – Nov 2022
The Parthenon sculptures
It is now forty years since Melina Mercouri, the Greek Minister for Culture from 1981 to 1989, famous also as a film star and singer, addressed UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies to draw international attention to the campaign with which she would be identified until her death in 1994, the repatriation to Athens of the Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum. ‘We are not asking for the return of a painting or a statue’, she said: ‘We are asking for the return of a portion of a unique monument, the privileged symbol of a whole culture’.
The Painters of Pompeii
As images, ancient Roman wall paintings command attention for their bold compositions, vibrant and saturated colours, convincing naturalism and the fantastical mythologies they depict. As objects they also captivate for the dramatic circumstances surrounding their near- destruction, the miracle (or rarity) of their survival and the alchemical nature of lime plaster and pigment.
The BBC At 100: Nature And Sir David Attenborough
See BBC 100 Year Timeline
Following the closure of numerous amateur stations, the BBC starts its first daily radio service in London. After much argument, news is supplied by an agency, and music drama and “talks” fill the airwaves for only a few hours a day. It isn’t long before radio is heard across the nation. This black and white footage from 1922 is silent.
Art History: ‘Still Life With Apples’ By Paul Cézanne
Bought by Degas for 100 francs in January 1896, it was acquired in Paris by John Maynard Keynes at the sale of the contents of Degas’s studio in March 1918. It is one of the most celebrated of all his still-lifes, and, through Keynes’s friendship with the painter and writer Roger Fry, and the circle of Bloomsbury writers, came to be crucial in the dissemination of knowledge of Cézanne’s work in England.
Boomers Daily 