Margaret Olley
Margaret Hannah Olley was an Australian painter. She was the subject of more than ninety solo exhibitions. Margaret Olley was born in New South Wales, she was the eldest of three children of Joseph Grace. She attended Somerville House in Brisbane during her high school years and was so focused on art that she dropped one French class in order to take another art lesson with teacher and artist Caroline Barker. In 1941, Margaret commenced classes at Brisbane Central Technical College and moved to Sydney in 1943 to enroll in an Art Diploma course at East Sydney Technical College where she graduated with A-class honours in 1945, her work concentrated on still life. In 1997 a major retrospective of her work was organised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, she received the inaugural Mosman Art Prize in 1947. On 13 July 2006 she donated more works to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Olley was twice the subject of an Archibald Prize winning painting, she was the subject of paintings by many of her artist friends, including Russell Drysdale and Danelle Bergstrom.
On 10 June 1991, in the Queen's Birthday Honours list, Olley was made an Officer of the Order of Australia "for service as an artist and to the promotion of art". On 12 June 2006, she was awarded Australia's highest civilian honour, the Companion of the Order, "for service as one of Australia's most distinguished artists, for support and philanthropy to the visual and performing arts, for encouragement of young and emerging artists". In 2006, Olley was awarded the degree Doctor of Fine Arts honoris causa by the University of Newcastle. Of the last paintings that Olley did before her death, 27 were exhibited at Sotheby's Australia in Woollahra in an exhibition entitled The Inner Sanctum of Margaret Olley that opened on 2 March 2012. Olley had put the final touches on the show the day before she died and Philip Bacon, who had exhibited her work for decades, had prepared a catalogue to show her that weekend; the opening night was attended by about 350 people among whom were the Governor-General of Australia, Quentin Bryce, who gave an address, in which she said that Olley's work was just like the artist, "filled with optimism".
Other attendees at the opening included Penelope Wensley, the Governor of Queensland, Edmund Capon, Ben Quilty and Barry Humphries. Olley died at her home in Paddington in July 2011, aged 88, she never had no children. Her Paddington home sold for over three million dollars in July 2014. After Olley's death, the Art Gallery of New South Wales used funds donated by its Collection Circle to purchase Nasturtiums, a painting by E. Phillips Fox as a memorial to her, her ideas about art were explored in conversations held between 19 October 2009 and 22 September 2010 with author Barry Pearce, whose book based on them was published in the year of her death. Part of Olley's Paddington house, well known for its items that the painter collected and used as subject matter for her art, described as "her lifelong installation", has been recreated at the Tweed River Art Gallery, an area not far from where the artist was born; the architect of the Tweed's new Margaret Olley Centre, Bud Brannigan, said that it would be faithful to Olley's house, "in all of its glory".
There is a comprehensive photographic record of her studio and work, shot on the morning she died, by artist photographer Greg Weight. This suite of prints, has been donated to the Tweed River Art Gallery. A documentary by Catherine Hunter, Margaret Olley — A Life in Paint follows Olley as she completes her last – and many believe her finest – works, those painted in the 18 months leading up to her death; the critically acclaimed film interprets Olley's style and artistic evolution through the reflections of her peers, including former National Gallery of Australia director Betty Churcher, curator Barry Pearce and Ben Quilty, whose portrait of Olley won the 2011 Archibald Prize. Margaret Olley paintings at google.com Phillip Bacon Galleries, Margaret Olley: Biographical notes Margaret Olley: Biography Margaret Olley at the Art Gallery of New South Wales Margaret Olley Australian Government Cultural and Recreational Portal Tyranny of the tape recorder by Brenda Niall ABR of Margaret Olley: Far from a Still Life by Meg Stewart Margaret Olley & Donald Friend, 21 January – 19 March 2006 S H Ervin Gallery Margaret Olley review by Grafico Topico's Sue Smith Obituary of Margaret Olley, The Daily Telegraph, 31 July 2011 Design and Art Australia Online Biographical Record
Paul César Helleu
Paul César Helleu was a French oil painter, pastel artist, drypoint etcher, designer, best known for his numerous portraits of beautiful society women of the Belle Époque. He conceived the ceiling mural of night sky constellations for Grand Central Terminal in New York City, he was the father of Jean Helleu and the grandfather of Jacques Helleu, both artistic directors for Parfums Chanel. Paul César Helleu was born in Vannes, France, his father, a customs inspector, died when Helleu was in his teens. Despite opposition from his widowed mother, he went to Paris and studied at Lycée Chaptal. In 1876, at age 16, he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, beginning academic training in art with Jean-Léon Gérôme. Helleu attended the Second Impressionist Exhibition in the same year, made his first acquaintances with John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Claude Monet, he was struck by their modern, bold alla prima technique and outdoor scenes, so far removed from the studio. To survive following graduation, Helleu took a job with the firm Théodore Deck Ceramique Française hand-painting fine decorative plates.
