Food for the Soul Oscar Contenders: Awards Season 2022–2023
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Food for the Soul Oscar Contenders: Awards Season 2022–2023

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By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout This year, there are hardly any choices of theatrical films to qualify for Best Picture nominations. Current leading contenders in this year’s Oscar race are All Quiet on the Western Front, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as well as Top Gun: Maverick. The last one, already predicted to win,…

Food for the Soul – Rediscovering Artists
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Food for the Soul – Rediscovering Artists

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By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout HILMA (2022; dir. Lasse Hallström) Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was a Swedish abstractionist painter who was largely ignored and certainly misunderstood by her contemporaries—family, art critics, friends, the public. It took decades after her death in 1944 for her paintings to be rediscovered in an attic by her…

Food for the Soul – Documentaries: How Artists Think
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Food for the Soul – Documentaries: How Artists Think

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By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Full-length documentaries require what our consumption of entertainment media totally lacks these days—lots of time and patience. We watch short videos on social media and episodes of TV shows, or we check out news videos on our phones. A long, slow art documentary requires an investment of both…

Food for the Soul:  Streaming … European Daily Life
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Food for the Soul:  Streaming … European Daily Life

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By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Colder autumn evenings are a perfect excuse for sitting in front of a smaller screen. There are hundreds of choices, from huge fantasy series like House of the Dragon (viewership for each episode numbers in the millions) to popular sci-fi or crime shows on major streaming services. Here…

Food for the Soul: Charles I – The Royal Connoisseur of Art
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Food for the Soul: Charles I – The Royal Connoisseur of Art

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“Ars longa, vita brevis.” ~ Hippocrates, Aphorismi By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout As the world witnesses a historic change in Great Britain, which welcomes Charles III as the new king (the coronation ceremony has been scheduled for May 6, 2023), it is perhaps worth remembering the first English monarch of this name—Charles I…

Happy and Unhappy Families
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Happy and Unhappy Families

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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.“~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1898 By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout Most really good artists would not paint a family—theirs or somebody else’s—just as a record of people’s faces. They would use the theme to say something important about their…

Food for the Soul: Cozy Entertainement
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Food for the Soul: Cozy Entertainement

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By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout During WWII, Hollywood turned away from hard-hitting dramas toward lighter fare—mysteries, comedies, and musicals—resulting in such classics as The Philadelphia Story, The Maltese Falcon, Meet Me in St. Louis, and His Girl Friday. Perhaps the pandemic offers a similar explanation for the current revival of a genre that…

Food for the Soul: Guo Pei Exhibition — San Francisco
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Food for the Soul: Guo Pei Exhibition — San Francisco

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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 years, I have seen Chanel, Galliano, and Yves St. Laurent retrospectives in Paris, an Alexander McQueen show that is currently…

Food for the Soul: Global Trade in Art Part 3- Middle East
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Food for the Soul: Global Trade in Art Part 3- Middle East

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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 the city walls, incorporating such lands as Dalmatia and Istria, and reaching practically up to Constantinople. Venice was the gateway…

Food for the Soul: Women Art Exhibitions—Venice and Paris
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Food for the Soul: Women Art Exhibitions—Venice and Paris

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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 ambitious shows tend to be hosted in the global art centers of Paris and Venice. Two important exhibitions focused on…

Nina’s Euro Blog
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Nina’s Euro Blog

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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 held in the old palace and gardens of Bronice (near Nałęczów, a picturesque town famous for its natural springs and…

Food for the Soul: Women Who Gave Us van Gogh – Women & Art Series 16
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Food for the Soul: Women Who Gave Us van Gogh – Women & Art Series 16

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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 who created new styles—like Monet, Gauguin, or Cézanne. Others excelled as art dealers, like marchand Paul Durand-Ruel, who handled sales…

Food for the Soul: Comets – Looking Skyward for Inspiration
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Food for the Soul: Comets – Looking Skyward for Inspiration

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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 sudden appearance in the night sky of an exotic shape of a ball and a shiny tail would be hard…

Food for the Soul: Gideon’s River Test
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Food for the Soul: Gideon’s River Test

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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 history. Attila the Hun, Alexander the Great, and Adolf Hitler come to mind in support of this argument, with countless…

Food for the Soul: Global Trade Part 2  – Out of Africa
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Food for the Soul: Global Trade Part 2  – Out of Africa

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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 culminated in 1497 with Vasco da Gama’s voyage all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope and on…

Food for the Soul: Art and Cautionary Tales
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Food for the Soul: Art and Cautionary Tales

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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, that art has also been used to warn people of the potential consequences of their actions. The British Museum houses…

Food for the Soul: The Neglected Art of Pastels – Rosalba Carriera – Women & Art Series 15
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Food for the Soul: The Neglected Art of Pastels – Rosalba Carriera – Women & Art Series 15

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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 say before you say your sentence, or it will never come out right. You cannot change your mind halfway. Painting…

Protest in Art
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Protest in Art

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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 to bullies or resists violence, it is called personal courage. When a group does it, it is often called a…

Food for the Soul: Isabella Stewart Gardner – Women & Art Series 14
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Food for the Soul: Isabella Stewart Gardner – Women & Art Series 14

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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 mustachioed policemen who knocked on the doors of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Fenway Street were readily admitted by…

Food for the Soul: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
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Food for the Soul: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

