December 3rd, 2019 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, Travel, visual arts
I had long wanted to fully experience the Venice Biennale. In 2017, the curator of the American pavilion was Christopher Bedford, also the newly hired director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. The credentials created quite the synergistic buzz. The artist who...
November 19th, 2019 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, Travel
Andrea Palladio published I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), an inventory of his buildings, in 1570. Palladio largely invented the concept of the country home, conjoining the physical space of artifice with the metaphysical space...
November 30th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Canada, General, Travel, visual arts
Art is everywhere in Montreal. In that chilly breeze in October, in the slaty light, the stroll down Sherbrooke to the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts took us past memorials to Steve Jobs and Canada’s poet laureate, Leonard Cohen. The campus—for all those buildings...
June 25th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Europe, Gardens and Gardening, General, literature and poetry, the world and Mother Nature, Travel, visual arts
Every time I pick up a Ross King book, it’s longer and weightier. Brunelleschi’s Dome was a little bit of a thing, perfect for reading on a transcontinental flight. Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling was longer but then the Sistine Chapel ceiling is a better...
May 26th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, General, literature and poetry, Popular Culture, Travel
Note to self: if there is the chance to drop off luggage before the room has been prepared, drop off everything except for telephone, wallet, camera and guidebook. As we waved hej-hej (that’s “bye-bye”) to Lars the landlord and strolled into town, I realized that my...
May 11th, 2018 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, literature and poetry, Popular Culture, Society at Large, Travel
Christianshavn is a relic of 17th-century development. Thus its shape is that of a segment of a circle with the København Havn (the redundant “Merchants Harbor Port”) representing the chord and Stadsgraven Canal forming the arc. Originally a moat protecting the...