By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout Art museums sometimes showcase outstanding fashion designs, often presenting historical collections of artists who long ago earned their place in the pantheon of couture. Over the last few […]
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Even if Venice itself is not in the Middle East, until the early 1500s the Venetian empire, built on trade with Asia and the Levant, extended far beyond […]
By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout In recent years, exhibitions of women’s art have gained so much popularity that almost every week there is a local exhibition somewhere in the world. Predictably, the most […]
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout In Florentine museums and churches, there is an endless parade of Madonnas and altar compositions of the Holy Family, which have somewhat lost their religious impact after so […]
Polish Palaces and Art in Naples This post is inspired by the location of a very romantic wedding I recently attended in the center of Poland. Both the wedding ceremony and the party afterwards were […]
By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout Paris at the end of the 19th century was packed with sophisticated men who loved art. They were making it, discussing it, and selling it. There were those […]
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The world is watching bad—and then worse—news coming out of Ukraine every day. Millions of people, even those who last month were not sure where Ukraine actually is, […]
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout We have selected some good movies and interesting documentaries that explore different aspects of freedom. You could, if you wish, also make your own list of cinematic examples. […]
The Comet of 1680 over Rotterdam. Lieve Verschuier (1680). Rotterdam Historic Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain “As above, so below.” ~ Hermes Trismegistus (6th century AD) By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout A […]
Gideon. Sketch for a fresco. Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1796). Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Photo: Wikimediart.org By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout There is a longstanding intellectual debate about whether an individual can change […]
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout “For we fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honors, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life.” ~ Declaration of Arbroath, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Robert Henri. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1916). 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 […]
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Frank Herbert’s novel Dune was published in 1965, and ever since, entire generations of people all over the world have read the book even if they were not […]
Valentin Serov. Portrait of the Collector of Modern Russian and French Paintings, Ivan Abramovich Morozov (1910). The State Tretiakov National Gallery, Moscow. © Tretiakov National Gallery, Moscow By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Paris […]
Georgia O’Keeffe. Pelvis with the distance (1943). Indianapolis Museum of Art, Newfields, IN. © Indianapolis Museum of Art/Gift of Anne Marmon Greenleaf in memory of Caroline M. Fesler. Photo: Bridgeman Images © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Adagp, […]
Damian Hirst. The Triumph of Death Blossom (2018). Private collection© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2021. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates. Photo: Courtesy Fondation Cartier By Nina Heyn – Your Culture […]
Gardeners (Les Jardiniers). Gustave Caillebotte. 1875-1877. Private collection. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Until about the end of WWII, if you lived in a house or at least […]
Christ Driving Moneylenders from the Temple. Church of St. Aignan (1899). Chartres, France. Photo: Reinhardhauke Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout If you need to impart important messages to people who cannot […]
Florence cathedral. Photo: Nina Heyn By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout In 1504, when Leonardo da Vinci was mostly done with living in Florence, he accepted an important commission to decorate Palazzo Vecchio (which […]
Magdalena Abakanowicz. Abakan Orange (1971). Jankilevitsch Collection. Photo: Marcin Koniak/Desa Unicum, Courtesy of National Museum Poznań By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout “Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence. […]
Rembrandt. Landscape with the Good Samaritan (1638). The Princes Czartoryski Collection, National Museum, Kraków. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Europe has many places that are a perfect combination of art […]
Édouard Louis Dubufe. Portrait of Rosa Bonheur (the bull was painted by Bonheur) (1857). Versailles Palace. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout There is a reason why the traditionally dressed Victorian […]
Marc Chagall. I and the Village (1911). MoMA. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the world’s largest contemporary and modern art assemblage, […]
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres – Portrait de Comtesse D’Haussonville (1845). The Frick Collection, New York. Photo: ©The Frick Collection, Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout So many people love the experience of visiting New […]
