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kottke.org posts about Art
Sunburn Photographic Printing
For his project Illustrated People, Thomas Mailaender imprinted photographic images onto people's skin by shining a UV light through negatives. The visual effect created is not unlike that of a sunburn but it goes away as soon as the skin is exposed to light. I wonder…does it hurt like a sunburn?
Thomas Mailaender
The Knitting Clock
Artist Siren Elise Wilhelmsen designed a clock that knits while it tells time — the clock makes one two-meter long scarf every 365 days.
Time is manifested in physical objects; in things that grow, develop or extinguish. Time is an ever forward-moving force and I wanted to make a clock based on times true nature, more than the numbers we have attached to it.
(via clive thompson)
Siren Elise Wilhelmsen
Light Painted Landscapes
It's been a bit since we've checked in on artist Reuben Wu, who uses drones to paint (sculpt?) with light in the sky over dark landscapes. Most of his recent stuff seems to be video on his Instagram account but I pulled a couple of photos of his that I haven't featured before. Always inspiring stuff worth exploring.
Reuben Wu
The Rijksmuseum Brings All the Vermeers to the Yard
Wow! A forthcoming exhibition at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum will bring together 23 of the 37 known paintings by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, including The Girl with a Pearl Earring. As the museum's website says: "Never before have so many Vermeers been brought together".
The exhibition will include masterpieces such as The Girl with a Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis, The Hague), The Geographer (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main), Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid (The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) and Woman Holding a Balance (The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC).
Works never before shown to the public in the Netherlands will include the newly restored Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
This page lists all of the works that will appear in the exhibition — you can click on the title of any of the artworks to see a zoomable high-resolution image of the painting, e.g. The Milkmaid or Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window.
Accompanying the exhibition is an online guided tour of Vermeer's works, narrated in English by Stephen Fry. The History Blog raved about the tour:
This is one of the best virtual exhibitions I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of them. It is written in a personable, light-hearted style that still manages to be incredibly information-rich. The way they zoom into the detail of the paintings to illustrate the commentary is flawlessly paced and takes full advantage of the ultra-high resolution photographs. Fry explains changes Vermeer made based on the most recent imaging and research into his process. There are also annotated areas of each painting which you can click on for a shot of additional information. The notes open in windows that have click-through images, so every note is really multiple notes. Then when you're done exploring the nooks and crannies, you click back to the main tour and the narration picks up where you left off. Whoever designed this is a content management genius, seriously.
The exhibition runs at the Rijksmuseum from February 10 to June 4, 2023 — but note that The Girl with a Pearl Earring will only be available for viewing until March 30, at which point the painting will return to Mauritshuis in The Hague. I….think I might have to get to Amsterdam to go see this?
Lessons on How to Draw by Hokusai
In 1812, Japanese woodblock print artist Katsushika Hokusai, who would later become famous for his iconic Great Wave off Kanagawa prints, published a three-volume series called Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing. All three volumes are available online: one, two, three. Even if you're not in the market for drawing lessons, the pages are wonderful to flip through.
The Embroidered Supermarket
Textile artist Alicja Kozlowska's Embroidered Ordinaries series recalls the the pop art of Warhol & Lichtenstein and Andreas Gursky's 99 Cent II Diptychon while also being firmly contemporary. There's maybe a Duchamp/readymade something something riff in there? I dunno, I'm not an art critic, just a fan. Anyway, I love how detailed these are — remarkably true-to-life for objects that are embroidered. (via colossal)
Alicja Kozlowska
How Beautiful Japanese Manhole Covers Are Made
From steel scrap to testing the final product with a ton of water pressure, here's how Japanese manhole covers are made. The video is perhaps a little long in parts, so I would not blame you for skipping ahead to ~12:10 to see how some of the covers are hand-painted in brilliant color.
See also Japanese Manhole Covers Are Beautiful.
Gio Swaby's Colorful Textile Portraits
I am loving these vibrant fabric portraits by Bahamian artist Gio Swaby (Instagram). Here's a brief statement of work from her website (italics mine):
Gio Swaby is a Bahamian visual artist whose practice is an exploratory celebration of Blackness and womanhood. Her work centres on Black joy as a radical act of resistance. It works through the philosophy of love as liberation and explores pathways of healing and empowerment. It allows space for both the strong and soft to coexist.
(via colossal)
Gio Swaby
Everyday Paper Mâché
Bernie Kaminski makes everyday objects out of paper mâché and posts the results to his Instagram account. At a glance, you wouldn't be able to tell that some of these weren't real and then after a moment you're like, waaaait a minute… At any rate, the twee design aesthetic here is off the charts. (via @thoughtbrain)
Bernie Kaminski
Lego's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa
As part of the company's effort to get more adults building with bricks, LEGO has released an 1810-piece set based on Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Here's the only problem: it's sold out online (and on Amazon as well). Perhaps you can find one at your local toy store?
If you were lucky enough to procure a set, Lego has produced an 85-minute audio piece about The Great Wave that you can listen to while you're putting it together. The piece includes interviews with woodblock printer David Bull, Alfred Haft, curator of Japanese Art at the British Museum, and anime & manga scholar Susan Napier. Very cool.
Meet the Artists Behind the USPS's Upcoming 'Art of the Skateboard' Stamps
Last month, the US Postal Service revealed some stamps that are due to be released in 2023. Alongside a stamp honoring John Lewis and some cool microphotography stamps are a series of four stamps featuring the Art of the Skateboard.
Antonio Alcalá designed the stamps, which feature skateboard decks created by four different artists:
Di'Orr Greenwood is a member of the Najavo Nation who does pyrographic art, burning images into the wooden decks of some of the boards she designs. Greenwood also carves cedar wood flutes and teaches skateboarding. From her Instagram, one of decks she's designed recently:
William James Taylor Jr. is a prolific self-taught artist from Virginia. You can check out his work on Instagram and buy a bunch of decks with his designs — here are just a few of them:
Crystal Worl is "Tlingit Athabascan from Raven moiety, Sockeye Clan, from the Raven House" who currently lives and works in Juneau, Alaska. Her Instagram is here and here's a recent deck from her website:
Federico Frum is a street mural artist from Colombia who is based in Washington DC; he operates under the name MasPaz. From his Instagram, a recent desk design:
I'm excited to get some of these stamps when they come out later in the year. (via lizzie armanto)
Antonio Alcala
Crystal Worl
Di'Orr Greenwood
Federico Frum
William James Taylor Jr.
Our First Closeup Image of Mars Was a Paint-By-Numbers Pastel Drawing
On July 15, 1965, NASA's Mariner 4 probe flew within 6,118 miles of the surface of Mars, capturing images as it passed over the planet. The image data was transmitted back to scientists on Earth, but they didn't have a good way to quickly render a photograph from it. They determined that the fastest way to see what Mariner 4 had seen was to print out the imaging data as a series of numbers, paste them into a grid, buy a set of pastels from a nearby art store, and do a paint-by-numbers job with the pastels on the data grid. The result (pictured above) was the first closeup representation of the surface of an extraterrestrial planet — in color, no less!
After the flyby of the planet it would take several hours for computers to process a real image. So while they were waiting, the engineers thought of different ways of taking the 1's and 0's from the actual data and create an image. After a few variations, it seemed most efficient to print out the digits and color over them based upon how bright each pixel was. So Mr. Grumm went to a local art store and asked for a set of chalk with different shades of gray. The art store replied that they "did not sell chalk" (as that was apparently too low for them, only convenience stores sold "chalk"), but they did have colored pastels. Richard did not want to spend a lot of time arguing with them, so he bought the pastels (actual pastels seen below), had the 1's and 0's printed out on ticker tape about 3in wide, and his team colored them by their brightness level (color key seen below).
Here's a closer view of the pastels and numbers:
The choice of color palette was serendipitous:
Though he used a brown/red color scheme, the thought that Mars was red did not enter his mind. He really was looking for the colors that best represented a grey scale, since that was what they were going to get anyway. It is uncanny how close his color scheme is to the actual colors of Mars. It's as if they came right out of current images of the planet.
Compare with the photography we're getting from Curiosity these days; we've come a long way in the last 60 years. (via @jenniferrrrrroberts and robin sloan)
A Timeline of the Evolution of Western Art Movements
From Behind the Masterpiece, a whirlwind summary of evolution of Western art movements, from prehistoric art to the Renaissance to Romanticism to Impressionism to Cubism and beyond. 23 minutes seems like the sweet spot for this kind of thing: any shorter and there wouldn't be time to give the viewer a sense of each movement but if it were 40 minutes, perhaps many fewer people would be enticed to watch. (via open culture)
Genetic Portraits: Split Multi-Generational Portraits of Family Members
I'm not going to actually look, but I've probably featured Ulric Collette's series Genetic Portraits here before. Collette photographed family members in the same pose and then digitally stitched them together. The resemblances and differences between family members are fascinating. (via jenni leder)
Update: A similar series by Bobby Neel Adams. (via @geedix)
Update: See also these similar paintings by Daevid Anderson.
Ulric Collette
Love a Good Train Station Mosaic
Dang, look at these new mosaics by Kiki Smith and Yayoi Kusama for Grand Central Madison, the MTA's newest LIRR station.
As a former (and future?) New Yorker, I know a lot of the city's dwellers appreciate the MTA's commitment to public art and to mosaics in particular. Like the Dude's rug, it really ties the city together.
China's Van Goghs
I did not mean to watch an entire 75-minute documentary in the middle of my workday, but this sucked me right in and it might do the same to you. Zhao Xiaoyong is one of thousands of painters in Dafen, China who hand-paint replicas of famous paintings by the likes of Matisse, Degas, Renoir, Leonardo, and Kahlo. But a favorite artist amongst many of them, including Zhao, is Vincent van Gogh.
Zhao says, "I've been painting his paintings for nearly 20 years. I want to see the originals." He works from photos of paintings and believes his work will be better if he can see them in person. And so, he and a few others make the trip to Europe — to visit a buyer of their paintings in the Netherlands, to see the originals of their replicas in the Van Gogh Museum, and to visit some of the places he lived and worked. It quickly becomes a spiritual journey. On a street in Arles, they came across a scene that van Gogh painted in 1888:
Here we are! Oh, it is like this. Things from a hundred years ago are still here. See, the sky in my picture is so blue. The sky is so blue! Van Gogh also painted this picture at dusk. Now I know why his sky is so bright. It was at dusk when he painted. Just like how we experienced today. It's just like that.
Never having painted from life before but inspired by the scene, Zhao paints the scene as van Gogh would have more than a century before — that is, as van Gogh would have stood there painting but also in the artist's signature style and informed by Zhao's deep knowledge of having made many replicas of that specific painting over the years.
After his trip, while sitting around a dinner table with friends, Zhao asks, "Have I become an artist? Do I have anything that deserves appreciation?" and it's not difficult to imagine any number of painters and artists throughout the centuries and asking themselves those same questions over dinner and drink. Fascinating documentary.
P.S. You can follow and buy Zhao's work on Instagram. (via open culture)
Zhao Xiaoyong
My Recent Media Diet, Spring 2022 Edition
Well hey there, it's been a few months, so it's time for another roundup of what I've been reading, watching, listening to, and experiencing recently. In addition to the stuff below, I have a few things in progress: the second season of Russian Doll, Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, and I just started dipping into Rebecca Woolf's forthcoming memoir, All of This. Oh, and I'm listening to Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World on audiobook and the third season of Michael Lewis' Against the Rules podcast. All always, don't sweat the letter grades too much.
Everything Everywhere All at Once. This movie is a little bit of a miracle: action, comedy, heartfelt, and a little bit of a mess, all together in a perfect balance. This is the best movie I've seen in ages. (A+)
Encanto. The kids and I liked it fine. (B+)
The Expanse (season six). I'm going to miss spending time in this world with these people. (A-)
Matrix by Lauren Groff. Was delighted and moved by this work of historical fiction about Marie de France. (A)
Station Eleven. I loved the slow burn and resolution of this show. I didn't think I wanted to watch a TV show about a flu pandemic causing the end of civilization, but it was actually perfect. Both actresses who played Kirsten were fantastic. (A/A+)
The Last Duel. Every director is entitled to their Rashomon I guess? And I'm not sure Matt Damon was the right choice here… (B)
Pig. Had no idea what to expect from this one. Even so, Taken + Truffle Hunters + Fight Club + Ratatouille was a surprise. (B+)
Strafford ice cream. This Black-owned dairy farm makes the richest, creamiest ice cream I've ever had. So glad I randomly bought a pint of it a few months ago…I'm never going back to anything else. (A)
