I love museums, but I must admit, I haven’t spent much time at those near to me. But get me on a tour of one, or any other historical site and, boy, do I ask questions. Naturally I’d be intrigued by the idea of a museum-sponsored trip, and I have found a couple here that make my pet travel bug woozy with delight.
This month’s tour hosts are all great art institutions that of...
Tour Host Review
Bequeathed to this nation by an English scientist who had never even visited the U.S., the Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum complex. With 14 separate museums under its aegis, such as Air and Space, National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American History, and more than 90 separate affiliated museums around the country, you could spend years wandering the Smithsonian’s...
Host of the Month
A few years ago the alumni magazine at University of the Pacific (UOP) asked me to write profiles of several outstanding dentists who were also accomplished artists in outside fields. One man was a professional actor in high demand on regional stages, and one woman, still an active musician, had once played violin for the New York Philharmonic. Another ...
Festival Pick
What a crossroads the Caribbean became after the voyages of Columbus! The Spanish, English, French and Dutch, and later the Americans, all disseminated their cultures in this sea of islands, whether through sovereignty or trade. A student of the era of imperialism and colonialism could look to the Caribbean as a microcosm of ...
World Heritage Site
We thought we could defy the canon and name 10 (or so) of the greatest
museums in the world without mentioning at least one of the museums
listed below.
However, we are but a tiny tail on the Great Dog of Culture. We’ll
happily let somebody else establish a new Top 10 (or so). For now, we’re
...
Museum Pick
Kakadu, Crocodile Dundee’s home, Is one of earth’s great wonders
On August 5, 1999, 37 years to the day after Marilyn Monroe committed suicide, 44-year-old Rodney Ansell fired upon a police officer on a highway outside the Australian city of Darwin. The mortally wounded cop’s partner fired back and killed Ansell.
Ansell’s death was both a mystery and a shock to Australian...
Over the past 30 months that we’ve been publishing The Cultured Traveler, we’ve found ourselves stressing two themes: “Hit the road” and “local is good.”At first it would seem these two pieces of advice are at odds with each other. But there’s nothing in the rule book that says hitting the road means having to travel a great...
When the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay are on strike or closed for a national holiday, is there any place you can visit in Paris besides the Luxembourg Gardens and the Eiffel Tower? Yes, indeed, there is, and what's more it's the kind of place that is both awesomely beautiful and delightfully entertaining. Now that's a tall order for an art museum, but then again, since the Jacquemart-Andre Museum was...
It will be hard to give up a day in Amsterdam for anything else, but make a trip to the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, about six miles from the Dutch city of Arnhem and easily accessible by bus and train from Amsterdam. Its stellar Vincent Van Gogh collection, with 93 paintings and 183 drawings, plus superb works by Seurat, Monet, Gauguin, Picasso, Gris, Courbet, Corot, Millet, Mondrian, and...
It will be hard to give up a day in Amsterdam for anything else, but make a trip to the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, about six miles from the Dutch city of Arnhem and easily accessible by bus and train from Amsterdam. Its stellar Vincent Van Gogh collection, with 93 paintings and 183 drawings, plus superb works by Seurat, Monet, Gauguin, Picasso, Gris, Courbet, Corot, Millet, Mondrian, and more...