1.
Pasadena, California
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Pasadena /ˌpæsəˈdiːnə/ is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of 2013, the population of Pasadena was 139,731. Pasadena is the ninth-largest city in Los Angeles County, Pasadena was incorporated on June 19,1886, becoming one of the first cities be incorporated in what is now Los Angeles County, the only one being incorporated earlier being its namesake. It is one of the cultural centers of the San Gabriel Valley. The city is known for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game, the original inhabitants of Pasadena and surrounding areas were members of the Native American Hahamog-na tribe, a branch of the Tongva Nation. They spoke the Tongva language and had lived in the Los Angeles Basin for thousands of years, Tongva dwellings lined the Arroyo Seco in present day Pasadena and south to where it joins the Los Angeles River and along other natural waterways in the city. The native people lived in thatched, dome-shape lodges and they lived on a diet of acorn meal, seeds and herbs, venison, and other small animals. They traded for fish with the coastal Tongva. They made cooking vessels from steatite soapstone from Catalina Island, the trail has been in continuous use for thousands of years. An arm of the trail is still in use in what is now known as Salvia Canyon. When the Spanish occupied the Los Angeles Basin they built the San Gabriel Mission and renamed the local Tongva people Gabrielino Indians, today, several bands of Tongva people live in the Los Angeles area. The Rancho comprised the lands of todays communities of Pasadena, Altadena, before the annexation of California in 1848, the last of the Mexican owners was Manuel Garfias who retained title to the property after statehood in 1850. Garfias sold sections of the property to the first Anglo settlers to come into the area, Dr. Benjamin Eaton, the father of Fred Eaton, much of the property was purchased by Benjamin Wilson, who established his Lake Vineyard property in the vicinity. Wilson, known as Don Benito to the local Indians, also owned the Rancho Jurupa and was mayor of Los Angeles and he was the grandfather of WWII General George S. Patton, Jr. and the namesake of Mount Wilson. Berry was an asthmatic and claimed that he had his best three nights sleep at Rancho San Pascual, to keep the find a secret, Berry code-named the area Muscat after the grape that Wilson grew. To raise funds to bring the company of people to San Pascual, Berry formed the Southern California Orange and Citrus Growers Association and sold stock in it. The newcomers were able to purchase a portion of the property along the Arroyo Seco and on January 31,1874. As a gesture of good will, Wilson added 2,000 acres of then-useless highland property, at the time, the Indiana Colony was a narrow strip of land between the Arroyo Seco and Fair Oaks Avenue
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Art museum
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An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
4.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
5.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
6.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
7.
Asia
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Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres, about 30% of Earths total land area and 8. 7% of the Earths total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its large size and population. In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, the western boundary with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains, China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 A. D. The accidental discovery of America by Columbus in search for India demonstrates this deep fascination, the Silk Road became the main East-West trading route in the Asian hitherland while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, the boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal. This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia, the border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics. In Sweden, five years after Peters death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia, the Russians were enthusiastic about the concept, which allowed them to keep their European identity in geography. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg, the latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century, the border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, the border between Asia and the loosely defined region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Malay Archipelago. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the possessions of the various empires there. Lewis and Wigen assert, The narrowing of Southeast Asia to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process, Asia is larger and more culturally diverse than Europe. It does not exactly correspond to the borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system on the grounds there is no or is no substantial physical separation between them
8.
Sculpture garden
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A sculpture garden or sculpture park is an outdoor garden dedicated to the presentation of sculpture, usually several permanently sited works in durable materials in landscaped surroundings. A sculpture garden may be private, owned by a museum and accessible freely or for a fee, or public, some cities own large numbers of public sculptures, some of which they may present together in city parks. Exhibits range from individual, traditional sculptures to large site-specific installations, Sculpture gardens may also vary greatly in size and scope, either featuring the collected works of multiple artists, or the artwork of a single individual. Sculpture gardens have a long history around the world - the oldest known collection of constructions is a Neanderthal sculpture garden unearthed in Bruniquel Cave in France in 1990. Within the cave, broken stalagmites were arranged in a series of stacked or ring-like structures approximately 175,000 years ago, in the United States, the oldest public sculpture garden is a part of the joint park and wildlife preserve Brookgreen Gardens, located in South Carolina. The property was opened in 1932, and has since included on the National Register of Historic Places. Blázquez Abascal, Jimena, Valeria Varas, and Raúl Rispa, Sculpture Parks in Europe, A Guide to Art and Nature. Art Parks, A Tour of Americas Sculpture Parks and Gardens, ISBN 978-1616891299 Harper, Glenn, and Twylene Moyer, eds. Landscapes for Art, Contemporary Sculpture Parks, hamilton, NJ, ISC Press, and Seattle, University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0295988610 Media related to Sculpture parks at Wikimedia Commons
9.
Pasadena Tournament of Roses
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The Rose Parade, also known as the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Parade presented by Honda, is part of Americas New Year Celebration held in Pasadena, California each year on New Years Day. The parade includes flower-covered floats, marching bands, and equestrian units and is followed by the Rose Bowl college football game and it is produced by the nonprofit Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association. It is seen by millions more on television worldwide in more than 100 international territories and countries, the Rose Bowl is a college football game that was added in 1902 to help fund the cost of staging the parade. Since 2011, the parade has been sponsored by Honda, accordingly, the company has the parades first float, which like all floats, follows the parades theme. The 2017 parade featured 44 floats,19 equestrian units with approximately 400 horses, the Grand Marshals of the parade were Greg Louganis, Janet Evans and Allyson Felix. Members of Pasadenas Valley Hunt Club first staged the parade in 1890, since then the parade has been held in Pasadena every New Years Day, except when January 1 falls on a Sunday. In that case, it is held on the subsequent Monday and this exception was instituted in 1893, as organizers did not wish to disturb horses hitched outside Sunday church services. Many of the members of the Valley Hunt Club were former residents of the American East and Midwest and they wished to showcase their new California homes mild winter weather. At a club meeting, Professor Charles F, holder announced, In New York, people are buried in the snow. Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear, lets hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise. So the club organized horse-drawn carriages covered in flowers, followed by foot races, polo matches, upon seeing the scores of flowers on display, the professor decided to suggest the name Tournament of Roses. Over the next few founding years, marching bands and motorized floats were added, by 1895, the event was too large for the Valley Hunt Club to handle, hence the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association was formed. Activities soon included ostrich races, bronco busting demonstrations, and an odd novelty race between a camel and an elephant, soon reviewing stands were built along the parade route and newspapers in Eastern Seaboard cities started to take notice of the event. Tournament House is the given the former home where the organization is headquartered. The first associated football game was played on January 1,1902, originally titled the Tournament East-West football game, it is considered to be the first Rose Bowl. The next game was not played until New Years Day 1916, the game derives its modern name from Rose Bowl Stadium, which was built for the 1923 game. In 2002 and 2006, the Granddaddy of em all was not held the day as the parade. Not all fans were pleased with the change, some thought the atmosphere, once the BCS title game was separated from the host bowl, it no longer affected the date of the Rose Bowl Game
10.
Rose Parade
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The Rose Parade, also known as the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Parade presented by Honda, is part of Americas New Year Celebration held in Pasadena, California each year on New Years Day. The parade includes flower-covered floats, marching bands, and equestrian units and is followed by the Rose Bowl college football game and it is produced by the nonprofit Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association. It is seen by millions more on television worldwide in more than 100 international territories and countries, the Rose Bowl is a college football game that was added in 1902 to help fund the cost of staging the parade. Since 2011, the parade has been sponsored by Honda, accordingly, the company has the parades first float, which like all floats, follows the parades theme. The 2017 parade featured 44 floats,19 equestrian units with approximately 400 horses, the Grand Marshals of the parade were Greg Louganis, Janet Evans and Allyson Felix. Members of Pasadenas Valley Hunt Club first staged the parade in 1890, since then the parade has been held in Pasadena every New Years Day, except when January 1 falls on a Sunday. In that case, it is held on the subsequent Monday and this exception was instituted in 1893, as organizers did not wish to disturb horses hitched outside Sunday church services. Many of the members of the Valley Hunt Club were former residents of the American East and Midwest and they wished to showcase their new California homes mild winter weather. At a club meeting, Professor Charles F, holder announced, In New York, people are buried in the snow. Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear, lets hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise. So the club organized horse-drawn carriages covered in flowers, followed by foot races, polo matches, upon seeing the scores of flowers on display, the professor decided to suggest the name Tournament of Roses. Over the next few founding years, marching bands and motorized floats were added, by 1895, the event was too large for the Valley Hunt Club to handle, hence the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association was formed. Activities soon included ostrich races, bronco busting demonstrations, and an odd novelty race between a camel and an elephant, soon reviewing stands were built along the parade route and newspapers in Eastern Seaboard cities started to take notice of the event. Tournament House is the given the former home where the organization is headquartered. The first associated football game was played on January 1,1902, originally titled the Tournament East-West football game, it is considered to be the first Rose Bowl. The next game was not played until New Years Day 1916, the game derives its modern name from Rose Bowl Stadium, which was built for the 1923 game. In 2002 and 2006, the Granddaddy of em all was not held the day as the parade. Not all fans were pleased with the change, some thought the atmosphere, once the BCS title game was separated from the host bowl, it no longer affected the date of the Rose Bowl Game
11.
