History and description of the Royal Museum of natural history. Translated from the French
Extraits
Non classé
Desert Isles & Pirate Islands
Desert Isles & Pirate Islands examines the development of the island theme in nineteenth-century English juvenile fiction. The earliest island stories, Robinsonnades designed to teach both piety and natural history, gave way in mid-century to adventure stories with their primary emphasis on excitement and entertainment. By the end of the Victorian era, while elements of the Robinsonnade still featured in adventure fiction, the island story accommodated other traditions. It was particularly in the periodicals known as 'penny dreadfuls' that the island story became a lively and often lurid tale of pirates and their buried treasure. The book contains a detailed 505-item bibliography of stories on the island theme appearing in England from 1788 to 1910. Sixty-five illustrations reproduced from contemporary children's books and periodicals depict typical characters, situations and motifs in this fiction.
12/1984
Généralités
From Vine to Wine.. Domaine Ponsot’s Vineyards: 150 Years of History (1872–2022)
Inspired by the microhistory trend, this book sets out to illustrate how 150 years of the unique history of a family of winegrowers is embedded in-and contributes to-the larger history of Burgundy crus. The book will explore the developments in techniques and knowledge about grapevines and wine that have taken place between 1872 to 2022, providing readers with a better understanding of the issues relating to designations of origin (appellations) and the notion of terroir. Readers will see how things were done in the past and how they are done today, and the approaches that will be adopted in the future by 'climatic' winegrowers, and will conclude that sometimes everything must change in order for everything to remain the same.
06/2022
Beaux arts
Tiepolo in Milan. The Lost Frescoes of Palazzo Archinto
Tiepolo in Milan : The Lost Frescoes of Palazzo Archinto brings together preparatory drawings and paintings, as well as documentary photographs, to commemorate an extraordinary fresco cycle by the Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770). Painted for Palazzo Archinto in Milan, the frescoes were destroyed in a bombing during World War II. The catalogue accompanies an exhibition at The Frick Collection. In 1730-31, Tiepolo undertook his first significant project outside the Veneto, frescoes for five ceilings in Palazzo Archinto in Milan. The paintings were commissioned by Count Carlo Archinto (1670-1732), likely in honor of the marriage of his son, Filippo, to Giulia Borromeo. Tiepolo's mythological and allegorical scenes-Triumph of Arts and Sciences ; Apollo and Phaëton ; Perseus and Andromeda ; Juno, Fortune, and Venus ; and Nobility-were painted in some of the largest rooms of the palazzo. Unfortunately, the palazzo was bombed during World War II and its interior completely destroyed. Only a series of black-and-white photographs, taken between 1897 and the late 1930s, preserves the frescoes' appearance, but a number of preparatory drawings and paintings provide precious information, including three painted sketches (Triumph of Arts and Sciences, the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon ; Apollo and Phaëton, Los Angeles County Museum ; and Perseus and Andromeda, The Frick Collection). Three drawings from the British Museum in London, the Museo Civico in Trieste, and the Sinebrychoff Art Museum in Helsinki are the only related graphic works. These-along with other drawings and prints by Tiepolo and some books- have been reunited for the first time in order to bring to life these extraordinary works of art. On view at The Frick Collection from April 16 to July 14, 2019, the exhibition is curated by Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at the Frick, with Andrea Tomezzoli, Professor at the University of Padua, and Denis Ton, Curator of the Musei Civici in Belluno. Included in the publication are essays on Tiepolo's work in Palazzo Archinto (Salomon), on the role of the frescoes in Tiepolo's career (Tomezzoli), on the intellectual world of the Archinto family (Ton), and on the architectural history of the palace (Kluzer).
04/2019
Sociologie
A Handbook of Global Citizenship Education. The Belgian perspective
Presented as a response to contemporary global issues (such as sustainable development, interculturality or democracy), Global Citizenship Education (GCE) aims to "open people's eyes and minds to the realities of the world and awaken them to bring about a world of greater justice, equity and human rights for all". Given that GCE is now perceived as a means of bringing contemporary world issues into classrooms, teachers and school principals are increasingly encouraged to adopt it. Indeed, new skills frameworks require students to develop knowledge on global issues, while students themselves are demanding this education because they seek the means to play a greater role in the world. Often addressed in the form of social or environmental issues perceived as being of serious concern, GCE is expected to feature increasingly in the curricula of schools and universities in the future. But in Belgium and around the world, Global Citizenship Education (GCE) has been the subject of debate in recent years. This handbook reflects these various debates. Initially published in French, it is, above all, an attempt to compensate for the absence of texts on the subject from the French-speaking world, notably from the Belgian research and practice world. This English version enhances the international visibility of the vital academic, institutional, and professional sectors addressing GCE in Belgium, and highlights the specific features of GCE in this country. It will be particularly useful for students, teachers and practitioners, and everyone who wants to understand the challenges of Global Citizenship Education today.