Severance. Fantastic opening credits sequence and while I wasn't as enamored as many were after the first few episodes, the show definitely grew on me. (A-)
My Brilliant Friend (season three). I don't know why there's no more buzz about this show. The acting, world-building, story, and Max Richter's soundtrack are all fantastic. And the fight against fascism! (A)
The Gilded Age. Exactly what I wanted out of a period drama from the maker of Downton Abbey and Gosford Park. (B+)
Exhalation. Second time through, this time on audiobook. I love these stories - Chiang is a genius. (A)
The Book of Boba Fett. This turned into season 2.5 of The Mandalorian and I am totally ok with that. (B+)
Other People's Money podcast. As a snack-sized in-between season for his excellent Against the Rules podcast, Michael Lewis revisits his first book, Liar's Poker, written about his experience working for Salomon Brothers in the 80s. (A-)
The King's Man. Not as fun as the first movie but more fun than the second one? But they all could be better. (B)
Turning Red. I loved Domee Shi's short film, Bao, and this film is similarly clever and heartfelt. (A-)
Drive My Car. Really appreciated the cinematography of this one; wish I could have seen it in the theater. (A-)
Jennifer Packer at The Whitney. I was unfamiliar with Packer's work before seeing this exhibition, but I'm a fan now. (A-)
Licorice Pizza. I'm really flabbergasted at the two pointless racist scenes in this film. PT Anderson is a better filmmaker than this. It's a shame because I enjoyed the rest of the film — the two leads are great. Can't recommend it though. (D)
Death on the Nile. These movies are fun. Sometimes all you want to do is watch Kenneth Branagh chew scenery as Hercule Poirot. (B+)
Moonfall. Not as fun or coherent (I know, lol) as some of Emmerich's other movies. The acting in this is…not great. (C+)
Hawkeye. Fun but I don't know how many more Marvel things I want to keep up with. (B)
Spider-Man: No Way Home. Tom Holland's Spider-Man is always fun. (B+)
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Better than the overcomplicated sequel and Mikkelsen was a better Grindelwald than Depp. The story wrapped up so nicely that who knows if there will be a fourth movie. (B)
The Tragedy of Macbeth. Brilliant cinematography and set design. (B+)
The Batman. Oh I don't know. I guess this was a pretty decent detective story, but I'm not sure why Batman needed to be involved. (B)
The Northman. This would have been much better had it ended 20 minutes sooner. Not sure we needed another movie that concludes with ultimately pointless violent masculine revenge. (B-)
Kimi. Soderbergh does Rear Window + The Conversation. The direction is always tight and Zoë Kravitz is great in this. (A-)
The Mysterious Benedict Society. The kids and I enjoyed this solid adaptation of the first book of a popular series. (B+)
Armageddon. The pace of this movie is incredible — it just drops you right into the action and never stops for more than 2 hours. Also, the top question when searching this movie title on Google is "Is Armageddon movie a true story?" *sigh* (B-)
Clever Cutout Portraits
Rudy Willingham holds up paper cutouts of people (and Muppets!) against carefully chosen backgrounds and photographs the results, resulting in these witty portraits.
You can find more of Willingham's work across his various social media platforms: website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok.
Rudy Willingham
Octopuses, Seahorses, and the Amazing Biodiversity of the Ocean
Zoe Keller's Ocean Biodiversity Print Series celebrates the diversity of the animals that live in the sea. Each of the four prints concerns a different sea creature or region of the ocean: the octopus, the jellyfish, the seahorse, and the deep sea. (via dense discovery)
Zoe Keller
Spoiler Paintings
For his series of Spoiler Paintings, Mario García Torres silkscreened short texts on colorful backgrounds that reveal major plot points of movies like The Usual Suspects, The Matrix, E.T., Basic Instinct, Heat, and Fight Club.
Although the Spoiler Paintings may seem conventional and harmless, they were produced with the intention of displacing the reaction in a work of art by producing tension even before seeing the piece. This objective is achieved by using the widespread notion that knowing the end of a film destroys its experience.
Mario Garcia Torres
Massive New Book Collection Offers Unprecedented Views of the Sistine Chapel
There are famously no photos allowed when visiting the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. So, this new book series "that includes 1:1 scale images of the masterpieces by Michelangelo, Botticelli, and other Renaissance artists" from the chapel might be your best bet to enjoying this wonder of the art world at home. But here's the bad news: the 20-pound volume costs $22,000 and has been limited to 1999 copies, no reprints.
Published by Callaway Arts & Entertainment and Italy's Scripta Maneant, the book uses state-of-the-art color printing to ensure its colors match those used in the Chapel. The close-up detail of each image provides a perspective that cannot be obtained by visiting the Chapel in person. Readers can see the artist's brush strokes and texture of the paint, as well as the small cracks and imperfections that line the walls and ceiling.
The publishing agreement with the Vatican stipulated that only 1,999 copies could be printed. Six hundred of them are in English. The Italian language copies have already sold out. The deal also stipulates no reprints.
This book looks incredible — two photographers took 270,000 images over 65 nights that were stitched together using 3D software to accurately portray the paintings done on the chapel's curved surfaces. (via open culture)
The Birdsong of Printed Circuit Birds
As part of her Circuit Garden project, artist Kelly Heaton makes birds out of electronic circuitry that can be adjusted to produce a wide variety of birdsong. Here she demonstrated with a printed circuit bluejay:
As Heaton explains, the sounds made by the birds aren't recordings…they're generated by the electronics, like a synthesizer.
My "printed circuit birds" are self-contained sound generators. The electronics are [100%] analog: no audio recordings or software are involved. By "analog" I mean that the sound is dynamically produced by the bird's body (circuit), like a vintage synthesizer. In this video, I adjust knobs to change resistance in the circuit, thereby altering the song quality. You can think of this like adjusting neurons in a bird's brain to alter the impulse by which it vocalizes.
Kelly Heaton
How Ukrainians Are Saving Art During the War
Building on the lessons of World War II, Ukrainians are trying to save their art and other important cultural artifacts from destruction during Russia's invasion. When an invader repeatedly tries to deny the cultural distinction of a people for decades and even centuries, like Russia has done with Ukraine, saving buildings and statues and paintings can be of great importance.
Because under the 1954 convention, "damage to cultural property means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind". So attacks on cultural heritage are a considered war crime. But treaties can only do so much. In the years since, conflicts around the world have rendered immeasurable damage to cultural heritage. A lot of it intentional. Like the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan buddhas. And Isis' attacks on ancient sites all over Syria.
"That cultural heritage is not only impacted, but in many ways it's implicated and central to armed conflict. These are things that people point to that are unifying factors for their society. They are tangible reflections of their identity."
And Putin has made it clear that identity is at the ideological center of Russia's invasion: "I would like to emphasize again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space."
"He thinks that we don't really exist and they want to destroy all the signs of our identity."
BTW, regarding the destruction of the museum that housed works by Maria Prymachenko at the start of the video: according to the Ukrainian Institute, the works were saved from burning by local residents.
The Rembrandt Book Bracelet
Inspired by the online availability of high resolution images from the Rijksmuseum's collection, design firm Duinker and Dochters created a book of 1400 images of hands from Rembrandt's work that is wearable as a bracelet. From the Cooper Hewitt:
Designers Lia Duinkers and Lyske Gais, are fascinated by the details Rembrandt achieved in his depiction of hands. From hundreds of images of Rembrandt's hand illustrations, they created an intriguing book-bracelet, an intricate piece that not only pays homage to the talent of Rembrandt, but also spotlights the genius of Duinker and Gais's skills in graphic design, bookbinding, and jewelry design. Entitled "Rembrandt's Hands and a Lion's Paw" the book-bracelet is comprised of 1400 miniature pictures of hands derived from 303 Rembrandt etchings and drawings in the collection of the Rikjsmuseum and available as high-resolution images on the museum's website.
Here's what the bracelet looks like in its storage box:
What a fantastic little object…you can marvel about how it was made on their website. (via colossal)
Lia Duinkers
Lyske Gais
Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure
Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure is a new exhibition of the life and work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, curated by his two younger sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux. It opened this past weekend in NYC and includes a bunch of work that's never been exhibited before. From the NY Times:
The show, "Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure," features more than 200 artworks and artifacts from the artist's estate — 177 of which have never been exhibited before — in a 15,000-square-foot space designed by the architect David Adjaye. Providing perhaps the most detailed personal portrait to date of Basquiat's development, the show comes at a time when the artist's market value continues to soar and his themes of race and self-identity have become especially resonant. (The mayor's office is to proclaim Saturday, the show's opening, Jean-Michel Basquiat Day.)
"They're literally opening up the vaults," said Brett Gorvy, a dealer and a former chairman and international head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie's. "These are paintings I've only seen in books."
This looks great; definitely hitting this the next time I'm in NYC. Tickets are available here. (via pentagram, who did the identity for the exhibition)
Alphabet Truck
Over a period of four years and after thousands of miles of driving, Eric Tabuchi photographed the backs of semi-trailers with letters of the alphabet on them, eventually compiling all 26 letters. Here's the first dozen:
(via present & correct)
Eric Tabuchi
Sheila Bridges' Harlem Toile
Toile de Jouy is a fabric, typically featuring "romantic pastoral scenes", that was popular in France in the 18th century — the wealthy covered their walls in it. Interior designer Sheila Bridges developed her own patterns for her Harlem Toile, inspired by her Harlem and Philadelphia neighborhoods and the African American experience more generally.
As an African American living in Harlem, I have always been intrigued and inspired by the historical narrative of the decorative arts, especially traditional French toile with its pastoral motifs from the late 1700s. I'm entertained by the stories these patterns tell and the questions they sometimes raise. But after searching for many years for the perfect toile for my own home, I decided that it quite simply didn't exist. I created Harlem Toile de Jouy initially as a wallcovering then expanded the collection to include fabrics, bedding, plates, glassware, umbrellas and clothing. This design (which lampoons some of the stereotypes deeply woven into the African American experience), has been featured in The Studio Museum In Harlem, the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, and the Musée De La Toile De Jouy in Jouy-en Josas, France. I am honored to have my Harlem Toile De Jouy wallpaper included in The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum's permanent wallpaper collection.
Veronica Chambers wrote a great piece about Harlem Toile for the NY Times: The Wallpaper That Is Also a 'Reminder That My Ancestors Had My Back'.
The wallpaper, which was created by the celebrated interior designer Sheila Bridges in 2006, features beautiful drawings of African Americans in the lush, historical settings that rarely featured them — a couple in 18th-century dress dance under a structure that recalls the Arc de Triomphe to the tunes of a boombox that rests playfully on the grass; women in ball gowns sit under a majestic tree, one combs the other's hair while yet another woman holds up a fairy-talelike mirror; a courting couple in fashion that now brings to mind the popular series "Bridgerton" feast on a picnic. For a Black girl who grew up loving Jane Austen and Toni Morrison with equal aplomb, Harlem Toile was more than wallpaper. It was a tableau of possibility and belonging.
I'm not doing justice to all of what is being expressed in Bridges' work and how it's resonating with Chambers & other members of the Black community, so you should just read the piece. (thx, caroline)
Sheila Bridges
Veronica Chambers
Discover Modern Art with Each New Browser Tab
I just switched my web browser to use the New Tab with MoMA extension. Each new browser tab I open contains another piece of art from MoMA's collection. Here are a few things that have popped up so far:
I'm really enjoying this so far…it feels like being in a slow-moving art history class all day long.
Claude Monet's War Paintings
This is another great episode of James Payne's Great Art Explained on the work of Claude Monet, specifically the massive water lily canvases he completed before his death, created as "a war memorial to the millions of lives tragically lost in the First World War".
Claude Monet is often criticised for being overexposed, too easy, too obvious, or worse, a chocolate box artist. His last works, the enormous water lily canvasses are among the most popular art works in the world.
Yet there is nothing tame, traditionalist, or cosy about these last paintings. These are his most radical works of all. They turn the world upside down with their strange, disorientating and immersive vision.
Monet's water lilies have come to be viewed as simply an aesthetic interpretation of the garden that obsessed him. But they are so much more.
These works were created as a direct response to the most savage and apocalyptic period of modern history. They were in fact conceived as a war memorial to the millions of lives tragically lost in the First World War.
I've seen these paintings at the Musée de l'Orangerie — amazing to see them exactly the way in which the artist intended them to be seen.
See also Film of Claude Monet Painting Water Lilies in His Garden (1915) and Monet's Ultraviolet Vision.
James Payne
Encyclopedia Botanica Digital
The Fleur is artist Ondrej Zunka's collection of imagined digital flowers with fanciful forms — an "Encyclopedia Botanica Digital". (via colossal)
Ondrej Zunka


