Gold
Gold is a chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79, making it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. In its purest form, it is a bright reddish yellow, soft and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a group 11 element, it is solid under standard conditions. Gold occurs in free elemental form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, in alluvial deposits, it occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver and naturally alloyed with copper and palladium. Less it occurs in minerals as gold compounds with tellurium. Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, which forms a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion. Gold is insoluble in nitric acid, which dissolves silver and base metals, a property that has long been used to refine gold and to confirm the presence of gold in metallic objects, giving rise to the term acid test. Gold dissolves in alkaline solutions of cyanide, which are used in mining and electroplating.
Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys. A rare element, gold is a precious metal, used for coinage and other arts throughout recorded history. In the past, a gold standard was implemented as a monetary policy, but gold coins ceased to be minted as a circulating currency in the 1930s, the world gold standard was abandoned for a fiat currency system after 1971. A total of 186,700 tonnes of gold exists above ground, as of 2015; the world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, 10% in industry. Gold's high malleability, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, conductivity of electricity have led to its continued use in corrosion resistant electrical connectors in all types of computerized devices. Gold is used in infrared shielding, colored-glass production, gold leafing, tooth restoration. Certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine; as of 2017, the world's largest gold producer by far was China with 440 tonnes per year.
Gold is the most malleable of all metals. It can be drawn into a monoatomic wire, stretched about twice before it breaks; such nanowires distort via formation and migration of dislocations and crystal twins without noticeable hardening. A single gram of gold can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, an avoirdupois ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become semi-transparent; the transmitted light appears greenish blue, because gold reflects yellow and red. Such semi-transparent sheets strongly reflect infrared light, making them useful as infrared shields in visors of heat-resistant suits, in sun-visors for spacesuits. Gold is a good conductor of electricity. Gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm3 identical to that of tungsten at 19.25 g/cm3. By comparison, the density of lead is 11.34 g/cm3, that of the densest element, osmium, is 22.588±0.015 g/cm3. Whereas most metals are gray or silvery white, gold is reddish-yellow; this color is determined by the frequency of plasma oscillations among the metal's valence electrons, in the ultraviolet range for most metals but in the visible range for gold due to relativistic effects affecting the orbitals around gold atoms.
Similar effects impart a golden hue to metallic caesium. Common colored gold alloys include the distinctive eighteen-karat rose gold created by the addition of copper. Alloys containing palladium or nickel are important in commercial jewelry as these produce white gold alloys. Fourteen-karat gold-copper alloy is nearly identical in color to certain bronze alloys, both may be used to produce police and other badges. White gold alloys can be made with nickel. Fourteen- and eighteen-karat gold alloys with silver alone appear greenish-yellow and are referred to as green gold. Blue gold can be made by alloying with iron, purple gold can be made by alloying with aluminium. Less addition of manganese, aluminium and other elements can produce more unusual colors of gold for various applications. Colloidal gold, used by electron-microscopists, is red. Gold has only one stable isotope, 197Au, its only occurring isotope, so gold is both a mononuclidic and monoisotopic element. Thirty-six radioisotopes have been synthesized, ranging in atomic mass from 169 to 205.
The most stable of these is 195Au with a half-life of 186.1 days. The least stable is 171Au. Most of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses below 197 decay by some combination of proton emission, α decay, β+ decay; the exceptions are 195Au, which decays by electron capture, 196Au, which decays most by electron capture with a minor β− decay path. All of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses above 197 decay by β− decay. At least 32 nuclear isomers have been characterized, ranging in atomic mass from 170 to 200. Within that range, only 178Au, 180Au, 181Au, 182Au, 188Au do not have isomers. Gold's most stable isomer is 198m2Au with a half-life of 2.27 days. Gold's least stable isomer is 177m2Au with a half-life of only 7 ns. 184m1Au has three decay paths: β+ decay, isomeric
Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes used carving and modelling, in stone, ceramics and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been an complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded or cast. Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, represents the majority of the surviving works from ancient cultures, though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished entirely. However, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, this has been lost. Sculpture has been central in religious devotion in many cultures, until recent centuries large sculptures, too expensive for private individuals to create, were an expression of religion or politics; those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and China, as well as many in Central and South America and Africa.
The Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, Greece is seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith; the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelo's David. Modernist sculpture moved away from traditional processes and the emphasis on the depiction of the human body, with the making of constructed sculpture, the presentation of found objects as finished art works. A basic distinction is between sculpture in the round, free-standing sculpture, such as statues, not attached to any other surface, the various types of relief, which are at least attached to a background surface. Relief is classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sometimes an intermediate mid-relief. Sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief is the usual sculptural medium for large figure groups and narrative subjects, which are difficult to accomplish in the round, is the typical technique used both for architectural sculpture, attached to buildings, for small-scale sculpture decorating other objects, as in much pottery and jewellery.
Relief sculpture may decorate steles, upright slabs of stone also containing inscriptions. Another basic distinction is between subtractive carving techniques, which remove material from an existing block or lump, for example of stone or wood, modelling techniques which shape or build up the work from the material. Techniques such as casting and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work; the term "sculpture" is used to describe large works, which are sometimes called monumental sculpture, meaning either or both of sculpture, large, or, attached to a building. But the term properly covers many types of small works in three dimensions using the same techniques, including coins and medals, hardstone carvings, a term for small carvings in stone that can take detailed work; the large or "colossal" statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity. Another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades.
The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the "head", showing just that, or the bust, a representation of a person from the chest up. Small forms of sculpture include the figurine a statue, no more than 18 inches tall, for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Modern and contemporary art have added a number of non-traditional forms of sculpture, including sound sculpture, light sculpture, environmental art, environmental sculpture, street art sculpture, kinetic sculpture, land art, site-specific art. Sculpture is an important form of public art. A collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in some form of association with religion. Cult images are common in many cultures, though they are not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art, like the Statue of Zeus at Olympia; the actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were evidently rather small in the largest temples.
The same is true in Hinduism, where the simple and ancient form of the lingam is the most common. Buddhism brought the sculpture of religious figures to East Asia, where there seems to have been no earlier equivalent tradition, though again simple shapes like the bi and cong had religious significance. Small sculptures as personal possessions go back to the earliest prehistoric art, the use of large sculpture as public art to impress the viewer with the power of a ruler, goes back at least to the Great Sphinx of some 4,500 years ago. In archaeology and art history the appearance, sometimes disappearance, of large or monumental sculpture in a culture is regarded as of great significance, though tracing the emergence is complicated by the presumed existence of sculpture in wood and other perishable materials of which no record remains; the ability to s
Ryerson University
Ryerson University is a public research university in Toronto, Canada. Its urban campus surrounds the Yonge-Dundas Square, located at one of the busiest intersections in downtown Toronto; the majority of its buildings are in the blocks northeast of the Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto's Garden District. Ryerson's business school, Ted Rogers School of Management, is on the southwest end of the Yonge-Dundas Square, located on Bay Street north of Toronto's Financial District and is attached to the Toronto Eaton Centre; the university has expanded in recent years with new buildings such as the Mattamy Athletic Centre, in the historical Maple Leaf Gardens arena, former home of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The university's administration services are housed in 1 Dundas and 495 Yonge Street; the university is composed of 39,000+ undergraduate students, 2,600 graduate students, 12,000 continuing education students. Ryerson is ranked 10th in Canada by student enrollment. Ryerson University is home to Canada's largest undergraduate business school, the Ted Rogers School of Management, Canada's third largest undergraduate engineering school, the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, as well as the Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Communication & Design, Faculty of Community Services, the Faculty of Science.
The university has been approved by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada to begin working towards establishing a social justice and innovation focused law school. The school will mark the third law school in Toronto after York's Osgoode program and University of Toronto's Law degree. In addition to offering full-time and part-time undergraduate and graduate programs leading to Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees, the university offers part-time degrees, distance education, certificates through the G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education. In 1852, at the core of the present main campus, the historic St. James Square, Egerton Ryerson founded Ontario's first teacher training facility, the Toronto Normal School, it housed the Department of Education and the Museum of Natural History and Fine Arts, which became the Royal Ontario Museum. An agricultural laboratory on the site led to the founding of the Ontario Agricultural College and the University of Guelph. St. James Square went through various other educational uses before housing a namesake of its original founder.