At this same time, he met Giovanni Boldini, a portrait painter with a facile, bravura style, who became a mentor and comrade, influenced his future artistic style. When he was 18 years old, Helleu established a close friendship with John Singer Sargent, four years his senior, to last his lifetime. Becoming established, Sargent was receiving commissions for his work. Helleu had not sold anything, was discouraged to the point of abandoning his studies; when Sargent heard this, he picked one of his paintings, praising his technique. Flattered that Sargent would praise his work, he offered to give it to him. Sargent replied, "I shall gladly accept this, but not as a gift. I sell my own pictures, I know what they cost me by the time they are out of my hand. I should never enjoy this pastel if I hadn't paid you a fair and honest price for it." With this he paid him a thousand-franc note. Helleu was commissioned in 1884 to paint a portrait of a young woman named Alice Guérin, they fell in love, married two years on 28 July 1886.
Throughout their lives together, she was his favourite model. Charming and graceful, she helped introduce them to the aristocratic circles of Paris, where they were popular fixtures. On a trip to London with Jacques-Émile Blanche in 1885, Helleu met Whistler again and visited other prominent artists of the age, his introduction to James Jacques Tissot, an accomplished society painter from France who made his career in England, proved to be a revelation. From Tissot, Helleu saw, for the first time, the possibilities of drypoint etching with a diamond point stylus directly on a copper plate. Helleu became a virtuoso of the technique, drawing with the same dynamic and sophisticated freedom with his stylus as with his pastels, his prints were well received, they had the added advantage that a sitter could have several proofs printed to give to relations or to friends. Over the course of his career, Helleu produced more than 2,000 drypoint prints. Soon, Helleu was displaying works to much acclaim at several galleries.
Degas encouraged Helleu to submit paintings to the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition in May and June 1886. The show was installed in a Paris apartment at 1 rue Laffitte, which ran concurrently with the official Salon that year to make a statement. Although 17 artists joined the famous exhibit that included the first Neo-Impressionistic works, like Monet, refused to participate. In 1886, Helleu befriended Robert de Montesquiou, the poet and aesthete, who bought six of his drypoints to add to his large print collection. Montesquiou wrote a book about Helleu, published in 1913 with reproductions of 100 of his prints and drawings; this volume remains the definitive biography on Helleu. Montesquiou introduced Helleu to Parisian literary salons, where he met Marcel Proust, who became a friend. Proust created a literary picture of Helleu in his novel Remembrance of Things Past as the painter Elstir. Montesquiou's cousin, the Countess Greffulhe, enabled Helleu to expand his career as a portrait artist to elegant women in the highest ranks of Paris society, for which he is now most renowned.
His noteworthy subjects include the Duchess of Marlborough, the Marchesa Casati, Belle da Costa Greene, Louise Chéruit, Helena Rubinstein. Looking for new inspiration, Helleu began a series of paintings and color prints of cathedrals and stained glass windows in 1893, followed by flower studies and landscapes of parks in Versailles. Helleu took up sailing. Ships, harbor views, life at port in Deauville, women in their fashionable seaside attire, became subjects for many vivid and spirited works. In 1904, Helleu was awarded the Légion d'honneur and became one of the most celebrated artists of the Edwardian era in both Paris and London, he was an honorary member in important beaux-arts societies, including the International Society of Painters and Engravers, headed by Auguste Rodin, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. On his second trip to the United States in 1912, Helleu was awarded the commission to design was the ceiling decoration in New York City's Grand Central Terminal, he decided on a mural of a blue-green night sky covered by the starry signs of the zodiac that cross the Milky Way.