text:
MICT and Brookfield Interactive (Hong Kong) Ltd sign a definitive acquisition agreement with ParagonEx
- The merged companies create a substantial new group, Global Fintech Holdings
- Global Fintech Holdings raised $23.5 million at $1.65 per share to finance transaction
- A tender offer to purchase up to 20% of MICT's outstanding common stock at a price of $1.65 per share shall be commenced by BNN Technology PLC
MICT, Inc.
Dec 20, 2018, 17:48 ET
MONTVALE, N.J., Dec. 20, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Brookfield Interactive (Hong Kong) Ltd, ParagonEx Ltd. and MICT, Inc. (NASDAQCM: MICT) are pleased to announce the signing of a definitive acquisition agreement to pursue the strategic transactions and planned listing on NASDAQ outlined in announcements by MICT and BNN on July 2, 2018.
Summary of the Proposed Transaction
The acquisitions will create a new company, Global Fintech Holdings Ltd. (GFH), which will become the parent of these highly complementary businesses with the opportunity to achieve significant scale as a combined entity:
ParagonEx is a leading developer and global provider of software solutions and related services for online trading in contracts-for-difference ("CFD") in over 500 different underlying global financial instruments such as stocks, indices, commodities, exchange-traded funds and foreign exchange. ParagonEx provides its business-to-business (B2B) clients with a software platform for trading in CFDs under a business model of 'Platform as a Service' (PaaS). ParagonEx's trading platform is product-agnostic, capable of handling high trading volumes and is highly synergistic with Brookfield Interactive (HK)'s offering, and expected to enable it to deliver its content and services in China and elsewhere on robust digital trading platforms. ParagonEx generated EBITDA of $19.9 million in 2017 and $10.3 million of EBITDA in H1 2018 as well as producing significant cash flow.1
Brookfield Interactive (HK) brings to GFH, a technology, content and services company with a focus on the Chinese lottery, sports and gaming markets. Brookfield Interactive (HK)'s successful history of executing its digital technology strategy in China via long term trusted and proven relationships with Chinese provincial lottery centers, government regulated departments and major Chinese portals, provides a well-established starting point for GFH, which will be strengthened by the execution capabilities of the merged companies.
MICT, a Nasdaq listed company, through its majority owned subsidiary Micronet Ltd., currently provides rugged mobile devices for the growing commercial Mobile Resource Management (MRM) market. MICT develops, manufactures and provides mobile computing platforms for the mobile logistics management market in the U.S., Europe and Israel. American manufactured systems are designed for outdoor and challenging work environments in trucking, distribution, logistics, public safety and construction. As noted below, MICT's interest in Micronet Ltd. is contemplated to be spun off in connection with the transactions contemplated by the acquisition agreement.
We believe combining these entities will create a company with a strong business-to-business (B2B) technology platform and operational expertise that will enable GFH to present a leading global multifaceted platform for trading in digital assets. The combination of these entities is expected to allow GFH to capitalize on ParagonEx's technology and Brookfield Interactive (HK)'s market relationships and technology, via a public market vehicle with access to the capital markets, to become a leading technology provider for the lottery, sports content and other gaming verticals with a strong position in the Asian markets. The strengths and competencies of GFH are expected to include:
a premier trading platform in digital assets, offered as a Platform as a Service ("PaaS"), that is product agnostic and can be scaled into many different verticals;
access to the Chinese market through Brookfield Interactive (HK) to monetize the lotto, sports, gaming and other markets using GFH's technology solutions; and
potential to capitalize on its access to the financial markets to acquire revenues of smaller players at attractive and accretive acquisition multiples to address industry consolidation driven by regulatory changes.
Key Terms of the Transaction
GFH successfully raised $23.5 million at $1.65 per share to fund the transaction (the "Financing").
BNN Technology PLC, a 15% stockholder in MICT and majority stockholder of Brookfield Interactive (HK), will commence a tender offer to purchase up to 20% of the issued and outstanding shares of MICT's common stock, not already owned by it within 15 business days at a price of $1.65 per share, in order to increase its ownership percentage of MICT to a maximum of 35% (assuming full participation in the tender offer).
MICT and GFH will complete a merger whereby MICT will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of GFH.
Brookfield Interactive (HK) shareholders will transfer to GFH all of the issued and outstanding shares of Brookfield Interactive (HK), resulting in Brookfield Interactive (HK) becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of GFH.
ParagonEx's shareholders will transfer all of the issued and outstanding shares of ParagonEx to GFH, resulting in ParagonEx becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of GFH.
At or within sixty (60) days of the applicable record date, GFH will spin off MICT's interest in Micronet Ltd., a partially owned subsidiary traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange under the ticker MCRNL, to its shareholders who retain shares of MICT after the tender offer.
In connection with the Acquisitions, at Closing, the parties will receive the following approximate consideration:
Investors in the GFH Financing (assuming a $25 million raise) – 15,151,515 ordinary shares of GFH, representing approximately 8.83% of GFH
MICT Shareholders (other than BNN's current ownership, and assuming that no shares of MICT are sold in the tender offer) – 9,048,077 ordinary shares of GFH, representing approximately, 5.27% of GFH
Brookfield Interactive (HK) Shareholders – 58,898,810 ordinary shares of GFH, representing approximately 34.37% of GFH
ParagonEx Shareholders – (a) $25 million in cash, (b) a senior unsecured note in the principal amount of $10 million and (c) 86,382,373 ordinary shares of GFH, representing approximately 50.36% of GFH
ParagonEx Founders – 2,000,000 ordinary shares of GFH, representing approximately, 1.17% of GFH
All of the shares to be issued by GFH are valued at $1.65 per share, representing a GFH equity valuation of approximately $283 million.
The Business of GFH
The merger is intended to create a strong B2B technology platform with operational expertise that will enable GFH to present a leading global multifaceted platform for trading in digital assets. ParagonEx's and Brookfield Interactive (HK)'s assets and technology are highly complementary and are expected to enable GFH to monetize BNN's opportunities within China as well as expedite the growth plan of ParagonEx globally. GFH believes future growth can be driven by the combination and penetration of existing products and platforms into new and emerging markets while capitalizing on revenue acquisition opportunities in a consolidating market.
GFH's enhanced access to the financial markets, supported by a NASDAQ listing, is anticipated to facilitate the acquisition, at attractive and accretive acquisition multiples, of revenues streams of smaller companies dependent on third party software providers, as regulatory changes drive industry consolidation. These potential acquisitions offer significant opportunities for operational cost savings as a result of ParagonEx's highly scalable and robust PaaS capability.
ParagonEx and Brookfield Interactive (HK) are already developing new "play for fun" products to create new revenue streams for GFH. These online games are expected to appeal to a different, yet larger, segment of end users who are not financial traders, but who wish to enjoy playing online financial trading games.
GFH intends to establish its base of operations in Hong Kong and believes that this will enable a rapid rollout of its operations to service the South East Asia market. GFH intends to obtain all licenses necessary to conduct the business and support the operation of the group from Hong Kong.
Commenting on the proposed transaction, Darren Mercer, Chief Executive Officer of Brookfield Interactive (HK), said:
"We are extremely excited to have agreed on a combination of these highly complementary companies. Together they provide an underlying business that can be very profitable, boasting a world class technology platform with big data analytical capability, a management team with decades of experience building highly profitable technology companies and an opportunity to monetize a number of significant commercial relationships in Asia. The blend of these companies enables the combined entity to benefit from the specialisms in which each element excels and allows us to view the future with considerable confidence. I am particularly pleased to see this echoed by the support of investors in the Financing which has raised $23.5 million."
David Lucatz, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of MICT, added:
"This transaction marks a significant milestone in the evolution of MICT. The merged company will develop a much more substantial and diverse revenue stream than has been possible during our solid progress over the last 10 years. It is a game changer for us, providing the opportunity to generate significant value for our shareholders, who will be encouraged by the support for the financing at $1.65 per share. Looking ahead, this compelling merger of our three companies positions GFH well to leverage its proprietary technology, capital raising ability and Asian experience in addressing a number of fast-growing business segments."
Simon Duggan, CEO of ParagonEx, said:
"We are delighted to take part in an exciting combination that accelerates our expansion. For more than 10 years our team has delivered linear year-on-year profits growth. This performance has been supported by strong technology in which more than $45 million has been re-invested to date. This transaction will support our new revenue acquisition program, and the deployment of our platform in new directions, commencing with the execution of key BNN commercial relationships in China. I strongly believe that combining with MICT's capital markets experience in the US and BNN's access to Chinese consumer and business markets is an exciting opportunity to fast-track further adoption of ParagonEx's technology in the global market."
Transaction Advisors
Maxim Group LLC acted as sole financial advisor to Brookfield Interactive (HK ) and BNN Technology PLC in connection with the proposed Merger.
Herzog Fox & Neeman are acting as legal counsel to ParagonEx Ltd in connection with the transactions contemplated by the merger agreement.
CoView Capital, a Manhattan-based investment bank focused on mergers and acquisitions, rendered the Fairness Opinion to the Board of MICT. Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo, P.C. and Naschitz, Brandes, Amir & Co. are acting as legal counsel to MICT in connection with the transactions contemplated by the merger agreement.
Official filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission relating to this transaction may be found at www.sec.gov