Egerton Ryerson was a leading educator and Methodist minister. He is known as the father of Ontario's public school system, he is a founder of the first publishing company in Canada in 1829, The Methodist Book and Publishing House, renamed The Ryerson Press in 1919 and today is part of McGraw-Hill Ryerson, a Canadian publisher of educational and professional books, which still bears Egerton Ryerson's name for its Canadian operations. Advances in science and technology brought on by World War II, continued Canadian industrialization interrupted by the Great Depression, created a demand for a more trained population. Howard Hillen Kerr was given control of nine Ontario Training and Re-establishment centres to accomplish this, his vision of what these institutions would do was broader than. In 1943, he visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was convinced Canada could develop its own MIT over one hundred years. Along the way, such an institution could respond to the society's needs.
When the Province approved the idea of technical institutes in 1946, it proposed to found several. It turned out all but one would be special purpose schools, such as the mining school. Only the Toronto retraining centre, which became the Ryerson Institute of Technology in 1948, would become a multi-program campus, Kerr’s future MIT of Canada; the Toronto Training and Re-establishment Institute was created in 1945 on the former site of the Toronto Normal School at St James Square, bounded by Gerrard, Church and Gould. The Gothic-Romanesque building was designed by architects Thomas Ridout and Frederick William Cumberland in 1852; the site had been used as a Royal Canadian Air Force training facility during World War II. The institute was a joint venture of the federal and provincial government to train ex-servicemen and women for re-entry into civilian life; the Ryerson Institute of Technology was founded in 1948, inheriting the staff and facilities of the Toronto Training and Re-establishment Institute.
In 1966, it became the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. In 1971, provincial legislation was amended to permit Ryerson to grant university degrees accredited by provincial government legislation and by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada; that year, it became a member of the Council of Ontario Universities. In 1992, Ryerson became Toronto’s second school of engineering to receive accreditation from the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board; the following year, Ryerson formally became a University, via an Act of the Ontario Legislature. In 1993, Ryerson received approval to grant graduate degrees; the same year, the Board of Governors changed the institution's name to Ryerson Polytechnic University to reflect a stronger emphasis on research associated with graduate programs and its expansion from being a university offering undergraduate degrees. Students occupied the university's administration offices in March 1997, protesting escalating tuition hikes. In June 2001, the school assumed its name as Ryerson University.
Today, Ryerson University offers programs in aerospace, civil, industrial, electrical and computer engineering. The B. Eng biomedical engineering program is the first stand-alone unde
Silver
Silver is a chemical element with symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, reflectivity of any metal; the metal is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free elemental form, as an alloy with gold and other metals, in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold and zinc refining. Silver has long been valued as a precious metal. Silver metal is used in many bullion coins, sometimes alongside gold: while it is more abundant than gold, it is much less abundant as a native metal, its purity is measured on a per-mille basis. As one of the seven metals of antiquity, silver has had an enduring role in most human cultures. Other than in currency and as an investment medium, silver is used in solar panels, water filtration, ornaments, high-value tableware and utensils, in electrical contacts and conductors, in specialized mirrors, window coatings, in catalysis of chemical reactions, as a colorant in stained glass and in specialised confectionery.
Its compounds are used in X-ray film. Dilute solutions of silver nitrate and other silver compounds are used as disinfectants and microbiocides, added to bandages and wound-dressings and other medical instruments. Silver is similar in its physical and chemical properties to its two vertical neighbours in group 11 of the periodic table and gold, its 47 electrons are arranged in the configuration 4d105s1 to copper and gold. This distinctive electron configuration, with a single electron in the highest occupied s subshell over a filled d subshell, accounts for many of the singular properties of metallic silver. Silver is an soft and malleable transition metal, though it is less malleable than gold. Silver crystallizes in a face-centered cubic lattice with bulk coordination number 12, where only the single 5s electron is delocalized to copper and gold. Unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in silver are lacking a covalent character and are weak; this observation explains the low high ductility of single crystals of silver.
