These curators of St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum have the right idea. Perhaps this is the wishful thinking of a person without a pet, but I would love to work in an office full of cats...
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/russias-museum-cats
Much as dogs were humanity's first security system, cats were our original pest control. In an environment full of delicate artwork, where thousands of visitors circulate every day (including, I'm sure, many children), it makes sense that instead of rat poison and traps, the museum staff are resorting to this age-old solution to rodent problems. And, of course, they're providing a loving and safe home to a veritable squadron of cats, many of whom previously lived in less-than-healthful circumstances in the museum's heating system.
The article doesn't mention that these cats (their predecessors, really) were first brought to the museum, which was then a palace, by decree of the Russian empress Elizabeth. They were specially imported from Kazan, a city whose cats were reputed to be the best mousers in Russia. These cats lived in the palace for many years, until the feline population was virtually decimated during World War II. About twenty years ago, a program was begun to care for the animals, and in recent years, in addition to maintaining its existing cats, the museum has even begun to adopt cats in need of a home.
The museum director is noted to have said that "they are the spirit of the place. The museum’s genius loci.” It's a curious but apt comparison; genii loci were ancient Roman guardians of specific locations (usually homes), whose goodwill was usually secured through piety and sacrificial offerings. These cats seem to have become such a part of the fabric of the museum that without them, the Hermitage Museum would be a different, less feeling place. But as long as they continue to be loved by staff and visitors as they are, the cats appear quite content to stay in their unusual abode.
Showing posts with label mythology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mythology. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Sunday, January 13, 2013
io9: Let's Bring Back the Greek Gods!
Because they were so much more interesting than the all-powerful monotheist deities people worship now!
http://io9.com/5974126/can-we-bring-the-greek-gods-back-please
Granted, religion isn't meant to be entertaining so much as to provide followers with a roadmap to a pleasant afterlife and an explanation for all questions not yet answered by science. But the Greeks had both those (well, perhaps not always the nicest afterlife) as well as extremely colourful and often interactive mythology. I don't fancy getting abducted by a Greek god, but going to an oracle sounds like quite the experience. (Then again, the oracle of Delphi was supposed to be on psychotropic fumes emitted by the volcanic vents in the area.)
In any case, it sure beats Calvinism!
http://io9.com/5974126/can-we-bring-the-greek-gods-back-please
Granted, religion isn't meant to be entertaining so much as to provide followers with a roadmap to a pleasant afterlife and an explanation for all questions not yet answered by science. But the Greeks had both those (well, perhaps not always the nicest afterlife) as well as extremely colourful and often interactive mythology. I don't fancy getting abducted by a Greek god, but going to an oracle sounds like quite the experience. (Then again, the oracle of Delphi was supposed to be on psychotropic fumes emitted by the volcanic vents in the area.)
In any case, it sure beats Calvinism!
Monday, December 6, 2010
Camera Mounted on a Peregrine Falcon
I would recommend skipping this one if you have severe motion sickness.
One of my dearest childhood wishes was to be able to fly, under my own power. I loved the Daedalus and Icarus (or more properly, Daidalos and Ikaros) story. I used to try to fashion wings for myself, out of cardboard, popsicle sticks, Halloween faerie wings, whatever else I could find. I can imagine -- almost remember -- my father being tolerantly amused (he had been an engineer, once upon a time), and my mother rolling her eyes and cleaning up the messes that must have ensued.
I wish I could show my five-year-old self this video.
One of my dearest childhood wishes was to be able to fly, under my own power. I loved the Daedalus and Icarus (or more properly, Daidalos and Ikaros) story. I used to try to fashion wings for myself, out of cardboard, popsicle sticks, Halloween faerie wings, whatever else I could find. I can imagine -- almost remember -- my father being tolerantly amused (he had been an engineer, once upon a time), and my mother rolling her eyes and cleaning up the messes that must have ensued.