Brookfield Interactive (HK)
info@bnntechnology.com
+44(0) 1565 872 990
info@mict-inc.com
In connection with the proposed transactions described herein, MICT, Global Fintech Holdings, ParagonEx and Brookfield Interactive (HK) will prepare a proxy statement/prospectus for MICT's stockholders and a registration statement on Form F-4 to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. MICT's proxy statement/prospectus will be mailed to MICT's stockholders that do not opt to receive the document electronically. MICT, Global Fintech Holdings, ParagonEx and Brookfield Interactive (HK) urge investors, stockholders and other interested persons to read, when available, the proxy statement/prospectus, as well as other documents filed with the SEC, because these documents will contain important information.
Such persons can also read MICT's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017, for a description of the security holdings of its officers and directors and their respective interests as security holders in the consummation of the transactions described herein. MICT's definitive proxy statement/prospectus, which will also be included in the registration statement, will be mailed to stockholders of MICT as of a record date to be established for voting on the transactions described in this report. MICT's stockholders will also be able to obtain a copy of such documents, without charge, by directing a request to: MICT, 28 West Grand Avenue, Suite 3, Montvale NJ 07645. These documents, once available, can also be obtained, without charge, at the Securities and Exchange Commission's web site (http://www.sec.gov).
Participants in Solicitation
MICT and its directors and executive officers, may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies for the special meeting of MICT's stockholders to be held to approve the transactions described in this press release. Information regarding the persons who may, under the rules of the SEC, be deemed participants in the solicitation of MICT's stockholders in connection with the proposed Transactions will be set forth in the proxy statement/prospectus when it is filed with the SEC. You can find information about MICT's executive officers and directors in its Annual Report on Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC on April 13, 2018. You can obtain free copies of these documents from MICT using the contact information above.
Non-Solicitation
This press release is not a proxy statement or solicitation of a proxy, consent or authorization with respect to any securities or in respect of the proposed transaction and shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of MICT or Global Fintech Holdings, nor shall there be any sale of any such securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction. No offer of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
Important Information about the Tender Offer
THE TENDER OFFER REFERRED TO IN THIS PRESS RELEASE HAS NOT YET COMMENCED. THIS PRESS RELEASE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR PURCHASE, OR THE SOLICITATION OF TENDERS WITH RESPECT TO THE SHARES OF MICT. NO OFFER, SOLICITATION, PURCHASE OR SALE WILL BE MADE IN ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH AN OFFER, SOLICITATION, PURCHASE OR SALE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. THE OFFER WILL BE MADE SOLELY PURSUANT TO THE TENDER OFFERING DOCUMENTS. THESE DOCUMENTS WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE TENDER OFFER AND SHAREHOLDERS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO EVALUATE CAREFULLY ALL INFORMATION IN THE OFFERING DOCUMENTS AND TO CONSULT THEIR INVESTMENT AND TAX ADVISORS BEFORE MAKING ANY DECISION REGARDING THE TENDER OF THEIR SHARES. TO COMMENCE THE TENDER OFFER, A TENDER OFFER STATEMENT ON SCHEDULE TO (THE "TENDER OFFER STATEMENT") WILL BE FILED WITH THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (THE "SEC"). IN ADDITION, FOLLOWING DEFINITIVE DOCUMENTATION, MICT INTENDS TO FILE WITH THE SEC A SOLICITATION/RECOMMENDATION STATEMENT ON SCHEDULE 14D-9 WITH RESPECT TO THE TENDER OFFER. THE TENDER OFFER STATEMENT, INCLUDING THE OFFER TO PURCHASE, THE LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL, AND OTHER RELATED MATERIALS, AND THE SOLICITATION/RECOMMENDATION STATEMENT OF MICRONET ON SCHEDULE 14D-9, WILL ALSO BE AVAILABLE TO MICT'S STOCKHOLDERS AT NO CHARGE ON THE SEC'S WEBSITE AT WWW.SEC.GOV.
Non-GAAP Financial Metrics:
The amounts set forth in this Press Release were calculated in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). This Press Release includes non-GAAP and non-IFRS financial measures for ParagonEx which do not conform to SEC Regulation S-X in that it includes financial information (EBITDA) not derived in accordance with US GAAP or IFRS. Accordingly, such information and data will be adjusted and presented differently in the F-4 and MICT's proxy statement to be filed with the SEC to solicit shareholder approval of the proposed transaction. ParagonEx believes that the presentation of non-GAAP/non-IFRS measures provides information that is useful to investors as it and provides an additional tool for investors to use in evaluating ongoing operating results and trends ParagonEx. Investors should review ParagonEx's audited and interim financial statements, which will be presented in the F-4 and MICT's proxy statement to be filed with the SEC, and not rely on any single financial measure to evaluate their respective businesses. Other companies may calculate EBITDA and other non-GAAP/non-IFRS measures differently, and therefore PAragonEx's EBITDA and other non-GAAP/non-IFRS measures may not be directly comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies.
Safe Harbor Language
This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of U.S. federal securities laws. Words such as "expect," "estimate," "project," "budget," "forecast," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "may," "will," "could," "should," "believes," "predicts," "potential," "continue" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the expected results and, consequently, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. These forward-looking statements and factors that may cause such differences include, without limitation, MICT, Global Fintech Holdings, ParagonEx and Brookfield Interactive (HK)'s expectations with respect to future performance, growth and anticipated acquisitions; the anticipated financial impact of the reverse merger; ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the reverse merger; costs related to the proposed reverse merger; the satisfaction of the closing conditions to the reverse merger; the timing of the completion of the merger; global economic conditions; the price, terms and timing of the Tender Offer, the timing and terms of the spinoff; geopolitical events and regulatory changes; acts of piracy, political instability, terrorist or other attacks, war or international hostilities; loss of key personnel; difficulty managing planned growth properly; access to additional financing; changes in tax laws; weather and natural disasters; changing interpretations of generally accepted accounting principles; inquiries and investigations and related litigation; continued compliance with government regulations; and other risks and uncertainties indicated from time to time in filings with the SEC. The foregoing list of factors is not exclusive. Additional information concerning these and other risk factors is contained in MICT's most recent filings with the SEC and will be contained in the proxy statement/prospectus to be filed as result of the transactions described above. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements concerning MICT, Global Fintech Holdings, ParagonEx, Brookfield Interactive (HK) and BNN Technology, the transactions described herein or other matters and attributable to MICT, Global Fintech Holdings, ParagonEx, Brookfield Interactive (HK) and BNN Technology, or any person acting on their behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements above. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. None of MICT, Global Fintech Holdings, ParagonEx, Brookfield Interactive (HK) and BNN Technology undertake or accept any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement to reflect any change in their expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.
1 EBITDA represents the sum of net income/(loss), interest and finance costs, interest income, depreciation and amortization, exchange rate adjustment and, if any, income taxes during the relevant period. Refer to the disclaimer language at the end of this press release for more information regarding non-GAAP financial measures.
SOURCE MICT, Inc.
Strategic investment of up to $16.25M in MICT, with at least $9M...
New orders of $1,000,000 Received by Micronet for its legacy TREQ ...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Sevilla Have Offered Sergio Ramos A Five-Year Deal For Emotional Return
Josh Lawless
Published 8:01, 11 June 2021 BST
Sergio Ramos has been offered a five-year deal by his former club Sevilla, reports say.
The Real Madrid skipper's contract will expire at the Santiago Bernabeu on June 30 and he has been linked with the likes of Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester United.
But late last night, Spanish outlet El Primero Palo published a story claiming the 35-year-old is courting strong interest from his previous employers.
It's said that Sevilla's proposal is for a total of five years, including the possibility of Ramos remaining at the club in a different capacity once he retires.
He would have to take a fairly sizeable wage cut, with Sevilla offering him a salary of €7 million per year.
Ramos came through the youth ranks at Sevilla before going on to turn out for the first-team for two seasons.
In 2005, he made a massive €27 million move to Real in what was a record deal for a Spanish player at the time.
He's gone on to become one of the most successful defenders in football history, making 671 appearances for Real in 16 seasons and lifting 22 honours - including five La liga titles and four Champions Leagues.
Image: PA
Although there hasn't been an agreement between Real and Ramos, AS believe the long-time Spain international will extend his stay in the capital.
Recently, Ramos hit headlines for reportedly telling Real players to not accept pay cuts because the money will only go towards PSG and France sensation Kylian Mbappe.
José Ramón de la Morena, a presenter at radio show El Transistor, claims that an unnamed player at Los Blancos has told the club about Ramos' controversial actions.
Topics: Sergio Ramos, Football, Sevilla, Real Madrid
Josh is a sports journalist who specialises in football and wrestling. He has been published by Curzon Ashton FC, Late Tackle, Manchester City FC, The Mirror, Read Man City and Manchester Evening News. He provides coverage of professional wrestling and has interviewed some of the biggest names in the field - including the first UK interview with The Hardy Boyz after their return to WWE. He has never sported a pair of Lonsdale Slip-ons, contrary to reports.
@https://twitter.com/JoshLawless_
Real Madrid Have Confirmed The Departure Of Sergio Ramos After 16 Years At The Club
The 25 Highest-Scoring Defenders This Century Proves Sergio Ramos Is A Genuine GOAT
Spine-Tingling 'Thank You Sergio Ramos' Video Proves He's A Generational Defender, Like No Other
Sergio Ramos Immediately Rules Out Move To Two Clubs After Real Madrid Exit