Silver has a brilliant white metallic luster that can take a high polish, and, so characteristic that the name of the metal itself has become a colour name. Unlike copper and gold, the energy required to excite an electron from the filled d band to the s-p conduction band in silver is large enough that it no longer corresponds to absorption in the visible region of the spectrum, but rather in the ultraviolet. Protected silver has greater optical reflectivity than aluminium at all wavelengths longer than ~450 nm. At wavelengths shorter than 450 nm, silver's reflectivity is inferior to that of aluminium and drops to zero near 310 nm. High electrical and thermal conductivity is common to the elements in group 11, because their single s electron is free and does not interact with the filled d subshell, as such interactions lower electron mobility; the electrical conductivity of silver is the greatest of all metals, greater than copper, but it is not used for this property because of the higher cost.
An exception is in radio-frequency engineering at VHF and higher frequencies where silver plating improves electrical conductivity because those currents tend to flow on the surface of conductors rather than through the interior. During World War II in the US, 13540 tons of silver were used in electromagnets for enriching uranium because of the wartime shortage of copper. Pure silver has the highest thermal conductivity of any metal, although the conductivity of carbon and superfluid helium-4 are higher. Silver has the lowest contact resistance of any metal. Silver forms alloys with copper and gold, as well as zinc. Zinc-silver alloys with low zinc concentration may be considered as face-centred cubic solid solutions of zinc in silver, as the structure of the silver is unchanged while the electron concentration rises as more zinc is added. Increasing the electron concentration further leads to body-centred cubic, complex cubic, hexagonal close-packed phases. Occurring silver is composed of two stable isotopes, 107Ag and 109Ag, with 107Ag being more abundant.
This equal abundance is rare in the periodic table. The atomic weight is 107.8682 u. Both isotopes of silver are produced in stars via the s-process, as well as in supernovas via the r-process. Twenty-eight radioisotopes have been characterized, the most stable being 105Ag with a half-life of 41.29 days, 111Ag with a half-life of 7.45 days, 112Ag with a half-life of 3.13 hours. Silver has numerous nuclear isomers, the most stable being 108mAg, 110mAg and 106mAg. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives of less than an hour, the majority of these have half-lives of less than three minutes. Isotopes of silver range in relative atomic mass from 92.950 u
Vancouver Aquarium
The Vancouver Aquarium is a public aquarium located in Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In addition to being a major tourist attraction for Vancouver, the aquarium is a centre for marine research and marine animal rehabilitation; the Vancouver Aquarium was one of the first facilities to incorporate professional naturalists into the galleries to interpret animal behaviours. Prior to this, at the London Zoo Fish House, naturalists James S. Bowerbank, Ray Lankester, David W. Mitchell and Philip H. Gosse had held "open house" events, but the Vancouver Aquarium was the first to employ educational naturalists on a full-time basis. Aquarium research projects extend worldwide, include marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation. On August 9, 2010 Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B. C. Premier Gordon Campbell announced capital funding of up to $15 million; the province would donate $10 million in funding over the next three years to help pay for a planned expansion of the 54-year-old facility, Premier Gordon Campbell said.
Harper added that Ottawa would hand over up to $5 million to the aquarium for infrastructure upgrades. The aquarium, remains a nonprofit organization; the property is owned by the City of Vancouver and rented to the Aquarium for $40,000 a year since 1991. In October 2009 the Vancouver Aquarium was designated as a Coastal America Learning Center by the US Environmental Protection Agency; as the first Learning Center in Canada, this designation is intended to strengthen the Canadian/U. S. Partnership for protecting and restoring shared ocean resources; the Vancouver Public Aquarium Association was formed in 1950 by UBC fisheries and oceanography professors Murray Newman, Carl Lietze and Wilbert Clemens. After receiving the help of timber baron H. R. MacMillan and businessman George Cunningham and $100,000 from each of the three levels of government, it opened on June 15, 1956 with the ribbon being cut by federal Minister of Fisheries James Sinclair. Sinclair's daughter 7-year-old Margaret was present at the ribbon cutting ceremony.