01/2023
Monographies
Hilma af Klint. The Five Notebook 1
In 1896, Hilma af Klint and four other like-minded women artists left the Edelweiss Society and founded the "Friday Group", also known as "The Five". They met every Friday for spiritual meetings, including prayers, studies of the New Testament, meditation and séances. The medium exercised automatic writing and mediumistic drawing. Eventually they established contact with spiritual beings whom they called "The High Ones". In 1896, the five women began taking meticulous notes of the mediumistic messages conveyed by the spirits. In time, Hilma af Klint felt she had been selected for more important messages. After ten years of esoteric training with "The Five", aged 43, Hilma af Klint accepted a major assignment, the execution of The Paintings for the Temple. This commission, which engaged the artist from 1906 to 1915, changed the course of her life. In 1908, Rudolf Steiner, leader of the German Theosophical Society, held several lectures in Stockholm. He also visited af Klint's studio and saw some of the early Paintings for the Temple. In 1913, Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society, which af Klint joined in 1920 and remained a member for the rest of her life.
01/2022
Monographies
Burmese Silver from the Colonial Period
This stunning catalogue presents an exceptional collection of rare Burmese silver. Accompanied by detailed photographs and explanatory texts, this ground-breaking book proposes a new way of looking at Burmese silver. Names, dates, places, and stories - identifying the who, when, where, and what of Burmese silver has been the focus of publications on the topic. Are these questions the best way to understand silver, however ? Alexandra Green argues that they are not. Too few pieces provide reliable information about silversmiths, production locations, and dates to allow for a comprehensive understanding of the subject. Instead, a close examination of silver patterns reveals strong links with Burmese art history reaching as far back as the Bagan period (11th to 13th centuries), connections with contemporary artistic trends, and participation within the wider world of silversmithing. The first European to write about Burmese silver was H L Tilly, a colonial official from the late 19th into the early 20th century. Tasked with collecting objects for various fairs and exhibitions, he took an interest in Burmese art, publishing articles and books from the 1880s onwards. While much of what he wrote was factually inaccurate and coloured by the prejudices and stereotypes common at the time, his two volumes on Burmese silver published in 1902 and 1904 contain pictures of pieces from the early to mid 19th century. These enable a reconstruction of how silver designs evolved as the country was absorbed into the Indian Raj, and British and other Westerners became consumers of local silver products. Tilly was also correct in his interest in silver designs. Green uses the visual information from his books to describe the continuities and innovations of designs found on silver from the mid 19th through the mid 20th century, and she places these trends within local, regional, and global flows of ideas. Many studies of Burmese silver have been plagued by a lack of understanding of the Burmese context. In contrast, Green examines silver from a local perspective, drawing on Burmese texts and information that allows for a nuanced view of the motifs, designs, and patterns that appear repetitively on silver pieces. Using Graham Honeybill's collection, formed over many years, as a basis, she explores how designs and patterns circulated around the country and were innovatively combined and recombined on pieces by silversmiths producing objects for Burmese, Western, and commercial clients.
09/2022
Cerveau et psychologie
Transcultural Dictionary of Misunderstandings. European and Chinese Horizons
The Transcultural Dictionary of Misunderstandings. European and Chinese Horizons is the result of an initiative which forges a radically new path for promoting transcultural understanding by studying culture-bound keywords. The stimulating idea is to create and address with intention that which is generally held to be by all means avoided : namely, misunderstandings. The experiment starts with a level of communication that is not political per se but cultural. Cultures have no rigid borders like nation-states. They are more dynamic and meandering, open to influence, and translatable. Like cultures themselves, keywords are saturated with history, long-term experience, values, and collective emotions. They carry a load of tacit knowledge and implicit axioms that have the advantage of not having to be unpacked, explained, or spelled out. Working through various semantic layers of keywords on both sides helps to create a more transparent language for transcultural dialogue. The creation of such a language is the effect of producing, exchanging, and working through misunderstandings on both sides. Within the framework of transcultural dialogue, misunderstandings turn out to be an innovative tool for mutual learning by seeing oneself through the eyes of the other. It is high time for researchers in various parts of the world to join forces and translate basic concepts from one language and culture into another. Every translation is a transformation, marking similarities and differences which can lead to an uncovering of new ideas, values, and cultural practices. This unconventional dialogue is a great source of inspiration because it works through hardened assumptions and misrepresentations, unsettles schematic thinking, and leads to unexpected insights and new points of contact. Aleida Assmann Professor of English Literature and Literary Theory, University of Konstanz, Germany
07/2022
Histoire et Philosophiesophie
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN WORLD HISTORY. An introduction
In modern industrial society, the tic between science and technology seems clear, even inevitable. But historically, as James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn remind us, the connection was far less apparent. For much of human history, technology depended more on the innovation of skilled artisans than it did on the speculation of scientists. Technology as "applied science," the authors argue, emerged relatively recently, as industry and governments began funding scientific research that would lead directly to new or improved technologies. In Science and Technology in World History, McClellan and Dorn offer an introduction to this changing relationship.