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From the June 1987 Issue Subscribe
One of the few unknowns at the opening of the Menil Collection will be the director's direction.
By Michael Ennis
Walter Hopps, the controversial director of the Menil Collection in Houston's Montrose, at last has a place where he can show his stuff. David Crossley
This story is from Texas Monthly's archives. We have left it as it was originally published, without updating, to maintain a clear historical record. Read more here about our archive digitization project.
The Menil Collection, the privately funded museum that will showcase the De Menil family art trove, opens in Houston on June 7, and if the long-awaited event seems a bit anticlimactic, it is only because so many questions have already been answered about the building and its contents. The collection that will be exhibited in the long, low, gray clapboard structure down the street from the Rothko Chapel was revealed to the world in an exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1984 (see "Mrs. de Menil's Eye," TM, July 1984). Particularly rewarding in the areas of surrealist, primitive, and Byzantine art, the Menil Collection is spectacular in scope if rarely transcendent in quality.
Few reservations should greet the public debut of the building designed by Renzo Piano. It will display a few hundred choice pieces and provide study facilities and extensive storage for the rest of the roughly 10,000 objects acquired by Schlumberger heiress Dominique de Menil and her late husband, John, in four decades of collecting. A co-architect of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the most flamboyantly functional—and often dysfunctional—museum in the world, Piano has here created a superior yet more modest work. Piano's building represents the fruition of De Menil minimalism, an in-house architectural style of monastic simplicity and geometric rigor softened by low-tech materials and natural light. The enforced restraint has clearly brought out the best in Piano. The sequence of sleek, white galleries, linked by a long, spinal promenade, is relieved by gardens that punctuate the modular precision of the floor plan like brilliant rectangles of primary color punctuate a Mondrian. Even the most characteristically Pianoesque high-tech flourish—rows of curved ferroconcrete "leaves" that function as all-in-one roof trusses, gallery ceilings, and giant-sized louvers to filter sunlight through the galleries—has the graceful lines of classical sculpture.
But whether this stunning set piece will become a vital force in the cultural life of Texas remains an unanswered question. Unlike most private museums, the Menil Collection is not intended as a mausoleum for its benefactors' sensibilities but as a site for regularly rotating temporary exhibits as well as a resource for scholars (the upper story is a series of spacious and well-lit minigallery storerooms, where most of the collection will be kept).
At a time when publicly funded museums are increasingly cowed by financial pressures and by the tastes of the governing oligarchies, the Menil Collection, with its single, unusually liberal-minded despot, has an opportunity to provide an alternative to the much-processed culture that is often presented to museumgoers. And that the Menil Collection intends to offer a more zealous vision seems apparent by Dominique de Menil's selection of Walter Hopps as its director.
Hopps, one of the most colorful and controversial personalities in his profession, actually was named director of the Menil Collection in 1980. He has already assembled several shows under the De Menil aegis, including "The Rhyme and the Reason," the dramatic unveiling of the De Menil family holdings. But until now, Hopps's curatorial efforts have been easier to see in Paris than in Houston. The opening of the Menil Collection will provide a more accessible focus for Hopps's wide-ranging—some would say rampaging—intellect.
Hopps's career is the stuff of art world legends, but he is neither the flake his detractors perceive him to be nor quite the genius his more ardent supporters say he is. What he does offer is perhaps the museum business's most inspired, intuitive sense of where to find the cutting edge in contemporary art. Although he is only a youthful-looking 55, Hopps has been, first as a dealer and then as a museum director, a major player throughout almost the entire span of post–World War II American art.
A fourth-generation Californian, Hopps was tutored as a teenager by noted collector Walter Arensberg. Arensberg introduced his protégé to Marcel Duchamp when Hopps was only seventeen, and the twentieth century's foremost assailant of the traditional art object has remained a lasting influence on Hopps. In 1950 Hopps began an intermittent seven-year odyssey through Stanford University, UCLA, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University, an academic tour that netted him, he seems almost proud to say, not a single degree. But Hopps didn't need academic credentials to sense that something extraordinary was happening to American art, and by the time he was 21 he had opened the first of several Los Angeles galleries that would give the initial West Coast exposure to many of the leading New York–based avant-gardists of the fifties, in addition to such seminal Westerners as Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, and Sam Francis.
During the fifties, innovative commercial galleries were the equivalent of today's alternative spaces, and the scene that Hopps was instrumental in creating was one in which artists, beat poets, and progressive musicians freely cross-pollinated. The era was also a time when the dangers of being on the cutting edge were real. "A good many of my colleagues were dead before they were thirty," says Hopps. "The wastage of people was terrible." Poverty, drugs, McCarthy-era political repression, which seeped out of the movie industry to infect the California art community, accounted for the toll; Hopps's Ferus Gallery, a collaboration with the notorious assemblagist Edward Kienholz, was named for an artist who shot himself when he was eighteen.
Hopps believes that the martyrdom of Jackson Pollock in the late summer of 1956 (the heavy-drinking artist died in the wreck of his convertible) began an era of acceptance for advanced American art. "By 1959," he says, "the artists we represented knew that there was a chance for a career." Hopps opened a branch of the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, formed a corporation, brought in a partner and an investor, and began to show another generation of New York radicals, like Frank Stella and Jasper Johns, along with such new-breed Californians as conceptualist Robert Irwin and ceramicist Kenneth Price.
In the late fifties and early sixties Hopps also became the guest curator at the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art in California, a small suburban institution that served as Los Angeles' contemporary arts museum. Offered a full-time curatorial job in 1962, Hopps was to become the director by default when his predecessor abruptly resigned in 1963. During Hopps's tenure as curator and director, he staged a remarkable series of exhibitions, ranging from historic modernism to the contemporary art of both coasts. Among the highlights were the first-ever retrospectives of Duchamp and Joseph Cornell and the celebrated "New Paintings of Common Objects," the first museum survey of what would come to be known as pop art.
At the Pasadena art museum Hopps also became a central figure in one of the art world's classic institutional dramas. Hopps's plan for the future of the suddenly thriving museum was to acquire a quality collection, develop a professional staff, and merely add on to the existing building, an undistinguished Chinese-style mansion in downtown Pasadena; his board's ambition was to throw most of the museum's present and future financial resources into building a sprawling structure on a new site. Hopps protested that the cost of construction and maintenance for the new building would financially ruin the museum, but the board forged ahead. Plagued at the same time by the breakup of his first marriage, Hopps, in his own words, "just flipped out." Returning to Los Angeles on the day scheduled for the formal unveiling of the model of the new museum, he found himself physically unable to leave the airport. He finally had the presence of mind to call a psychiatrist friend, who checked him into the mental ward at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The breakdown would end Hopps's career at the Pasadena museum, which subsequently became a black hole for a series of unfortunate museum directors. Hopps was conclusively vindicated in 1974, when the museum went bankrupt and the costly building was taken over by collector Norton Simon, who replaced the contemporary art with collections of old masters and the French Impressionists. Despite the popularity of the Norton Simon Museum with the public, many critics suspect that Simon is merely renting a warehouse to display a collection that will end up elsewhere, and ultimately Pasadena will be left with an oversized building and almost no art to show in it, a fitting monument to the misplaced priorities of museum boards everywhere.
Hopps resurfaced in Washington, D.C., where during the late sixties he was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, the country's leading liberal think tank. He then went on to spend five years as the director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and seven years as the curator of twentieth-century American art at the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution. The only surprising thing about Dominique de Menil's recruitment of Hopps—he began working as a consultant to the Menil Foundation in 1979—is that it didn't happen sooner; his instinct for innovation, his catholicity of taste, and his improvisational management style are also characteristic of most of the De Menil cultural enterprises. But so far, Hopps hasn't been a loose cannon in the Houston art world. Although he has juried shows of emerging art and is a frequent visitor to the alternative spaces, he has also developed a respectful relationship with the two powers that be, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Contemporary Arts Museum. His most significant curatorial production, "The Rhyme and the Reason," was a fairly disciplined attempt at a broad art-historical thesis, but the show effectively tiptoed around that history more effectively than it challenged it.
Hopps doesn't plan any pyrotechnics for the opening of the Menil Collection. He says, "I've deliberately chosen not to present anything that was beyond the time and understanding of John de Menil." The inaugural exhibits will consist of a collection of surrealist works; a memorial to Andy Warhol, whom Hopps showed in the early sixties; and perhaps the most arresting exhibit, a large group of John Chamberlain's crushed auto-body sculptures, which will stand alone in a single six-thousand-square-foot gallery, giving full play to Chamberlain's surprisingly lyrical color sense. As far as Texas art goes, Hopps's short-term priorities are shows of such neglected modernist pioneers as Forrest Bess, the Bay City visionary and all-around eccentric who had a brief fling with an important New York gallery in the fifties, and the little-known Ben L. Culwell, a San Antonio native who studied at Columbia University in the mid-thirties, produced some magnificently horrifying expressionist scenes of World War II battle in the Pacific, and then gave up painting in the fifties and returned to his family business in Tyler.
His Name Was Forrest Bess
While Hopps may be moving cautiously for the moment—at least by his own standards—he can hardly be presumed to have mellowed. "Each year I hope we have less attendance," he says, a statement that would cost him his job anywhere else, "because the quality of the experience will be greater for those who do come." That experience may indeed seem astringent to a public for whom a visit to the local museum has become the next best thing to a Sunday at the mall; the Menil Collection will have no shop, restaurant, education wing, or even director's office in the main building (Hopps will continue to occupy his modest office in a gray clapboard house across the street). But Hopps makes it clear that he intends to challenge the state's mainstream institutions without emulating them.
And when asked if he would ever consider directing a major public-run institution again, particularly since the kind of problems that buried the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art are endemic today, Hopps just answers quietly, "I don't even imagine it."
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Dan Solomon writes about politics, music, food, sports, criminal justice, health care, film, and business.


