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Saturday, March 6, 2010

The relationship between fashion and art has always been a passionate one. This fine blend drips onto the covers of chic wine bottles and plates of designer food, as well as the clothes we wear. Whichever art or fashion period interests you, luxury hotels can be show-homes for every artistic appetite.

If classicism with a fine Italian touch tickles your Jimmy Choos, try the Halkin Hotel in London. The sleek lines and marble-like shades drawn from the Modernist period will please even the most capricious design enthusiast. Expect beautifully-crafted Thai dishes from their Michelin starred restaurant to mirror the artistic focus.

Let's not forget the delectable Georgian and Victorian art periods, which some London hotels portray so well. The Cannizaro Hotel in Wimbledon whispers back to its 300 year old roots. The rooms are plush and have played host to distinguished individuals, such as King George III, through to writers Oscar Wilde and Henry James. The nearby Wimbledon Village (yes, where the tennis championships are held) is a delightful spectrum of fashion boutiques, some of which are the best in London.

But for boutique-lovers, nothing can surpass the selection available in New York. If you like avant-garde then the Seven boutique downtown is for you. Fashionistas hunting the next big thing should head to Debut (also downtown), as it showcases all the fresh New York designers. If the midtown big name stores are more to your taste, check out New York hotel, The City Club. Originally built in 1904, it provided a non-partisan atmosphere where Democrats and Republicans could meet to discuss the politics of the day. The layout of the building has not changed since 1904, but the décor certainly has. Abstract art twinned with vintage books and framed maps will delight art and fashion-lovers and compliment any cultural trip to New York.

If you fancy a change from the Big Apple, Miami's Art Deco area will certainly provide this. Splendia, the luxury hotel operator describes The Betsy Palace as the benchmark in Miami hotel accommodation. Its colonial façade and chequered rooms are an ode to the roaring twenties, with twenty-first century luxury mixed in. Further up the strip and in complete contrast, The Sanctuary Hotel and Spa offers a taste of the Modernist period. Influenced by Japanese art, it has a secluded Zen-like courtyard with bright reds and clean, sleek lines that provides a peaceful hideaway from the buzz of Miami life.

Finally, when discussing art, fashion and hotels in the same article, it would be a sin to not mention the flair of San Francisco hotels . For the bold, fashion-forward, Hotel Frank with its punchy dog-tooth-patterned interior will wow even the most daring followers of fashion. However, if a calm literary theme suits your style then visit the Hotel Rex. Originally inspired by the San Francisco literary salons of the thirties, the hotel has a wide collection of antique objects and drawings from this period to browse during your stay.

From the days of Dali and the Bocca sofa, it's clear how art has influenced fashion and how we seek it in our everyday lives. Luxury hotels are like post-modern museums, reflecting all different artistic periods, as well as a welcome retreat after a hard day's shopping in designer shoes.


A wax museum is a collection of life like figures of real people made out of wax. Undoubtedly the most famous wax museum is Madame Tussauds. Other famous wax Museums include the Movieland Wax Museum and the Hollywood Wax Museum. The wax models resemble the personalities quite well and it makes even a wild guess difficult when both the real and the model is placed together.

Madam Tussauds is a name synonymous with wax museums. IT was set up by wax sculptor Marie Tussaud. She learnt the art of wax modeling from her mother's employer Dr. Philippe Curtius. Her first wax figure was a sculpture of Voltaire. She also made models of prominent people in the French Revolution. In order to exhibit her collection she traveled extensively throughout Great Britain and Ireland. She finally settled down in Baker Street in London and opened a Museum there. One of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors. This held wax sculptures of victims of the French Revolution, murderes and other criminals.

Today Madame Tussauds is easily the most famous wax Museum in the world. It has grown to be one of the biggest tourist attractions of London. With its gaining popularity it has expanded with branches in Amsterdam, Berlin, Las Vegas, New York, Washington DC, Hong Kong, Shangai and Hollywood. The figures at this world famous wax museum include historical and royal characters, film stars, sports stars and even well known criminals.

One of the most famous wax museums in the United States used to be the Movieland wax museum. But this was permanently shut down in 2005. However while it functioned it was very popular. It was the largest wax museum in the United States and had nearly 300 wax figures of famous Hollywood movie stars. The costumes of the wax figures were often original ones donated by the stars themselves. This generally gave the originality of the piece and resembled very well to the great personalities.