Canada's first public Aquarium, the Vancouver Aquarium has become the largest in Canada and one of the five largest in North America. The Vancouver Aquarium was the first aquarium in the world to display an orca. Other whales and dolphins on display included belugas and dolphins. In 1975, the Vancouver Aquarium was the first aquarium accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums; the Aquarium is accredited by the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums and in 1987 was designated Canada's Pacific National Aquarium by the Canadian Federal Government. On July 23, 1995, a beluga whale named, she was the first beluga to be both born in a Canadian aquarium. A second calf, was born on July 30, 2002, but died unexpectedly with no previous sign of illness on July 17, 2005. In 1996, the Vancouver Park Board instituted a municipal bylaw that prevents the Vancouver Aquarium from capturing cetaceans from the wild for display purposes, only obtain cetaceans from other facilities if they were born in captivity, captured before 1996 or were rescued and deemed un-releasable after this date.
On June 15, 2006 Canada Post issued a 51 cent domestic rate stamp to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Aquarium. For many years, the primary attraction for visitors was the orca show; the Aquarium was the first to capture and display a killer whale, Moby Doll, in a pen at Burrard Drydocks, for 3 months in 1964. Since it was home to Skana, Hyak II, Finna and three of Bjossa's calves; when Finna died and Bjossa was left without other orca companions, the Aquarium attempted to acquire one or more female orcas from other marine parks. However, no suitable companions were found, Bjossa was moved to SeaWorld, San Diego, in April 2001 where she died due to a chronic respiratory illness; the Aquarium has since moved to emphasize the educational aspects of the displays rather than the public spectacle of the shows. They have highlighted their research and rehabilitation efforts; the aquarium has played a significant role in the research of wild orcas in BC. John Ford, a respected researcher who focuses on orca vocalizations, worked there for many years and they still fund a lot of the study.
The Wild Killer Whale Adoption Program, which funds research, is run out of the aquarium. After considerable public discussion and some opposition from an animal rights group, the Vancouver Park Board voted in favour of a proposal to expand the Aquarium at a cost of $100 million, funded by the Aquarium, private donors, infrastructure grants. A public consultation process, led by the aquarium and their own consultants, showed 89% of local residents were in favour of the expansion; the proposal will extend its lease by 20 years. Construction was expected to begin in the fall of 2007. Vancouver Aquarium has not kept any orcas in captivity since 2001 and has pledged not to capture wild animals, but to instead rely on captive animals for breeding; the aquarium covers 9,000 square metres and has a total 9,500,000 litres of water in 166 aquatic displays. There are a number of different galleries, several of which were built at different times throughout the aquarium's history; this central indoor exhibit consists of a 260,000 litres (57,000 im
Totem pole
Totem poles are monumental carvings, a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are made from large trees western red cedar, by First Nations and indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia; the word totem derives from the Algonquian word odoodem meaning " kinship group". The carvings may symbolize or commemorate ancestors, cultural beliefs that recount familiar legends, clan lineages, or notable events; the poles may serve as functional architectural features, welcome signs for village visitors, mortuary vessels for the remains of deceased ancestors, or as a means to publicly ridicule someone. They may embody a historical narrative of significance to the people carving and installing the pole.
Given the complexity and symbolic meanings of totem pole carvings, their placement and importance lies in the observer's knowledge and connection to the meanings of the figures and the culture in which they are embedded. Totem poles serve as important illustrations of family lineage and the cultural heritage of the Native peoples in the islands and coastal areas of North America's Pacific Northwest British Columbia and coastal areas of Washington and southeastern Alaska in the United States. Families of traditional carvers come from the Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka’wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth, among others; the poles are carved from the rot-resistant trunks of Thuja plicata trees, which decay in the moist, rainy climate of the coastal Pacific Northwest. Because of the region's climate and the nature of the materials used to make the poles, few examples carved before 1900 remain. Noteworthy examples, some dating as far back as 1880, include those at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in Vancouver and the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa.