Although the astrological design was admired, the ceiling was covered in the 1930s. More than sixty years in 1998, it was restored. Helleu made his last trip to New York City in 1920 fo
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, to the southeast by Azerbaijan; the capital and largest city is Tbilisi. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres, its 2017 population is about 3.718 million. Georgia is a unitary semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy. During the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia, such as Colchis and Iberia; the Georgians adopted Christianity in the early 4th century. The common belief had an enormous importance for spiritual and political unification of early Georgian states. A unified Kingdom of Georgia reached its Golden Age during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Thereafter, the kingdom declined and disintegrated under hegemony of various regional powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire, successive dynasties of Iran.
In the late 18th century, the eastern Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti forged an alliance with the Russian Empire, which directly annexed the kingdom in 1801 and conquered the western Kingdom of Imereti in 1810. Russian rule over Georgia was acknowledged in various peace treaties with Iran and the Ottomans and the remaining Georgian territories were absorbed by the Russian Empire in a piecemeal fashion in the course of the 19th century. During the Civil War following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Georgia became part of the Transcaucasian Federation and emerged as an independent republic before the Red Army invasion in 1921 which established a government of workers' and peasants' soviets. Soviet Georgia would be incorporated into a new Transcaucasian Federation which in 1922 would be a founding republic of the Soviet Union. In 1936, the Transcaucasian Federation was dissolved and Georgia emerged as a Union Republic. During the Great Patriotic War 700,000 Georgians fought in the Red Army against the German invaders.
After Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a native Georgian, died in 1953, a wave of protest spread against Nikita Khrushchev and his de-Stalinization reforms, leading to the death of nearly one hundred students in 1956. From that time on, Georgia would become marred with blatant corruption and increased alienation of the government from the people. By the 1980s, Georgians were ready to abandon the existing system altogether. A pro-independence movement led to the secession from the Soviet Union in April 1991. For most of the following decade, post-Soviet Georgia suffered from civil conflicts, secessionist wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, economic crisis. Following the bloodless Rose Revolution in 2003, Georgia pursued a pro-Western foreign policy; this strengthened state institutions. The country's Western orientation soon led to the worsening of relations with Russia, culminating in the brief Russo-Georgian War in August 2008 and Georgia's current territorial dispute with Russia. Georgia is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development.
It contains two de facto independent regions and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Georgia and most of the world's countries consider the regions to be Georgian territory under Russian occupation. "Georgia" stems from the Persian designation of the Georgians – gurğān, in the 11th and 12th centuries adapted via Syriac gurz-ān/gurz-iyān and Arabic ĵurĵan/ĵurzan. Lore-based theories were given by the traveller Jacques de Vitry, who explained the name's origin by the popularity of St. George amongst Georgians, while traveller Jean Chardin thought that "Georgia" came from Greek γεωργός; as Prof. Alexander Mikaberidze adds, these century-old explanations for the word Georgia/Georgians are rejected by the scholarly community, who point to the Persian word gurğ/gurğān as the root of the word. Starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic and West European languages; this term itself might have been established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region, referred to as Gorgan.
The native name is Sakartvelo, derived from the core central Georgian region of Kartli, recorded from the 9th century, in extended usage referring to the entire medieval Kingdom of Georgia by the 13th century. The self-designation used by ethnic Georgians is Kartvelebi; the medieval Georgian Chronicles present an eponymous ancestor of the Kartvelians, Kartlos, a great-grandson of Japheth. However, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the latter being one of the proto-Georgian tribes that emerged as a dominant group in ancient times; the name Sakartvelo consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i, specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, or Iberia as it is known in sources of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ancient Greeks and Romans referred to early western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians; the Georgian circumfix sa-X-o is a standard geographic construction designating "the area where X dwell", where X is an ethnonym. To
Polish Americans
Polish Americans are Americans who have total or partial Polish ancestry. There are an estimated 9.5 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 3% of the U. S. population. Polish Americans are the largest Slavic ethnic group in the United States, second largest Central European group and the eighth largest immigrant group overall; the first Polish settlers arrived at Walter Raleigh's failed Roanoke Colony in 1585. In 1608 Polish settlers came to the Virginia Colony as skilled craftsmen. Two early immigrants, Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, led armies in the Revolutionary War and are remembered as national heroes. Overall, more than one million Poles and Polish subjects have immigrated to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Exact immigration numbers are unknown. Many immigrants were classified as "Russian", "German" and "Austrian" by the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service as the Polish state did not exist from 1795 to 1918 and thus the former territories of Poland at this time were under Prussian, Austrian-Hungarian and Russian control.
