Food for the Soul – Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun – Women Artists Series 7
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
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
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…
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
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…
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: The Magi at the National Gallery
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 Adoration of the Kings. The exotic story of the three rulers of faraway kingdoms, led by a star to Bethlehem…
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
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
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
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
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: Introduction to Visions of Freedom
“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 sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence…
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…
Fool for the Soul: Tenet
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 be a Warner Bros. blockbuster for one of the hot mid-July weekends you might spend in a shopping mall cooling…
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 3: Recovered
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 more rare than an art loss. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Sometimes, there is hope for a lost…
Food for the Soul: Lost Masterpieces. Part 2: Missing
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 have been the first thing to be looted. By the turn of the 19th century, the collection of war trophies…
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: Loving Beethoven
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 than a day later, has been recorded as December 17, 1770. This year, therefore, it is a round 250 year…
Food for the Soul – Police… in other countries, other shows
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 usually focus on American TV shows. So, here is a different list. Instead of watching traditonal U.S. cop shows, full…
Food for the Soul – Dog Stories
Martiros Saryan. By the Well. Hot day, 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 – Your Culture Scout As soon as I wrote a story about cats in fine art, dog aficionados felt a…
Food for the Soul – Cat Stories
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 Scout Long before the entire world got stuck in front of flickering screens all day long, cat videos were the…
Food for the Soul: Docs you can share with youngsters
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 taken up by fixing. We fix our kids calculus assignments, even if our last bout with calculus was decades ago,…
What’s New
Food for the Soul: The Art of Gold and the Gold in ArtSeptember 12, 2024Food for the Soul – Streaming on Vacation 2024August 28, 2024Food for the Soul: “Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter…
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
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: at home
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 wait out the virus. Everything has ground to a sudden halt: going to work or school, dining out or seeing…
About
Nina Heyn is Your Culture Scout – the author of the Food for the Soul column, podcast chats about art and the book Women in Art: Artists, Models and Those Who Made It Happen. Drawing on her previous careers as a long-time Hollywood studio publicist, a film writer and a corporate executive, Nina’s goal is to tell…
Movies & TV
Search for:SearchFood for the Soul – Streaming on Vacation 2024August 28, 2024Food for the Soul: Dune: Part TwoMarch 14, 2024Food for the Soul: Mystery Shows for Winter NightsJanuary 4, 2024F…
Videos
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Women & Art
In ages past, women have always had a hard path towards even becoming an artist, much less being recognized as one. By late 1500, some of them, like an Italian painter Sofonisba Anguissola, have achieved enough recognition to live as a professional, commissioned artist. However, even some as famous as Sofonisba (Anthony van Dyck sought…
Food for the Soul: Frida Kahlo – Women Artists Series 3
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 hunkering down at home to wait out the pandemic. The same as cinema-going and dining with friends at restaurants, museum-going…
Audios
Playlist Women in Art at the Barnes with Nina Heyn and Ulrike Granögger – May 10th, 2024 (59:29) Lessons from Vermeer with Nina Heyn and Ricardo Oskam, Part 2 – June 1st, 2023 (1:04:51) Lessons from Vermeer with Nina Heyn and Ricardo Oskam – May 4th, 2023 (57:55) Episode 15: Traveling…. While Streaming – December…
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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: Adventures of the Ghent Altar
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 Culture Scout When brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck started painting panels of a commissioned altar some time in 1420’s…
Food for the Soul – Money on Canvas
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 Scout Ever since precious metal coins were invented as a convenient alternative to barter, from Phoenicia to ancient China, they…
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: Parasite and Farewell
“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 past, but the reality is that there are class lines that cannot be crossed.” Boon Jong Ho, director of Parasite…
Food for the Soul – da Vinci’s Horse
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 filming stories about da Vinci in Milan when we met at a book fair an Italian author, Marco Malvaldi, who…
Food for the Soul: Podcasting about da Vinci
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 bring you a podcast. In late 2019 the Louvre opened a historic exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci. Catherine, Ulrike Granögger…
Food for the Soul: 12 Movie Gifts in a Pear Tree
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 a recommendation were that movies had to be entertaining (a value much neglected in a majority of films) and a…
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 a serial killer in The Monster, accolades for her role as Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road) – she…
Food for the Soul: Knives Out!