McClellan and Dorn review the historical record beginning with the thinking and tool making of prehistoric humans. Neolithic people, for example, developed metallurgy of a sort, using naturally occurring raw copper, and kept systematic records of the moon's phases. Neolithic craftsmen possessed practical knowledge of the behavior of clay, fire, and other elements of their environment, but though they may have had explanations for the phenomena of their crafts, they toiled without any systematic science of materials or the self-conscious application of theory to practice.
Without neglecting important figures of Western science such as Newton and Einstein, the authors demonstrate the great achievements of non-Western cultures. They remind us that scientific traditions took root in China, India, and Central and South America, as well as in a series of Near Eastern empires, during late antiquity and the Middle Ages, including the vast region that formed the Islamic conquest. From this comparative perspective, the authors explore the emergence of Europe as a scientific and technological power. Continuing their narrative through the Manhattan Project, NASA, and modern medical research, the authors weave the converging histories of science and technology into an integrated, perceptive, and highly readable narrative.
"Professors McClellan and Dorn have written a survey that does not present the historical development of science simply as a Western phenomenon but as the result of wide-ranging human curiosity about nature and attempts to harness its powers in order to serve human needs. This is an impressive amount of material to organize in a single textbook."
- Paula Findlen, Stanford University
01/1999
Histoire et Philosophiesophie
Number from Ahmes to Cantor
We might take numbers and counting for granted, but we shouldn't. Our number literacy rests upon centuries of human effort, punctuated here and there by strokes of genius. In his successor and companion volume to Gnomon: From Pharaohs to Fractals, Midhat Gazalé takes us on a Journey from the ancient worlds of the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Mayas, the Greeks, the Hindus, up to the Arab invasion of Europe and the Renaissance. Our guide introduces us to some of the most fascinating and ingenious characters in mathematical history, from Ahmes the Egyptian scribe (whose efforts helped preserve some of the mathematical secrets of the architects of the pyramids) through the modern era of Georg Cantor (the great nineteenth-century inventor of transfinite numbers). As he deftly blends together history, mathematics, and even some computer science in his characteristically compelling style, we discover the fundamental notions underlying the acquisition and recording of "number", and what "number" truly means.
Gazalé tackles questions that will stimulate math enthusiasts in a highly accessible and inviting manner. What is a natural number? Are the decimal and binary systems the only legitimate ones? Did the Pythagorean theorem and the discovery of the unspeakable irrationals cost the unfortunate mathematician Hippasus his life? What was the Ladder of Theodorus of Cyrene and how did the ancient Greeks calculate square roots with such extraordinary proficiency? An original generalization of Euler's theorem is offered that explains the pattern of rational number representations. Later on, the field of Continued Fractions paves the way for another original contribution by Gazalé, that of cleavages, which sheds light on the mysterious nature of irrational numbers as it beautifully illustrates Dedekind's famous Schnitt. In the end the author introduces us to the Hilbert Hotel with its infinite number of rooms, guests, and an infinite number of people waiting to check in, where he sets the debate between Aristotle and Cantor about the true nature of infinity.
This abundantly illustrated book, remarkable for its coherency and simplicity, will fascinate all those who have an interest in the world of numbers. Number will be indispensable for all those who enjoy mathematical recreations and puzzles, and for those who delight in numeracy.
01/2000
Anglais apprentissage
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman de Ernest J Gaines
Written as the recollection of a 110-year-old woman, "Miss Jane", The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is the narrative of African-American history from the Declaration of Emancipation to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Gaines's masterpiece is meant to represent the interpretation of the events of a century through the central character's uneducated but street-wise vision. Carefully built on a historical structure, the book relies on a well-mastered stylistic technique that mixes several literary genres, providing the reader with a deep insight into the African American experience. Inevitably, such central issues as "black pride", human dignity, ethics or the nature of freedom are raised and the reader finds himself actively involved in the reconstruction of a black subject whom "history" had relegated in the footnotes of a "Manifest Destiny" written by revisionist ideologues.