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What Books Did Harper Lee Write? (TOP 5 Tips)
What was it that Harper Lee wrote? Harper Lee's most well-known work is the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which was first published in 1960 and has since become a classic. In addition to To Kill a Mockingbird, she also penned the novel Go Set a Watchman, which was not published until 2015.
Did Harper Lee only write one book?
Is there anything written by Harper Lee? Harper Lee's most well-known work is the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which was first published in 1960 and is considered to be her masterpiece. It was not until 2015 that her novel Go Set a Watchman was released, which was written before To Kill a Mockingbird.
Why did Harper Lee only publish 2 books?
We only have incomplete answers at this point. Lee was a very secretive individual, who had avoided contact with media since the mid-1960s. Some of the few public remarks Lee has made have claimed that she chose not to publish more novels because she was overwhelmed by the popularity of To Kill a Mockingbird. However, Lee has never said this.
What did Harper Lee write?
What was it that Harper Lee wrote? Harper Lee's most well-known work is the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which was first published in 1960 and has since become a classic. It was not until 2015 that her novel Go Set a Watchman was released, despite the fact that she wrote it before To Kill a Mockingbird. She also authored articles on the history of Alabama.
How many books has Harper Lee made?
Is it possible that Harper Lee wrote more than one book? In 1961, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and is today considered a masterpiece of contemporary American literature. Lee only published a total of two novels. Although she had been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, it was for her service to literature that she received the honor.
We recommend reading: Readers ask: Mildred D Taylor Books During What Time Period?
Did Harper Lee write a 2nd novel?
Harper Lee's second novel, "Go Set a Watchman," was available for sale on Tuesday, 55 years after the publication of the first. "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee revealed in February that she will publish a sequel to her classic novel. Since the publication of the final book in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, the new novel has become the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.com.
Did Harper Lee really write TKAM?
It was 55 years ago today that Harper Lee's second novel, "Go Set a Watchman," became available for purchase. "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee revealed in February that she will publish a sequel to her novel. Since the release of the final book in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, the new novel has become the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.com.
What does the phrase Go Set a Watchman mean?
Harper Lee's second novel, "Go Set a Watchman," was published for the first time on Tuesday, 55 years after the first. Lee had already indicated that she will publish a sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird" in February. The new novel has surpassed the final volume in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series in terms of pre-orders on Amazon.com.
What is another book Harper Lee wrote?
Harper Lee's second novel, "Go Set a Watchman," was available for sale on Tuesday, 55 years after the first. Lee had indicated in February that she will publish a sequel to her novel "To Kill a Mockingbird." The new novel has surpassed the final volume in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series in terms of pre-orders on Amazon.com, becoming the most pre-ordered book in the company's history.
We recommend reading: FAQ: What Books Did Peter.Wrote?
What is the controversy that involves Truman and Harper Lee?
Their relationship was strained as a result of jealousy. Eventually, Capote's resentment over Lee's financial and critical success began to eat at him, resulting in a developing split between the two writers. In the words of Lee, writing to a friend many years later, "I was his longest buddy, and I did something Truman could never forgive me for: I wrote a novel that was published."
Why did Harper Lee stop writing books?
Because she expressed what she intended to say in To Kill a Mockingbird, according to the Birmingham News, and she didn't want to go through all of the pressure and media again, she decided not to rewrite the novel. His companion, Rev. Thomas Lane Butts, gave him the knowledge that led to this conclusion.
What is one meaningful Harper Lee quote?
"Authentic courage is when you know you're going to get licked before you start, but you start anyway and see it through to the end regardless of the consequences." According to the adage, "people see what they look for and hear what they listen for." "I believe that there is just one type of person. "Hey, everybody. "
What are some memorable characters created by Harper Lee?
Scout (Mary Badham), Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), and Jem (Phillip Alford) were all renowned characters in Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," and the 1962 film adaptation brought them even more fame.
Did Harper Lee go to college?
There is no evidence that Harper Lee wrote it.
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text:
<?php