I wish I could show my five-year-old self this video.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Italy Travelogue, Part 3: Vatican City
If you're ever in Rome, the Vatican is definitely worth seeing. It'll take a day, at least, but do go. It's chock-full of centuries of artwork and architecture, and not all of it is Catholic; some of the most famous classical sculptures are there. The pièce de résistance, of course, is the Sistine Chapel; disappointingly, but understandably, we were not allowed to photograph it. We did take pictures of lots of other things...
The Vatican Museums are home to some of the greatest artistic treasures in the world. Exhibit A -- Here's the marble of Laocoön and sons being strangled by Athena's sea serpents, the one that Pliny the Elder wrote about (Yes, I took Latin in high school, why do you ask?), one of the most celebrated statues from antiquity:
The story goes, Laocoön was a Trojan priest of Poseidon, who was in Poseidon's bad books because he took a wife and sired children (this is relevant only because his terrible luck and grisly death is sometimes attributed to the god's displeasure). Anyhow, he was one of the few Trojans who suspected that the Trojan horse was a ruse, and proposed that they set it on fire. Athena summoned a pair of giant snakes to strangle him and his sons. The Trojans then assumed that the horse was sacred (and that anyone who dared to harm it would meet a similarly nasty end), and so they brought the horse into Troy. I'm not sure who had it worse, Laocoön or Cassandra.
We also saw Raphael's even more famous The School of Athens:
This is often considered to be not only Raphael's finest piece, but also the very spirit of the Renaissance in painted form. The term itself, "Renaissance", means "rebirth", and the great artists and thinkers of the Renaissance felt a deep intellectual kinship with their Greco-Roman peers. It is only fitting that the spirit of the era is captured as Greek institution.
I had fun squinting up at it and trying to identify all the people in the painting, but I didn't get very far. The two figures in the middle (under the central arch) are Plato and Aristotle, in the red and blue mantles, respectively. Plato is supposed to be modeled on Leonardo da Vinci (and with that beard, I can see the resemblance). Michelangelo is in the middle on the bottom step (purple shirt and red pants, with his elbow on a box, looking bored), as a Greek painter (what else) of some importance. Raphael painted himself in, too, though I didn't find him until we got home. He's in the upper right, where the bottom of the arch meets the top of the pillar, next to the old man in the green cloak (he's wearing red and purple, too).
Fast-forwarding several centuries in art history, we come to Canova's Perseus, who is depicted in the style of the classical hero (read: naked), holding up the head of his slain foe (Medusa). Here he is:
I thought he looked rather familiar, and that's because he is. Canova made another Perseus, which is almost identical, and that one resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I've seen it before.
Canova's Perseus is one of the few post-Renaissance marbles to be exhibited so prominently in the Vatican Museums, and rightly so. He sculpted Perseus in the tail end of the Baroque era, when everything was excessively embellished (to the point of seeming nauseatingly garish), and manages to capture the hero triumphant, simple and clothed in little besides his own achievement.
The Vatican Museums also house a collection of artifacts of non-European antiquity. They have an excellent Egyptian wing, and also one with Near Eastern art. My sister and I were much amused to find, in the Assyrian section, this piece:
It's Birdman! (My sister is a better bird(wo)man than I am, I know; I have a terrible poker face.)
It's one of many long-standing points of reference for us. She currently attends the same middle school I did, and one of our favorite teachers is the inimitable Ms. Springer, archaeologist and historian extraordinare, who taught us sixth grade history. (She did a wonderful job of it, too; I was immensely surprised to find, in my Ancient Empires course reader, a passage from "Wen-Amon Goes to Phoenicia", which we read in sixth grade.)
Birdman was one of the most memorable characters from our Assyria unit. I still remember taking a field trip to the Met to see him; I thought he was enormous, back then. I spotted him in the Vatican all these years later, and we couldn't resist.
