By Catherine Clover – Bangkok, Thailand, is a city with many interesting wats, or temples, palaces and occasionally a home of historical significance, many of which I see often and have visited as I’ve lived here in Bangkok for several years. The Jim Thompson house is a fine […]
By Patrick Hunt How many wines can compete with the renown of Burgundy for Pinot Noir? To many, Maienfeld in the Canton of Graubunden in Switzerland is famous as the setting for Johanna Spyri’s 1880 novel of Heidi, so this lovely and picturesque part of the Rhine Valley has even […]
by Andrea M. Gáldy – Roman Augsburg and Kempten are hidden gems of Southern Germany. This region offers more than skiing holidays and Oktoberfest, nice though they are. Traces of ancient Celtic and Roman settlements in the former Province of Raetia can still be made out, while during the Mediaeval […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Prepare to get lost in ancient Egypt. Actually, prepare to get lost constantly for this is a museum cleverly hidden within the Munich Kunstareal (Fig. 2). As you approach the Museum of Egyptian Art you turn from a normal visitor into an archaeologist discovering a […]
By Patrick Hunt – According to 17th century German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, “Music is a secret exercise in the arithmetic of the soul.” That music and mathematics are deeply wedded needs no explanation, since “Music is mathematics you can hear” [1] If anyone could hear the mathematics of music, it […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy, Exhibitions and Museum Editor – When life was suddenly brought to a halt and encapsulated in 79 AD, the people caught up in the catastrophe cannot have been entirely surprised by Vesuvius erupting. The earthquake of February 62 AD alone might have been a wake-up call. […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Archbishop Antonio Agustín y Albanel (1517-1586) died on 31 May 1586 at Tarragona, a city of notable traditions both as the Roman capital of Hispania Citerior, then Hispania Tarraconensis and as the seat of one of the oldest archdioceses in Spain, established even before […]
By Allison Rath – When Norton Dodge (1927-2011) first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1955 to study the economic role of Russian women, he encountered the underground nonconformist art world in Moscow with the clandestine help of artist Valery Kuznetsov. Moved by the art he saw, Dodge would spend the […]
By Patrick Hunt – The Abbazia di Novacella is in the South Tyrolean municipality of Varna (Varhn), surrounded by its monastery vineyards above the Isarco (Eisack) River. South Tyrol was part of Austria until 1919 but is now Italy. The Abbazia is steeped in history, from its medieval foundation around […]
By Kristine Wendt – One of the most elusive art historical biographies belongs to Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Having pieced together his biography from police records alone, historians have classified Caravaggio as violent, irascible, and quick to draw his sword. Moreover, surviving contemporary biographies, covetous and biased, have further […]