The museum was brightly lit spacious and colorful. The sets around the wax figures were well known scenes form famous movies with attention paid even to minor details. Unfortunately this once famous wax museum had to close down because of dwindling attendance. Even after the closure, the museum is well known or is remembered for its excellence and how the entire ambience was maintained.

The longest running wax museum in the United States is undoubtedly the Hollywood Wax Museum. It is located on Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood walk of Fame. This famous wax museum is one of Hollywood's premiere attractions. It houses life like wax images of silver screen icons in popular roles they played. The Hollywood Wax Museum has branches in Missouri and Tenessee. Recent remodeling of the museum in Branson Missouri has introduced an animated ride and a mirror maze.

Other popular wax museums include Musee Conti Wax Museum in New Orleans, the Wax Museum at Fisherman'sWharf in San Francisco and the Royal London Wax Museum in Canada.
About the Author

World Museums


The Museum history is been introduced in older century. But some of the new museums was introduced in new century. This museum was introduced only by the peoples those who were struggled to get their freedom from the other rulling peoples those who were rulling their country. In some contries the peoples were rulled by the rulling committee peoples and they use the major weapon and instruments for their ownly purposes. These weapons and instruments were kept in the world museum for the peoples those who lived in this century to know about them and their freedom struggles. In some Museum the freedom strugglers photos and there regular used things were also be kept for the peoples to know.

But rarely this all kind of weapons and instruments were kept in the museum for the purpose of known to the peoples those who lives in the new century. This things which were kept in the museum should not be theft. So, each and every museum there will be a guard to look of the the museum things and it should be maintained by the government of each and every country pride. The museum will be occupied by the Cam. To prevent theft of the things from the museum. And the timings of the museum visitors and address will be also noted in some of the museum for the prevent of theft.

The Museum consists of older century peoples instruments and freedom fighters weapons and instruments and their daily usage things and their photos and their history of each and every freedom fighters. This are all the main History of world museum.


The Egyptian Museum of Antiquities contains many important pieces of history. Not only does it house the world’s largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities, it also houses the many treasures of King Tutankhamen, and many interesting statues that moved with the museums many re-locations. The Egyptian government established the museum, built in 1835 near the Asbakiya Gardens. The museum soon moved to Boulaq in 1858 because the original building was too small to hold all of the artifacts. In 1855, shortly after the artifacts were moved, Duke Maximilian of Austria was given all of the artifacts. He hired a French architect to design and construct a new museum for the antiquities. The new building was to be constructed on the bank of the Nile River in Boulaq. In 1878, after the museum was completed for some time, it suffered irreversible damage; a flood of the Nile River caused the antiquities to be relocated to another museum, in Giza. The artifacts remained there until 1902 when they were moved, for the last time to the current museum in Tahrir Square. This is the history of Egyptian Museums

Gandhiji Museums


This museums displays information about Mahatma Gandhi, and most importantly it showcases the original blood-stained garment of Gandhi when he was assassinated by Nathuram Godse. The other piece of the garment is kept at the Gandhi Museum in Delhi.

This museum not only famous for gandhiji and also this is famous for many reasons like which are all described below for ur persual. This famous mosque (masjid) is located at the heart of Madurai city, within 500 metres of the Periyar(Central)bus stand and within 1 kilometre South East of the Madurai railway junction. Hazrat Kazi Syed Tajuddin, who came from Oman during late 12th century, received this land from the king, Koon Pandiyan, and constructed the mosque which is the earliest Muslim place of worship in Madurai. All of his descendants (Huqdars - shareholders of that mosque are called Syeds) have lived in the same locality for 700 years, and have managed the mosque since then. Syed Tajuddin was appointed as Kazi of the sultans, and still his descendants who live at Kazimar street, Madurai, are appointed as Kazis to the Government of Tamil Nadu. All Syeds belong to the Sunni sect of Islam, its Hanafi school. Most of the descendants of Kazi Syed Tajuddin are shadhilis (shazuli) and follow the Sufi order Fassiyatush Shadhiliya.

These are all the main features of this museum which is placed in india, and it was the main features that were displayed in this museum. Its mainly consists of gandhiji work and his goodness.

