Latest news with #vanGogh
Time Out
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The Getty Center was just named one of the best museums in the U.S., and it's in good company
Six months after it reopened following the devastating wildfires, one of Angelenos' most cherished L.A. landmarks has bounced back higher than its Brentwood hilltop. WorldAtlas has just named the Getty Center one of the 12 best museums in the country, joining the ranks of NYC's The Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Citing its status as not only a world-class research institute and museum, but a free, immaculately designed destination offering dazzling views of Los Angeles, this outpost of the J. Paul Getty Museum – Malibu's Getty Villa being the other branch – finally gets the national recognition it deserves. Not only does it house an unmatched collection – spanning media from Medieval to Modern by van Gogh, Manet and Monet, Gentileschi, Renoir, Munch, Rembrandt, Stieglitz, Caillebotte, Degas, Fragonard, Turner and Blake – but it can only be accessed by a 15-minute tram ride that affords the Center's million-plus yearly visitors a chance to take in views of Los Angeles, and the deer frolicking below. There are also five gorgeous gardens: a street-level sculpture garden with works by modern masters Elisabeth Frink and Isamu Noguchi; two sky-high grounds with sculptures by Magritte, Calder, Miró and Hepworth; a cactus garden with panoramic views; and the Robert Irwin-designed Central Garden, bursting with manicured hedges, streams and over 500 varieties of plant life. Current exhibitions include a history of queer photography (with stunning shots of Josephine Baker, Keith Haring and the legendary Julius' Bar 'Sip-In') and an appreciation of Artemisia Gentilleschi's strong, oft-beheading women, with a 40th anniversary celebration of the forever-radical Guerilla Girls on the horizon. The $1.3 billion center opened in 1997 after a much-delayed, yearslong construction process. Pritzker-winning (now disgraced) abstract artist Richard Meier was selected to design the building's architecture, which makes brilliant use of two ridges on the Brentwood hilltop on which it sits. Aside from its public-friendly museum, the Center also houses the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the J. Paul Getty Trust. (If the name Getty sounds familiar, look up virtually any famous image and look for the watermark.)
Time of India
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Bengaluru immerses in Van Gogh's art
Missed it the first time? The Real Van Gogh Immersive Experience is back in Bengaluru. This exhibition offers a fresh perspective on van Gogh's timeless masterpieces, showcasing his colours and emotions through immersive art, all complemented by Mitch de Klein's original music score. The exhibition features a curated line-up of 70 pieces from van Gogh's collection of artworks, including Starry Night, Sunflowers, Wheatfield with Crows, and Irises. The experience begins in an education room, providing context and background to Van Gogh's life and artistic journey. Next, the infinity room offers an expansive space where visitors can immerse themselves, with numerous twinkling lights and reflective surfaces. You Can Also Check: Bengaluru AQI | Weather in Bengaluru | Bank Holidays in Bengaluru | Public Holidays in Bengaluru Finally, the immersive room transports art lovers deeper into the artist's world. Bengaluru hosted its first Van Gogh exhibition in 2023, which used 6,000 lumen projectors. This new show, however, features 22,000 lumens of projection technology, resulting in crisper, more colourful images and a significantly more immersive experience. Pictures by Karthikeyan Sairam
Budapest Times
07-06-2025
- Science
- Budapest Times
One starry, starry night
How little I know about space and space agencies is embarrassing. Mind you, this lack of knowledge hasn't kept me awake at night and until recently, I'd kept my ignorance well hidden. Even from myself. I had no clue how much I didn't know until Łukasz Wyrzykowski gently corrected me. [For those of you who like to know how to pronounce the seemingly unpronounceable, say: Woo-cash Vi-zhi-kov-ski.] NASA isn't the North American Space Agency as I had thought but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I had been trying to make the point that while I knew something about NASA, I had never even heard of ESA – the European Space Agency. Seems I knew little about anything. I know Gaia as the personification of Earth – Mother Earth; but in Wyrzykowski's world, Gaia is the name of ESA's star surveying spacecraft that was up there, somewhere, for more than 10 years: From 27 July 2014 to 15 January 2025, Gaia has made more than three trillion observations of two billion stars and other objects throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond, mapping their motions, luminosity, temperature and composition. While the Hubble Space Telescope takes cool photos, the Gaia spacecraft was all about video. Hours and hours and hours of it. Tons of data that is still being sifted through and examined for anomalies, like the odd family of stars desperate to leave home or a mysterious planet and a brown dwarf or an infant exoplanet that's only 20 million years old. It's a completely new world for me. Wyrzykowski was speaking to a small group on retreat in the Tatras. He opened his presentation with an image of Vincent van Gogh's painting The Starry Night. Completed in June 1889 it shows van Gogh not just as an artist but also as an observer of the sky. It's now possible to go back to 1889 and see the same sky van Gogh saw through his bedroom window in