Arts&Culture
Traditional art that brings inspiration to us modern people.
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How to Crush Your New Year’s Reading Resolutions
In 2022, Gallup found that Americans read an average of 12.6 books each per year, the lowest number Gallup has measured since it began tracking the stat in 1990. In that same poll, a full 17 percent of Americans said they read no books at all during the prior year.
Ex Libris: Dolly Parton
Born in 1946, Dolly Parton grew up dirt-poor in a cabin on Tennessee’s Little Pigeon River. Her rise to success since that hardscrabble beginning is one of America’s classic rags-to-riches stories. Parton has sold over 100 million records worldwide, composed thousands of songs—many of which remain unpublished—acted in movies, written books, founded one of America’s premier entertainment centers (Dollywood), and won dozens of awards. Today, fans and critics alike rightly consider her a country music legend.
Rembrandt’s Five Senses
On Sept. 22, 2015, a New Jersey auctioneer opened bidding for a painting believed to date from the 19th century. Projected to sell for between $500 to $800, the artwork’s price rose to $870,000 after the bidding war ended. The two rivaling purchasers recognized it to be Rembrandt’s “Unconscious Patient”—a painting from a five-part series that is the Dutch artist’s earliest known work.
The Wills’s House: A Gettysburg Home With Historic Significance
A house is just a house and a building just a building—until something weighty happens there. In November 1863, Abraham Lincoln was the guest of attorney David Wills. The 16th president’s visit to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, his overnight stay at Wills’s house, and the words he spoke to crowds gathered at a new cemetery on Nov. 19 left an indelible impression that continues to fascinate visitors today.
Epoch Times 2024 Top 10 Best Movies of the Year
Furthuring the trend that began in the early 2000s, my 2024 Top 10 list bears little to no resemblance to those of my contemporaries. At first I thought this was an unconscious decision on my part to be a deliberate contrarian, but that’s not it. Every title on my 2024 list has positive critical and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Best History Books of 2024
Looking for history books that are worth the read going into the new year? I read and reviewed nearly 40 history books in 2024 that covered the eras of Ancient Greece, the Early Roman Empire, early Christianity and Islam in the Middle East, the Medieval Period in England and France, the rise of the Caribbean pirates, the U.S. Civil War, the World Wars of the 20th century, and the Cold War.
The Dreams of Children: Christmas During the Great Depression
Some today may rightly feel moved to pity the reduced circumstances in which countless thousands of fathers and mothers battled to provide a Christmas for their children. Yet the background to their stories can rouse admiration and respect: The hard times of the 1930s produced creative ways to celebrate the winter holidays that continue to influence us today.
What Makes a Work of Literature Universal?
When I was in college, I had a habit of disagreeing with my English professors. One point of disagreement was the importance of poets and writers traditionally considered part of the Western “canon.” The canon is the body of writers and works considered the best, most important, and obligatory subjects of study for any serious student of letters.
‘Pink Palace’: The Heart of Scotland’s Drumlanrig Castle
In 1329, Scotland’s famous King Robert the Bruce asked an unusual and final favor from his closest friend and talented military commander, Sir James Douglas (Sir James the Good). With imminent death preventing him from fulfilling his vow to fight in the crusades, the king asked Douglas, to remove his heart upon death and bring it to battle. A year later, Douglas was killed at the Siege of Teba while fulfilling the king’s request. A winged heart wearing a crown became the Douglas emblem.
Hampton Court Beauties: Sir Godfrey Kneller and Baroque Classicism
When viewing the eight-portrait series “Hampton Court Beauties,” those struck by the combination of beauty, sobriety, grandeur, reserve, and dignity might assume these paintings were the work of a mid-to-late 18th-century artist. However, these portraits were composed a century earlier by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), the German-British painter regarded to be the greatest English baroque portraitist.
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin’s 300th Anniversary at The Met
Paris was the “it” destination this summer as the host city of the Olympics. Wall-to-wall media coverage extolled the capital’s cultural treasures and chic scenes of everyday life. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has on view, through Feb. 4, 2025, a special exhibition that is a passport to Paris, albeit an 18th-century version.
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