Portraits often mirror the artist as much as their subjects. On the walls of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass., last week, hung a collection of portraits that were animated with gentle strength of character, aglow with love of children
Tag Archives: museum
Two-Wheel Appeal
As a 19-year-old philosophy student in Paris, Jens Martin Skibsted had a watershed moment when the bicycle protest against cars he was riding in came to a sudden halt. The roadblock
Hitler’s First Anti-Semitic Letter Goes on Display
In September 1919, the year after the end of World War I, a German captain named Karl Mayr, who ran a propaganda unit in charge of educating demobilized soldiers in nationalism and scapegoating, received an inquiry from a soldier named Adolf Gemlich about the army’s position on “the Jewish question.” Mayr tasked a young subordinate named Adolf Hitler to answer. The resulting Gemlich letter, as it is known to historians, is believed to be the first record of Hitler’s anti-Semitic beliefs and has been an important document in Holocaust studies for decades.
Indonesian Art: The Undercutting Edge
The soaring value of contemporary Chinese and Vietnamese art has been one of the art world’s most widely documented phenomena of recent years. But if you’re a would-be collector who feels priced out of the market, is there anywhere else to look?
Architecture: MOMA’s radical restraint
In 1997, the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City announced that Yoshio Taniguchi had won a 10-entrant competition against world-famous architects like Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas to design the museum’s $425 million overhaul. Around the world, art lovers and architecture mavens alike responded with a loud, bemused, “Who?” So unknown was the 67-year-old architect outside his native Japan that one confused well-wisher congratulated Terence Riley, MOMA’s chief curator of architecture and design, on selecting “Tony Gucci,” a nonexistent Italian architect.
Memphis: Tourists Flock to See River’s Rising Waters
“Welcome to Memphis,” boomed Ben Outlaw, the airport Hertz rental car bus driver, over the speaker system, “home of barbeque, the Civil Rights Museum, riverboats, Graceland and the 100-year flood. You can’t beat that!” Indeed, regional tourists flocked to Memphis on Monday as the Mississippi River began to crest at 48 ft
China: The Detention of Ai Weiwei is a Worrying Sign
When people write on Chinese websites that they “love the future,” it should be a sentiment the government can get behind. After all, the authorities in Beijing have pressed their subjects to embrace the country’s bright economic prospects
Fingerprint unmasks original da Vinci painting
A smudged fingerprint has convinced art experts that a painting thought to have dated back to the early 19th century is the work of revered Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci.
Tiny T. rex fossil discovery startles scientists
A pint-sized version of the Tyrannosaurus rex, with similarly powerful legs, razor-sharp teeth and tiny arms, roamed China some 125 million years ago, said scientists who remain startled by the discovery. The predator, nicknamed Raptorex, lived about 60 million years before the T.
The Space Needle and sci-fi in Seattle
Got the rain jackets? So what if it rains a lot in Seattle