Complicating the U. S. Census figures further are the high proportion of Polish Americans who marry outside their ethnicity; the Polish American Cultural Center places a figure of Americans who have some Polish ancestry at 19-20 million. In 2000, 667,414 Americans over 5 years old reported Polish as the language spoken at home, about 1.4% of the census groups who speak a language other than English or 0.25% of the U. S. population. Their history is divided into three stages: From the colonial era down to 1870, small numbers of Poles and Polish subjects came to America as individuals or in small family groups, they assimilated and did not form separate communities; some Jews from Poland assimilated into cities which were Polish bastions in order to conceal their Jewish identities. From 1870 to 1914, Poles and Polish subjects formed a significant part of the wave of immigration from Germany, Imperial Russia, Austria Hungary; the Ethnic Poles and Jews in particular came in family groups, settled in and/or blended into Polish neighborhoods and other Slavic bastions, aspired to earn high wages compared to what they could earn back in Europe.
The main Ethnically-Polish-American organizations were founded because of high Polish interest in the Catholic church, parochial schools, local community affairs. Few were politically active. Since 1914, the United States has seen mass emigration from Poland, the coming of age of several generations of assimilated Polish Americans. Immigration from Poland has continued into the early 2000s, began to decline after Poland joined the European Union in 2004; the income levels have gone up from well to above average. Poles became active members of the liberal New Deal Coalition from the 1930s to the 1960s, but since many have moved to the suburbs, have become more conservative and vote less Democratic. Outside of Republican and Democratic politics, politics such as those of Agudath Israel of America have involved Polish-Jewish Americans. Lopata argues that Poles differed from most other ethnic groups in several ways, they did not plan to remain permanently and become "Americanized". Instead, they came temporarily, to earn money and wait for the right opportunity to return.
Their intention was to ensure for themselves a desirable social status in the old world. However, many of the temporary migrants had decided to become permanent Americans. Many found manual labor jobs in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and the heavy industries, of the Great Lakes cities of Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee and Toledo; the U. S. Census asked Polish immigrants to specify Polish as their native language beginning in Chicago in 1900, allowing the government to enumerate them as an individual nationality when there was no Polish nation-state. No distinction is made in the American census between ethnically Polish Americans and descendants of non-ethnic Poles, such as Jews or Ukrainians, who were born in the territory of Poland and considered themselves Polish nationals. Therefore, some say, of the 10 million Polish Americans, only a certain portion are of Polish ethnic descent. On the other hand, many ethnic Poles when entering the US from 1795 to 1917, when Poland did not exist, did not identify themselves as ethnic Poles and instead identified themselves as either German, Austrian or Russian.
Therefore, the actual number of Americans of at least partial Polish ancestry, could be well over 10 million. In the 2011 United States Census Bureau's Population Estimates, there are between 9,365,239 and 9,530,571 Americans of Polish descent, with over 500,000 being foreign-born. Polish-Americans have assimilated quickly to American society. Between 1940 and 1960, only 20 percent of the children of Polish-American ethnic leaders spoke Polish compared to 50 percent for Ukrainians. In the early 1960s, 3,000 of Detroit's 300,000 Polish-Americans changed their names each year. Language proficiency in Polish is rare in Polish-Americans, as 91.3% speak "English only". In 1979, the 8 million respondents of Polish ancestry reported that only 41.5 percent had single ancestry, whereas 57.3% of Greeks, 52% of Italians and Sicilian
Tel Aviv Museum of Art
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was established in 1932 in a building, the home of Tel Aviv's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff; the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art opened in 1959. The museum moved to its current location on King Saul Avenue in 1971. Another wing was added in 1999 and the Lola Beer Ebner Sculpture Garden was established; the museum contains "The Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Art Education Center", opened since 1988. The museum houses a comprehensive collection of classical and contemporary art Israeli art, a sculpture garden and a youth wing; the museum hosted the semi-final allocation draw for the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 on 28 January 2019. The Museum's collection represents some of the leading artists of the first half of the 20th century and many of the major movements of modern art in this period: Fauvism, German Expressionism, Futurism, Russian Constructivism, the De Stijl movement and Surrealism, French art, from the Impressionists and Post- Impressionists to the School of Paris including works of Chaim Soutine, key works by Pablo Picasso from the Blue and Neo-Classical period to his Late Period, Cubist paintings by Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, several sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz, Surrealists works of Joan Miró.