Galka Scheyer
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Galka Scheyer was a German-American painter, art dealer, art collector, and teacher. She was the founder of the Blue Four, an group that consisted of Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee. By 1916, she was working as a painter in Brussels, Scheyers commitment to the Blue Four began in 1915, when she first saw the work of Russian artist Jawlensky in Lausanne, Switzerland. She organized his participation in a show at Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden. That same year, on a trip to the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, Jawlensky introduced her to Feininger, Kandinsky and Klee, who were instructors at the avant-garde art school. From 1924 on, Scheyer represented the Blue Four in the United States, organizing the first American exhibition of their work at the Charles Daniel Gallery, New York, in 1925. The next year she travelled to the west coast and began arranging exhibits of work by the Blue Four, Scheyer initially settled in the Bay Area. In 1926 she was named the European representative of the Oakland Art Gallery and she also taught art at the Anna Head School in Berkeley in the 1920s. By 1930 she decided to move to Los Angeles, basing that decision on sales to the Arensbergs, in her promotional zeal, Scheyer even lent works by the Blue Four as props in movies. Scheyer had met architect Rudolph Schindler and lived briefly in his Kings Road House in 1931, Scheyers continuous efforts to promote the Blue Four widened the influence of European modernism in the United States. John Cage and Diego Rivera were among those introduced to the work of artists through Scheyer. Scheyer also posed for Jawlensky frequently, and in 1927, artist Lucretia Van Horn painted a portrait of Scheyer, Arensbergs donation required UCLA to provide a building for his collection within five years, Scheyer further stipulated that the university must publish a modest catalogue of her collection. When UCLA failed to meet the conditions, the Arensberg collection went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the museums curator, John Coplans, regarded the Scheyer collection as its greatest cultural asset. Norton Simon took over the facility in 1974, a sampling of the Scheyer holding is frequently on view at the Norton Simon Museum. Simon fulfilled that obligation in 1976, confirming the ownership of the collection. But Simon, who had little interest in commissioning complete, scholarly studies of his holdings and her correspondence, the Galka Scheyer papers from 1917 to 1945, are part of the Archives of American Art. In 1960, the University Gallery at the University of Minnesota exhibited paintings, drawings, isabel Wünsche, Galka E. Scheyer & Die Blaue Vier, Briefwechsel 1924–1945. Wabern, Bern 2006, ISBN 3-7165-1429-2 Vivian Endicott Barnett, Die Gründung der Blauen Vier und ihre Präsentation in New York 1924–1925
12.
Pasadena Art Museum
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The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum, the museum contains the Norton Simon Theater which shows film programs daily, and hosts lectures, symposia, and dance and musical performances year-round. The museum is located along the route of the Tournament of Rosess Rose Parade, the Museum filled a void, being the only modern art museum between San Francisco and La Jolla in California at the time. It was renowned for art exhibits and supported the work of local contemporary artists such as Helen Lundeberg, John McLaughlin. Hopps later drew up a short list of California architects for a new building, including Richard Neutra, Charles Eames, John Lautner, Craig Ellwood. Hopps insisted on an architect because he expected a high level of interaction throughout the design process. A new Pasadena Art Museum building was completed in 1969, designed by Pasadena architects Thornton Ladd, the distinctive and modern curvilinear exterior facade is faced in 115,000 glazed tiles, in varying rich brown tones with an undulating surface, made by renowned ceramic artisan Edith Heath. Hopps resigned before the museum opened, in the early 1970s, due to an ambitious schedule of exhibits and the new building project, the museum began to experience serious financial hardships. He was first approached for assistance in 1971 by trustees of the museum. In 1974, the museum and Simon came to an agreement, the remainder was used to display the Pasadena museums contemporary collection. A new 10-member board of trustees was formed, consisting of four members from Simons group, Simon also became responsible for the collection and building projects, in return the museum was renamed to Norton Simon Museum and renovated at a reported cost of more than $3 million. Simon died in 1993, and the actress Jennifer Jones, his widow and chairwoman of the board, made corrective, conciliatory moves that have repositioned the museum and its two collections. In 1995, the museum began a major $5 million renovation with the architect Frank Gehry, the gardens were redesigned by Power and Associates to house the 20th-century sculpture collection in an engaging setting. The new Norton Simon Theater was the element of the renovation, designed by Gensler & Associates. The Norton Simon Museum, which more than 11,000 objects. As of 2014, their public filings placed the combined value of the artworks at about $2.5 billion. The museum makes relatively little effort to expand the collection amassed by its founder, for more than three decades after it was founded in 1975, the Norton Simon Museum maintained a no-loans policy. In 2007 the board agreed to select works to museums including the National Gallery in Washington
13.
Grace Nicholson
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Grace Nicholson was an American art collector and art dealer, specializing in Native American and Chinese handicrafts. The space she originally designed for her shop is now home to the USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, Grace Nicholson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, daughter of Franklin Nicholson and Rose Dennington Nicholson. Her father was an attorney, and her mother trained as an educator, Rose Nicholson died from complications following Graces birth, when Grace was a teen, her father also died, and she was sent to live with her paternal grandparents. They both died in 1901, leaving her an inheritance, Nicholson attended Philadelphia High School for Girls, graduating in the class of 1896. She briefly worked as a stenographer after high school, in 1901, using her inheritance, Nicholson moved to California, and soon opened a small shop in Pasadena, selling Native American handicrafts such as baskets and weaving. She hired crafters to teach traditional beadwork and other skills, she rented space to local artists and she traveled extensively in the rural western and Southwestern United States, worked with local dealers to build her collection, and corresponded with East Coast collectors to sell the objects. Nicholson acquired artifacts for sale, but also for major museums such as the Smithsonian Institution and she lectured about the Indian to churches and civic groups. In recognition of her expertise, Nicholson was elected to the American Anthropological Association in 1904, as a member of the Anthropological Society, she joined a tour group that visited horticulturist Luther Burbank in 1905, in Santa Rosa, California. In 1909, she was awarded a medal at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, for a display of baskets. In 1924, she designed a new building for her collections, the architectural firm of Marston, Van Pelt & Maybury worked with Nicholson to realize her vision. Her design, nicknamed the Treasure House, borrowed elements from buildings she had seen in China, the building was opened as an art gallery and shop in 1925, although the interior garden courtyard was not completed until 1929. The Los Angeles Times regularly included Nicholsons gallery in listings of local art events and she hosted an especially eclectic display of European tapestries and Persian pottery in 1928. Her building was deeded to the City of Pasadena in 1943, Nicholson was an active charter member of the Zonta Club of Pasadena, and hosted meetings at her home, including a 1929 Christmas party attended by Amelia Earhart. Nicholsons papers and photographs were donated to the Huntington Library in 1968, Nicholsons 1925 building is now home to the USC Pacific Asia Museum. Much of her collection of artifacts was incorporated into the holdings of the Smithsonians National Museum of the American Indian. Another large collection of items purchased from Nicholson was bequeathed to the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, a Grace Nicholson scholarship for women students who demonstrate artistic talent was established at Scripps College in 1951
14.
Pacific Asia Museum
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USC Pacific Asia Museum is an Asian art museum located at 46 N. Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, California, United States, the museum was founded in 1971 by the Pacificulture Foundation, which purchased “The Grace Nicholson Treasure House of Oriental Art” from the City of Pasadena. Grace Nicholson donated the structure to the city for art and cultural purposes in 1943 and was a dealer in Native American and, later, Asian art and it houses some 15,000 rare and representative examples of art from throughout Asia and the Pacific Islands. In 2013, the became part of the University of Southern California. The building is temporarily closed beginning June 27,2016 until mid-spring 2017 for a seismic retrofit, the building, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1926 and designed by the architectural firm of Marston, Van Pelt & Maybury. It is designed in the style of a Chinese imperial palace and features a courtyard with a garden, a small pool. US-China Today has an article and slide show on the exhibit and a video featuring the curator, china Modern, Designing Popular Culture 1910-1970 Japan in Blue and White Chinese garden - the museum courtyard official USC Pacific Asia Museum website
15.
