An intimate visit with a generous, genial guide.
A grand tour of a museum like no other.
Deftly weaving history and memoir, former New York Times Paris bureau chief Sciolino offers a spirited journey through France’s most storied museum, the Louvre. At various times a fortress, a public inn, an arsenal, a prison, a mint, and a workplace for artisans, the king’s palace became a “people’s museum” as a result of the French Revolution, open to all. Its original royal collection quickly grew, augmented with art from the homes of guillotined aristocrats, Versailles and other palaces, churches, and monasteries. Added to and remodeled as it expanded, with artworks gained through conquest and plunder, it became a sprawling edifice, with over 400 rooms in an assortment of architectural and decorative styles. The galleries, stretching half a mile, exhibit some 30,000 of its half million holdings; it employs more than 2,300 people, including curators, restorers, guards, and guides, working on 25 different levels. Sciolino reports on her conversations with many of them as she encountered specific pieces of art (the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, to name a few), or she follows themes such as food, animals, jewels, and even shoes. The Louvre has so many shoes in its paintings that it published a coffee-table book on footwear. Sciolino takes unexpected paths to find quiet corners: a small collection of Impressionists (the bulk being at the Musée d’Orsay), tribal art, and one of the world’s largest collections of frames. Although the Louvre does not offer a queer-themed tour, unlike other major museums, Sciolino notes its extensive queer art collection. Her celebration of a beloved venue also highlights outposts in the French city of Lens, in Abu Dhabi, and in Métro stations featuring a host of reproductions. Illustrated with 53 black-and-white photos.
An intimate visit with a generous, genial guide.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781324021407
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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