class Algolia_Algoliasearch_Adminhtml_QueueController extends Mage_Adminhtml_Controller_Action
{
    public function indexAction()
    {
        /** @var Algolia_Algoliasearch_Helper_Config $config */
        $config = Mage::helper('algoliasearch/config');

        /** @var Mage_Core_Model_Resource $resource */
        $resource = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource');
        $tableName = $resource->getTableName('algoliasearch/queue');

        $readConnection = $resource->getConnection('core_read');

        $size = (int) $readConnection->query('SELECT COUNT(*) as total_count FROM '.$tableName)->fetchColumn(0);
        $maxJobsPerSingleRun = $config->getNumberOfJobToRun();

        $etaMinutes = ceil($size / $maxJobsPerSingleRun) * 5; // 5 - assuming the queue runner runs every 5 minutes

        $eta = $etaMinutes . ' minutes';
        if ($etaMinutes > 60) {
            $hours = floor($etaMinutes / 60);
            $restMinutes = $etaMinutes % 60;

            $eta = $hours . ' hours ' . $restMinutes . ' minutes';
        }

        $queueInfo = array(
            'isEnabled' => $config->isQueueActive(),
            'currentSize' => $size,
            'eta' => $eta,
        );

        $this->sendResponse($queueInfo);
    }

    public function truncateAction()
    {
        /** @var Mage_Core_Model_Resource $resource */
        $resource = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource');
        $tableName = $resource->getTableName('algoliasearch/queue');

        try {
            $writeConnection = $resource->getConnection('core_write');
            $writeConnection->query('TRUNCATE TABLE '.$tableName);

            $status = array('status' => 'ok');
        } catch (\Exception $e) {
            $status = array('status' => 'ko', 'message' => $e->getMessage());
        }

        $this->sendResponse($status);
    }

    private function sendResponse($data)
    {
        $this->getResponse()->setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json');
        $this->getResponse()->setBody(json_encode($data));
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Prem Rakshith
Date of Birth 14-December-1977
Place of Birth Chennai
(Tamil Nadu, India)
Also know as Sathish, Prem Rakshit
Profession Choreographer
Currently Prem Rakshith is Working for Super star Mahesh Babu movie 1 it is going release on January 2014 for sankranti. His passion for dance made him enroll in various dance classes early in his life. His dance career actually took off in 1993, when he worked with all the choreographers in Tamil and Telugu cine industry. He also staged various performances and won many Accolades. The year 2006 turned out to be very lucky for Prem as he got his first break. Mr. RB Choudry spotted his talent and gave him an opportunity in his movie. But it was the year 2007 which gave him a major break in his life as a choreographer. Director Mr. Raj Mouli a leading and popular director in the Telugu movie industry, who gave various hits in Telugu movies, gave Prem a major project Yamadonga. Junior NTR's movie Yamadonga was choreographed by Prem Rakshith and it proved to be a major hit. He choreographed a couple of songs in that movie. His floor moment in Yamadonga movie became very popular in the industry. Currently Prem Rakshith is engaged in various Telugu and Tamil movie projects . Till date he has choreographed many movies which includes both Telugu and Tamil movies
Awards by Prem Rakshith
Check all the awards nominated and won by Prem Rakshith.
Filmfare Award for Best Dance Choreographer – South
Honored for : Badrinath
(Telugu, Song : Nath Nath)
Honored for : Arya 2
(Telugu)
Nandi Award for Best Choreographer
Honored for : Adurs
Honored for : Kantri
Honored for : Azhagiya Tamil Magan
Honored for : Mudra
(won award for the song "Vayasunami")


text:
BGFN MAGAZINE >> News >> Business news >> Gucci Timepieces and Jewelry announces partnership in musical preservation program
Gucci Timepieces and Jewelry announces partnership in musical preservation program
by , 23 March, 2011
In light of the three-year partnership between Gucci and The Recording Academy, the two partners have teamed up to help preserve one of the most important musical finds in recent years.
The GRAMMY Museum at L.A. Live is leading the effort in assessing a Muzak archive that was recently discovered in a warehouse in South Carolina. The archives included more than 20,000 never-released master recordings of American music dating back to 1934, from jazz to early spiritual. Gucci Timepieces & Jewelry is the first partner to help the GRAMMY Museum support the preservation of this historical musical discovery. The effort will be focused on determining the best way to house, digitize and ultimately release the collection to the public.
"It's remarkable that an entire chapter of never-released American music has been discovered in this way. To have the opportunity to release these recordings and help tell their story is an honor," said GRAMMY Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli. "Gucci's preservation efforts in other domains, such as film restoration, fit perfectly with The GRAMMY Museum's commitment to celebrate the legacy of recorded music. We are thrilled to be working with the Gucci team on this important project."
In Basel, Gucci Timepieces & Jewelry and The Recording Academy will present the exciting new project, along with a Gucci GRAMMY traveling exhibit that includes information on the preservation program, interactive features and items from the GRAMMY Museum. Both Neil Portnow, President/CEO of the Recording Academy, and Santelli, will be joining Gucci CEO Patrizio Di Marco and Gucci Timepieces & Jewelry President Michele Sofisti in announcing the new collaboration.
Photos: Image.net
Hits: 12035 | Leave a comment
Tags:Gucci Timepieces and Jewelry, together with The Recording Academy, has been preparing to launch a special series of GRAMMY limited-edition jewelry
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Anti-AIDS agents 90. novel C-28 modified bevirimat analogues as potent HIV maturation inhibitors.
In a continuing study of bevirimat (2), the anti-HIV-maturation clinical trials agent, 28 new betulinic acid (BA, 1) derivatives were designed and synthesized. Among these compounds, 17, with a C-28 MEM ester moiety, and 22, with a C-28 ethyl hexanoate, increased the anti-HIV replication activity compared with 2 by 2-fold while compounds 40, 41, 48, and 49, with C-28 piperazine or piperidine amide substitutions, increased the activity by 3- to 15-fold. The best new compound, 41, exhibited an anti-HIV IC(50) of 0.0059 μM compared with 0.087 μM for 2. All of the active compounds showed only antimaturation effects, as confirmed by TZM-bl assay, in blocking the HIV replication. The results suggest that proper C-28 substitutions can further enhance the antimaturation activity of 2 without any antientry effects. Thus, 41 may serve as a promising new lead for development of anti-AIDS clinical trial candidates.


text:
Q: How to remove the last unicode symbol from NSString I have implemented a custom keyboard associated with a text field, so when the user presses the delete button, I remove the last character from the string, and manually update the current text field text.
NSRange range = NSMakeRange(currentTextFieldString.length-1, 1);
[currentTextFieldString replaceCharactersInRange:range withString:@""];

So far so good.
Now, the problem is, that the user has the option to enter some special unicode symbols, these are not 1 byte, they can be 2 bytes too, now on pressing the delete button, I have to remove the entire symbol, but if I follow the above approach, the user has to press the delete button twice.
Here, if I do:
NSRange range = NSMakeRange(currentTextFieldString.length-2, 2);
[currentTextFieldString replaceCharactersInRange:range withString:@""];

it works fine, but then, the normal characters, which are just 1 byte, get deleted twice at a time.
How to handle such scenarios?
Thanks in advance.
EDIT:
It is strange, that if I switch to the iPhone keyboard, it handles both cases appropriately. There must be some way to do it, there is something that I am missing, but am not able to figure out what.

A: Here's the problem.  NSStrings are encoded using UTF-16.  Many common Unicode glyphs take up only one unichar (a 16 bit unsigned value).  However, some glyphs take up two unichars.  Even worse, some glyphs can be composed or decomposed, e.g.é might be one Unicode code point or it might be two - an acute accent followed by an e.  This makes it quite difficult to do what you want viz delete one "character" because it is really hard to tell how many unichars it takes up.
Fortunately, NSString has a method that helps with this: -rangeOfComposedCharacterSequenceAtIndex:.  What you need to do is get the index of the last unichar, run this method on it, and the returned NSRange will tell you where to delete from.  It goes something like this (not tested):
NSUInteger lastCharIndex = [myString length] - 1; // I assume string is not empty
NSRange rangeOfLastChar = [myString rangeOfComposedCharacterSequenceAtIndex: lastCharIndex];
myNewString = [myString substringToIndex: rangeOfLastChar.location];

A: If you can't get this to work by default, then use an if/else block and test if the last character is part of a special character. If it is, use the substring to length-2, otherwise use the substring to length-1.