San Francisco, California
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
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La Jolla, California
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La Jolla is a hilly seaside community within the city of San Diego, California, United States occupying 7 miles of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean within the northern city limits. The population reported in the 2010 Census was 46,781, Local Native Americans, the Kumeyaay, called this location mat kulaaxuuy, lit. land of holes. The topographic feature that gave rise to the holes is uncertain, it probably refers to sea-level caves located on the north-facing bluffs. It is suggested that the Kumeyaay name for the area was transcribed by the Spanish settlers as La Jolla, an alternative, pseudo-etymological suggestion for the origin of the name is that it is an alternate spelling of the Spanish word la joya, which means the jewel. Despite being disputed by scholars, this derivation of the name has been cited in popular culture. That supposed origin gave rise to the nickname Jewel City, during the Mexican period of San Diegos history, La Jolla was mapped as pueblo land and contained about 60 lots. When California became a state in 1850, the La Jolla area was incorporated as part of the chartered City of San Diego, in 1870 Charles Dean acquired several of the pueblo lots and subdivided them into an area that became known as La Jolla Park. Dean was unable to develop the land and left San Diego in 1881, a real estate boom in the 1880s led speculators Frank T. Botsford and George W. Heald to further develop the sparsely settled area. In the 1890s the San Diego, Pacific Beach, and La Jolla Railway was built, La Jolla became known as a resort area. To attract visitors to the beach, the railway built facilities such as a bath house, visitors were housed in small cottages and bungalows above La Jolla Cove, as well as a temporary tent city, erected every summer. The La Jolla Park Hotel opened in 1893, the Hotel Cabrillo was built in 1908 by Squire James A. Wilson and was later incorporated into the La Valencia Hotel. By 1900, La Jolla comprised 100 buildings and 350 residents, the first reading room was built in 1898. A volunteer fire brigade was organized in 1907, the city of San Diego established a fire house in 1914. Livery stable owner Nathan Rannells served successively as La Jollas volunteer fire captain, first police officer, the Bishops School opened in 1909. La Jolla High School was established in 1922, the La Jolla Beach and Yacht Club was built in 1927. In 1896 journalist and publisher Ellen Browning Scripps settled in La Jolla and she was wealthy in her own right from her investments and writing, and she inherited a large sum from her brother George H. Scripps in 1900. Unmarried and childless, she devoted herself to philanthropic endeavors, particularly those benefiting her adopted home of La Jolla and she commissioned many of La Jollas most notable buildings, usually designed by Irving Gill or his nephew and partner Louis John Gill. Her donations also launched the Scripps Memorial Hospital in 1924, the Scripps Metabolic Clinic, Ellen Browning Scripps also founded Scripps College, a womens college, in 1926
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Helen Lundeberg
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Helen Lundeberg was a Southern Californian painter. Along with her husband Lorser Feitelson, she is credited with establishing the Post-Surrealist movement and her artistic style changed over the course of her career, and has been described variously as Post-Surrealism, Hard-edge painting, and Subjective Classicism. Helen Lundeberg was born in Chicago in on June 24,1908, in 1912 her family moved to Pasadena, California. As a child, she was a student and an avid reader. Her intellectual aptitude earned her inclusion in a Stanford University study for brilliant children in the Los Angeles area, during her early adulthood, Lundebergs inclination was to become a writer. In 1930, Lundeberg graduated from Pasadena Junior College and she enrolled in art classes at the Stickney Memorial School of Art in Pasadena, where she met professor and fellow painter Lorser Feitelson. Feitelsons dynamic approach to composition and broad ranging interests in the art scene inspired Lundeberg. In the 1930s, Lundeberg was working in both the social realist and post-surrealist styles and she first exhibited at the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego in 1931, when she showed her painting Apple Harvesters. In 1933 had her first solo show at the Stanley Rose Gallery in Los Angeles and she and Feitelson married that same year. Together in 1934, Feitelson and Lundeberg founded Subjective Classicism, which became known as Post Surrealism. Using her painting Plant and Animal Analogies as a case study, Post Surrealism represented the first concentrated response in the US to European Surrealism. Unlike their European counterparts, American Post-Surrealist artists did not rely on random dream imagery, instead, carefully planned subjects were used to guide the viewer through the painting, gradually revealing a deeper meaning. This method of working appealed to Lundebergs highly intellectual sensibilities and her engagement with surrealism is present, to varying degrees, in her work throughout the rest of her career. From 1936 to 1942, Lundeberg was employed by the Works Progress Administrations Federal Art Project, for which she produced lithographs, easel paintings, and murals in the Los Angeles area. Working in oil paint and with a team of four assistants and these murals were removed from the building in the 1970s and are now considered lost. In 1941, the WPA commissioned Lundeberg to paint a mural at the Fullerton City Hall, Lundebergs mural, History of California, covered three walls of the city council chambers with scenes ranging from the arrival of Spanish explorers to the rise of Hollywood. When the building was converted into police headquarters, the mural was painted over, also under the auspices of the WPA, Lundeberg completed the mural History of Transportation near the southern border of Edward Vincent, Jr. Park in Inglewood, California. This 8 foot high,241 foot long, mural is made of petrachrome and it includes images of people from all walks of life employing various means of transportation from carriages and steam trains to automobiles and airplanes
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John McLaughlin (artist)
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John Dwyer McLaughlin was a highly pivotal and significant American abstract painter. Based primarily in California, he was a pioneer in minimalism and he aimed to create paintings devoid of any object hood including but not limited to a gestures, representations, figuration, and so on. This led him to the rectangle, leveraging a technique of layering rectangular bars on adjacent planes, McLaughlin creates works that provoke introspection and, consequently, a greater understanding of one’s relationship to nature. Christopher Knight affirms McLaughlin is among the most profound avant-garde painters to work in the United States in the aftermath of the cataclysm that was World War II, in the wake of the Holocaust and Hiroshima, those artists stared straight into the void. Void is not an abyss of social and spiritual terror in which interior narratives of worldly experience can be told, instead, his is the negative space that allows consciousness to blossom and manifest itself. Their art is about inviting us into their deep perception, while his is about inviting us into our own, mcLaughlin’s void is ma, the poetic space and interval between things that animate Japanese art. John McLaughlin was born in Sharon, Massachusetts and his father was a Massachusetts Superior Court judge and he had six siblings. His parents instilled in him an interest in art, most specifically Asian art, McLaughlin served in both World Wars. His service in the United States Navy during World War I spanned from 1917 to 1921, in 1928 he married Florence Emerson, a grandniece of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1935 they moved to Japan, where McLaughlin studied the art, when they returned to Boston in 1938, they opened The Tokaido, Inc. an art gallery which specialized in Japanese prints and other Asian items. After studying Japanese at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, he served the United States Marine Corps in World War II as a translator, later in the war, he worked in U. S. Army Intelligence as a translator in Japan, India, China and Burma. In 1945 he was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service, McLaughlin had begun painting during the 1930s, relatively late in life. He was self-taught, without receiving formal artistic training and his fondness for Asian art and his travels in that part of the world influenced his artistic style. He settled in Dana Point, California in 1946 and began painting full-time, a few of his earliest paintings were still lifes and landscapes, but the remainder of his pieces were abstracts. During this time period, he was one of just a few American artists creating abstracts, McLaughlins work is characterized by a simplicity expressed as precise geometric forms, usually rectangles. His experiences in Asia were very important in developing his style, Zen masters taught that spaces between objects could be more important than the objects themselves in facilitating meditation. The work of Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian also strongly influenced McLaughlin and he wrote, With respect to my direct influences I must stress my interest in 15th and 16th century Japanese painters. From 1952 onward, he ceased using curves in his work, paintings from his later period show increasing simplification of form and color palette
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Sam Francis
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Samuel Lewis Francis was an American painter and printmaker. Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California, the son of Katherine Lewis Francis and Samuel Augustus Francis, Sr. The 1935 death of his mother, who had encouraged his interest in music affected him deeply, Francis served in the United States Air Force during World War II before being injured during test flight maneuvers. He was in the hospital for years, and it was while there, after being visited by artist David Park in 1945. Once out of the hospital he returned to Berkeley, this time to study art and he received both his BA degree and MA degree from University of California, Berkeley, where he studied botany, medicine and psychology. Francis was initially influenced by the work of abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky and he spent the 1950s in Paris, having his first exhibition there at the Galerie Nina Dausset in 1952. While in Paris he became associated with Tachisme, and had his work championed by art critics Michel Tapié, between 1950 and 1958 Francis spent time and painted in Paris, the south of France, Tokyo, Mexico City, Bern and New York. His artistic development was affected by his exposure to French modern painting, Asian culture, after his 1953 painting Big Red was included in the 1956 exhibition Twelve Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Francis began a rapid rise to international prominence. Francis painted large murals for the Kunsthalle, Basel in 1956-8 and for the Chase Manhattan Bank, between 1960 and 1963 he created several series of works, including the Blue Balls series. Consisting of biomorphic predominantly blue forms and drips, these works referenced the pain that resulted from the tuberculosis that he suffered in 1961. Francis returned to California during the 1960s and continued painting, mainly in Los Angeles, in 1965 Francis started a series of paintings that featured large areas of open canvas, minimal color and strong line. His work evolved further after he began intensive Jungian analysis with Dr. James Kirsch in 1971 and began paying attention to his dreams. Francis works of the early 1970s have been referred to as Fresh Air pictures, created by adding pools, drips and splatters of color to wet bands of paint applied with a roller, these works re-asserted the artists interest in color. By 1973–4 many of Francis paintings featured a grid or matrix made up of crossing tracks of color. Many of these works were large in scale, measuring up to twenty feet long. After 1980 the formal structure of the grid gradually disappeared from Francis work and he was extremely active as a printmaker, creating numerous etchings, lithographs and monotypes, many of which were executed in Santa Monica at the Litho Shop, which Francis owned. In 1984 Francis founded The Lapis Press with the goal of producing unusual and he died in Santa Monica and was buried in Olema, in Marin County, California. Sam Francis was married five times, and was the father of four children and he was married from 1947 through 1952 to Vera Miller, a high school girlfriend, then to California painter Muriel Goodwin then to Japanese painter Teruko Yokoi with whom he had a daughter, Kayo
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New Painting of Common Objects
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The exhibition New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1962 was the first museum survey of American pop art. The eight artists included were, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, Phillip Hefferton, Robert Dowd, Edward Ruscha, Joe Goode and Wayne Thiebaud. It was curated by Walter Hopps, who had given Andy Warhol his first solo show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles the previous year. The show helped the pop art movement gain critical acceptance, preceding the Guggenheim Museums 1963 pop art exhibition Six Painters, the artists came from different backgrounds. Thiebaud was a teacher at the University of California at Davis, Lichtenstein, Hefferton and Dowd had previously worked in the Abstract Expressionist style. Dine had been associated with Happenings in New York, Warhol had been a successful commercial artist. The youngest members of the group, old highschool friends Ruscha and Goode, had recently left art school and were supporting themselves with graphic design work, in particular, Ruscha worked as a layout artist for the Carson-Roberts Advertising Agency in Los Angeles
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Marcel Duchamp
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Duchamp has had an immense impact on twentieth-century and twenty first-century art. By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his artists as retinal art. Instead, Duchamp wanted to use art to serve the mind, Marcel Duchamp was born at Blainville-Crevon in Normandy, France, and grew up in a family that enjoyed cultural activities. The art of painter and engraver Émile Frédéric Nicolle, his grandfather, filled the house, and the family liked to play chess, read books, paint. Of Eugene and Lucie Duchamps seven children, one died as an infant, Marcel Duchamp was the brother of, Jacques Villon, painter, printmaker Raymond Duchamp-Villon, sculptor Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti, painter. At 8 years old, Duchamp followed in his brothers footsteps when he left home and began schooling at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille, two other students in his class also became well-known artists and lasting friends, Robert Antoine Pinchon and Pierre Dumont. For the next 8 years, he was locked into a regime which focused on intellectual development. Though he was not a student, his best subject was mathematics. He also won a prize for drawing in 1903, and at his commencement in 1904 he won a coveted first prize and he learned academic drawing from a teacher who unsuccessfully attempted to protect his students from Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and other avant-garde influences. However, Duchamps true artistic mentor at the time was his brother Jacques Villon, whose fluid, at 14, his first serious art attempts were drawings and watercolors depicting his sister Suzanne in various poses and activities. That summer he painted landscapes in an Impressionist style using oils. Duchamps early art works align with Post-Impressionist styles and he experimented with classical techniques and subjects. He studied art at the Académie Julian from 1904 to 1905, during this time Duchamp drew and sold cartoons which reflected his ribald humor. Many of the drawings use verbal puns, visual puns, or both, such play with words and symbols engaged his imagination for the rest of his life. In 1905, he began his military service with the 39th Infantry Regiment. There he learned typography and printing processes—skills he would use in his later work, due to his eldest brother Jacques membership in the prestigious Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture Duchamps work was exhibited in the 1908 Salon dAutomne. The following year his work was featured in the Salon des Indépendants, of Duchamps pieces in the show, critic Guillaume Apollinaire—who was to become a friend—criticized what he called Duchamps very ugly nudes. The group came to be known as the Puteaux Group, or the Section dOr, uninterested in the Cubists seriousness or in their focus on visual matters, Duchamp did not join in discussions of Cubist theory, and gained a reputation of being shy
22.