the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. What he painted wasn't an image of the sky on one night, though, but rather a collage of images of the same sky over time. Being far from the madding crowd, with nowhere to go but up or down, there was plenty of time to chat with the other speakers. My session on grateful living had gone down well and I was eager to learn more of what the others had to say. In particular, I was curious to know how (and why) anyone would become an astronomer. As a young lad in what he refers to as 'an obscure town in Poland' Wyrzykowski was curious about what was going on up there in the sky. Encouraged by his father to follow his dream, he attended the University of Warsaw where he completed a Master's in Astronomy and a PhD in Astrophysics. Stints at the universities of Tel Aviv, Manchester, and Cambridge rounded off his education and he is now a Full Professor at the Astronomical Observatory at the University of Warsaw and is also on staff at the Astrophysics Division of Poland's National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ), also in Warsaw. Each year, some 30 students enrol in the undergraduate programme. Five years later, four might walk away with a Master's. It's intense, but with a 4:1 pupil-teacher ratio, it amounts to individual tutoring. Whether those four end up in astronomy is partly down to them and partly to circumstance – being in the right place at the right time to avail of the right opportunity. Whatever happens, they're well-qualified for jobs in areas like statistics, programming, and physics. The lucky ones, ones like Wyrzykowski, get to do what they love, to live their passion. This pleased me. My friend's son is really into history – his is a tangible interest, evident by the way he speaks about what's going on in the world today and how what is happening has been shaped by what went on 80 or 100 years ago. He lights up when he talks about obscure wars, pivotal elections, and historical events that shaped our world. But he's going to study engineering, he said, taking a pragmatic approach to employability. No, I screamed in my head. Don't do it. Study what you love and everything else will come right. Wyrzykowski's mission is similar. So many young people in obscure towns and villages around the world don't know there is a path out there that will take them to the stars – literally. So many companies don't realise the untapped potential that space offers. Yes, an economic return on investment exists – the geo return. Space serves many economic and societal uses beyond spaceflight itself, including weather forecasting, food, agriculture, disaster mitigation and management, climate change, energy, transport, insurance, and security…the applications of space are seemingly endless. The cynical part of me wondered why the world is spending millions on space when we seem hellbent on destroying the planet we're living on. The curious side of me won out. There is so much we don't know. Earlier this year, Wyrzykowski founded the European Astronomical Society of Small Telescopes (EASST) – a non-profit organisation dedicated to bringing astronomy closer to people. He wants to focus our attention on the sky and inspire us to 'explore the universe and actively participate in global research'. Each one of us. You. Me. Small companies. Big companies. Start-ups. Schools. Universities. Anyone and everyone. As Wyrzykowski says, imagination is the only limit. How many of us look up at night? With so much light pollution, can we even see what's out there? Are we losing (or have we already lost) our ability to be in awe of something? Anything? High up in the Tatras, Wyrzykowski watched the night sky, hoping for a clear view. When it was dark enough, he brought us outside and with a laser, gave us a tour of the stars. He talked about the Milky Way, stars, planets, satellites, and black holes. He spoke in terms of light years. He answered our questions. He gave us the science, but more importantly, he reignited my ability to wonder. Later, Wyrzykowski mentioned the AX-4 mission to the International Space Station, which, at the time of writing, is set to launch on 10 June. The crew of four led by commander Peggy Whitson from Axiom and piloted by Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Space Research Organisation, includes two mission specialists: Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, a European Space Agency project astronaut from Poland, and Tibor Kapu representing the Hungarian Space Office. [Kapu was one of four Hungarians selected from 247 applicants for the Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) Astronaut Program. And now, his day has come.] A week ago, this news wouldn't have been news. Not for me. I might have scanned a headline and moved on. I had no real sense of what astronomers do or even why space is something to get excited about. Now, I'm ready to get a bar of Stühmer Moment space chocolate, check out the programme at the Svábhegyi Csillagvizsgáló [am gutted to hear that the Budapest Planetarium is closed permanently], follow the AX-4 crew on their 14-day mission, and be ready to book my train to Warsaw when Wyrzykowski's van Gogh exhibition opens. Instead of dusting around the telescope upstairs, I'll be looking through it, looking to the starry, starry sky for inspiration and to recapture the feeling of awe birthed in the Tatras, fuelled by the passion of a professional who is dedicated to his craft and determined to convert the world to his cause. Mary Murphy is a freelance writer, speaker, copyeditor, blogger, and communications trainer. Read more at | |
Time of India
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
The Failure of Failure?