British Museum, in London


The Doors Palace Khorsabad and Royal Oxus Treasure - both located in the section dealing with the ambiguities of the Middle East, are elements that stand out. The Cotton collection of manuscripts, given to the nation in 1700, was attached to the new museum and £10,000 was expended on the purchase of the Harleian collection of manuscripts. A new Board of Trustees was established. Greek and Roman Antiquities - underline fragments of the frieze of the Parthenon and the remains of two ancient wonders of the world: the Temple of Artemis and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The Museum was first housed in a seventeenth-century mansion, Montagu House, in Bloomsbury on the site of today's building. On 15 January 1759 the British Museum opened to the public. With the exception of two World Wars, when parts of the collection were evacuated, it has remained open ever since, gradually increasing its opening hours and moving from an attendance of 5,000 per year to today's 5 million. Now this museum was daily visisted by many peoples those who were travel through london for visiting some familiar places those peoples never miss this museum which is located in london and many tourist peoples donate their amount for the usage of this museum.

Czartoryski Museum


This museum was built in the older times and it was came to known only in the recent up year come years and many peoples were working in this museum to keep the museum neat and clean for the visitors. In 1871, after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Prince Wladyslaw packed or hid all of the art facts and fled. In 1874, the city of Krakow offered him the arsenal in the Old Wall as a museum, which he called upon Violet-le-Duc to renovate, who in turn delegated the project to his son-in-law Maurice Ouradou. In 1878, one hundred years after Princess Izabela's set up her museum in Pulawy, the new museum, as it is seen today, was opened. For nearly twenty years until his death in 1894, Prince Wladyslaw set about adding to the collection. Upon Prince Adam Jerzy's death, his younger son, Prince Wladyslaw, took over the museum. A born collector, he and his sister, Princess Izabela Dzialynska, expanded the collection to include: the Polonaise carpet, Etruscan and Greek vases, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, and other types of arms and armours, as well as Limoges enamels. At the 1865 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, Wladyslaw created a Polish room to exhibit the famous carpet and other parts of his collection. In 1945, Dr. Hans Frank, german governor of Poland and personal friend of Hitler brought the paintings from Berlin for his own use at the Wawel Castle. But when the Germans evacuate Krakow in January, he takes the paintings with him to Silesia and then to his own villa in Neuhaus. The Americans arrest Frank on May 4, and the Polish representative at the Allies Commission for the Retrieval of Works of Art claimed the stolen paintings on behalf of the Czartoryski Museum. However, the Raphael and 843 other artefacts are missing from the collection. This museum was fantastic museum which is located in the large space for the conveinent of the peoples those who comes to visit this museum. Many peoples across the world comes to visit this museum and learn many good things which were kept for the peoples to known.

Vatican Museum Part (1):
GALLERY OF THE MAPS
The Gallery is named after the maps painted on the walls in 40 different panels, each devoted


to a region, island or particular territory of Italy.

APARTMENT OF ST.PIUS V
Gallery of St. Pius V: tapestries produced in Tournai in the middle of the sixteenth century

and by Pieter van Aelst.
Chapel decorated with frescoes by Giorgio Vasari and Jacopo Zucchi.

SOBIESKI ROOM
Named for the painting which takes up the entire north wall with its depiction of the victory


of John III Sobieski, King of Poland, over the Turks outside the walls of Vienna in 1683. The

work was painted by Jan Matejko (1883).

RAPHAEL'S ROOMS AND LOGGIAS
The four rooms commonly known as the "Rooms of Raphael" were part of - togheter with the

"Chiaroscuri" room, the Old Room of the Swiss, the cubicle with its adjoining heater, the

Nicholine Chapel and the Loggia - the new residence chosen by Julius II on the third floor of

the building.
The series of four communicating rooms was a reconstruction carried out by Nicholas V

(1447-55) of the thirteenth century palace of Nicholas III (1277-80). Towards the end of the

first decade of the sixteenth century Perugino, Sodoma, Baldassarre Peruzzi and Bramantino

were all at work decorating them, but in 1509 Julius II dismissed them and commissioned

Raphael to decorate the whole of this part of the Vatican. He worked there for about ten

years, but only three of the rooms were completed before his death in 1520, and the direct

intervention of the master is certain in only two of them.


Deservedly one of the most famous places in the world, the Sistine Chapel is the site where

the conclave for the election of the popes and other solemn pontifical ceremonies are held.