Kurt Schwitters
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Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany. He is most famous for his collages, called Merz Pictures, Kurt Schwitters was born on 20 June 1887 in Hanover, at Rumannstraße No.2, now, No. 8, the child of Eduard Schwitters and his wife Henriette. His father was proprietor of a clothes shop. In 1893, the moved to Waldstraße 5, future site of the Merzbau. In 1901, Schwitters suffered his first epileptic seizure, a condition that would exempt him from service in World War I until late in the war. After studying art at the Dresden Academy alongside Otto Dix and George Grosz, 1909–15, Schwitters returned to Hanover, in 1911 he took part in his first exhibition, in Hanover. As the First World War progressed his work became darker, gradually developing a distinctive expressionist tone, Schwitters spent the last one-and-half years of the war working as a drafter in a factory just outside Hanover. He was conscripted into the 73rd Hanoverian Regiment in March 1917, by his own account, his time as a draftsman influenced his later work, and inspired him to depict machines as metaphors of human activity. In the war I discovered my love for the wheel and realized that machines are abstractions of the human spirit and he married his cousin Helma Fischer on 5 October 1915. In 1918, his art was to change dramatically as a consequence of Germanys economic, political. In the war, things were in terrible turmoil, what I had learned at the academy was of no use to me and the useful new ideas were still unready. Everything had broken down and new things had to be out of the fragments. It was like a revolution within me, not as it was, Schwitters was to come into contact with Herwarth Walden after exhibiting expressionist paintings at the Hanover Secession in February 1918. He showed two Abstraktionen at Waldens gallery Der Sturm, in Berlin, in June 1918 and this resulted in meetings with members of the Berlin Avant-garde, including Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, and Hans Arp in the autumn of 1918. The night he introduced himself in the Café des Westens, im a painter, he said, and I nail my pictures together. Schwitters asked to join Berlin Dada either in late 1918 or early 1919, Hausmanns anecdote about Schwitters asking to join Berlin Dada is, however, somewhat dubious, for there is well-documented evidence that Schwitters and Huelsenbeck were on amicable terms at first. When they first met in 1919, Huelsenbeck was enthusiastic about Schwitters’s work and promised his assistance, when Huelsenbeck visited him at the end of the year, Schwitters gave him a lithograph and though their friendship was by now strained, Huelsenbeck wrote him a conciliatory note
23.
Joseph Cornell
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Joseph Cornell was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an experimental filmmaker. He was largely self-taught in his efforts, and improvised his own original style incorporating cast-off. He lived most of his life in relative isolation, cared for his parents and his disabled brother at home. Joseph Cornell was born in Nyack, New York, to Joseph Cornell, a designer and merchant of textiles, and Helen TenBroeck Storms Cornell. The Cornells had four children, Joseph, Elizabeth, Helen, both parents came from socially prominent families of Dutch ancestry, long-established in New York State. Cornells father died in 1917, leaving the family in strained circumstances, following the elder Cornells death, his wife and children moved to the borough of Queens in New York City. Cornell attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in the class of 1921, aside from the period he spent at the academy in Andover, Cornell never traveled beyond the New York City area. This led him to himself and become a self-taught artist. Although he expressed attraction to women like Lauren Bacall, his shyness made romantic relationships almost impossible. In later life his bashfulness verged toward reclusiveness, and he left the state of New York. However, he preferred talking with women, and often made their husbands wait in the room when he discussed business with them. He also had friendships with ballerinas, who found him unique. He devoted his life to caring for his younger brother Robert, who was disabled and lived with cerebral palsy, at some point in the 1920s, or possibly earlier, he read the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, including Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Cornell considered Eddys works to be among the most important books published after the Bible. Christian Science belief and practice informed Cornells art deeply, as art historian Sandra Leonard Starr has shown and he was also rather poor for most of his life, working during the 1920s as a wholesale fabric salesman to support his family. As a result of the American Great Depression, Cornell lost his textile industry job in 1931, during this time, through her friendship with Ethel Traphagen, Cornells mother secured him a part-time position designing textiles. In the 1940s, Cornell also worked in a plant nursery and briefly in a plant, and designed covers and feature layouts for Harpers Bazaar, View, Dance Index
24.
Richard Neutra
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Richard Joseph Neutra was an Austrian-American architect. Living and building for the majority of his career in Southern California, Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the 2nd district of Vienna, Austria Hungary, on April 8,1892 into a wealthy Jewish family. His Jewish-Hungarian father Samuel Neutra was a proprietor of a metal foundry, Richard had two brothers who also emigrated to the United States, and a sister who married in Vienna. Neutra attended the Sophiengymnasium in Vienna until 1910, and he studied under Adolf Loos at the Vienna University of Technology and he was a student of Max Fabiani and Karl Mayreder. In 1912 he undertook a trip to Italy and Balkans with Ernst Ludwig Freud. In June 1914, Neutras studies were interrupted when he was ordered to Trebinje and he took a leave in 1917 to return to the Technische Hochschule to take his final examinations. After World War I Neutra went to Switzerland where he worked with the landscape architect Gustav Ammann, in 1921 he served briefly as city architect in the German town of Luckenwalde, and later in the same year he joined the office of Erich Mendelsohn in Berlin. Neutra contributed to the competition entry for a new commercial centre for Haifa, Palestine. He married Dione Niedermann, the daughter of an architect, in 1922 and they had three sons, Frank L, Dion an architect and his fathers partner and Raymond Richard a physician and environmental epidemiologist. Neutra moved to the United States by 1923 and became a citizen in 1929. In California, he celebrated for rigorously geometric but airy structures that symbolized a West Coast variation on the mid-century modern residence. Clients included Edgar J. Kaufmann, Galka Scheyer, and Walter Conrad Arensberg, in the early 1930s, Neutras Los Angeles practice trained several young architects who went on to independent success, including Gregory Ain, Harwell Hamilton Harris, and Raphael Soriano. In 1932, he tried to move to the Soviet Union, to design workers housing that could be easily constructed. In 1932, Neutra was included in the seminal MoMA exhibition on architecture, curated by Philip Johnson. In 1949 Neutra formed a partnership with Robert E. Alexander that lasted until 1958, in 1955, the United States Department of State commissioned Neutra to design a new embassy in Karachi. In 1965 Neutra formed a partnership with his son Dion Neutra, between 1960 and 1970, Neutra created eight villas in Europe, four in Switzerland, three in Germany, and one in France. Prominent clients in this period included Gerd Bucerius, publisher of Die Zeit, Neutra died in Wuppertal, Germany, on April 16,1970, at the age of 78. Neutra sometimes used detailed questionnaires to discover his clients needs, much to their surprise and his domestic architecture was a blend of art, landscape, and practical comfort
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Charles Eames
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Among their most well-known designs is the Eames Lounge Chair. They also worked in the fields of industrial and graphic design, fine art, Charles Ormond Eames, Jr, was an American designer, architect and film maker. Along with his wife Ray Kaiser Eames he is responsible for groundbreaking contributions in the field of architecture, furniture design, industrial design, manufacturing and he briefly studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis on an architecture scholarship. After two years of study, he left the university, many sources claim that he was dismissed for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright and his interest in modern architects. The university reportedly dropped him because of his too modern views, other sources, less frequently cited, note that while a student, Charles Eames also was employed as an architect at the firm of Trueblood and Graf. The demands on his time from this employment and from his classes led to sleep-deprivation, while at Washington University, he met his first wife, Catherine Woermann, whom he married in 1929. A year later, they had a daughter, Lucia Jenkins, in 1930, Charles began his own architectural practice in St. Louis with partner Charles Gray. They were later joined by a partner, Walter Pauley. Charles Eames was greatly influenced by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, in order to apply for the Architecture and Urban Planning Program, Eames defined an area of focus—the St. Louis waterfront. Together with Eero Saarinen he designed prize-winning furniture for New Yorks Museum of Modern Art Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition, in 1941, Charles and Catherine divorced, and he married his Cranbrook colleague Bernice Kaiser, who was born in Sacramento, California. He then moved with her to Los Angeles, California, where they worked and lived until their deaths. In the late 1940s, as part of the Arts & Architecture magazines Case Study program, Charles Eames died of a heart attack on August 21,1978 while on a consulting trip in his native Saint Louis, and was buried in the Calvary Cemetery there. He now has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame, in 1970 and 1971, Charles Eames gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. He related the progression of design and its process where the leaf is transformed into something fantastically ornate. Ray-Bernice Alexandra Kaiser Eames was an American artist, designer, along with her husband Charles Eames she is responsible for groundbreaking contributions in the field of architecture, furniture design, industrial design, manufacturing and the photographic arts. She was born in Sacramento, California to Alexander and Edna Burr Kaiser and she spent her early childhood years with her parents in their apartment, and then moved to a bungalow outside of the town. Her parents taught her the quality of enjoyment which later led to inventions in furniture design and her parents also instilled the value of enjoyment of nature. She was a founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936, one of her paintings is in the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum of American Art
26.