10/2005
Non classé
The Concept of Man in Igbo Myths
In the vast silence of their isolation, the traditional Igbos have learnt the ways of living in harmony with nature. From their origin in distant time, they have kept a sacred perspective on the natural world. In our age, there is the need for traditional wisdoms to retain their validity and be intrinsic to our philosophic and scientific perceptions of the cosmos. We cannot do without their knowledge, their spiritual perspective, and their deep faith in the harmony of all nature. Ignoring these qualities has profound environmental implications. Global warming, environmental pollution, and the exhaustion of nature's resources are but a few of the symptoms of the nature's experiences as we continue to mistreat it in order to satisfy our own ends. This work helps us to realise that wherever we are, we are a part of nature. All the things around us are as presences, representing forces and powers of life that are not ours and yet are all part of us. Then we find them reflecting in ourselves, because we are nature, though not identical with it.
11/1999
Sciences politiques
Chroniques électorales. Tome 2, La cinquième république du général de Gaulle
Here, at last collected in three volumes, are the classic analyses of each of the French postwar elections and referenda which François Goguel had published in various journals and symposia. The three volumes - Volume I deals with the Fourth Republic, Volume II with the Fifth from 1958 to 1969 and Volume III with the Fifth after de Gaulle - are an indispensable référence tool, the only work which provides full data on elections and voting behavior in postwar France. But François Goguel does not only present data : in his double role as political scientist and practitioner, he considers the effects of voting Systems, political cleavages, and voting behavior factors, that is, the contradiction between the effects of immediate political conditions and political culture for each élection and its relation to the other élections. Thus through and beyond elections, François Goguel présents a genuine political history of France under the Fourth and the Fifth Republics.
01/1983
Non classé
Chaos, Control, and Consistency:- The Narrative Vision of Wolfgang Koeppen
Wolfgang Koeppen's critical and popular reputations stem largely from his literary success in the 1950s, a success which has overshadowed the author's activities in the earlier years of his career. It is in the interest of redressing this imbalance that the present study has been undertaken. It traces a consistent line of development from Koeppen's journalistic activities in the Berlin of the 1930s, through his earliest creative writing, and on, in this light, to the post-war publications for which he is most famous. It is thus possible to place the whole of Koeppen's career within the social and literary context of sixty years of German history.
06/1993
Monographies
The Eveillard Gift
This beautiful publication presents for the first time the Eveillard Gift of drawings to The Frick Collection, the most important gift of drawings and pastels in its history. It accompanies an exhibition at the Frick and includes a catalogue of the works and commentaries by noted scholars. Twenty-six works of art promised to The Frick Collection by Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard dramatically advance the museum's commitment to the research and display of European drawings. Included in this transformative gift from two longtime supporters of the Frick are exquisite drawings, pastels, prints, and one oil sketch by François Boucher, Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Lawrence, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, John Singer Sargent, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and Jean-Antoine Watteau, among others. The works include fi gurative sketches, independent studies, portraits, and landscape scenes, each either deepening the museum's celebrated holdings or bringing the work of an artist who is not-but should be-represented in the collection. This lavishly illustrated publication, which accompanies an exhibition at the Frick, includes a catalogue of the works, as well as comprehensive commentaries on each of promised gifts written by noted scholars in their fi eld.
10/2022
Beaux arts
Brief history of venise
Breve storia di Venezia a été écrite par un célèbre abbé vénitien, Rinaldo Fulin et elle a été publiée pour la première fois en 1873 comme cadeau de mariage. Fulin rappelle l'histoire de Venise des origines à la chute de la République, à travers le passé glorieux et la splendeur de la Sérénissime et de ses principaux acteurs. Un bref chapitre sur l'histoire moderne et contemporaine de la ville a été ajouté au texte original. Le volume est enrichi d'une collection d'illustrations tirées de Il gran teatro di Venezia de Domenico Lovisa (1717).