Barbara Hepworth. Sphere with Inner Form (1963). Barbara Hepworth Museum, St. Ives, UK. Photo: image (c)2003 Graham Rogers at Wikipedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Imagine that you are a mother of […]
Julie Mehretu. Stadia II (2004). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg; gift of Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Nicolas Rohatyn and A.W. Mellon Acquisition Endowment Fund 2004.50. Photo: Courtesy the Carnegie Museum via the Whitney. © Julie […]
Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, the Rainy Day / Rue de Paris, temps du pluie (1877). Art Institute of Chicago. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Impressionism owes a huge debt to Gustave Caillebotte but hardly anyone today knows […]
Serge Attukwei Clottey. The Wishing Well. 2021 installation at James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center in Palm Springs. Photo: Nina Heyn. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout California is one of the last […]
In the center: Alexander Calder. Untitled (mobile-1956) and Untitled (painting-1967). Calder Foundation New York. Photo: Installation view of “Calder-Picasso” at the de Young Museum, photography by Gary Sexton. © 2021 Calder Foundation New York/Artists Rights […]
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Self-Portrait (1791). National Trust, Ickworth House, UK. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout When we think of the French upper classes just before the French Revolution, what […]
Olga Boznańska – Self-Portrait (1908). National Museum, Warsaw. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Even casual museumgoers are familiar with such female artists as Georgia O’Keeffe or Mary Cassatt—celebrated painters whose […]
Photo credit: jovaughn-stephens/Unsplash photo By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout It’s a sign of the times that documentaries now seem to be more interesting than features. While some feature movies this year focus on […]
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The 2021 Academy Awards have been moved two months later than usual to April 25, extending the entire awards season to eight long months. Movies are eligible for […]
Self-portrait. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). Date of painting unknown. Hilma af Klint Foundation. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The fact that painter Hilma af Klint has been unknown in the […]
The Adoration of the Kings. Jan Gossaert (1510-15). Photo © The National Gallery, London. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout One of the most artistically alluring Christmas themes is the one known as the […]
Book of the City of Ladies. Christine de Pizan (c. 1405). Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout We do not know who illustrated the Book of […]
Jewish Woman with Oranges. Alexander Gierymski (1881). National Museum Warsaw. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout There is nothing attractive about toil—this mind-numbing effort of farming or doing some menial, repetitive […]
Land Girls Hoeing. Manly Edward MacDonald (1918-19). Canada War Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Women have not always been stuck at home just sewing and running households. They have […]
Part A Young Woman Sewing. Nicolaes Maes (1655). Harold Samuel Collection, © City of London Corporation, London. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout This is the second part in our series […]
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 […]
"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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
By the well. Hot day. Martiros Saryan. 1909. Martiros Saryan Museum,Yerevan, Armenia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain “Man’s best friend” has been a friend of artists throughout centuries and esthetic styles. By Nina Heyn – […]
Couturier Cat. Tsuguharu Foujita. 1927. Photo: Public Domain Wikiart.org Before there were videos of funny cats on the Internet, for about 4000 years there were simply fun cat paintings. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture […]
By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Stuck at home together with the rest of the world we should, theoretically, have lots of free time. It turns out however that a lot of this time is […]
Artemisia Gentileschi. Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura) (about 1638-1639). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019. Photo: Courtesy of The National Gallery, London “…with me Your Illustrious Lordship […]
Raphael. Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione. (1513) The Louvre. Courtesy of Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome April 6, 2020 markes a 500 year anniversary of passing of one the most beloved artists. A huge Raphael exhibition at […]
Food for the Soul will now be adding a dedicated mini-site to bring you all the culture stories in one place By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The world has just hunkered down to […]
Videos
Olga Boznańska. Japanese self-portrait. 1892. Photo: Public domain Wikimedia Commons. National Museum Wrocław, Poland In ages past, women have always had a hard path towards even becoming an artist, much less being recognized as one. […]
An exhibition was planned in San Francisco to showcase Frida Kahlo’s personal life through personal mementos locked up for 50 years in Casa Azul By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Worldwide we are all […]
Audios (click on any title to download)
