In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” Curator Aimee Ng explores the history behind one of the audience favorites at the Frick, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s “Comtesse d’Haussonville.” Sometimes referred to as the “poster girl” of The Frick Collection, the subject of this celebrated portrait led a fascinating life, taking piano lessons from Chopin and writing biographies of Lord Byron and the Irish revolutionary Robert Emmet. (She published the books anonymously to avoid a scandal.) This week’s complementary cocktail calls for an ounce of absinthe, an anise-flavored spirit invented in Switzerland, the country of her birth.
Category Archives: History
Travels With A Curator: “St. James Park, London”
In this week’s episode of “Travels with a Curator,” explore the history of St. James’s Park with Curator Aimee Ng. This popular attraction in London serves as the backdrop for Thomas Gainsborough’s “Mall in St. James’s Park,” which he painted about 1783 for George III. Originally a cockleshell-strewn court for playing pall-mall, a precursor of croquet, the Mall was a place of visual encounters, where fashionable 18th-century Londoners (and their pets) could see and be seen.
To see this painting in detail, please visit our website: https://collections.frick.org/objects…SHOW LESS
Videos: “Watermelons – History & Cultivation” Of Summer’s Favorite Fruit
There’s nothing that counteracts the heat of summer quite like a big, sweet, juicy slice of watermelon. Luke Burbank offers up the history and lore behind that thirst-quenching favorite.
Watermelon is a plant species in the family Cucurbitaceae, a vine-like flowering plant originally domesticated in West Africa. It is a highly cultivated fruit worldwide, having more than 1000 varieties. Watermelon is a scrambling and trailing vine in the flowering plant family Cucurbitaceae.
Ancient Egypt: The “Mystery Of Queen Nefertiti” (NatGeo Video)
Queen Nefertiti is one of the most famous queens of ancient Egypt, but the location of her tomb is still a mystery.
About Lost Treasures of Egypt: An immersive, action-packed and discovery-led series following International teams of Egyptologists as they unearth the world’s richest seam of ancient archaeology – Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. For a full season of excavations and with unprecedented access to the teams on the front line of archaeology, we follow these modern-day explorers as they battle searing heat and inhospitable terrain to make the discoveries of a lifetime. Using innovative technology and age-old intuition in their quest to uncover the secrets of these ancient sites, can the team’s discoveries re-write ancient history?
Neferneferuaten Nefertiti was an Egyptian queen and the Great Royal Wife of Akhenaten, an Egyptian Pharaoh. Nefertiti and her husband were known for a religious revolution, in which they worshipped one god only, Aten, or the sun disc.
Nostalgia: “Gas And Glamour” In Los Angeles
“I love cars and I love Los Angeles for being a city of cars. Over the last decade or so, I have been intrigued by L. A.’s love affair with the automobile, tracing back to a time when cars themselves were objects of beauty.“
“Those cars are no longer on the streets today but the buildings from that era remain. As an architectural photographer, I wanted to capture L. A.’s car-culture-induced optimism and ambition reflected in polychromatic, starspangled coffee shops, gas stations, and car washes, that once lured the gaze of passing motorists.” (Ashok Sinha)
Ashok Sinha is an architectural and fine art photographer whose large-scale photographs capture a sense of place tied to both natural landscapes and built environments. His photographs have been published by editorial outlets such as The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Interior Design, and exhibited at The Museum of the City of New York, the International Center of Photography, and The Royal Photographic Society.
COCKTAILS WITH A CURATOR: “TITIAN’S ARETINO” (VIDEO)
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” celebrate the 444th anniversary of Titian’s death by delving into the tumultuous life of Pietro Aretino, one of the most celebrated—and reviled—literary figures of the Italian Renaissance. Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon examines Titian’s portrait of Aretino at the Frick and the friendship between the Venetian painter and the acid-tongued writer, known to his contemporaries as the “scourge of princes.” This week’s complementary cocktail is the Bellini, a mixture of Prosecco and white-peach puree created by the Cipriani family in Venice and named for Titian’s teacher, Giovanni Bellini.
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio, known in English as Titian, was an Italian painter during the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, ‘from Cadore’, taken from his native region.
TOP TRAVEL VIDEOS: “AERIAL AMERICA – Virginia” (SMITHSONIAN CHANNEL)
Take flight over natural wonders and man-made marvels that celebrate Virginia and our country’s remarkable beginnings.
From the Series: Aerial America: Virginia http://bit.ly/2yXMB59
New Photography Books: “America – 1900” (Taschen)
These rediscovered Photochrom and Photostint postcard images from the private collection of Marc Walter were produced by the Detroit Photographic Company between 1888 and 1924. Using a photolithographic process that predated the autochrome by nearly 20 years, they offered people the very first color photographs of the United States.
Suddenly, the continent’s colors were available for all to see. From the rich ochres and browns of the Grand Canyon to the dazzle of Atlantic City, these places were now a visual delight not only for eyewitnesses but for Americans far and wide.
Imbued with a sense of discovery and adventure, the pictures gathered here are a voyage through peoples, places, and time. They take us through North America’s vast and varied landscape, where we encounter its many communities, and above all transport us back to the United States of over a century ago. Across more than 600 pages including fold-out spreads, this sweeping panorama takes us from Native American settlements to New York’s Chinatown, from some of the last cowboys to Coney Island’s heyday. As luminous now as they were some 120 years ago, these rare and remarkable images that brought America to Americans now bring America’s past to our present.
The authors
Graphic designer, photographer, and collector Marc Walter (1949–2018) specialized in vintage travel photographs, particularly photochromes, of which he held one of the world’s largest collections. He published numerous books featuring images from his collection as well as his own photographs.
Sabine Arqué is a photo researcher, editor, and author. She has collaborated on numerous publications on the themes of travel, the history of tourism, photochromes, and photography.
Top Art History Podcasts: “Michelangelo’s Drawings – Mind Of The Master”
Michelangelo is among the most influential and impressive artists of the Italian High Renaissance. His lifelike sculptures and powerful paintings are some of the most recognizable works in Western art history. He also drew prolifically, making sketch after sketch of figures in slightly varying poses, focusing on form and gesture.
However, remarkably few of these drawings remain today, many of them burned by the artist himself, others lost or damaged over the centuries.
A recent exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Michelangelo: Mind of the Master, brought together more than two dozen of Michelangelo’s surviving drawings—including designs for the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment—to shed light on the artist’s creativity and working method. In this episode, co-curators of this exhibition, Julian Brooks and Edina Adam, discuss the master and what we can learn from his works on paper.
For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.
Art History Video: The “Birth Of Impressionism – Monet’s Lost Sunrise”
The theft and recovery of Claude Monet’s Sunrise, the painting that began the impressionist movement.
Impression, Sunrise is a painting by Claude Monet first shown at what would become known as the “Exhibition of the Impressionists” in Paris in April, 1874. The painting is credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement. Impression, Sunrise depicts the port of Le Havre, Monet’s hometown.
Boomers Daily 