Food for the Soul: Hilma af Klint, the first abstractionist. Women Artists Series 5
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Food for the Soul: Hilma af Klint, the first abstractionist. Women Artists Series 5

Hilma af Klint. Self-Portrait, date of painting unknown. Oil on canvas. 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 history of modern art is not that surprising. That even now she remains unknown is a bit more…

Food for the Soul- Women at Work, Part V – Princesses and Servants
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Food for the Soul- Women at Work, Part V – Princesses and Servants

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 the City of Ladies, but we know the author: Christine de Pizan (or de Pisan). This miniature portrays her as…

Food for the Soul: Women at Work- IV – The Toil
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Food for the Soul: Women at Work- IV – The Toil

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 tasks—to the person who is doing it. It can however, be appealing to artists as a subject, especially if such…

Food for the Soul: Women at Work Part  III – Out in the World
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Food for the Soul: Women at Work Part III – Out in the World

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 also been out in the fields as farmers or trading in the markets as merchants. Industrialization brought women into cities,…

Food for the Soul: Women at Work Part II – At Home
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Food for the Soul: Women at Work Part II – At Home

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 on women at work—this time captured in their most accessible milieu—working at home. The tasks depicted may be some of…

Food for the Soul – Women at Work Part I – Masterpieces
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Food for the Soul – Women at Work Part I – Masterpieces

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 century, are male. The paintings show men heroically fighting or representing religious or mythological figures, men hunting, or men suffering…

Food for the Soul: Good and Bad Government
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Food for the Soul: Good and Bad Government

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 presidential election amid the most polarized debate in living memory about what is right and wrong and what kind of…

Food For the Soul: Artists Gardens
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Food For the Soul: Artists Gardens

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, but perhaps one of them is our renewed appreciation of gardens. A lot of us have favorite gardens. It might…

Food for the Soul: Lost Masterpieces. Part 1: Destroyed
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Food for the Soul: Lost Masterpieces. Part 1: Destroyed

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. Thousands of works have been destroyed by fires and wars or simply by someone changing their mind, like Rockefeller being…

Food for the Soul: Artemisia Gentileschi – Women Artists Series 4
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Food for the Soul: Artemisia Gentileschi – Women Artists Series 4

Artemisia Gentileschi. Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura), (about 1638-1639). Oil on canvas. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019. Photo: Courtesy of The National Gallery, London “…with me Your Illustrious Lordship will not lose and you will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman.”~…

Food for the Soul: 500 years of Raphael in Rome
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Food for the Soul: 500 years of Raphael in Rome

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 the Scuderia del Quirinale in Rome could only open in March for few days before the whole of Italy went…

Food for the Soul: Michelangelo – Mind of the Master
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Food for the Soul: Michelangelo – Mind of the Master

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 photo credit: Teylers Museum, Haarlem.The Netherlands. Courtesy of the Getty Museum Most of the time, on order to experience Michelangelo’s…

Food for the Soul: Streaming Late at Night
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Food for the Soul: Streaming Late at Night

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 evenings are perfect for some streaming time. Here are some shows that are entertaining, smart, produced around the globe, and…

Food for the Soul: Bombshell
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Food for the Soul: Bombshell

“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…

Food for the Soul: Museum Gardens

Food for the Soul: Museum Gardens

“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,…