#city history

[lunegrimm]

Nachtschwärmer - [night owl/ night person]

New personal piece just in time for the return of the werewolf designs (more details will follow soon] I felt like making coloured version this time as well & I love how it looks! #WerewolfWednesday

[lucasm]

Prior department store, Brno

Date: 1974-1984

Architects: Zdeněk Řihák, Zdeněk Sklepek, Jan Melichar

In the 1970s, Brno needed modern business premises, which led to the construction of the Prior department store, an architectural masterpiece in the Brutalist style. The original ambitious plans to expand the city southwards were thwarted by the occupation in 1968, so only a smaller version of the project was realised. Prior opened in 1984 and met all the requirements for retail space at the time. The building is noted for its massive concrete structure and sculptural detailing on the upper floors. Today it no longer meets the needs of modern commerce and is awaiting demolition.

1984-2024

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[marketingmover]

The History of Bell Gardens, California and Reasons People are Moving there with Marketing Movers

#Discover the rich history of #BellGardens, California, and why using #MarketingMovers can make your #relocation to this vibrant city a seamless experience #Movers #Moving #MovingInLA #LAMovers #MovingCompany #MovingtoLosAngeles #MoversInLosAngeles

Discover the rich history of Bell Gardens, California, and why using Marketing Movers can make your relocation to this vibrant city a seamless experience. Introduction Bell Gardens, California, is a city rich in history and culture, offering a unique blend of past and present. Moving to this vibrant city can be an exciting adventure, and using a professional moving company like Marketing Movers…

[menandwomanofhistory]

Allen Pomeroy

[zegalba]

Although located in the heart of Chongging, one of China's mega cities, Luohan Temple was constructed over 1000 years ago. Its ancient corridors lead to worn stone depictions of the Buddha while its wooden halls wafts with incense and are adorned with hundreds of local colourful deities.

[deep-space-netwerk]

So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.

It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!

But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!

The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.

It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?

Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.

Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.

Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.

Lotta problems with lens caps.

For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.

This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:

However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.

[artwithjej]

VIETATA L’AFFISSIONE

art. 663 c.p.

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📍Piazza della Passera, Firenze (IT)

[michelle-blue]

Vietnamese architects and historians consider the years from 1940 to 1975 the golden age of Vietnamese modernism. In that period, major modernist public buildings such as hospitals and hotels were designed and constructed.

- Mel Schenck via Saigoneer, "How Vietnam Created Its Own Brand of Modernist Architecture"

[peacefulandcozy]

Instagram credit: co.nfused

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The girls are back (from the grave)

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[amnhnyc]

🗣️ College students: Do you want to inspire curiosity in a captivating environment where science, community, and communication intertwine? Become a Museum intern! Applications for the Museum Education Experience Program (MEEP) are open through August 23. Apply today!

[itscolossal]

A Rare Cross-Section Illustration Reveals the Infamous Happenings of Kowloon Walled City

[visionsofnightfall]

Edinburgh yesterday.

instagram

print shop

[actiontourguide]

Navigate the enchanting Chicago Riverwalk and delve into the city's fascinating history with our self-guided walking tour. Grab a map, lace up your shoes, and embark on an adventure along the picturesque waterfront. Discover iconic landmarks, architectural wonders, and hidden gems that make Chicago truly unique. Let this map be your guide to unlocking the secrets of the Windy City.

[lionofchaeronea]

The Wedding Register, Edmund Blair Leighton, 1920