11/2019
Religion
Like Man, Like Woman
Modern scholarship often discusses Roman women in terms of their difference from their male counterparts, frequently defining them as ‘other'. This book shows how Roman male writers at the turn of the first century actually described women as not so different from men : the same qualities and abilities pertaining to the domains of parenthood, intellect and morals are ascribed by writers to women as well as to men. There are two voices, however : a traditional, ideal voice and an individual, realistic voice. This creates a duality of representations of women, which recurs across literary genres and reflects a duality of mentality. How can we interpret the paradoxical information about Roman women given by the male-authored texts ? How does this duality of mentality inform us about gender roles and gender hierarchy ? This work analyses well-known, as well as overlooked, passages from the writings of Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Quintilian, Statius, Martial and Juvenal and sheds new light on Roman views of women and their abilities, on the notions of private and public and on conjugal relationships. In the process, the famous sixth satire of Juvenal is revisited and its topic reassessed, providing further insights into the complex issues of gender roles, marriage and emotions. By contrasting representations of women across a broad spectrum of literary genres, this book provides consistent findings that have wide significance for the study of Latin literature and the social history of the late first and early second centuries.
07/2013
Sociologie
National and European Law on the Threshold to the Single Market
The volume contains the reports and discussion papers presented at an English-German Colloquium in May 1992. Scholars and practicing lawyers from the United Kingdom and Germany deal with seven important fields of law : History of Environmental Law - Current Issues of Local Government - Immigration and Asylum - Towards European Private Law Principles - Product Safety and Product Liability - Social Security - The Single Market and the Legal Profession.
03/1993
Droit
Le droit administratif français
French administrative law is living law, in a context. Définition and history. Instruments and methods. Scope : the administrative law institutions (the concept of corporate body, the state, the other public law agencies, the private agencies which perform public duties) ; the concept of public service (context, extension). Basic principles : prérogatives (powers, protection) ; constraints (the principles of legality and responsibility). The civil service : catégories (diversity of employers and status) ; careers (recruitment, stages, ending) ; ethics (duties, political and social rights). Judicial control : its organization (the dudity of jurisdictions, the organization of administrative justice) ; its functioning (rules of procédure, efficacy).
06/1984
Non classé
«America's my Home»- Interviews with Young Blacks from Georgia
This book presents six interviews with young, upwardly mobile blacks from the state of Georgia, USA, as a contribution to American oral history and culture. The time span covered comprises the years 1960 to 1975, a period which marked a transitional phase in race relations. The interviewees state their experiences with and feelings on desegregation, their political and ethnic loyalties, their aspirations in life, and their value systems. Despite a varied socio-economic background, they show a heightened sense of racial and cultural identity and an integrationist orientation with Martin Luther King as a culture hero.
12/1983
Histoire de l'art
Titian, the Della Rovere Dynasty, and His Portrait of Guidobaldo II and his Son. Edition
Le portrait Klesch, par Titien, de Guidobaldo II avec son fils Francesco Maria représente le duc d'Urbino dans ses pleins pouvoirs de commandant suprême des troupes papales avec son héritier à ses côtés. Ce rare double portrait en pied vient seulement d'être attribué à Titien après avoir entrepris des analyses et une restauration minutieuses qui révèlent une belle peinture au style "non finito" avec de superbes touches d'empâtement totalement typiques au maître. Tout ceci est illustré et développé dans ce nouveau livre. Titian provided portraits for the greatest men and women of Europe, Charles V and Philip II of Spain primary among them. For years the Klesch portrait was dismissed as a workshop product - partly because poor condition hid its true quality, but also because it was not believed that Titian could have deigned to create one for Guidobaldo, whose father Guidobaldo della Rovere (1514-1574) and family had a long history of patronizing the artist. Recent research, however, has thrown Guidobaldo's geopolitical significance into relief. He was supreme commander of Venice, the Papal States and then Spain. He sent thousands of soldiers to the major conflicts of his day, particularly the defense of Malta (1565) and the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and his engineers were sought throughout Europe for their ingenuity. In this volume full of new research, Ian Verstegen reveals that Guidobaldo was not peripheral but central to Italian politics and was regarded at several points in history as a key figure who could bring peace or who could influence major conflicts on the Italian peninsula, particularly the War of Siena, and then Pope Paul IV's offensive war against Spain. Anne-Marie Eze gives the first comprehensive examination of the painting's provenance, outlining the portrait's vicissitudes and reception at different moments in its near 500-year history, reexamining received wisdom about its past ownership, and presenting new documentary evidence to expand on and fill gaps in our knowledge of its whereabouts. Finally, Matthew Hayes and Ian Kennedy reflect on the technique, date, recent conservation, and authorship of the painting, proving it to be a masterpiece that only the great Titian could have created.