In 1989, the American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein created a giant two-panel mural for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. It hangs in the entrance foyer; the Collection includes several masterpieces, among them the painting Friedericke Maria Beer, 1916 by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt and Untitled Improvisation V, 1914, by the Russian master Wassily Kandinsky. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, donated in 1950, includes 36 works by Abstract and Surrealist artists, including works of Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes, Richard Pousette-Dart, Surrealists works by Yves Tanguy, Roberto Matta, André Masson. Sculptures are displayed in an internal sculpture garden. In addition to a permanent collection, the museum hosts temporary exhibitions of individual artists' work and group shows curated around a common theme; the museum hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 semi final allocation draw on 28 January 2019. The ceremony was hosted by Lucy Ayoub, two of the presenters for the contest in May. In November 2011, the Herta and Paul Amir Building on the western side of the museum opened.
It houses an Israeli Architecture Archive, a new section of Photography and Visual arts. The new building was designed by architect Preston Scott Cohen; the new wing houses 18,500 square feet of gallery space over five floors. The Amir building contains Pastel, a fine dining restaurant led by Chef Hilel Tavakuli; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Cosmetics
Cosmetics are substances or products used to enhance or alter the appearance of the face or fragrance and texture of the body. Many cosmetics are designed for use of applying to the face and body, they are mixtures of chemical compounds. Cosmetics applied to the face to enhance its appearance are called make-up or makeup. Common make-up items include: lipstick, eye shadow, foundation and contour. Whereas other common cosmetics can include skin cleansers, body lotions and conditioner, hairstyling products and cologne. In the U. S. the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates cosmetics, defines cosmetics as "intended to be applied to the human body for cleansing, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance without affecting the body's structure or functions". This broad definition includes any material intended for use as a component of a cosmetic product; the FDA excludes pure soap from this category. The word cosmetics derives from the Greek κοσμητικὴ τέχνη, meaning "technique of dress and ornament", from κοσμητικός, "skilled in ordering or arranging" and that from κόσμος, meaning amongst others "order" and "ornament".
Cosmetics have been in use for thousands of years. The absence of regulation of the manufacture and use of cosmetics has led to negative side effects, deformities and death through the ages. Examples are the prevalent use of ceruse, to cover the face during the Renaissance, blindness caused by the mascara Lash Lure during the early 20th century. Egyptian men and women used makeup to enhance their appearance, they were fond of eyeliner and eye-shadows in dark colors including blue and black. Ancient Sumerian men and women were the first to invent and wear lipstick, about 5,000 years ago, they crushed gemstones and used them to decorate their faces on the lips and around the eyes. Around 3000 BC to 1500 BC, women in the ancient Indus Valley Civilization applied red tinted lipstick to their lips for face decoration. Ancient Egyptians extracted red dye from fucus-algin, 0.01% iodine, some bromine mannite, but this dye resulted in serious illness. Lipsticks with shimmering effects were made using a pearlescent substance found in fish scales.
Six thousand year old relics of the hollowed out tombs of the Ancient Egyptian pharaohs are discovered. According to one source, early major developments include: Kohl used by ancient Egypt as a protectant of the eye. Castor oil used by ancient Egypt as a protective balm. Skin creams made of beeswax, olive oil, rose water, described by Romans. Vaseline and lanolin in the nineteenth century; the Ancient Greeks used cosmetics as the Ancient Romans did. Cosmetics are mentioned in the Old Testament, such as in 2 Kings 9:30, where Jezebel painted her eyelids—approximately 840 BC—and in the book of Esther, where beauty treatments are described. One of the most popular traditional Chinese medicines is the fungus Tremella fuciformis, used as a beauty product by women in China and Japan; the fungus increases moisture retention in the skin and prevents senile degradation of micro-blood vessels in the skin, reducing wrinkles and smoothing fine lines. Other anti-aging effects come from increasing the presence of superoxide dismutase in the brain and liver.