Of course, no trip to the Vatican is complete without a visit to St. Peter's Basilica. The lines were not as terrible as we'd feared (thank goodness!), and the inside was every bit as spectacularly grand as we'd imagined. I made a beeline for Michelangelo's most famous Pietà:
You'll have to click on it to get a closer view, and even then, it's still quite small; I was pressed up against the plexiglas wall, but I was still about a dozen feet away from it. Apparently, some crazy person tried to attack it with a hammer, and ended up chipping off Mary's nose, and so they won't let anyone get anywhere near it anymore. (Something similar happened to the David (who lost a few toes), and so there's a plexiglas shield around him, too.)
One of the first things anyone notices about the work is that Mary looks incredibly young. There's some debate about why this is; we know that Michelangelo made her deliberately so. Some say that it's an indication of her purity and favor with God; others say that she's actually supposed to be a young mother, and that she's holding her baby and having a premonition of her son's fate.
On the subject of Pietàs, I edited the Florence part to include some pictures from the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo that I oddly couldn't find the first time around, so scroll down if you're interested in one of Michelangelo's other Pietàs.
Well, that's Italy. It was a lot of fun (and a historian/erstwhile Latin student's dream). There was plenty we didn't get to see this time around, so I'd definitely want to go back sometime in the future!
The Vatican Museums are home to some of the greatest artistic treasures in the world. Exhibit A -- Here's the marble of Laocoön and sons being strangled by Athena's sea serpents, the one that Pliny the Elder wrote about (Yes, I took Latin in high school, why do you ask?), one of the most celebrated statues from antiquity:
The story goes, Laocoön was a Trojan priest of Poseidon, who was in Poseidon's bad books because he took a wife and sired children (this is relevant only because his terrible luck and grisly death is sometimes attributed to the god's displeasure). Anyhow, he was one of the few Trojans who suspected that the Trojan horse was a ruse, and proposed that they set it on fire. Athena summoned a pair of giant snakes to strangle him and his sons. The Trojans then assumed that the horse was sacred (and that anyone who dared to harm it would meet a similarly nasty end), and so they brought the horse into Troy. I'm not sure who had it worse, Laocoön or Cassandra.
We also saw Raphael's even more famous The School of Athens:
This is often considered to be not only Raphael's finest piece, but also the very spirit of the Renaissance in painted form. The term itself, "Renaissance", means "rebirth", and the great artists and thinkers of the Renaissance felt a deep intellectual kinship with their Greco-Roman peers. It is only fitting that the spirit of the era is captured as Greek institution.
I had fun squinting up at it and trying to identify all the people in the painting, but I didn't get very far. The two figures in the middle (under the central arch) are Plato and Aristotle, in the red and blue mantles, respectively. Plato is supposed to be modeled on Leonardo da Vinci (and with that beard, I can see the resemblance). Michelangelo is in the middle on the bottom step (purple shirt and red pants, with his elbow on a box, looking bored), as a Greek painter (what else) of some importance. Raphael painted himself in, too, though I didn't find him until we got home. He's in the upper right, where the bottom of the arch meets the top of the pillar, next to the old man in the green cloak (he's wearing red and purple, too).
Fast-forwarding several centuries in art history, we come to Canova's Perseus, who is depicted in the style of the classical hero (read: naked), holding up the head of his slain foe (Medusa). Here he is:
I thought he looked rather familiar, and that's because he is. Canova made another Perseus, which is almost identical, and that one resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I've seen it before.
Canova's Perseus is one of the few post-Renaissance marbles to be exhibited so prominently in the Vatican Museums, and rightly so. He sculpted Perseus in the tail end of the Baroque era, when everything was excessively embellished (to the point of seeming nauseatingly garish), and manages to capture the hero triumphant, simple and clothed in little besides his own achievement.
The Vatican Museums also house a collection of artifacts of non-European antiquity. They have an excellent Egyptian wing, and also one with Near Eastern art. My sister and I were much amused to find, in the Assyrian section, this piece:
It's Birdman! (My sister is a better bird(wo)man than I am, I know; I have a terrible poker face.)