Santosh Desai is a leading ad professional. He says he has strayed into writing entirely by accident, and for this he is "grateful". "City City Bang Bang" looks at contemporary Indian society from an everyday vantage point. It covers issues big and small, tends where possible to avoid judgmental positions, and tries instead to understand what makes things the way they are. The desire to look at things with innocent doubt helps in the emergence of fresh perspectives and hopefully, of clarity of a new kind. LESS ... MORE Failure, today, is not allowed to die its natural death. It must be rehabilitated, repackaged, and recycled—turned into grit, grace, or growth. It is no longer a terminus but a threshold. The fall is not the end of the story, only the second act. Fail better. Fail forward. Fail fast. But by all means, fail usefully. We tell ourselves we are being more open, more real. We celebrate vulnerability—as long as it is accompanied by hindsight. We speak of rejection, loss, collapse—but only once we have emerged intact, triumphant even, with a lesson to teach. The shame of failure is permitted, but only briefly and only as narrative bait. There are many costumes we dress failure in. The most flattering is redemption. The stumble that made us stronger. The heartbreak that made us wiser. The bankruptcy that taught us discipline. All is forgiven, as long as it leads somewhere better. This is LinkedIn failure at its best, a pose worn by the successful to increase engagement, to say, Once I was a loser like the rest of you, but fear not; you too can be redeemed if I could be. Statistically speaking, It is an inclusive lie, but it serves its purpose. Then there's the tragic-but-noble failure. The one born of principle, conviction, or timing. The artist who never sold, the idealist who died unknown, and the fighter who was undone by the world, not by their own missteps. This version dignifies failure—but it also aestheticises it. It is curated suffering. It leaves the soul intact. It makes us suffer on their account, to feel righteous from a distance, having no skin in the game. It gives us some succour to know that our failures may exist despite our being geniuses. In our mind at least. Look at van Gogh. And when neither nobility nor redemption is available, we default to utility. Failure becomes feedback. A prototype. A data point. No time to feel, just iterate. The modern world is full of people who kept trying, or to use the language of the start-up, pivoting till something clicked and they made podcasts about it. The overblown narrative that surrounds failure today is based on truth. People do redeem themselves, failure does teach lessons that success can come nowhere near, it builds resilience and humility and can makes us better not just in terms of material progress but as people. The problem perhaps is that this narrative is purely instrumental – it thinks of failure as a means to an end, burying the fact that there can be another kind of failure. The one we don't know how to name. The failure that simply hurts. The kind that exposes you—not as a misunderstood genius or a courageous risk-taker, but as someone who misjudged themselves. The kind that brings not growth, but shame. Not insight, but silence. The kind of failure that makes you smaller, and not in a good way. Smaller, because you thought you could. And you couldn't. This failure doesn't want to be posted about. It doesn't want to be learnt from. It doesn't want to teach you anything. It just wants to exist—to be carried, not converted. We often say that younger generations lack the mental equipment to deal with failure. That Gen Z, in particular, is fragile, thin-skinned, over-therapised. That they crumble under pressure and overshare their wounds. But we, the older cohort, are hardly models of grace either. We pride ourselves on coping, on never making a fuss. But our inability to accept failure is just as deep—only better disguised. We don't collapse; we deflect. We don't feel; we reframe. We have grown up believing that failure must always be private, always provisional, always recoverable. What we cannot bear is the idea that we may have been wrong about ourselves—that we aimed for something and missed, not because the world was cruel, but because we weren't enough. The truth is, all of us are not built for greatness. A lot of us will lead ordinary lives, reaching destinations no one tells inspiring stories about. The sense of failure is often a product of unrealistic goals, something our culture is loath to admit is a real thing. We speak the language of stoicism, but we are terrified of consequence. We cannot stand the thought that some things break and stay broken. That shame is not always a dysfunction. That some failures are just failures. But maybe we need a place for that again. A place where not all pain needs to be processed. Where not all scars are signs of strength. Where we can fail—and not redeem, not repurpose, not post—but simply live with the weight of it. Because failure, in its rawest form, teaches us nothing. It just tells the truth. And that, perhaps, is enough. Or should be. The modern tendency to take all that is hard and bitter and turn into a wellness potion of some kind serves to disconnect us from the idea of pain. Adversity takes on an unrecognisable shape with well-meaning language crowding out all exits. It is important to recognise that we will have wounds, carry scars, grapple with our own failings. As people we wear skins over skins – layers grown not from growth but from the act of being. From enduring, not transforming. And that should mean something. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Canberra Times
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Canberra Times
Four seasons in London: what to do in the city come rain, chill or shine
HOW: If the quirky Tate Modern doesn't tickle your fancy, how about the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square? Masterpieces by Michelangelo, van Gogh, Monet and other legends are displayed here, while next door's National Portrait Gallery reopened in June 2023 after a facelift. As well as kings and queens, you'll see pioneering women (Emmeline Pankhurst, Mary Quant, Malala Yousafzai) and inspiring Davids (Bowie, Beckham, Hockney). Head to nearby Chinatown for dim sum or have afternoon tea, with dainty sandwiches, scones and cakes, at Fortnum & Mason, London's oldest department store. Shop a bit here - or on Bond Street and Oxford Street, both lined with big brands - then enjoy a pint and people-watching at a storied Soho pub like The Dog and Duck (a former hangout of George Orwell). Catch a play at one of the West End's myriad theatres - perhaps Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the world's longest-running show - or pamper yourself at The Londoner. This 350-room "super-boutique" hotel has a swish spa, an upscale Japanese izakaya and a chic-casual French restaurant overlooking Leicester Square, the always vibrant heart of London's West End.