“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 and so on. So many movies, so little time. This is one of the reasons many good dramas or even…
Food for the Soul: Women at Prado – Women Artists Series 2
Sofonisba Anguissola. Self-Portrait at the Easel, 1556-57. Oil on canvas. 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 that she was a woman, and had risen above the usual course of those of her sex,…
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, drawings and sculptures, sometimes objects of historical value, writings or artifacts (think the MET or the Tate). They fulfill the…
Food for the Soul: da Vinci, Paris – Part 3
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 amazing that 500 years on, we still see news stories about da Vinci in daily press. There was one recently…
Food For The Soul: The Laundromat
“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 mainstream movie? Director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven series) and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!, Contagion)…
Food for the Soul: From Downton to Wall Street
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 Scout Fall is good for fans of enjoyable dramas – summer superhero blockbusters have had their run, everyone is back…
Food for the Soul: “Tel Aviv on Fire”
“-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 “Tel Aviv on Fire” By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout The pool of independent movies in Hollywood is shrinking every…
Food for the Soul: Blinded By the Light
“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 not easy to make a good movie about either racial problems or relations with parents. Either they reek of political…
Food for the Soul: Berthe Morisot – Women Artists series 1
Edma Morisot. Portrait of Berthe Morisot, 1865. Oil on canvas. Private collection, Paris. Photo: Wikimedia Commons “I do not think any man would ever treat a woman as his equal, and it is all I ask because I know my worth.” ~ Berthe Morisot in her notebook By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout As…
Food for the Soul: Berthe Morisot – Women Painters Series 1
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 I know my worth.” Berthe Morisot in her notebook By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout As much or as little…
Food for the Soul: Digital Art in Paris
“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 art exhibitions in major cities attest to our undying fascination with masterpiece paintings. Especially popular are retrospective exhibitions that allow…
Food for the Soul: Caravaggio in Rome
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 Australian art critic on Caravaggio By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout There are several ways to enjoy art in Rome….
Food for the Soul: The Year of da Vinci – Interview with a Milanese – Journalist Paola Jacobbi
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 has lived in Milan for most of her life. Paola joins Food for the Soul’s Nina Heyn to discuss Milan’s…
Food for the Soul: Departing in Style – Mawangdui Tombs
“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 Scout It would be impossible to track the history of human civilization if not for a fairly universal custom of…
Food for the Soul – Royal Dazzlers
“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 Sigismund Augustus. By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout European countries tend to proudly display their royal crown jewels at…
Food for the Soul – Museum Night in Europe
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. There will be field trips for history, geography or literature curriculum. There will be days of school holding final exams…
Food for the Soul – The Inventor
“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 in the pastoral 18th century – when nature has not been yet destroyed by industrial revolution and global wars have…
Leonardo da Vinci: Books and Exhibitions
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 da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519), more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian…
Food for the Soul: Da Vinci – 500th Anniversary
“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 da Vinci By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout May 2, 2019 marks the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s…
Food for the Soul – The Joy of Color
“If you pay attention, nothing in nature stays the same for a single moment: You can’t be bored of nature, can you? Well, sometimes I’ll steal something from Van Gogh. I mean I do. Good artists don’t borrow, they steal.” David Hockney By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout There are two amazing facts about Vincent…
Food for the Soul: All the Rembrandts
“There’s a drawing by Rembrandt, I think it’s the greatest drawing ever done. It’s in the British Museum and it’s of a family teaching a child to walk, so it’s a universal thing, everybody has experienced this or seen it happen. Everybody. I used to print out Rembrandt drawings big and give them to people…
Food for the Soul: Tears for Notre Dame
No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend’s were. Each…
Hero of the Week: April 4, 2019 – Nina Heyn