11/2021
Sciences de la terre et de la
Green Plants. Their Origin and Diversity, 2nd Edition
The central theme of Green Plants is the astonishing diversity of forms found in the plant kingdom, from the simplicity of prokaryotic algae to the myriad complexities of flowering plants. To help the reader appreciate this remarkable diversity, the book is arranged according to generally accepted classification schemes, beginning with algae (both prokaryotic and eukaryotic) and moving through liverworts, hornworts, mosses, fern allies, ferns and gymnosperms to flowering plants. Copiously illustrated throughout with clear line diagrams and instructive photographs, Green Plants provides a concise account of all algae and land plants, with information on topics from cellular structure to life cycles and reproduction. The authors maintain a refreshingly cautious and objective approach in discussions of possible phylogenetic relationships. Newly emerging information on features of plants known only as fossils is included, providing as complete a history as possible of the plant kingdom. Throughout the book there are many references to ultrastructural and physiological features which relate growth and form to current concepts in the study of plant development. This new edition has been completely updated to reflect current views on the origin of the major groups of plants and includes information arising from more recently developed techniques such as cladistic analyses. As such, it provides an up-to-date and timely resource for students of botany, and also for researchers needing a comprehensive reference to the plant kingdom.
01/2000
Sciences politiques
Scripture and Midrash in Judaism
The rabbis of late antiquity produced a score of exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures of Ancient Israel ("the Old Testament"), in which they took various approaches to the study and interpretation of what they called "the written Torah". These exegesis, called collectively "Midrash", form an important part of "the oral Torah", that is, the tradition of Sinai formulated and transmitted for memorization and ultimately written down by the ancient sages in the first six centuries A.D. These three volumes present large selections of the Midrash-documents of ancient Judaism, in the translation of Jacob Neusner, who has now translated into English nearly all of the Rabbinic literature of late antiquity. The selections are organized by type, so that readers see the various ways in which, in form and in intellectual program, the documents of Midrash-compilation were formulated and set forth. In this way, the vast body of biblical exegesis put forth by Judaism in its formative age is made available to the contemporary reader.
03/1994
Mouvements artistiques
Look Close, Think Far. Art at the Ackland
This richly illustrated volume introduces one of America's finest university art museums - one whose directors, curators, donors, and patrons have left a remarkable legacy, a museum collection that encourages us all to "look close, think far. " The selection of over 280 highlights is presented with brief commentaries and an essay that traces the growth of the Ackland Art Museum's outstanding collection. The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of the United States' most distinguished public university art museums. Founded in 1958, it now houses over 20, 000 works of art, covering some 5, 000 years of cultures from around the globe. "Look Close, Think Far" is the tagline of the Ackland, informing everything from the dynamic and varied program of special exhibitions to ambitious interpretation, education, and outreach activities. It applies especially strongly to the museum's extensive permanent collection. Although an integral part of the oldest public university in the United States, the Ackland is a relatively young institution. Now approaching its sixty-fifth year, it has become the proud steward of over 20, 000 works of art from an impressively broad range of world cultures and time periods. The Museum is known for its special strengths in art of the European tradition, with very strong holdings in prints and drawings ; the arts of Asia, and especially China, Japan, and India ; a small but fine collection of classical art from Africa ; and recent and contemporary art. This publication showcases a cross-section though the diverse collection, with 283 works, giving an impression of the Ackland's permanent collection that is true to its character, representative of its breadth, and indicative of its quality. The essay gives special attention to the early stages and the less obvious, more idiosyncratic moments that have contributed to the Ackland's personality and individuality. The approach taken by the editor Peter Nisbet, deputy director for curatorial affairs at the Ackland, differs from most conventional volumes of museum collection highlights in several refreshing ways. Instead of separating works along the lines of curatorial departments, the arrangement emphasizes the unity of the collection by merging works from different cultures. These are presented in a largely chronological sequence, but one that surprises by starting with the present and extending back in time. Within this order, works of art are deliberately paired across individual page openings, to stimulate visual attention, reflective thinking, and sometimes maybe just a smile.
08/2022
Bijouterie, horlogerie
Le Guide de la joaillerie. Pour les vrais amateurs
With the promise of eternity, jewels bestow gifts of adornment and beauty on those who wear them. Their value is multifaceted : intrinsic, sentimental, magical, human. Since the dawn of time, these few grams of precious metals and gems have acted as distillations of the highest sentiments and catalysts of the lowest passions. Through its power and grandeur, jewelry has mirrored the human journey through the centuries, and French author and editor Fabienne Reybaud walks readers through all its facets while highlighting the world's most mythical stones and magnificent pieces, from the Hope Diamond to Elizabeth Taylor's La Peregrina pearl. Extensively illustrated with atelier images, original sketches and colorful photography, this volume covers everything jewelry enthusiasts need to know, including the club of five and the four Cs. It is accompanied by an essential glossary, the best museum collections to visit around the world as well as the budding designers to follow and a buyer's guide to investing in antique and vintage pieces.