Built to the design of Baccio Pontelli by Giovannino de Dolci between 1475 and 1481, the

chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who commissioned it. It is a large rectangle with a

barrel-vaulted ceiling and it is divided into two unequal parts by a marble screen. The screen

and the transenna were built by Mino da Fiesole and other artists.
The frescoes on the long walls illustrate parallel events in the Lives of Moses and Christ and

constitute a complex of extraordinary interest executed between 1481 and 1483 by Perugino,

Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli and Domenico Ghirlandaio, with their respective groups of

assistants, who included Pinturicchio, Piero di Cosimo and others; later Luca Signorelli also

joined the group.
The barrel-vaulted ceiling is entirely covered by the famous frescoes which Michelangelo

painted between 1508 and 1512 for Julius II. The original design was only to have represented

the Apostles, but was modified at the artist's insistence to encompass an enormously complex

iconographic theme which may be synthesized as the representation of mankind waiting for the

coming of the Messiah. More than twenty years later, Michelangelo was summoned back by Paul

III (1534-49) to paint the Last Judgement on the wall behind the altar. He worked on it from.

The Fitzwilliam Museum was described by the Standing Commission on Museums & Galleries in 1968 as "one of the greatest art collections of the nation and a monument of the first importance". It owes its foundation to Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion who, in 1816, bequeathed to the University of Cambridge his works of art and library, together with funds to house them, to further "the Increase of Learning and other great Objects of that Noble Foundation".

Fitzwilliam's bequest included 144 pictures, among them Dutch paintings he inherited through his maternal grandfather and the masterpieces by Titian, Veronese and Palma Vecchio he acquired at the Orléans sales in London. During a lifetime of collecting, he filled more than 500 folio albums with engravings, to form what has been described as "a vast assembly of prints by the most celebrated engravers, with a series of Rembrandt's etchings unsurpassed in England at that time". His library included 130 medieval manuscripts and a collection of autograph music by Handel, Purcell and other composers which has guaranteed the Museum a place of prominence among the music libraries of the world.

Dome in the Founder's Building:

In 1848 the Founder's Building, designed by George Basevi (1794-1845) and completed after his accidental death by C R Cockerell (1788-1863), opened to the public. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the collections have grown by gift, bequest and purchase; their history is a continuous one which traces the history of collecting in this country over the last two hundred years. If the Museum owed its foundation to a Grand Tourist, it went on to benefit from the shift of taste towards the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance for which the Gothic Revival of the nineteenth century was responsible. By the same token, many of the Museum's early twentieth century benefactors may be counted among the heirs to the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic Movements. In recent years, the Museum's traditional base of support from alumni and private collectors has been augmented by generous provision from the National Art Collections Fund and other charitable organisations and public bodies, including H M Treasury (under the provision for the allocation to Museums of works of art accepted in lieu of capital taxes). Today, the Museum pursues a vigorous acquisitions policy as one aspect of its abiding commitment to hold the nation's "treasures in trust". The Standing Commission's view is both echoed and expanded by the University itself:

"The Fitzwilliam Museum is one of the greatest glories of the University of Cambridge. It is a museum of international stature, with unique collections most splendidly housed... Like the University itself, the Fitzwilliam Museum is part of the national heritage, but, much more, it is part of a living and continuing culture which it is our statutory duty to transmit".

This exhibition will celebrate one of the most enriching periods in the history of the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Directorship of Sir Sydney Cockerell (1908 - 1937).

It will examine his close relationship with leading artists, writers and collectors of the period, including John Ruskin, William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Fairfax Murray, and Henry Yates Thompson.

It will also explore Cockerell's enormous impact on museum design and display in the early twentieth century.

The exhibition will bring together for the first time Cockerell's most spectacular acquisitions.

Some of them, such as Titian's Tarquin and Lucretia or the ancient Greek vases, are among the Museum's iconic exhibits.

But many more are treasures rarely seen by the public, for instance the works of William Blake, William Morris' Kelmscott Press books, Keats' autograph manuscript of Ode to the Nightingale, and the superb collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts.

A number of these exceptional works of art were acquired by the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum, another of Cockerell's novel creations, followed as a model by museums and galleries throughout the country.

To mark the centenary of the foundation of the Friends in 1909, the exhibition will conclude with a recent acquisition which attracted their most generous contribution ever and the largest public support in the history of the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Macclesfield Psalter. As a newly discovered member of the East Anglian school of illumination, which was first defined and studied by Sydney Cockerell, its acquisition is a tribute to his life-long passion for illuminated manuscripts - as a scholar, collector, and museum director.

World famous temples


Wat Rong Khun in Chiang Mai, Thailand is unlike any Buddhist temples in the world.


