From the Smithsonian: The artwork that took 30 years and 200 acres to create

• Arts & Letters

  Congratulations to the Lionesses, England’s women’s soccer team, for making history Monday night!

  August 5, 2022 · 2 min read

  Their win over Germany in the European Championship final – after a 56-year title drought for the UK – would have amazed the man who wrote this letter to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1895: “[A woman]…

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• Arts & Letters

  The Captivating Impressionism of Giorgio Morandi

  October 20, 2020 · 3 min read

  The culture and business of art is largely chauvinistic. Ninety-eight percent of the art that is made in one country stays in one country. But there is a class of art that crosses borders: the work of artists…

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• Arts & Letters

  Bach, Rachel Carlson, and MC Escher

  October 14, 2022 · 1 min read

  I’m a fan of MC Escher’s art. And Rachel Carlson’s writing. And Johann Sebastian Bach’s music. (Who isn’t?) But did you know that they are connected? Escher and Carlson were inspired by Bach. And each was also…

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• Arts & Letters

  This painting by Piet Mondrian has been hung upside-down for 77 years

  December 20, 2022 · 1 min read

  The goof was discovered by the curator of a new exhibition at a museum in Germany. Here’s how she figured it out.

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• Arts & Letters

  Edna St. Vincent Millay to Witter Bynner, May 2, 1935

  March 30, 2022 · 1 min read

  Edna St. Vincent Millay is one of my favorite American poets. I was both amused and bemused to discover that she didn’t like writing letters: Edna St. Vincent Millay to Witter Bynner, May 2, 1935 “I simply…

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