John Lautner
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John Edward Lautner was an American architect. Following an apprenticeship in the mid 1930s with Frank Lloyd Wright, Lautner opened his own practice in 1938, Lautner practiced primarily in California, and the majority of his works were residential. Lautner was born in Marquette, Michigan, in 1911 and was of mixed Austrian and his father, John Edward Lautner, who migrated from Germany ca. 1870, was self-educated, but gained a place at the University of Michigan as an adult and then studied philosophy in Göttingen, Leipzig, Geneva and Paris. In 1901, he was appointed as head of French and German at the recently founded Marquette Northern State Normal School and his mother, Vida Cathleen Gallagher, was an interior designer and an accomplished painter. The Lautners were keenly interested in art and architecture and in May 1918, their Marquette home Keepsake, designed by Joy Wheeler Dow, was featured in the magazine The American Architect. A crucial early influence in Lautners life was the construction of the familys summer cabin, Midgaard. The Lautners designed and built the cabin themselves and his mother designed and painted all the interior details and he furthered his studies in Boston, Massachusetts and New York City. In 1933, Lautner graduated with a degree in Liberal Arts, in April 1933, after reading the autobiography of Frank Lloyd Wright, Vida Lautner approached the architect, who had recently launched his apprenticeship program at Taliesin. From 1933 to 1939, he worked and studied under Wright at the studios in Wisconsin, Lautner progressed rapidly under Wrights mentorship. The following year, he was assigned to what became a two-year project supervising a Wright-designed house in Marquette for MaryBuds mother and they worked together on around eleven Los Angeles projects over the next five years and their association continued sporadically. The Lautners arrived in Los Angeles in March 1938 and their first child Karol was born in May. In September 1938, Wright contacted him and this led to Lautners supervision of a series of Los Angeles domestic projects, during this period, Lautner worked with Wright on the designs of the Sturges House in Brentwood Heights, California and on the unbuilt Jester House. In the meantime, the Bell and Green projects had both stalled due to rising costs, the Greens canceled, but Wright gave the Bell commission to Lautner. He was also engaged to supervise the Mauer house when the Mauers dismissed Wright for failing to deliver the working drawings in time and this was beset by many problems. A Lautner-designed retreat for Obolers wife was eventually built and this also marked the end of his professional association with Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1944, Lautner pursued joint ventures with architects Samuel Reisbord, Lautner left the Honnold practice in 1947, primarily because he had begun a relationship with Honnolds wife Elizabeth Gilman. He separated from MaryBud and moved into the Honnold residence at 1818 El Cerrito Place and he embarked on a string of significant design projects including the Carling Residence, the Desert Hot Springs Motel, the Gantvoort Residence and Henrys Restaurant in Glendale
27.
Craig Ellwood
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Craig Ellwood was an influential Los Angeles-based modernist architect whose career spanned the early 1950s through the mid-1970s. Although untrained as an architect, Ellwood fashioned a persona and career through equal parts of a talent for good design and he was recognized professionally for fusing of the formalism of Mies van der Rohe with the informal style of California modernism. Ellwood was born Jon Nelson Burke in Clarendon, Texas, along with many others in the 1920s, Ellwoods family moved west, following U. S. Route 66, finally settling in Los Angeles in 1937. There, Ellwood, as Johnnie Burke, attended Belmont High School, in 1942, Ellwood and his brother Cleve both joined the U. S. Army Air Corps. Ellwood served as a B-24 radio operator, based with Cleve in Victorville, after his discharge, Burke returned to Los Angeles and set up a company with his brother Cleve and two friends from the war, the Marzicola brothers, one of whom had a contractors license. The four men called their firm Craig Ellwood after a store called Lords. Burke later legally changed his name to Ellwood, in 1948, he joined the firm Lamport Cofer Salzman as a construction cost estimator, having acquired this skill during his work for the Craig Ellwood Company. Ellwood also studied structural engineering through UCLA extension night school for five years and he became increasingly involved in design and architecture, resulting in Ellwoods first commissions, all for residences. Ellwood established Craig Ellwood Design in 1951, early projects included Case Study House 16 in 1952. Though Ellwoods office expanded with the size and number of his commissions, as published in the 1976, the Art Center building is recognized as the work of Craig Ellwood Associates, with James Tyler as design architect and Stephen Woolley as project architect. Some sources have sought to re-credit this building solely to Tyler, the practice closed in 1977 and Ellwood retired to Italy to focus on painting and restoring a farm house near Ambra, Italy. Elwoods first wife was Faith Irene Walker, known as Bobbie, in 1949 Ellwood married actress Gloria Henry. The union produced three children Jeffrey, Adam, and Erin Ellwood, before the couple divorcing, in 1977. He then married Anita Eubank to live in Perigee, Valdarno, after divorcing Eubank, he and his fourth wife, Leslie Hyland Ellwood, had a daughter, Caitlin Emily Ellwood. Craig Ellwood stated his philosophy in the March 1976 issue of L. A. Architect, The essence of architecture is the interrelation and interaction of mass, space. The purpose of architecture is to enrich the joy and drama of living, the spirit of architecture is its truthfulness to itself, its clarity and logic with respect to its materials and structure. Building comes of age when it expresses its epoch, the constant change in technology demands a continuously maturing expression of itself. When technology reaches its fulfillment in perfect equilibrium with function, there is a transcendence into architecture, the truth about truth is it is – waiting for us to discover it
28.
Edith Heath
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Edith Kiertzner Heath was an American studio potter but soon became involved in the design and production of pottery and tableware on a far larger scale than that of most studio potters. In 1948, Edith founded Heath Ceramics, Edith Kierzner was born May 24,1911, in Ida Grove, Iowa, forty miles east of Sioux City, Iowa, to Danish immigrants Nils and Karoline Kierzner. In 1931, Edith enrolled at the Chicago Normal School, later renamed Chicago Teachers College and she enrolled part-time at the Art Institute of Chicago after graduation taking her first ceramic course. In 1938, Edith married Brian Heath, relocating to San Francisco, Edith accepted a position as an art teacher at the Presidio Hill School and audited classes at the California School of Fine Arts. She developed a body in these classes which she adapted many times for her production work. Not being able to have as much access to the pottery equipment, in 1943, she studied eutectics with Willard Kahn through the University of California extension courses. Form also played an important role in Ediths work, beyond her obvious attraction to the science of her craft was her search for useful shapes that appealed to her modern sensibilities. Her pottery was a balance of hand-built and hand-thrown work. The pieces tended towards simplicity, in 1944, her first major show was at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. She also participated in the Syracuse Ceramic Nationals 11 to 15, a buyer from San Francisco retailer Gumps approached Edith to supply their store with her high quality hand-thrown pottery using the companys pottery studio. She accepted the opportunity, while continuing to work in her own studio and she became convinced of the opportunities that studio potters had if they would undertake production work to fill the wartime import void. In 1947, Edith began to design and execute a limited production of her pottery. Major retailers began to order Ediths tableware, and in 1948 she opened Heath Ceramics in Sausalito, by 1949, Heath ceramics was producing 100,000 pieces of ware a year. Heath Ceramics was purchased by Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey in 2003, Edith Heath died on December 27,2005 at her home in Tiburon, California. Edith Heaths Coupe line remains in demand and has been in constant production since 1948, with changes to the texture. Other Heath pottery lines include Rim, designed in 1960, and Plaza, the Pasadena Art Museum, now the Norton Simon Museum, in Pasadena, California and designed by Pasadena architects Thornton Ladd and John Kelsey of the firm Ladd + Kelsey used the architectural tiles. The distinctive and modern curvilinear exterior facade is faced in 115,000 glazed tiles, in varying rich brown tones with an undulating surface and they are part of the backdrop many see when viewing the New Years Rose Parade on television. Heath Ceramics, The Complexity of Simplicity, chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco ISBN 0-8118-5560-0 Heath Ceramics
29.