Totem poles are the largest, but not the only, objects that coastal Pacific Northwest natives use to depict spiritual reverence, family legends, sacred beings and culturally important animals, people, or historical events. The freestanding poles seen by the region's first European explorers were preceded by a long history of decorative carving. Stylistic features of these poles were borrowed from earlier, smaller prototypes, or from the interior support posts of house beams. Although 18th-century accounts of European explorers traveling along the coast indicate that decorated interior and exterior house posts existed prior to 1800, the posts were smaller and fewer in number than in subsequent decades. Prior to the 19th century, the lack of efficient carving tools, along with sufficient wealth and leisure time to devote to the craft, delayed the development of elaborately carved, freestanding poles. Before iron and steel arrived in the area, Natives used tools made of stone, shells, or beaver teeth for carving.
The process was laborious. By the late eighteenth century, the use of metal cutting tools enabled more complex carvings and increased production of totem poles; the tall monumental poles appearing in front of native homes in coastal villages did not appear until after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Eddie Malin has proposed that totem poles progressed from house posts, funerary containers, memorial markers into symbols of clan and family wealth and prestige, he argues that the Haida people of the islands of Haida Gwaii originated carving of the poles, that the practice spread outward to the Tsimshian and Tlingit, down the coast to the indigenous people of British Columbia and northern Washington. Malin's theory is supported by the photographic documentation of the Pacific Northwest coast's cultural history and the more sophisticated designs of the Haida poles. Accounts from the 1700s describe and illustrate carved poles and timber homes along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. By the early nineteenth century, widespread importation of iron and steel tools from Great Britain, the United States, elsewhere led to easier and more rapid production of carved wooden goods, including poles.
In the 19th century and European trade and settlement led to the growth of totem pole carving, but United States and Canadian policies and practices of acculturation and assimilation caused a decline in the development of Alaska Native and First Nations cultures and their crafts, reduced totem pole production by the end of the century. Between 1830 and 1880, the maritime fur trade and fisheries gave rise to an accumulation of wealth among the coastal peoples. Much of it was spent and distributed in lavish potlatch celebrations associated with the construction and erection of totem poles; the monumental poles commissioned by wealthy family leaders to represent their social status and the importance of their families and clans. In the 1880s and 1890s, collectors and naturalist interested in native culture collected and photographed totem poles and other artifacts, many of which were put on display at expositions such as the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, before the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978, the practice of Native religion was outlawed, traditional indigenous cultural practices we
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an Order of France, established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture, its supplementary status to the Ordre national du Mérite was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is the recognition of significant contributions to the arts, literature, or the propagation of these fields, its origin is attributed to the Order of Saint-Michel. French government guidelines stipulate that citizens of France must be at least thirty years old, respect French civil law, must have, "significantly contributed to the enrichment of the French cultural inheritance" to be considered for award. Membership is not, limited to French nationals. Foreign recipients are admitted into the Order, "without condition of age"; the Order has three grades: Commandeur — medallion worn on necklet. Officier — medallion worn on ribbon with rosette on left breast. Chevalier — medallion worn on ribbon on left breast; the médaille of the Order is an eight-point, green-enameled asterisk, in gilt for Commanders and Officers and in silver for Knights.
The reverse central disc features the head of Marianne on a golden background, surrounded by a golden ring bearing the words "Ordre des Arts et des Lettres". The Commander's badge is topped by a gilt twisted ring; the ribbon of the Order is green with four white stripes. According to the statutes of the Order, French citizens must wait a minimum of 5 years before they are eligible to be upgraded from Chevalier to Officier, or Officier to Commandeur, must have displayed additional meritorious deeds than just those which made them a Chevalier. However, in the statutes there is a clause saying "Les Officiers et les Commandeurs de la Légion d'honneur peuvent être directement promus à un grade équivalent dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres"; this means that were someone to be made Officier of the Legion of Honour the next year that person can be made directly Officier of the Order of Arts and Letters and by pass a nomination as knight and the five-year rule. Ribbons of the French military and civil awards Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec, a Quebec order based in part on the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres "Nominations dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres".
Ministère de la culture, France. 2007. Retrieved 6 February 2009
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