Tremella fuciformis is known in Chinese medicine for nourishing the lungs. In the Middle Ages, it seemed natural that the face should be whitened and the cheeks rouged. During the sixteenth century, the personal attributes of the women who used make-up created a demand for the product among the upper class. Cosmetic use was frowned upon at many points in Western history. For example, in the 19th century, Queen Victoria publicly declared make-up improper and acceptable only for use by actors. Many women in the 19th century liked to be thought of as fragile ladies, they emphasized their delicacy and femininity. They aimed always to look interesting. Sometimes ladies discreetly used a little rouge on the cheeks and used "belladonna" to dilate their eyes so it would make them stand out more. Make-up was frowned upon in general during the 1870s when social etiquette became more rigid. Teachers and clergywomen were forbidden from the use of cosmetic products. During the 19th century, there was a high number of incidences of lead-poisoning because of the fashion for red and white lead makeup and powder.
This led to swelling and inflammation of the eyes, weakened tooth enamel, caused the skin to blacken. Heavy use was known to lead to death. However, in the second part of the 19th century, great advances were made in chemistry from the chemical fragrances that enabled a much easier production of cosmetic products, it was acceptable for actresses in the 1800s to use makeup, famous beauties such as Sarah Bernhardt and Lillie Langtry could be powdered. Most cosmetic products available were still either chemically dubious or found in the kitchen amid food coloring and beetroot. By the middle of the 20th century, cosmetics were in widespread use by women in nearly all industrial societies around the world. In 1968 at the feminist Miss America protest, protestors symbolically threw a number of feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can." This included cosmetics, which were among items the protestors called "instruments of female torture" and accouterments of what they perceived to be enforced femininity.
As of 2016, the world's
Manhattan
Manhattan referred to locally as the City, is the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City and its economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U. S. state of New York. The borough consists of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson and Harlem rivers. S. mainland, physically connected to the Bronx and separated from the rest of Manhattan by the Harlem River. Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each aligned with the borough's long axis: Lower and Upper Manhattan. Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial and entertainment capital of the world, the borough hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, Manhattan is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization: the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
Many multinational media conglomerates are based in Manhattan, the borough has been the setting for numerous books and television shows. Manhattan real estate has since become among the most expensive in the world, with the value of Manhattan Island, including real estate, estimated to exceed US$3 trillion in 2013. Manhattan traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan. Manhattan is documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders, which equals $1038 in current terms; the territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York, based in present-day Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790; the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty and peace.
Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898. New York County is the United States' second-smallest county by land area, is the most densely populated U. S. county. It is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a census-estimated 2017 population of 1,664,727 living in a land area of 22.83 square miles, or 72,918 residents per square mile, higher than the density of any individual U. S. city. On business days, the influx of commuters increases this number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York City's five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, is the smallest borough in terms of land area. Manhattan Island is informally divided into three areas, each aligned with its long axis: Lower and Upper Manhattan. Many districts and landmarks in Manhattan are well known, as New York City received a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017, Manhattan hosts three of the world's 10 most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, Grand Central Terminal.
The borough hosts many prominent bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge. Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement; the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the city's government. Numerous colleges and universities are located in Manhattan, including Columbia University, New York University, Cornell Tech, Weill Cornell Medical College, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top 40 in the world; the name Manhattan derives from the Munsee dialect of the Lenape language'manaháhtaan'. The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the bows". According to a Munsee tradition recorded in the 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at the lower end, considered ideal for the making of bows.
It was first recorded in writing as Manna-hata, in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht Halve Maen. A 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. Alternative folk etymologies include "island of many hills", "the island where we all became intoxicated" and "island", as well as a phrase descriptive of the whirlpool at Hell Gate; the area, now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – became the first documented European to visit the area that would become New York City, he entered the tidal strait now known as The Narrows and named the land around Upper New York
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