It’s hard to believe there was a time when people didn’t make a beeline for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” when they visited the Louvre. One hundred years ago, the now iconic painting was hardly even a main attraction.
In fact, nobody even noticed the painting had been stolen until 28 hours after the fact.
Check out the NPR story that explains how the theft of the ‘Mona Lisa’ in 1911 and the subsequent extensive coverage of it in the press at the time led to its celebrity status.
Drinking green tea in a tasteful German cafe while pondering Expressionism (all at the *same* time wow)
I spent a lovely (ugh i don’t really like this word, it reminds me of snobbish older ladies and their book of the month clubs) a delightful day in Berlin. I am writing this entry from a window seat in a quaint little cafe on a colorful street, where I am often distracted by passing cars and bikes, girls wearing striped shirts and harem pants, and slices of almond cake parading on white porcelain plates. It might take me a while to finish this post.
But I’ll write about Zossener Strasse some other time. Today I want to talk about Berlin’s amazing museums. Well, I’ll talk about the one I saw today: the Neue Nationalgalerie.
You cannot throw a stone in Berlin without hitting a museum. It’s great. I visited a few of them on my study abroad trip to Germany three years ago, and this time around I have already been to the Museum für Fotografie and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, to name a couple. I definitely recommend both the Helmut Newton exhibition and Olafur Eliasson’s art installations.
The paintings I saw at the Neue Nationalgalerie today were executed in the first half of the 20th century in Europe, but mostly in Germany and Austria. They tell the story of the times in a haunting and often ironic way. I had many favorites. There was a Dali painting and even a sculpture by Constantin Brâncuşi, but here’s a sampling of what I got to see.
Otto Dix - Die Skatspieler (found here)
Found here.
There was an Edvard Munch painting I really liked but I can’t find a photo of it online. It’s called Die Schneeschlipper.
But I loved almost everything by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
Potsdamer Platz (found here)
Der Belle-Alliance-Platz in Berlin (found here)
Rheinbruecke in Koeln (found here)
