Top 10 Best Museum Web Sites

Virtual museum flânerie... ça c'est bon

Museum buildings have long been a redoubt of architectural innovation and a dependable method for institutions to refresh their images and programming — just look at the Guggenheim Bilbao, whose name has become synonymous with museum-led urban renewal. Given that new buildings and renovations are a rare occasion, what’s another way for 21st-century museums to get a brand boost? They might choose to redesign that other gallery space — their Web site.

Which one is #1? Read on to find out and learn more about the rest at ARTINFO Ranks the Top 10 Best Museum Web Sites, From the Hirshhorn to the Aspen Art Museum | Artinfo ~ then click through their links for a virtual visit. 

Walk like a Roman | TLS

quelques mots sur l'histoire de la flânerie... c'est classique... 

In Walking in Roman Culture, Timothy M. O’Sullivan eloquently explains that how and why a person walked were crucial cultural indicators in ancient Rome: ways of walking divided barbarians from Romans, and good Romans from bad. If this aspect of Roman culture has not often bulked large in modern studies of the ancient world, that is partly because – as O’Sullivan notes – we have chosen not to recognize it, or have even actively “translated it away”.

The key Latin word is incessus, which literally means “gait” or “how a person moves on their feet”. It is now regularly translated as “bearing” or “demeanour”; but that removes all the sense of movement from it. “He has a noble bearing” may seem to us a more “natural” thing to say than “He has a noble way of walking”. It is not often what the Romans said, wrote or meant. In ancient Rome how you walked was a sign of who you were....Walking was also closely related to morals and social status. 


Walk like a Roman | TLS

What European Austerity?

... and why should we be worrying about someone else's when we're so absorbed with our own and hoping that someone else will be doing all unpleasant austerity stuff? It's the economy, stupid. Like it or not, we're all in it together. Too important to take it straight from your favorite pundit or any single source. We've been remiss but plan to resume reading Jesse's Café Américain, starting right now with a scary piece on defaulting and unsustainability. Be brave and do the same when you finish the "Dish" just served. 

Why City Kids Need to Play in the Street

Streets aren't just for jaded flâneurs. Sarah Goodyear writes in Atlantic Cities about not being a soccer mom anymore and how her son discovered the joy of spontaneity and kept his love of playing just about anything involving a ball. 

What he hasn’t always loved is organized league ball – the early morning games, the shlepping, the lack of spontaneity.

What my kid really gets a kick out of, we’ve learned, is taking the ball into the street or the nearby park and organizing his own games – with the other children on the block, with his friends from school, with random kids he runs into at the park or the schoolyard. Heck, even with me.

Of course, that’s the way it used to be all over New York and every city in the country. Kids playing stickball and hockey and skelly in the street, jumping rope, making up their own arcane rules and forming their own shifting alliances.

It’s a type of game-playing that has been gradually eroding over the years. You can find lots of things to blame for that....I wrote last week about “the invention of jaywalking” – the history of how America was gradually sold on the idea that urban streets were meant for cars and not for people. Research has shown how the social lives of city dwellers have suffered as a result....

Why City Kids Need to Play in the Street - Neighborhoods - The Atlantic Cities

The Best Resources For Learning About May Day

If this does not cover all the May Day iterations and variants, from Maypoles to marches, nothing will.... just add graphic and serve. No tourists in wicker cages this year, no revolution either. Decorating horses? Couldn't say. I'm adding the source of this image, from Palimpsest, where National Trust employee Ben Cowall blogs about heritage, history and landscape,

Though May Day is an ancient celebration, since the late nineteenth century it has primarily been recognized as a time to celebrate workers’ rights. Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning About May Day:

• May Day is not about maypoles: the history of international workers’ day is from The Guardian.
• Learn English reviews other reasons for the holiday.
• Here’s a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal highlighting protests on May Day, 2012.
• May Day Around The World is an interactive from The Guardian.
• The Beltane Fire Festival – May Day Exercises and Worksheets is from ESL Courses.
• May Day 2011 is a photo gallery from The Boston Globe.
• May Day protests is a slideshow from The L.A. Times.
• The Sacramento Bee also has a slideshow.

Additional suggestions are welcome. If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free. You might also want to explore the  900 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

The Best Resources For Learning About May Day