It's one of many long-standing points of reference for us. She currently attends the same middle school I did, and one of our favorite teachers is the inimitable Ms. Springer, archaeologist and historian extraordinare, who taught us sixth grade history. (She did a wonderful job of it, too; I was immensely surprised to find, in my Ancient Empires course reader, a passage from "Wen-Amon Goes to Phoenicia", which we read in sixth grade.)
Birdman was one of the most memorable characters from our Assyria unit. I still remember taking a field trip to the Met to see him; I thought he was enormous, back then. I spotted him in the Vatican all these years later, and we couldn't resist.
Of course, no trip to the Vatican is complete without a visit to St. Peter's Basilica. The lines were not as terrible as we'd feared (thank goodness!), and the inside was every bit as spectacularly grand as we'd imagined. I made a beeline for Michelangelo's most famous Pietà:
You'll have to click on it to get a closer view, and even then, it's still quite small; I was pressed up against the plexiglas wall, but I was still about a dozen feet away from it. Apparently, some crazy person tried to attack it with a hammer, and ended up chipping off Mary's nose, and so they won't let anyone get anywhere near it anymore. (Something similar happened to the David (who lost a few toes), and so there's a plexiglas shield around him, too.)
One of the first things anyone notices about the work is that Mary looks incredibly young. There's some debate about why this is; we know that Michelangelo made her deliberately so. Some say that it's an indication of her purity and favor with God; others say that she's actually supposed to be a young mother, and that she's holding her baby and having a premonition of her son's fate.
On the subject of Pietàs, I edited the Florence part to include some pictures from the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo that I oddly couldn't find the first time around, so scroll down if you're interested in one of Michelangelo's other Pietàs.
Well, that's Italy. It was a lot of fun (and a historian/erstwhile Latin student's dream). There was plenty we didn't get to see this time around, so I'd definitely want to go back sometime in the future!
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The New Yorker: What Atlas Should Have Done
I've actually always wondered about this:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/issuecartoons/2010/04/05/cartoons_20100329#slide=8
*Plothole Alert!* (I jest.)
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/issuecartoons/2010/04/05/cartoons_20100329#slide=8
*Plothole Alert!* (I jest.)
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The New Yorker: A Package for Priam
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/issuecartoons/2010/04/26/cartoons_20100419#slide=14
What can I say -- I'm a fan of historical humor (both humor about history, and humor from history). I confess I laughed when reading Herodotus last year.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
El Cid, Cicero, and Napoleon...
... walk into a bar... I'm kidding. Actually, what the three have in common (other than being dead) is that they were all exiled from their homelands, for various (political) reasons.
The line is also much more broadly applicable; hope is, after all, the last thing that can be taken from a person, short of his life.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
~Aeschylus, AgamemnonThere is something about the concept of homeland, la patrie, the people and language and culture and physical earth of the places we love, that drives people to live, to love, and to die. To be exiled, for some, is the finest form of agony. That notion, that singular spark, seems to have been lost, or twisted beyond recognition, in this day and age. I am a student of history, and The Song of Roland moves me still -- as does, of course, The Oresteia -- though I have read them both many times.
The line is also much more broadly applicable; hope is, after all, the last thing that can be taken from a person, short of his life.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
A One-Stop Resource for all your Greek Mythology Needs
http://www.theoi.com
An almost-comprehensive compendium of information on Greek mythology. Its strengths are deities of all stripes, mythical heroes, and genealogy. It is very useful as a supplement to Wikipedia, as it is usually more detailed, and its articles more tailored to the knowledgeable reader, rather than a lay audience.
An almost-comprehensive compendium of information on Greek mythology. Its strengths are deities of all stripes, mythical heroes, and genealogy. It is very useful as a supplement to Wikipedia, as it is usually more detailed, and its articles more tailored to the knowledgeable reader, rather than a lay audience.
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