By Patrick Hunt – According to 17th century German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, “Music is a secret exercise in the arithmetic of the soul.” That music and mathematics are deeply wedded needs no explanation, since “Music is mathematics you can hear” [1] If anyone could hear the mathematics of music, it […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy, Exhibitions and Museum Editor - When life was suddenly brought to a halt and encapsulated in 79 AD, the people caught up in the catastrophe cannot have been entirely surprised by Vesuvius erupting. The earthquake of February 62 AD alone might have been a wake-up call. […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Archbishop Antonio AgustÃn y Albanel (1517-1586) died on 31 May 1586 at Tarragona, a city of notable traditions both as the Roman capital of Hispania Citerior, then Hispania Tarraconensis and as the seat of one of the oldest archdioceses in Spain, established even before […]
By Allison Rath - When Norton Dodge (1927-2011) first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1955 to study the economic role of Russian women, he encountered the underground nonconformist art world in Moscow with the clandestine help of artist Valery Kuznetsov. Moved by the art he saw, Dodge would spend the […]
By Patrick Hunt -Â The Abbazia di Novacella is in the South Tyrolean municipality of Varna (Varhn), surrounded by its monastery vineyards above the Isarco (Eisack) River. South Tyrol was part of Austria until 1919 but is now Italy. The Abbazia is steeped in history, from its medieval foundation around […]
By Kristine Wendt – One of the most elusive art historical biographies belongs to Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Having pieced together his biography from police records alone, historians have classified Caravaggio as violent, irascible, and quick to draw his sword. Moreover, surviving contemporary biographies, covetous and biased, have further […]
By Patrick Hunt – In the great scheme of things theoretical, one might suppose that Classical music composition could be perceived as applied mathematics. Can ordered melody and harmonics and other elements in chord progressions somehow approach something like emotional equations, however subtle or sublime as in the case of […]
By Catherine Clover – Never have I been so impressed by a place as I was entering Burma (also known as Myanmar) for the first time. The trip was especially significant on a personal level, as the week prior Aung San Suu Kyi had been to the University of Oxford […]
Katherine Joplin - The study of the psyche is generally considered a relatively modern form of science. One thinks of 20th century archetype thinkers like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who founded psychoanalysis and the beginnings of modern psychology. However, the actual term “psyche†has a much older origin, and […]
By Catherine Clover – “In so far as Luang Prabang is like any other place, it is perhaps a little like an Austrian mountain village, with palms instead of pinesâ€. Andrew Graham, Interval in IndoChina, London, 1956 [1]. Sitting atop the bank of the Mekong in Northern Laos is the […]