Norton Simon
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Norton Winfred Simon, was an American millionaire industrialist and philanthropist based in California. His significant art collection is housed in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, born into a successful Jewish family in Portland, Oregon, he attended high school in San Francisco, graduating in 1924. At his fathers insistence, in 1925 he enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley and he enjoyed early success and invested $7000 in 1927 in an orange juice bottling plant in Fullerton, California which was insolvent and renamed it Val Vita Food Products Company. He soon added other fruit and vegetables to the product lines, as one of the first of his significant corporate moves, Simon sold Val Vita to Hunts Foods in return for a controlling interest in the combined business. By 1943 he changed the name to Hunts Foods and ran it with strict cost-controls. During and after World War II, Simon focused on product visibility, uncharacteristically for a food company at the time, he acquired full page advertisements in Vogue and Life magazines with full-color photos of Hunts ketchup bottles and tomato sauce cans. His aggressive advertising ensured the companys slogan Hunt for the best was prominent and his marketing strategy worked, and by 1945 Hunt Foods became a household name and one of the largest food processing businesses on the West Coast. Hunts is now part of ConAgra Foods, Inc, many of these businesses had extensive interests outside the United States. Norton Simon Inc. was later acquired by Esmark in 1983, Beatrice was sold to ConAgra in 1990. Simon accumulated a significant private art collection included works of the Impressionists, Old Masters, modern. Scholars including the critic Clement Greenberg and the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Theodore Rousseau studied the Duveen purchases for Simon and were able to identify numerous misattributions. Simon ended up selling much of the collection and only kept around 130 objects, primarily paintings, a handful of sculpture, a few porcelains, however, his collection holds three autograph Rembrandt paintings, considered highly important works of Rembrandt in Southern California. Simon served as a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art, in 1972, Simon bought a tenth-century South Indian bronze Nataraja, or dancing Shiva, from New York dealer Ben Heller for $900,000. The Indian government declared that the statue had been stolen from a temple in Tamil Nadu, although Simon was quoted as saying that he had knowingly bought smuggled art he vehemently denied the quote, declaring that the work had been legally imported into the United States. In the same Los Angeles Times article, he stated, “As a collector deeply and emotionally involved in art, in exchange, the Indian government agreed that Simon could keep and display the bronze in his museum for nine years before its return. Seeking a permanent home for his collection of over 4,000 objects and he ultimately assumed control and naming rights, and in 1974 it was renamed the Norton Simon Museum. The plan was to keep most of collection in Pasadena, administered by UCLA, the Simon board, the university was to build a separate museum facility on campus for part of the collection. However, Simon withdrew his offer three months after the announcement was made, in 1969, his son Robert Simon committed suicide
30.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
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The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, MOCAs original space, initially intended as a temporary exhibit space while the main facility was built, is now known as the Geffen Contemporary, in the Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles. The Pacific Design Center facility is in West Hollywood, the museums exhibits consist primarily of American and European contemporary art created after 1940. Since the museums inception, MOCAs programming has been defined by its approach to contemporary art. Throughout the evening, Weisman passionately discussed the citys need for an art museum. In the following weeks, the Mayors Museum Advisory Committee was organized, the committee, led by William A. Norris, set about creating a museum from scratch, including locating funds, trustees, directors, curators, a gallery, and most importantly an art collection. The following year, the fledgling Museum of Contemporary Art was operating out of an office on Boyd Street, many of MOCAs initial donors were young and supporting the arts for the first time, a substantial number joined up at the $10,000 founder minimum. Making up well over 90% of the works, gifts from several major private collectors form the cornerstones of MOCAs permanent collection of nearly 6,000 works. Much of it has come from members who donated or bequeathed key works or entire collections. In 1985, the museum accepted Michael Heizers earthwork Double Negative in Nevada desert, in 1991, Hollywood screenwriter Scott Spiegel donated works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Innerst, Robert Longo, Susan Rothenberg, David Salle, among others. Over the years, major donations of art collections have come from the Lannan Foundation, in 2000, MOCA received gifts from artists themselves, including major pieces by sculptor and performance artist Paul McCarthy, video artist Doug Aitken and photographer Andreas Gursky. Los Angeles-based artist Ed Moses made a gift of his work to the museum in 1995. As the Los Angeles Times declared, There isn’t a city in America—not New York, not Chicago, not Houston, not San Francisco—where a more impressive museum collection of contemporary art can be seen. Art as Object, 1958-1968, Reconsidering the Object of Art, 1965-1975, Hall of Mirrors, Art and Film since 1945, Out of Actions, Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979, WACK. Art and the Feminist Revolution, Art in the Streets, Under the Big Black Sun, California Art 1974–1981, and Ends of the Earth, Land Art to 1974. The museum also organized the first major museum retrospectives of the work of Allen Ruppersberg, John Baldessari, Ad Reinhardt, Jeff Wall, Barbara Kruger, and Takashi Murakami. In addition there were also monographic shows like an ambitious installation by Robert Gober in 1997, of all solo shows on view over the period between January 2008 and December 2012, only about 28% were devoted to female artists. Besides artists retrospectives and art historical investigations, under chief curator Paul Schimmel, public Offerings, in 2001, explored the phenomenon of youthful creative energy in an overheated art world where stars are created before they leave art school
31.
Lucas Cranach the Elder
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Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition and he continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from mythology and religion. He had a workshop and many works exist in different versions, his son Lucas Cranach the Younger. Lucas Cranach the Elder has been considered the most successful German artist of his time and he was born at Kronach in upper Franconia, probably in 1472. His exact date of birth is unknown and he learned the art of drawing from his father Hans Maler. His mother, with surname Hübner, died in 1491, later, the name of his birthplace was used for his surname, another custom of the times. How Cranach was trained is not known, but it was probably with local south German masters, as with his contemporary Matthias Grünewald, there are also suggestions that Cranach spent some time in Vienna around 1500. According to Gunderam Cranach demonstrated his talents as a painter before the close of the 15th century and his work then drew the attention of Duke Friedrich III, Elector of Saxony, known as Frederick the Wise, who attached Cranach to his court in 1504. Cranach was to remain in the service of the Elector and his successors for the rest of his life, Cranach married Barbara Brengbier, the daughter of a burgher of Gotha and also born there, she died at Wittenberg on 26 December 1540. Cranach later owned a house at Gotha, but most likely he got to know Barbara near Wittenberg, where her family owned a house. The first evidence of Cranachs skill as an artist comes in a picture dated 1504, in 1509 Cranach went to the Netherlands, and painted the Emperor Maximilian and the boy who afterwards became Emperor Charles V. Until 1508 Cranach signed his works with his initials, in that year the elector gave him the winged snake as an emblem, or Kleinod, which superseded the initials on his pictures after that date. Cranach was the painter to the electors of Saxony in Wittenberg. His patrons were powerful supporters of Martin Luther, and Cranach used his art as a symbol of the new faith, Cranach made numerous portraits of Luther, and provided woodcut illustrations for Luthers German translation of the Bible. Somewhat later the duke conferred on him the monopoly of the sale of medicines at Wittenberg, Cranachs presses were used by Martin Luther. His apothecary shop was open for centuries, and was only lost by fire in 1871, Cranach, like his patron, was friendly with the Protestant Reformers at a very early stage, yet it is difficult to fix the time of his first meeting with Martin Luther. The oldest reference to Cranach in Luthers correspondence dates from 1520, in a letter written from Worms in 1521, Luther calls him his gossip, warmly alluding to his Gevatterin, the artists wife. He was also godfather to their first child, Johannes Hans Luther, in 1530 Luther lived at the citadel of Veste Coburg under the protection of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and his room is preserved there along with a painting of him
32.
