Exuberant Flowers (and Weeds?)

Years ago I bought this poster of an exuberant bouquet by Jan van Huysum (1682-1749), which was at the time on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It's…

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Athens Square, Astoria

Athens Square (corner of 30th Avenue and 30th St.) is in Astoria, a New York City neighborhood with a sizable Greek-American population. Over the past twenty-five years, residents have partnered…

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Thomas Moran, The Teton Range (Metropolitan Museum Favorites, 19)

Frederick Church and Albert Bierstadt painted huge, magnificent canvases of the American West and other exotic locales: people paid just to look at them. The Metropolitan Museum's site describes the viewing…

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Recuerdo Staten Island

The (relatively) new Staten Island Ferry Terminal is decorated with excerpts from Edna St. Vincent Millay's 1922 poem "Recuerdo" ("I remember" or "souvenir"). The views from the terminal and the…

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Naming the Gates of Central Park, 3

Third in a series of three posts giving the full text of the  “Report on Nomenclature of the Gates of the Park,” 1862. The first post in the series includes background…

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“Lady Clare,” by Tennyson and Waterhouse

"The Lady Clare," by Alfred Lord Tennyson It was the time when lilies blow, And clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his…

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Naming the Gates of Central Park, 2

Second in a series of several posts giving the full text of the  “Report on Nomenclature of the Gates of the Park,” 1862. The first post in the series, which includes…

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