A: I don't know exactly what the problem is there with the special characters byte length.
What i suggest is:

*

*Store string length to a param, before adding any new characters

*If user selects backspace (remove last characters) then remove the string from last length to new length. Means for example last saved string length is 5 and new string length is 7 then remove get a new string with the index from 0 to 4, so it will crop the remaining characters.

This is the other way around to do as i don't know the exact what problem internally.
But i guess logically this solution should work.
Enjoy Coding :)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Visit One of Texas' Oldest Forts in Port of Galveston this Summer
Michael Gibson Published: June 10, 2021
For most Texans, a beach trip to Galveston is an easy Summer getaway. There's nothing better than putting your toes in the sand, chasing crabs on the beach, or digging for seashells. Not far from Galveston is a cool place to visit that showcases some of Texas' history, Fort Travis, one of the oldest forts in Texas.
Fort Travis got its start in 1836 when the Republic of Texas built Fort Travis, named after one of the heroes of the Alamo, William B. Travis, to protect the Galveston Harbor entrance. Fast forward to 1898, Fort Travis was bought by the United States Government. Between then and 1943, four batteries, barracks, mess hall, and other buildings were added to the 97 acres.
During both World War I and World War II, Fort Travis was armed and manned to protect the port in case of attack. About 2,500 troops served at the port during the wars. It was equipped with various sizes of long-range guns that could effectively protect the port in the event of an attack. No attack ever happened but it is nice to know the fort was there to protect our ships.
Some other histories of the fort include being severely damaged during the hurricane of 1900. That lead to the construction of a seventeen-foot seawall. In 1961, the fort helped residents ride out Hurricane Carla along with their cattle and other animals.
Fort Travis is currently owned by Galveston County and is now used as a park. Each October is the Jane Long Festival. During this festival, you are allowed to tour Battery Kimble of Fort Travis.
This Summer, definitely make a stop at Fort Travis Seashore Park and take in some Texas history.
Fort Travis Seashore Park
If your Summer travels take you to Galveston, stop by Fort Travis Seashore Park to visit one of Texas' oldest forts.
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Source: Visit One of Texas' Oldest Forts in Port of Galveston this Summer
Filed Under: Galveston, summer, texas
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Follow the Allies on the Normandy Breakthrough campaign as they push inland to liberate Paris and take the first step on the path to Berlin. Through a seamless narrative that delivers the rush of unrelenting battle and breathtaking action, players assume the roles of four ordinary Allied soldiers—American, British, Canadian and Polish—and are thrust onto an authentic, living battlefield for an unprecedented variety of combat. Experience advanced high-definition graphics, detailed character animations, and explosive on-screen action, delivering the most immersive and cinematically intense war experience ever.
Though there's no question that Call of Duty 3 is every bit as good as its predecessor, and without question the multiplayer is vastly improved, none of the changes or additions to the single-player campaign significantly alter the way the game plays. If the Call of Duty series hasn't won you over previously, Call of Duty 3 isn't going to do much to change your mind. But for anyone else, Call of Duty 3 is a must-own.
Granted, most of the game involves retaking Nazi occupied France, so a lot of the environment ends up being bombed-out houses, but it's little environmental treats like The Island that really show off Call of Duty 3's best graphics.
It would be easy to pick holes in Call of Duty 3, but bar a few annoyances they really don't matter. It might be a predominantly linear path shooter, but who cares? When the atmosphere and level of action on offer is this great, the fact that I can't wander off to see what's behind a tree half a mile to the East really doesn't bother me.
If you spend a lot of your time online, then it's far more than a consolation 'bonus mode' to make up for the lacklustre single player offering - it's without doubt one of the better online games that console gaming has offered us all year. Maybe next year they can get both elements of the package spot on and we can start singing its praises again.
Call Of Duty 3 est une expérience moins intense que celle de son prédécesseur mais se pose tout de même comme une bonne baffe, surtout si on ne connaît pas les deux premiers opus. Cependant, il serait temps que Treyarch révise sa copie en rajoutant de vraies nouveautés et en se penchant un peu sur l'IA des adversaires ou la construction linéaire de son aventure solo qui se termine toujours trop rapidement.


text:
Facebook fact-checks Edition
Facebook fact-checks Truth-O-Meter
Quotes George Washington as saying "it is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible."
— Facebook posts on Thursday, July 11th, 2019 in a Facebook post
No evidence George Washington said it's 'impossible to rightly govern without God and the Bible'
By Samantha Putterman on Monday, July 15th, 2019 at 4:03 p.m.
Why people continue to attribute fake quotes to the Founding Fathers, we may never know.
This time, a Facebook post claims that a quote about the Bible and governing came from none other than the first U.S. president, George Washington.
The spurious quote attributed to Washington goes as follows: "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible."
The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
You guessed it. There is no evidence to suggest that Washington ever said or wrote this.
Washington's Mount Vernon estate included the quotation in its list of "spurious quotations" and had this to say about it:
"The quote is frequently misattributed to Washington, particularly in regards to his farewell address of 1796. The origin of the misquote is, perhaps, a mention of a similar statement in a biography of Washington first published in 1835. However, the quote that appeared in the biography has never been proven to have come from Washington."
That biography, "Paulding's Life of Washington" by James Kirke Paulding, includes a variation of the quote on page 209: "It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being." Even that unsubstantiated listing doesn't include the words "a nation," "God" or "the Bible."
The quote also does not appear in the "Complete Works of George Washington" collection or in databases of his archived speeches or writings.
David Sewell, manager of digital initiatives at University of Virginia Press for Founders Online, a database of documents from the U.S. Founding Fathers, told PolitiFact it's safe to say there is no evidence Washington said this quote.
"George Washington almost never mentioned the Bible in his diary or correspondence with others," Sewell wrote in an email. "A search in Founders Online returns only ten results, and many of those are in footnotes."
Our ruling
Posts on social media attribute a questionable quote to Washington about the impossibility of governing "a nation without God and the Bible."
After searching several databases and archives of Washington's works, we find no evidence he ever said this. Additionally, the leading George Washington scholars say they don't believe he did, or even would, say it.
We rate this quote False.
Correction, July 17, 2019: "Paulding's Life of Washington" by James Kirke Paulding reads, "It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being." An earlier version of this post contained a typo in that passage; it has been updated. The ruling remains unchanged.
Published: Monday, July 15th, 2019 at 4:03 p.m.
Researched by: Samantha Putterman
Edited by: Rebecca Catalanello
Subjects: Corrections and Updates, Fake news, History
Facebook post, July 11, 2019
MountVernon.org, Spurious Quotations, Accessed July 11, 2019
CheckYourFact, FACT CHECK: DID GEORGE WASHINGTON SAY IT'S 'IMPOSSIBLE TO RIGHTLY GOVERN' WITHOUT GOD, THE BIBLE?, May 31, 2019
Google Books, "Paulding's a Paulding's A Life of Washington" p. 209; Accessed July 11, 2019
Founders Online Archive, George Washington, Accessed July 11, 2019
Google Books, The Complete Works of George Washington, Nov 9, 2017
MountVernon.org, Speeches, Accessed July 11, 2019
Email interview, David Sewell manager of digital initiatives at the University of Virginia Press for Founders Online, July 11, 2019
Browse Facebook fact-checks Truth-O-Meter
See all of PolitiFact's True rulings
See all of PolitiFact's False rulings
See all of PolitiFact's Pants on Fire rulings
Keep up to date with PolitiFact Facebook fact-checks


The intense reaction tells two newsworthy stories: a negative tale about the politics of race and gender on campus, and a positive one about America and its Jews.
And there, precisely, is encapsulated the irony of the situation. The vanguard of the anti-racism, anti-sexism movement on campus looks at an individual chosen for a job and can't see past his skin color or his gender. If Bacow didn't "understand, first-hand" what it means to be reduced to gender or skin color before he was chosen for this job, he sure does now, because it appears to be the only thing, or the main thing, that his critics can see about him.
It's not that I'm unaware of the privilege of being able to pass, or of the differences and overlaps between categories and constructs of race, religion, culture, and nationalism. But I'm also acutely cognizant of the 20th century European history in which whatever my family members were categorized as, "white" wasn't it. How American Jews — or, for that matter, Italians or Irish — came to be defined as "white" is a fine topic for a Harvard course or a doctoral dissertation. An anthropology professor wrote a book about it in the 1990s, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America.
The short story of "what that says" is that discrimination has receded to the point where Jews, in America at least, are no longer a persecuted minority and are instead integrated into the majority culture. Though that isn't without drawbacks, such as the threats that assimilation can pose to distinctive traditions, it is far preferable to the alternative.
As a Jewish Harvard undergraduate in the 1990s, I thought of Lowell as a white male oppressor. Years later, in researching early Harvard and Massachusetts history for my biography of Samuel Adams, I came to understand that the Puritan ancestors of Adams and Lowell were themselves refugees who had fled war-torn Europe on boats seeking religious liberty. Those Massachusetts Bay colonists were not all that different from my grandfather or Bacow's mom.
With some combination of luck, open-mindedness, and exposure to Harvard's extensive library resources, the students and others upset at Bacow's selection may eventually get past their perception of his skin color and gender and find a more nuanced and accurate way to place his family story in the context of the university's and their own. Maybe they'll even see him as an individual rather than as a "white male." If the new Harvard president can help the critics appreciate that perspective, he'll be teaching something about world history and perhaps more importantly about examining assumptions. Isn't that what education is all about?