Claude Monet was born in Paris, on November 14, 1840. Today his name is synonymous with Impressionism, but there was more to the artist than his love of painting light. It is well known that Monet loved to garden, as anyone who has ever been to his home in Giverny can attest. The quaint, pink-and-green country home—where he moved in ... Read More »
An uncontested election is a sign of democracy at work, but America wasn’t always the land of the free. When the first European settlers arrived in the New World, religion and superstition ruled the land, and the rights we take for granted today were a long way away. Anne Hutchinson was a Puritan settler who came to America in 1634 ... Read More »
It’s one of the holiest sites in the Catholic church—and one of the most sacred spots in the history of art. It’s the Sistine Chapel, and it was inagurated 500 years ago on October 31, 1512 by Pope Julius II. All those centuries ago, the pope led mass under Michelangelo’s still-wet masterpiece. Today, 20,000 people a day admire the artist’s ... Read More »
In the early 1960s, when the art scene was ruled by the seriousness of Abstract Expressionism, artist Roy Lichtenstein dove head first into the ubiquitous world of pop culture. He plucked images from advertisements and cartoons and rendered them with oversized Ben-Day printer’s dots, which he painstakingly rendered by hand. Since then, dozens of artists—stars like Richard Prince and Jeff ... Read More »
In the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, Matt Damon plays Tom Ripley, a man who heads to Italy to force rich American playboy Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) to return to his family. Along the way, his infatuation with Greenleaf and his girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow), takes a dark turn—all among the backdrop of 1950s Rome. From the ancient ... Read More »
Over the years, director Woody Allen has captured some of the the world’s most iconic cities on film. The most recent to get the auteur’s treatment is “To Rome with Love.” With the movie in mind, we looked to Rome’s past to see the history behind the locations in the film. Hayley and Michelangelo at Fontana di Trevi Fontana di ... Read More »
Last week we told you about an exhibition at the New Museum highlighting the artists who came up around New York City’s Bowery in the 1970s and ’80s. If that show left you wanting more secrets from the New York art scene, let’s head to the Lower East Side and East Village to take a look at the artists who ... Read More »
MUSEYON BOOKS Smart City Guides for Travel, History, Art and Film Lovers