Jennifer Jones
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Jennifer Jones, also known as Jennifer Jones Simon, was an American actress during the Hollywood golden years. Jones, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Song of Bernadette, was also Academy Award-nominated for her performances in four other films and she was married three times, most notably to film producer David O. Selznick. Jones starred in more than 20 films over a 30-year career, in 1980, she founded the Jennifer Jones Simon Foundation For Mental Health and Education after her daughters suicide. In later life, Jones withdrew from life to live in quiet retirement with her son and his family in Malibu. Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the daughter of Flora Mae, an only child, she was raised Roman Catholic. Her parents toured the Midwest in a tent show that they owned and operated. It was there that she met and fell in love with fellow acting student Robert Walker, the couple married on January 2,1939. Isley and Walker returned to Tulsa for a 13-week radio program, arranged by her father, Isley landed two small roles, first in a 1939 John Wayne western titled New Frontier, followed by a serial entitled Dick Tracys G-Men. She failed a screen test for Paramount Pictures and decided to return to New York City, while Walker found steady work in radio programs, Isley worked part-time modeling hats for the Powers Agency while looking for possible acting jobs. Selznick, however, had overheard her audition and was impressed enough to have his secretary call her back, following an interview, she was signed to a seven-year contract. She was carefully groomed for stardom and given a new name, director Henry King was impressed by her screen test as Bernadette Soubirous for The Song of Bernadette and she won the coveted role over hundreds of applicants. Jones apologized to Bergman, who replied, No, Jennifer, Jones presented the Best Actress Oscar the following year to Bergman for Gaslight. Over the next two decades, Jones appeared in a range of roles selected by Selznick. Her dark beauty and sensitive nature appealed to audiences and she projected a variable range, the portrait of Jones for the film Portrait of Jennie was painted by Robert Brackman. Her last big-screen appearance came in the disaster film The Towering Inferno. Her performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress, early scenes in the film showed paintings lent to the production by the art gallery of Jones husband, Norton Simon. Jones had two sons from her first marriage, Robert Walker, Jr. and Michael Walker, Robert was the only child of Jones three children who would not predecease her. Jones had an affair with film producer David O. Selznick and she separated from Walker in November 1943, co-starred with him in Since You Went Away, and divorced him in June 1945
33.
Frank Gehry
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Frank Owen Gehry, CC is a Canadian-born American architect, residing in Los Angeles. A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned attractions and it was his private residence in Santa Monica, California, that jump-started his career. Gehry is also the designer of the future National Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28,1929, in Toronto, Ontario, to parents Sadie Thelma and Irving Goldberg. His father was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish parents, a creative child, he was encouraged by his grandmother, with whom he would build little cities out of scraps of wood. With these scraps from her husbands store, she entertained him for hours, building imaginary houses. His use of corrugated steel, chain link fencing, unpainted plywood and he would spend time drawing with his father, while his mother introduced him to the world of art. So the creative genes were there, Gehry says, but my father thought I was a dreamer, I wasnt gonna amount to anything. It was my mother who thought I was just reticent to do things and he was given the Hebrew name Ephraim by his grandfather, but only used it at his bar mitzvah. In 1947, his family immigrated to the United States settling in California, Gehry got a job driving a delivery truck, and studied at Los Angeles City College, eventually to graduate from the University of Southern Californias School of Architecture. During that time, he became a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi, according to Gehry, I was a truck driver in L. A. going to City College, and I tried radio announcing, which I wasnt very good at. I tried chemical engineering, which I wasnt very good at and didnt like and you know, somehow I just started wracking my brain about, What do I like. And I remembered art, that I loved going to museums and I loved looking at paintings and those things came from my mother, who took me to concerts and museums. I remembered Grandma and the blocks, and just on a hunch, Gehry graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture degree from USC in 1954. After graduating from college, he spent time away from the field of architecture in other jobs. In the fall of 1956, he moved his family to Cambridge and he left before completing the program, disheartened and underwhelmed. Gehry returned to Los Angeles to work for Victor Gruen Associates, in 1957 he was given the chance to design and construct his first private residence at the age of 28, with friend and old classmate Greg Walsh. Built in Idyllwild, California for his wife Anita’s family neighbor Melvin David, The David Cabin, completed in 1958, beams protrude from the exterior sides and exposed, unfinished ceiling beams are prominent features. In 1961, he moved to Paris where he worked for architects Pereira, in 1962, Gehry established a practice in Los Angeles which became Frank Gehry and Associates in 1967 and then Gehry Partners in 2001
34.
National Gallery
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The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the century to 1900. The Gallery is a charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media. Its collection belongs to the public of the United Kingdom and entry to the collection is free of charge. It is among the most visited art museums in the world, after the Musée du Louvre, the British Museum, unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein, after that initial purchase the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, notably Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which comprise two-thirds of the collection. It used to be claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition, the present building, the third to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins from 1832 to 1838. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, wilkinss building was often criticised for the perceived weaknesses of its design and for its lack of space, the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi, the current Director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi. The late 18th century saw the nationalisation of royal or princely art collections across mainland Europe, great Britain, however, did not emulate the continental model, and the British Royal Collection remains in the sovereigns possession today. In 1777 the British government had the opportunity to buy an art collection of international stature, the MP John Wilkes argued for the government to buy this invaluable treasure and suggested that it be housed in a noble gallery. The twenty-five paintings from that now in the Gallery, including NG1, have arrived by a variety of routes. This offer was declined and Bourgeois bequeathed the collection to his old school, Dulwich College, the collection opened in Britains first purpose-built public gallery, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, in 1814. The British Institution, founded in 1805 by a group of aristocratic connoisseurs, the members lent works to exhibitions that changed annually, while an art school was held in the summer months. However, as the paintings that were lent were often mediocre, some resented the Institution. One of the Institutions founding members, Sir George Beaumont, Bt, in 1823 another major art collection came on the market, which had been assembled by the recently deceased John Julius Angerstein. Angerstein was a Russian-born émigré banker based in London, his collection numbered 38 paintings, including works by Raphael, on 1 July 1823 George Agar Ellis, a Whig politician, proposed to the House of Commons that it purchase the collection. The appeal was given added impetus by Beaumonts offer, which came with two conditions, that the government buy Angersteins collection, and that a building was to be found
35.
Frick Collection
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The Frick Collection is an art museum located in the Henry Clay Frick House on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, New York City at 1 East 70th Street, at the northeast corner with Fifth Avenue. It houses the collection of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, Henry Frick started his substantial art collection as soon as he started amassing his fortunes. A considerable amount of his art collection is located in his former residence Clayton in Pittsburgh, another part was given by his daughter and heiress Helen to the Frick Fine Arts Building, which is on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. The family did not permanently move from Pittsburgh to New York until 1905, Henry Frick initially leased the Vanderbilt house at 640 Fifth Avenue, to which he moved a substantial amount of his collection. He had his permanent residence built between 1912 and 1914 by Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings and he stayed in the house until his death in 1919. He willed the house and all of its contents, including art, furniture and his widow Adelaide Howard Childs Frick, however, retained the right of residence and continued living in the mansion with her daughter Helen. After Adelaide Frick died in 1931, the conversion of the house into a museum started. John Russell Pope altered and enlarged the building in the early 1930s to adapt it to use as a public institution and it opened to the public on December 16,1935. Further expansions of the museum took place in 1977 and in 2011, in 2014, the museum announced further expansion plans, but came up against community opposition because it would result in the loss of a garden. The Frick ultimately dropped those plans and is said to be considering other options, Frick had intended the mansion to eventually become a museum. Many of the paintings are arranged according to Fricks design. Besides its permanent collection, the Frick has always organized small, the collection features some of the best-known paintings by major European artists, as well as numerous works of sculpture and porcelain. It also has 18th century French furniture, Limoges enamel, after Fricks death, his daughter, Helen Clay Frick, expanded the collection, with a third of its artworks acquired since 1919. Although the museum cannot lend the two-thirds that belonged to Frick, as stipulated in his will, the Frick Collection oversees the nearby Frick Art Reference Library. Archival materials augment its research collections, opened in 1920, the library quickly became a prime resource for students. According to The Art Newspaper, the Frick Collection has an annual attendance of 275,000 to 300,000. About 35 percent of the visitors are non-English speaking, in 2011, Ian Wardropper succeeded Anne Poulet, who had run the Frick Collection as director since 2003. Poulet took the position after Samuel Sachs II stepped down after running the institution for six years, Poulet was the first female director of the Frick
36.
Karnataka
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Karnataka is a state in south western region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, originally known as the State of Mysore, it was renamed Karnataka in 1973. The capital and largest city is Bangalore, the state covers an area of 191,976 square kilometres, or 5.83 percent of the total geographical area of India. It is the seventh largest Indian state by area, with 61,130,704 inhabitants at the 2011 census, Karnataka is the eighth largest state by population, comprising 30 districts. Kannada, one of the languages of India, is the most widely spoken. Most of these rivers flow out of Karnataka eastward into the Bay of Bengal, though several etymologies have been suggested for the name Karnataka, the generally accepted one is that Karnataka is derived from the Kannada words karu and nādu, meaning elevated land. Karu nadu may also be read as karu, meaning black, the British used the word Carnatic, sometimes Karnatak, to describe both sides of peninsular India, south of the Krishna. With an antiquity that dates to the paleolithic, Karnataka has been home to some of the most powerful empires of ancient, the philosophers and musical bards patronised by these empires launched socio-religious and literary movements which have endured to the present day. Karnataka has contributed significantly to both forms of Indian classical music, the Carnatic and Hindustani traditions, Karnatakas pre-history goes back to a paleolithic hand-axe culture evidenced by discoveries of, among other things, hand axes and cleavers in the region. Evidence of neolithic and megalithic cultures have also found in the state. Gold discovered in Harappa was found to be imported from mines in Karnataka, prior to the third century BCE, most of Karnataka formed part of the Nanda Empire before coming under the Mauryan empire of Emperor Ashoka. Four centuries of Satavahana rule followed, allowing them to large areas of Karnataka. The decline of Satavahana power led to the rise of the earliest native kingdoms, the Kadambas, the Kadamba Dynasty, founded by Mayurasharma, had its capital at Banavasi, the Western Ganga Dynasty was formed with Talakad as its capital. These were also the first kingdoms to use Kannada in administration, as evidenced by the Halmidi inscription, the Western Chalukyas patronised a unique style of architecture and Kannada literature which became a precursor to the Hoysala art of 12th century. Parts of modern-day Southern Karnataka were occupied by the Chola Empire at the turn of 11th century, the Cholas and the Hoysalas fought over the region in the early 12th century before it eventually came under Hoysala rule. At the turn of the first millennium, the Hoysalas gained power in the region, literature flourished during this time, which led to the emergence of distinctive Kannada literary metres, and the construction of temples and sculptures adhering to the Vesara style of architecture. The expansion of the Hoysala Empire brought minor parts of modern Andhra Pradesh, in the early 14th century, Harihara and Bukka Raya established the Vijayanagara empire with its capital, Hosapattana, on the banks of the Tungabhadra River in the modern Bellary district. The empire rose as a bulwark against Muslim advances into South India, in 1565, Karnataka and the rest of South India experienced a major geopolitical shift when the Vijayanagara empire fell to a confederation of Islamic sultanates in the Battle of Talikota
37.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
38.