Sweat and toil of the master who never wanted you to see it By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Michelangelo Buonarotti. Head of a Child with a Cloak around the Head. Mid-1520’s. Collection and […]
The Ghent Altar or An Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. Inside panels. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public domain. The most stolen artwork ever has been restored to its original glory By Nina Heyn – Your […]
The Payment of Dues. Georges de la Tour, 1630-35. Lviv Art Gallery, Ukraine (until 1940 – Lwów Art Gallery, Poland), ex Lubomirski collection. Photo: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture […]
Streaming gems you possibly missed Winter usually does not offer many exciting movies other than the awards heavyweights (where your choices are between equally soul-dampening entries of 1917 or maybe Marriage Story). So… long dark […]
"In today's capitalistic society there are ranks and castes that are invisible to the eye. We keep them disguised and out of sight and superficially look down on class hierarchies as a relic of the […]
Leonardo da Vinci. Ca.1491. Study for the Sforza monument. Image source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout It was a classic moment of serendipity. Catherine, Robert and I have been […]
Leonardo da Vinci – the Louvre Exhibit with Nina Heyn and Ulrike Granögger. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout To conclude our series on da Vinci – Solari’s “Hero of the Year” – we […]
By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout For holidays, we bring our 12 Christmas Movie Gifts – as diverse as a partridge in a pear tree and maids a milking would be. The only criteria for […]
“Lawyer: Ready to go to war?” Gretchen Carlson: Oh, yeah” – lines from the movie Bombshell By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Charlize Theron is not only a film star (Oscar for her portrayal of […]
“Ransom Drysdale: What is this? CSI: KFC?” A line from Knives Out! By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Our streaming devices are groaning under the weight of choices – movies, seasons of shows, mini-series, documentaries […]
Sofonisba Anguissola. Self-Portrait at the Easel. 1556-57. Muzeum-Zamek. Łańcut, Poland. Photo credit: Courtesy of the © Prado National Museum, Madrid, Spain. “Her paintings were celebrated for their calm and gentle style, and for the particularity […]
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need”. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout A typical museum of fine art is a depository of paintings, […]
A good painter has two things to represent: the man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard.” — Leonardo da Vinci By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout It is […]
“Think of this as a fairytale that actually happened.” A line from the movie The Laundromat By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout How do you turn a dense literary account of financial (mal)practices into a […]
King George V: “Were you effected by the strikes?” The Dowager Countess: “My maid was rather curt with me. She’s a communist at heart.” From the movie Downton Abbey By Nina Heyn – Your Culture […]
“-David, we have a celebrity here! This Arab writes “Tel Aviv on Fire.” Do you watch it? -Once. It’s anti-Semitic. -With a name like that, did you expect a Zionist show?” Dialogue from the comedy […]
“Everybody’s got a hunger, a hunger they can’t resist; There’s so much that you want, you deserve much more than this.” Bruce Springsteen “Prove It All Night” By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout It is […]
Portrait of Berthe Morisot by her sister Edma Morisot. 1865. Photo credit: Wikimedia commons. “I do not think any man would ever treat a woman as his equal, and it is all I ask because […]
Portrait of Berthe Morisot by her sister Edma Morisot. 1865. Photo credit: Wikimedia commons. “I do not think any man would ever treat a woman as his equal, and it is all I ask because […]
“Our goal is to invite the public to walk to the heart of the artwork.” Gianfranco Iannuzzi, artistic director and co-director of the exhibition “Van Gogh, Starry Night” By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Crowded […]
Caravaggio. Narcissus. Ca. 1599. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barbierini. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. “There was art before him and art after him, and they were not the same.” Robert Hughes, late […]
As part of Solari’s ongoing celebration of the year of da Vinci, we visited Milan and met with one of the city natives. Paola Jacobbi is a very respected Italian culture and entertainment journalist who […]
“When future generations look back to my time, it will probably be similar to how I now think of the past.” Wang Yi Zhi, famous Chinese calligrapher 303-361 AD By Nina Heyn – Your Culture […]
“I have seen so many gems I did not expect to see in one place. No Venetian or papal collection can compare“- a papal envoy praising in 1560 a treasury collection of the Polish king […]
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout If you are a city school kid in Europe, no matter if attending an elementary or a high school, your class will be going to museums a lot. […]
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Living in the past, for instance […]
Solari Hero of the Year Leonardo da Vinci is the Solari Hero of the Year for 2019. On May 2, 2019, we celebrate the 500th anniversary of his passing. From Wikipedia: Leonardo di ser Piero […]
“How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.” Leonardo […]