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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 it is finally here—a museum devoted to the craft, art, and history of moviemaking. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures…

Food for the Soul: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney – Women & Art Series 13
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Food for the Soul: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney – Women & Art Series 13

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Robert Henri. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1916. Oil on canvas. 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 launching a museum of American art because “…not only can the visiting foreigner find no adequate presentation…

Food for the Soul: “The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art” exhibition in Paris
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Food for the Soul: “The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art” exhibition in Paris

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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 is still the art center of the world. This notion was reinforced this year by a unique and massive exhibition…

Food for the Soul – Georgia O’Keeffe: Women & Art Series 12
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Food for the Soul – Georgia O’Keeffe: Women & Art Series 12

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Georgia O’Keeffe. Pelvis with the distance, 1943. Oil on canvas. 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, Paris, 2021, courtesy of Centre Pompidou “I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to…

Food for the Soul: A Postcard from Paris
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Food for the Soul: A Postcard from Paris

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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 Scout September saw Parisians mostly spending their weekends out in the streets. Some of them (an estimated 17,000) were attending…

Food for the Soul – Discreet Charm of Kitchen Gardens
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Food for the Soul – Discreet Charm of Kitchen Gardens

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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 in a ground-floor apartment, chances were that you had some sort of kitchen garden space. If you were lucky enough…

Food for the Soul: Artists and the Moneychangers
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Food for the Soul: Artists and the Moneychangers

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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 read, then your choices include talking to them directly or showing them pictures—preferably images rendered in long-lasting materials such as…

Food for the Soul: Cerca Trova in Florence
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Food for the Soul: Cerca Trova in Florence

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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 served as the meeting hall for the Florentine Grand Council) with a fresco depicting the historic Battle of Anghiari fought…

Food for the Soul: Magdalena Abakanowicz – Women & Art Series 11
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Food for the Soul: Magdalena Abakanowicz – Women & Art Series 11

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Magdalena Abakanowicz. Abakan Orange, 1971. Sisal. 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. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to imagine.” ~ Magdalena Abakanowicz In 1962, a young woman…

Food for the Soul: Kraków, the City of Art
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Food for the Soul: Kraków, the City of Art

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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 and history. One city that possesses this ideal combination in spades, but is less visited than it deserves, is Kraków…

Food for the Soul – New York Big Five – MoMA
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Food for the Soul – New York Big Five – MoMA

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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, has been in the avant-garde of modern art collecting for almost a century. Founded in 1929 by three enterprising society…

Food for the Soul: New York Big Five – The Frick
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Food for the Soul: New York Big Five – The Frick

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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 York. I don’t. I’m overwhelmed by the stone jungle of office towers and the incessant noise of construction, police sirens,…

Food for the Soul: Barbara Hepworth – Women Artists Series 9
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Food for the Soul: Barbara Hepworth – Women Artists Series 9

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Barbara Hepworth. Sphere with Inner Form, 1963. Bronze. 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 a four-year-old boy as well as newborn, underweight triplets. You are living in a damp, badly heated basement in…

Food for the Soul – Julie Mehretu – Women & Art Series 8
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Food for the Soul – Julie Mehretu – Women & Art Series 8

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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 Mehretu By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The joint exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art and Los…

Food for the Soul: Gustave Caillebotte – The Unappreciated Impressionist
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Food for the Soul: Gustave Caillebotte – The Unappreciated Impressionist

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Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, the Rainy Day (Rue de Paris, Temps du Pluie ), 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Impressionism owes a huge debt to Gustave Caillebotte but hardly anyone today knows his name. By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Musée D’Orsay is one of the most…

Food for the Soul: California Reopenings. Back to Museums Part 2
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Food for the Soul: California Reopenings. Back to Museums Part 2

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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 states in the U.S. to have post-Covid-19 openings of entertainment and art venues, with many cultural events (such as the…

Food for the Soul: Calder-Picasso. Back to Museums Part 1
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Food for the Soul: Calder-Picasso. Back to Museums Part 1

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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 Society (ARS), New York Image provided courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. By Nina Heyn – Your…

Food for the Soul – Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun – Women Artists Series 7
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Food for the Soul – Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun – Women Artists Series 7

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Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Self-Portrait, 1791. Oil on canvas. 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 comes to mind are those impossible panniered gowns, powdered wigs, rouged cheeks, and ostrich feathers. Which is…

Food for the Soul: Olga Boznańska – Women Artists Series 6
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Food for the Soul: Olga Boznańska – Women Artists Series 6

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Olga Boznańska. Self-Portrait, 1908. Pastel, gouache on cardboard. 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 art is prominently displayed in major Western galleries. Fewer art lovers are familiar with someone like Olga…

Food for the Soul: Awards Season – Documentaries
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Food for the Soul: Awards Season – Documentaries

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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 exceptional situations (such as the last man on Earth’s travels to a polar station, or a moment in history from…

Food for the Soul: New Movies…Not in Cinemas…
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Food for the Soul: New Movies…Not in Cinemas…

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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 the 2021 Oscars—as well as numerous other awards (some critics’ organizations, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, etc.)—if released between January 1, 2020…

Food for the Soul: Coin Art
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Food for the Soul: Coin Art

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By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Even though practically every major ruler in world history has issued some coinage, just a handful of currencies have gone on to become international standards—used for a long time and widely traded. These include the drachmas of ancient Greece, the Roman Empire’s denari, and a coin called the…