11/2022
Religion
The History of German Lutheran Congregations in England, 1900-1950
Between 1900 and 1950, the development of German congregations in England was characterised by sudden unprecedented changes. Growth was followed by decline, marginalisation by expansion. The situation during and after World War I contrasted sharply with that during and after World War II. Being drawn into the German Church struggle German congregations in England experienced the conflict between nationalistic and ecumenical attitudes. They were challenged in particular by Bonhoeffer's theological stance and became a meeting-place for different cultural, political and spiritual traditions. World War II saw a new emphasis on the ministry among German-speaking refugees, as well as among civilian internees and military prisoners.
08/1987
Sciences de la terre et de la
Cuckoos, Cowbirds and Other Cheats
Cuckoos and cowbirds are amongst the select bird groups renowned as professional parasites, who always lay their eggs in the nests of other species. Occasional parasitic laying is also widespread in many other birds, who gladly parasitise the nests of their own kind when the opportunity arises.
In this fascinating new book, Nick Davies describes the natural histories of all the brood parasites and examines the exciting questions they raise about the evolution of cheating and the arms race between parasites and their hosts. Brood parasites fill their armoury with adaptations including exquisite egg mimicry, rapid laying, ejection of host eggs, murder of host young, chick mimicry and manipulative begging behaviour: ploys shown by recent research to have evolved in response to host defence behaviour or through competition among the parasites themselves. While many host species appear defenceless, accepting parasite eggs quite unlike their own, others are more discriminating against odd-looking eggs and some have evolved the ability to discriminate against odd-looking chicks as well. How does this arms race proceed? Will defenceless hosts improve their armoury in time, or are there sometimes constraints on hosts which allow the parasites to gain the upper hand? And why are so few species obliged only to lay eggs in host nests? Have host defences limited the success of brood parasitism, or is it in fact much commoner than we suspect, but occurring mainly when birds parasitise the nests of their own kind?
All of these puzzles are examined in descriptions of the natural history of each of the groups of parasites in turn. Here is a book with wide appeal, both to amateur naturalists fascinated by this most singular and macabre of behaviours and to ornithologists and ecologists interested in the evolution of ecology and behaviour. The story takes us from the strange tales of folklore to the classic field work earlier this century by pioneer ornithologists such as Edgar Chance, Stuart Baker, Herbert Friedmann and others, through to the recent experimental field work and molecular techniques of today's leading scientists. We visit brood parasites in Europe, Asia, Japan, Africa, Australasia, and North and South America, to look at some of the world's most interesting birds and sortie of biology's most interesting questions, many of which still beg answers from ornithologists in the future.
Brilliant illustrations by David Quinn depict many behaviours for the first time and convey the thrill of watching these astonishing birds in the wild.
04/2000
Histoire internationale
Each Child Is My Only One
In Each Child Is My Only One : Lotte Carlebach-Preuss, the Portrait of a Mother and Rabbi's Wife, Miriam Gillis-Carlebach, the daughter of Rabbi Dr. Joseph Zvi Carlebach (1883–1942), last Chief Rabbi of Hamburg and its surroundings, describes her childhood in the lively household of a rabbi's family with nine children, focusing on the special personality of her mother, Lotte Carlebach, née Preuss (1900–1942). The book starts with the history of the Preuss family, goes on to describe the marriage of Lotte to Joseph Carlebach, and portrays in detail their dynamic family life – until their deportation with their four youngest children to a Latvian concentration camp in 1942. The book is composed of two main parts. In the first section the reader learns about the events up to 1938, both inside and outside the Carlebach home ; the second section covers the years 1938–1941, in which there was a lively correspondence mainly between the mother and those of her children who succeeded in emigrating from Nazi Germany. This part concludes with several testimonies portraying the special personalities of Rabbi Carlebach and his wife and their devotion to the unfortunate who benefited from their unbounded assistance and altruism during the Holocaust. Many photographs are included in the book, several of them taken by Lotte Carlebach herself. The book is a unique and personal testimony about Jewish life in Germany during the years of persecution that relentlessly led to the conflagration of the Holocaust.
