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Bashir and Asma al-Assad at their betrothal I think there’s a touch of elephant in my DNA. I should get a  test. In the innocent eyes of a child, Babar the elephant and his family seem gentle and sort of poignant, but it turns out he was a massive racist and has had to be banned . Oh well, like the proverbial elephant I can’t let go of certain memories. Just can’t shake ‘em off. (Not that I’ve tried) I recall Joan Juliet Buck, a senior editor of Vogue magazine at the time, publishing the now-infamous puff-piece about Syria’s first lady Asma al-Assad. The piece was titled A Rose in the Desert. Buck’s subsequent confession of regret and embarrassment didn’t make a big splash, but at least she came clean even if Vogue magazine did not. Of course, that was before hubby Bashir gassed half his subjects . Ms Buck had fallen for Mrs al-Assad and family hook line and sinker, in much the same way as Charlotte Edwardes-with-an-e appears to have done, as evidenced by her obvious admiratio...

Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, N.C. July 20 - Dec 12 2021 Thomas Cole, Home in the Woods (1847), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse Charles Willson Peale, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson (1795), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American art Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch, (1826-30), oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse Eastman Johnson, The Storyteller of the Camp (Maple Sugar Camp) (1861-66), oil on board, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Original Purchase Fund from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, ARCA, and Anne Cannon Forsyth Jacob Lawrence, Builders No. 2 (1968), gouache and tempera with graphite underdrawing on paper, © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Fairfield Porter, Keelin Before the Reflected View, No. 2 (1972...

After unearthing some historic Hitler-related Tweets by its employee Tala Hawala the BBC dismissed her from her job as Palestine Specialist for BBC Monitoring.  An impassioned response to the dismissal appeared on Twitter and was reproduced by some of the media, many of which chose to close comment fields that are normally open to the public. This is so sensitive a topic that a partial “don’t go there” situation apparently prevails. We’re tacitly colluding in a conspiracy of silence. (Are we?) The prospect of being drowned under a tsunami of un-woke, racist hate-speak must be a bit too much for the editorial community if there is one. Why though - why close the comments? Opinions on Israel and the Palestinians (and sometimes on ‘Islam-in-general’) are invariably divisive and turn nasty at the drop of a hat, but I wonder if preemptively cancelling comments altogether is a sensible policy. It probably is, while the general public is so ill-informed and ill-equipped to argue k...

It's a hot Saturday evening, so I lazily checked Twitter and saw a tweet from Radio 4's Sunday programme: Because of the whole Tala 'Hitler was right' Halawa affair, I just as lazily Googled 'Emb Hashmi'. Her Twitter feed describes herself as ''BBC journalist''. Her LinkedIn profile describes herself as ''award winning journalist at BBC'' and states that she joined the BBC in April 2014. Just because of the Tala Halawa business, I then - not expecting anything - did a quick Twitter search for Emb's past tweets using two search terms, 'Israel' and 'Gaza' - not expecting to find anything remotely Tala-like.  But I found these: If her LinkedIn page is correct, she joined the BBC before these anti-Israel tweets. 🤔

  Madame Lebasque et sa fille Marthe by Henri Lebasque. Circa 1898-1899. M.S. Rau (New Orleans) Jeune fille en jaune by Henri Lebasque. Circa 1915. M.S. Rau (New Orleans) Marinette Endormie by Henri Lebasque. Circa 1934-35. M.S. Rau (New Orleans) Both friends and art critics alike dubbed him the "painter of joy and light." Post-Impressionist Henri Lebasque was an unabashed original, dedicating his life to bringing joy to his canvases. A generation younger than the great Impressionists Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Lebasque nevertheless pursued many of their same painterly goals. Throughout his career, he sought to capture that ever-evasive sense of light and shadow, but in a world that was always bright and sunny. The pleasure of a family holiday, the contentment of a lounging nude, the vivid tranquility of the sea — these were the subjects of Lebasque, whose sensitivity and heart is felt in each and every brushstroke.  Lebasque was born in 1865 i...

  A survey of American drawings from the 18th century to the early 20th century will introduce audiences to a range of artists, from anonymous to well-known practitioners, who excelled in a variety of drawing media and subject matter. Organized by the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison,   Picturing a Nation: American Drawings and Watercolors   traces colonial folk art to European-inspired academic styles to a distinctly modern, American form of draftsmanship. With pen and ink, graphite, watercolor, chalk and pastels, these artists composed incisive portraits, sweeping landscapes, historical narratives and scenes of everyday life. The exhibition will be on view exclusively at the Chazen Museum of Art from Aug. 31 through Nov. 28, 2021.          Picturing a Nation: American Drawings and Watercolors  is co-curated by the Chazen’s Janine Yorimoto Boldt, associate curator of American art, and James R. Wehn, Van Vleck Cu...