Word: venetian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Some of the bounty of this intercontinental enterprise is on display at Venice and Islam: 828-1797 - an impressive exhibition being held at the onetime seat of Venetian political power, the Doge's Palace, until Nov. 25. Chronicling nearly a thousand years of exchanges with Egypt, the Levant (roughly present-day Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Western Syria), the Ottoman and Persian empires and beyond, the collection is as eclectic as the history it charts: ceramics colored with Armenian dyes, embroidered silks and enameled glass, carpets and flowing tapestries, maps and ancient texts, elegant portraits of aristocrats and ambassadors...
...wars notwithstanding, Venice's relations with Islamic empires were deep and their influence enduring. The city's world-renowned Murano glass industry employed techniques learned from Anatolian workshops, while Venetian bookbinders and cartographers imitated their Arabic counterparts. One of the exhibit's showcase pieces - a hallowed marble throne from the Church of San Pietro di Castello in Venice - features a backrest that is actually a tombstone brought from Syria, still inscribed with Koranic scripture. The throne "tells a story," says curator Stefano Carboni, "of cultures in tune with each other, of mutual understandings." Venice declined as other European navigators explored...
...tentacular supply chains--Wal-Mart announced earlier this month that it had RFID-enabled forklifts in 975 of its North American stores. RFID tags are embedded in tires. They're in library books and credit cards and lift tickets. The military uses them to track assets in Iraq. The Venetian Casino that just opened in Macau puts an RFID tag in each one of its chips. As of Jan. 1 of this year, every U.S. passport contains an RFID tag, to make them machine-scannable and more forgery-proof. (Helpful hint: if you're worried about someone snooping on your...
...MACAU Venetian Macao, world's biggest casino, opens...
...moving back to Europe, where on a whim she bought an unfinished Venetian palace, nicknamed Palazzo Nonfinito, she staged Pollock's first Italian show in 1950. By then Life magazine had already posed the question, "JACKSON POLLOCK: IS HE THE GREATEST LIVING PAINTER IN THE UNITED STATES?" But her life as a collector was not quite complete. From the '50s on, she moved past Pop and Minimalism to focus on the more quirky kinetic works of Germans Mack and Uecker, only now being properly appreciated. "The Zero Group works exemplify how Peggy was evergreen," Rylands says. "She continued buying...