Nina is the founder of Torus International, a marketing strategy solutions consultancy that specializes in entertainment marketing and film acquisition, particularly in international markets. Her recent activities in international markets included service as head of marketing at a leading Polish independent film distributor, and as acquisitions consultant at a European exhibition and distribution company. In…
Food for the Soul: da Vinci Part 2 – Milan
“Leonardo is the perfect symbol both of the Renaissance and the modern man: complete, versatile, creative and future oriented“- Dr. Claudio Salsi, Director of Conservation of the Sforza Castle, Milan By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Our year-long fascination with Leonardo’s legacy continues, fueled by various European exhibitions such as a celebration of his…
Food for the Soul with Nina Heyn
Excerpt: Full Length Interview: Subscriber Resources – Interview Audios Listen to the Interview MP3 audio file Download the Interview MP3 audio file Read the transcript of Food for the Soul with Nina Heyn “Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.” ~ Dorothy Day By Catherine Austin Fitts This…
Food for the Soul: The Wandering Earth
“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” — Henry David Thoreau By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout The movie The Wandering Earth has already made history as the first Chinese sci-fi blockbuster which garnered $650 million in its native country, and marks the Chinese entry…
Food for the Soul: De Young Part 2 – Monet
“Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.” Claude Monet By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout San Francisco’s De Young Museum is on a tearing streak as far as the milestone French artists are concerned. After Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey,…
Food for the Soul: De Young Museum Part 1 – Gauguin
“There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.” Paul Gauguin By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout By all accounts Paul Gauguin was not a nice man. In his quest for artistic expression he abandoned his long-suffering wife and kids, he practically drove…
Food for the Soul – Binge on History
“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill, paraphrasing George Santayana By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Long winter nights are just perfect for plunging into long TV shows brought to your local computer screen by accommodating streaming services. We thought it might be fun to list some…
Food for the Soul: The Year of da Vinci
“Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long, life is short“- Hippocrates “Life, if well spent, is long” – Leonardo da Vinci By Nina Heyn -Your Culture Scout Imagine a designer whose technical designs remain mostly in the blueprint but never go into technical trials or a production line. Imagine a scientist who has to hide…
Food For the Soul: Oscar Treasures in Black and White
“It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t be magic. You shouldn’t weep happy and then sad and then happy again. But you do. And I do. And we all do.” ― Ray Bradbury, The Cat’s Pajamas By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Foreign black and white movies do not find favor with contemporary American audiences. The 2011 French movie The…
Food For the Soul: At The Movies … At Other Countries
“If someone has to commit a crime in order to survive, society must take a look at itself and ask who the guilty ones really are.” Dr. Chen Zuo Bing, director of Kangfu Medical Center at Beijing University Hospital By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Since Marvel superheros and various American action hits dominate movie…
Food for the Soul: Trapped Queens
Sir William Cecil: You must confront the truth, madam. She has a claim to your throne. Queen Elizabeth I: You would have me depose a sister monarch. Sir William Cecil: It is either civil war there, or civil war here. From the 2018 movie “Mary, Queen of Scots” By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout The…
Food for the Soul: The Oscar Race Has Started
“I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.” ~Freddie Mercury – front man of Queen By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Every autumn, various big, showpiece movies that start popping up in cinemas with attendant publicity blitz do not have anything in common other than the fact that they have been groomed…
Food for the Soul: MAGRITTE – known and unknown
“In opposition to the general pessimism, I set the search for joy, for pleasure.” René Magritte By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout The Belgian artist René Magritte made his name as a surrealist in the 1930’s, joining a cultural movement that has been spreading since 1920’s and already included poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who coined the…
Food For the Soul: Fondation Louis Vuitton
“I think people care. If not, why so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to see the Parthenon, to Chartres, the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao… Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.” Frank Gehry By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout…