Tiger's Nest Monastery, perched precariously on the edge of a 3,000-feet-high cliff in Paro Valley, is one of the holiest places in Bhutan.


Prambanan is a Hindu temple in Central Java, Indonesia. The temple was built in 850 CE, and is composed of 8 main shrines and 250 surrounding smaller ones.


No one knows exactly when the Shwedagon Paya [wiki] (or Pagoda) in Myanmar was built - legend has it that it is 2,500 years old though archaeologists estimate that it was built between the 6th and 10th century.


Temple of Heaven is a Taoist temple in Beijing, the capital of China. The temple was constructed in 14th century by Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty.

UK Famous Museum Part
In the museum, which is a Grade II listed Georgian Merchant's house at 26 South Quay, Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England, you can learn about Nelson and the times in which he lived.

Explore Nelson's career, from his Norfolk childhood through his famous battles to his tragic, heroic death, with our hands-on actvities. Find out about his mesmerising personality, his terrible wounds and his many illnesses - not to mention his scandalous love life. What was Nelson doing on your birthday? Find out here! Avoid the rats and beware of the cannonfire in Below Decks, a recreation of a man-of-war. Try our hammock, play ship's games, examine cannons from Nelson's time or relax in the picnic area of the Maritime Courtyard. "Man the Guns!": Life on Board a Naval Warship has just one more month to run, so visit soon. Come and see it all for yourself.

Everything that is represented in the UK Museum of Ordure (UKMO) is subject to the vagaries of an uncontrolled internal auto-destructive process (not a virus) which slowly deforms and disables all information held in the museum. This is comparable to the decaying processes which affect all artifacts in museums, regardless of all attempts at preservation: the retouching, repainting, cleaning, etc, which are incorporated risks to the purity of artifacts when first acquired by museums. Even 'successful' renovations are subject to periodic changes resulting from shifts in conservation policies. Eventually (and in accordance with the fallibilities of memory) artifacts are institutionally, progressively, determinedly and inadvertantly altered by acts of conservation (sometimes unintentional acts of institutional vandalism) until they cease to be recognisable as the objects first acquired. Of course in both cases - in the virtual environment and in the material world - the processes of generation, decay, and entropy are paramount. Museums are by this definition charged with achieving the impossible.

UKMO is primarily 'immaterial', but is no less susceptible to irrevocable change, revealing hardly perceptable but accreting shifts in qualities of appearance, meaning, and information, even as it consciously attempts to maintain the seamless surface of 'the museum' as a custodian or guardian of culture. There is a further question as to the inevitable fallability of bureaucracies common to institutional behaviours where the very systems employed are similarly subject to uncontrolled interference. In this respect, UKMO regards its endeavours - including the changing conditions it is subject to - and the subjection of changes on the immaterial condition of the artifact - as being subject to the fortunes of institutional bodies in general. However, UKMO is arguably of a different order. By continuing to preserve itself and at the same time embrace the inviolability of change, it asserts that changes wrought beyond the museum's control neither lower nor raise the values of the artifact in its remit. Are we witness to the death of something and the birth of something else? UKMO embraces all that changes while attempting to preserve productive contradiction and undetermined resolutions. It suggests a restless state of things and thinglessness, a dimension in the state of 'becoming', where redundant values may come to rest.

The Doors Palace Khorsabad and Royal Oxus Treasure - both located in the section dealing with the ambiguities of the Middle East, are elements that stand out. The Cotton collection of manuscripts, given to the nation in 1700, was attached to the new museum and £10,000 was expended on the purchase of the Harleian collection of manuscripts. A new Board of Trustees was established. Greek and Roman Antiquities - underline fragments of the frieze of the Parthenon and the remains of two ancient wonders of the world: the Temple of Artemis and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The Museum was first housed in a seventeenth-century mansion, Montagu House, in Bloomsbury on the site of today's building. On 15 January 1759 the British Museum opened to the public. With the exception of two World Wars, when parts of the collection were evacuated, it has remained open ever since, gradually increasing its opening hours and moving from an attendance of 5,000 per year to today's 5 million. Now this museum was daily visisted by many peoples those who were travel through london for visiting some familiar places those peoples never miss this museum which is located in london and many tourist peoples donate their amount for the usage of this museum.