05/2014
Beaux arts
Karem Arrieta. Edition bilingue français-anglais
Le temps ne s'égrène pas linéairement dans les toiles de Karem Arrieta. Il est cyclique ou revient comme un boomerang. Les époques se mêlent et s'effacent. Des spectres de l'Histoire de l'art passent, tout droit sortis de la Renaissance italienne ou flamande. Chérubins joufflus et moqueurs et autres putti à l'air goguenard. Femmes à la chevelure flamboyante et aux robes de velours échappées d'un Cranach. Ils sont les anges gardiens qui auréolent les bambins. Avec ces références, Karem Arrieta brise la chronologie et se place dans l'Histoire de l'art. Une histoire écrite par et pour l'Europe, dont les références ont infusé les cultures autochtones de l'Amérique latine, dans un syncrétisme parfois anachronique. "Notre appartenance au monde des images est plus forte, plus constitutive de notre être que notre appartenance au monde des idées." (Gaston Bachelard) / Time does not pass linearily in Karem Arrieta's artwork. It works in cycles, or comes back like a boomerang. Eras mingle and fade. Ghosts from the history of Art are passing by, coming straight out of the Italian or Flemish Renaissance. Chubby cherubins and classical "putti" with mocking eyes. Women with flamboyant hair in their velvet dresses, coming out of a Cranach. They're the guardian angels that crown their children. With these references, Karem Arrieta breaks free from the chronology and places herself in the history of Art—history written by and for Europe, and whose references influenced native cultures in Latin America, in a syncretism that can sometimes be anachronical. "Our belonging to the world of Images is stronger, more constituent to our being, than our belonging to the world of Ideas." (Gaston Bachelard) Barbara Tissier.
11/2019
Mouvements artistiques
Hockney's Eye. The Art and Technology of Depiction
David Hockney is the best known and most widely admired painter in the world. This vibrant catalogue accompanies a major exhibition at the The Fitzwilliam Museum and the Heong Gallery in Cambridge, as well as the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. Throughout his long career, David Hockney has insistently explored diverse ways of depicting the visible world. He has scrutinised the methods of the old masters, and explored radical departures from their cherished assumptions The exhibition and accompanying book are the first to focus on this central theme in his art. "Western art" from the Renaissance until at least the late 19th century has been dominated by the depiction of nature. Was this to be accomplished by direct looking (called "eyeballing" by Hockney) or with the assistance of optical theory and devices, such as cameras ? Hockney has experimented with the full range of existing strategies, overtly using perspective in some of his classic pictures and rigorously investigating optical aids for the imitation of nature, including the camera obscura and camera lucida. Yet he has come to reject the photograph as the definitive image of what we see. Along the way, he has identified a "camera culture'' in European painting from 1400, arguing very controversially that the supreme naturalism of painters like Jan van Eyck are the product of optical devices. His book, Secret Knowledge (2001), with its majestic panorama of paintings over the course of five centuries, claims that art historians have missed the central aspect of painters' practice. The "Hockney thesis" has been received more favourably outside the professional world of art history than in it. His own artistic practice has been in vigorous dialogue with his radical thesis, and he has progressively demonstrated new and dynamic ways of characterising the visual world without perspective and other conventional techniques. This quest results a series of joyous challenges to our ways of seeing in the major exhibition in Cambridge at the Fitzwilliam Museum and in the Heong Gallery (Downing College). It will look at the whole span of Hockney's varied career and at the nature of the optical devices he has tested. His vision will be explored in the setting of traditional masterpieces of naturalistic observation, and in the context of modern sciences and technologies of seeing. The first section of the book looks at his thrilling experiments in seeing and representing in broad historical and contemporary contexts. This is followed by discussions of pre-photographic devices for capturing the appearances of things by optical means. The third section includes essays on Hockney's experiments from the perspectives of neuroscience and computer vision. In short, it reveals in a new way the working of Hockney's unique eye.
04/2022
Sciences de la terre et de la
Destiny or Chance. Our solar system and its place in the cosmos
Written by a leading planetary scientist, this book tells the remarkable story of how our solar system came into existence. It provides a fast-paced and expert tour of our new understanding of the Earth, its planetary neighbours and other planetary systems.
In a whirl-wind adventure, we are shown how the formation of mighty Jupiter dominated the solar system, why Mars is so small, where comets come from, how rings form around planets, why asteroids exist and why Pluto isn't a planet at all. En route we discover that chance events have shaped the course of the history of our solar system. Dramatic collisions, for example, have caused the tilts and spins of the planets, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of man. Finally, we look at how suitable Earth is for harbouring life, what other planetary systems look like and whether we are alone in the cosmos.
For all those interested in understanding our solar system and its place in the cosmos, this is a lucid and compelling read.
01/2000