Food For the Soul: Venice
“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs at one go.” ~ Truman Capote By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout May be there aren’t exactly “One Hundred Places You Need to Visit Before You Die” but Venice would definitely be nice to check out before you check out for good. For literally ages…
Food for the Soul: Crazy Rich Asians
“Rachel Chu: So your family is rich? Nick Young: We’re comfortable. Rachel Chu: That is exactly what a super-rich person would say.” ~ Dialog from the movie Crazy Rich Asians By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout You don’t need statistics to enjoy a comedy but here it is anyway. There are 637 billionaires in Asia, 594 out of…
Food for the Soul: Dark Money
“Campaign finance is the gateway to every other issue you might care about – whether it be education or tax reform or foreign policy.” Ann M. Ravel, former chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission. By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Dark Money is a new political documentary that addresses financing for political campaigns at a…
Food for the Soul: Brain Not Brawn – Women In Action
“Debbie Ocean: How long would it take you to make seven pieces of jewelry? Amita: Five or six hours. Debbie Ocean: How long if I told you you didn’t have to live with your mother anymore? Amita: Less.” ~Dialog from Ocean’s Eight By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Hollywood is rocked daily by harassment accusations…
Food for the Soul: Museum BRANLY
“If Jacques Chirac is so interested in non-European art it’s largely because the 20th century discovered the quality, scope and significance of these cultures after having dominated and scorned them for such a long time.”< em>Former French Culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon in an interview for Financial Times By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout It is…
Food For The Soul: Following Claude Monet
“Apart from painting and gardening, I’m good for nothing. My greatest masterpiece is my garden.” Claude Monet By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout It goes without saying that you can literally spend weeks in Paris just visiting museums, taking in sights and exploring points of interest and there will always be something new to discover….
Food For The Soul: Museum POLIN
“Who is this museum for? …For everybody- to give a chance to meet Jewish community that gave the world great thinkers, leaders, scientists, writers, musicians and painters.” Marian Turski – journalist, historian, Chairman of the Board of POLIN Museum, Vice President of Jewish Historical Institute in Poland, Holocaust survivor Check it Out! By Nina Heyn,…
Food For The Soul: Amber
“The man was an expert in deceit, and he came to my father’s house bringing a necklace strung with gold and amber beads. While my dear mother and her maids examined and handled it, haggling over the price, he nodded silently to the woman.” Homer, The Odyssey (Book 15) Check it Out! By Nina Heyn,…
Food For The Soul: Cannes Film Festival
“So, where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?” Christina Aguilera Check it Out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Every May since 1946, the most famous and the most prestigious film festival in the world starts in a small beach resort of Cannes on the French Riviera. Even though there are signs that…
Food For The Soul: “Beirut”
” – 2000 years of revenge, vendetta, murder… -Welcome to Beirut” A dialog in the movie Beirut Check it Out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout In the olden days of cinema, circa last century, there have been plenty of political dramas to choose from. You could watch The Deer Hunter about Vietnam War or…
Food For The Soul: Ancient Egypt
“For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things.” Howard Carter…
Food For The Soul: Abacus – Small Enough To Jail
“(The US Banks issued 4.8 trillion in fraudulent mortgages and toxic loans) … but they could not bring them trial because of the institutions were so large and so internationally connected that indicting them could wreck the entre financial system…If you are going pick on a bank, a family-owned company, wedged between a couple of…
Food For The Soul: Immersive Museums
“BioDesign Studio is an experience like no other. This is a space where visitors of all ages can gain a deep understanding of their own power to use synthetic biology to solve big problems, like food security and climate change. We’ll be inspiring the next generation of biotech innovators.” Tim Ritchie, President and CEO of…
Food For The Soul: The Blacklist
“So the Federal Government has armed a cyber terrorist with a digital equivalent of a nuclear warfare. Another fabulous example of your tax dollar at work.” THE BLACKLIST TV show Check it Out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout They say that life imitates art but of course much more often it is art that…
Food For The Soul: Call Me By Your Name
“How you live your life is your business, just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now,…
Food For The Soul: Portraits and Selfies
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray By…