Part 1:The Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) is home to one of the largest collections of 19th century sculptures and paintings in Germany, displayed to perfection in the newly-reopened 19th century building. Highlights include the Caspar David Friedrich room with its eerie moonlit landscapes, and the Impressionist collection.

part 2: Old Museum (Altes Museum)
Being the oldest and largest public building in Berlin, this museum is part of the Museum Island and one of the internationally renowned museums of Berlin. The Altes Museum was buil between 1825 and 1830 by Karl Friedrich Schinkel architect in the neoclassical style. The building was severely damaged during the Second World War and restored in 1966. The museum features Greek, Roman, Etruscan and Egyptian antiquities.

Museum fur Film and Fernsehen:
Hooray for Hollywood, but remember that some of the personalities that gave it glamour and style came from Germany. Actors Marlene Dietrich and Peter Lorre, directors Billy Wilder and Josef von Sternberg came out of a country with a strong film-making tradition. Photo stills, footage, set designs and costumes provide glimpses of the familiar, and exhibits on Leni Riefenstahl's shooting of Olympia (1936) and Nazi entertainment c.q. propaganda films will impress 'seen-that' film buffs. The museum ends with special effects and science fiction.

Hamburger Bahnhof (Museum für Gegenwart):

Housed in an imposing former railway station, the grandly-named Museum for the Present has a permanent collection featuring works from artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Joseph Beuys (whose installations occupy the whole ground floor of one wing). The museum also plays host to temporary exhibitions like the Saatchi show 'Sensation'; in contrast to the furore it inspired in New York, the unflappable Berliners took it in their stride.



I love museums. In a day-by-day world they are a place apart -- a time capsule, a fairyland. They seem as ethereal as the special effects on a 2-dimensional movie screen; but they are concrete. I'm just back from nine, museum-dense days in London and Cambridge, and I need to think out loud about this adventure in Museum Mecca.

Cambridge University is scattered throughout a renaissance town. The town itself is a museum, even before you enter any building. Many Colleges have their own museums. And, while the Cambridge churches often charge admission, the museums are free. Perhaps some theological statement lurks in there; I do not know.

Largest is the Fitzwilliam museum. It houses all manner of art, antiquities, and books. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, a primary source of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century music, is there. The Museum also holds most of Handel's original scores.

Twelve miles south, in Duxford, the Imperial War Museum is primarily a superb aircraft collection. Its huge American Air Museum is only one piece. We spent all day at Duxford, and went away with the sad knowledge that we'd hurried past as many airplanes as we'd taken in. Back in Cambridge, the Anthropology Museum alone held a huge array of items that I'd only read and written about.

Time closed in, and we moved on to London -- far richer still in its displays. In London's Science Museum, one event put an amazing perspective on British museums: we moved slowly, studying labels, discussing specific artifacts, when a docent came up and started a conversation. His job, it seems, was to spot patrons with more than a passing interest, and to enrich their visit.

He absorbed us -- spent the entire day showing us everything. And the wealth of their "everything" boggles the mind. Here was the first lawnmower, Bessemer's converter and Otto's engine, the apparatus James Joule used to confirm the first law of thermodynamics, the first photographic negatives, Turing's computer, the actual rockets whose red glare we sing about in our national anthem. All that before we'd even finished the first floor!

We visited the Tate Museum, the Natural History Museum, Greenwich Observatory, the Victoria and Albert and the Florence Nightin-gale Museums. Then, when we finally rested our tired feet in the returning airplane, we could only marvel at how much we'd missed.

And, after spending so much time with this rich past, I thought of Whitehead who wrote, "A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost." I certainly view that remark with distrust, but it does contain a truth. Among the many lessons of these nine days was this: Every splendid thing we'd seen was given us by someone who'd transcended the past and ventured into unknown territory.

We need to claim and celebrate the greatness and beauty revealed here without being bound by it. Celebrate the genius, not the artifact. Each of us is remarkable. Each of us can do that one new thing that no one in these exhibits ever thought of doing.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.



The Musée d'Art Américain, Giverny is located :

99 rue Claude Monet
27620 GIVERNY
France

about 100 yards from Claude Monet's home and garden.

Tel : +33 (0) 232 51 94 65
Fax : +33 (0) 232 51 94 67
American museum of Art Giverny
Opening hours

The Musée d'Art Américain, Giverny is open from April 1st to October 31, 2008 every day except Monday, from 10:00 a.m. to 6 p.m. It is also open on bank holidays.

No booking or advance tickets are necessary for individuals. Reservations are mandatory for groups.

The visit lasts about one hour.