South Asia
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Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as Nepal and northern parts of India situated south of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. South Asia is bounded on the south by the Indian Ocean and on land by West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an economic cooperation organisation in the region which was established in 1985, South Asia covers about 5.1 million km², which is 11. 51% of the Asian continent or 3. 4% of the worlds land surface area. The population of South Asia is about 1.749 billion or about one fourth of the worlds population, overall, it accounts for about 39. 49% of Asias population and is home to a vast array of peoples. The area of South Asia and its extent is not clear cut as systemic. Aside from the region of South Asia, formerly part of the British Empire, there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. Modern definitions of South Asia are consistent in including Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar is included by some scholars in South Asia, but in Southeast Asia by others. Some do not include Afghanistan, others question whether Afghanistan should be considered a part of South Asia or the Middle East, the mountain countries of Nepal and Bhutan, and the island countries of Sri Lanka and Maldives are generally included as well. Myanmar is often added, and by various deviating definitions based on often substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the common concept of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the British Raj, with several exceptions. The Aden Colony, British Somaliland and Singapore, though administered at various times under the Raj, have not been proposed as any part of South Asia. Additionally Burma was administered as part of the Raj until 1937, the 562 princely states that were protected by but not directly ruled by the Raj became administrative parts of South Asia upon joining Union of India or Dominion of Pakistan. China and Myanmar have also applied for the status of members of SAARC. This bloc of countries include two independent countries that were not part of the British Raj – Nepal, and Bhutan, Afghanistan was a British protectorate from 1878 until 1919, after the Afghans lost to the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan war. The United Nations Statistics Divisions scheme of sub-regions include all eight members of the SAARC as part of Southern Asia, population Information Network includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as part of South Asia. Maldives, in view of its characteristics, was admitted as a member Pacific POPIN subregional network only in principle, the Hirschman–Herfindahl index of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for the region includes only the original seven signatories of SAARC. The British Indian Ocean Territory is connected to the region by a publication of Janes for security considerations, the inclusion of Myanmar in South Asia is without consensus, with many considering it a part of southeast Asia and others including it within South Asia. Afghanistan was of importance to the British colonial empire, especially after the Second Anglo-Afghan War over 1878–1880, Afghanistan remained a British protectorate until 1919, when a treaty with Vladimir Lenin included the granting of independence to Afghanistan. Following Indias partition, Afghanistan has generally included in South Asia
39.
Southeast Asia
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Southeast Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies near the intersection of geological plates, with seismic and volcanic activity. Southeast Asia consists of two regions, Mainland Southeast Asia, also known historically as Indochina, comprising Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar. Maritime Southeast Asia, comprising Indonesia, East Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, East Timor, Brunei, Cocos Islands, definitions of Southeast Asia vary, but most definitions include the area represented by the countries listed below. All of the states are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the area, together with part of South Asia, was widely known as the East Indies or simply the Indies until the 20th century. Sovereignty issues exist over some territories in the South China Sea, Papua New Guinea has stated that it might join ASEAN, and is currently an observer. Southeast Asia is geographically divided into two subregions, namely Mainland Southeast Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia includes, Maritime Southeast Asia includes, The Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India are geographically considered part of Southeast Asia. Eastern Bangladesh and the Seven Sister States of India are culturally part of Southeast Asia, the eastern half of Indonesia and East Timor are considered to be biogeographically part of Oceania. Homo sapiens reached the region by around 45,000 years ago, homo floresiensis also lived in the area up until 12,000 years ago, when they became extinct. Austronesian people, who form the majority of the population in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, East Timor. Solheim and others have shown evidence for a Nusantao maritime trading network ranging from Vietnam to the rest of the archipelago as early as 5000 BC to 1 AD. The peoples of Southeast Asia, especially those of Austronesian descent, have been seafarers for thousands of years and their vessels, such as the vinta, were ocean-worthy. Magellans voyage records how much more manoeuvrable their vessels were, as compared to the European ships, Passage through the Indian Ocean aided the colonisation of Madagascar by the Austronesian people, as well as commerce between West Asia and Southeast Asia. Gold from Sumatra is thought to have reached as far west as Rome and this was later replaced by Hinduism. Theravada Buddhism soon followed in 525, in the 15th century, Islamic influences began to enter. This forced the last Hindu court in Indonesia to retreat to Bali, in Mainland Southeast Asia, Burma, Cambodia and Thailand retained the Theravada form of Buddhism, brought to them from Sri Lanka. This type of Buddhism was fused with the Hindu-influenced Khmer culture, very little is known about Southeast Asian religious beliefs and practices before the advent of Indian merchants and religious influences from the 2nd century BCE onwards. Prior to the 13th century CE, Hinduism and Buddhism were the religions in Southeast Asia
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Cambodia
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Cambodia, officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is 181,035 square kilometres in area, bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia has a population of over 15 million. The official religion is Theravada Buddhism, practiced by approximately 95 percent of the population, the countrys minority groups include Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams, and 30 hill tribes. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh, the political, economic, the kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with Norodom Sihamoni, a monarch chosen by the Royal Throne Council, as head of state. The head of government is Hun Sen, who is currently the longest serving leader in South East Asia and has ruled Cambodia for over 25 years. In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name Kambuja. The Indianized kingdom built monumental temples including Angkor Wat, now a World Heritage Site, after the fall of Angkor to Ayutthaya in the 15th century, a reduced and weakened Cambodia was then ruled as a vassal state by its neighbours. In 1863 Cambodia became a protectorate of France which doubled the size of the country by reclaiming the north, the Vietnam War extended into the country with the US bombing of Cambodia from 1969 until 1973. Following the Cambodian coup of 1970, the king gave his support to his former enemies. Following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, Cambodia was governed briefly by a United Nations mission, the UN withdrew after holding elections in which around 90 percent of the registered voters cast ballots. The 1997 coup placed power solely in the hands of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian Peoples Party, important sociopolitical issues includes widespread poverty, pervasive corruption, lack of political freedoms, low human development, and a high rate of hunger. While per capita income remains low compared to most neighbouring countries, agriculture remains the dominant economic sector, with strong growth in textiles, construction, garments, and tourism leading to increased foreign investment and international trade. Cambodia scored dismally in an annual index ranking the rule of law in 102 countries, placing 99th overall, Cambodia also faces environmental destruction as an imminent problem. The most severe activity in this regard is considered to be the countrywide deforestation, the Kingdom of Cambodia is the official English name of the country. The English Cambodia is an anglicisation of the French Cambodge, which in turn is the French transliteration of the Khmer Kampuchea, Kampuchea is the shortened alternative to the countrys official name in Khmer, Preah Reacheanachak Kampuchea. The Khmer endonym Kampuchea derives from the Sanskrit name Kambujadeśa, composed of देश, desa and कम्बोज, Kambujas, colloquially, Cambodians refer to their country as either Srok Khmer, meaning Khmers Land, or the slightly more formal Prateh Kampuchea, literally Country of Kampuchea. The name Cambodia is used most often in the Western world while Kampuchea is more used in the East. Excavations in its lower layers produced a series of dates as of 6000 BC
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Thailand
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Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand, formerly known as Siam, is a country at the centre of the Indochinese peninsula in Southeast Asia. With a total area of approximately 513,000 km2, Thailand is the worlds 51st-largest country and it is the 20th-most-populous country in the world, with around 66 million people. The capital and largest city is Bangkok, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has switched between parliamentary democracy and military junta for decades, the latest coup being in May 2014 by the National Council for Peace and Order. Its capital and most populous city is Bangkok and its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India on the Andaman Sea to the southwest. The Thai economy is the worlds 20th largest by GDP at PPP and it became a newly industrialised country and a major exporter in the 1990s. Manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism are leading sectors of the economy and it is considered a middle power in the region and around the world. The country has always been called Mueang Thai by its citizens, by outsiders prior to 1949, it was usually known by the exonym Siam. The word Siam has been identified with the Sanskrit Śyāma, the names Shan and A-hom seem to be variants of the same word. The word Śyâma is possibly not its origin, but a learned, another theory is the name derives from Chinese, Ayutthaya emerged as a dominant centre in the late fourteenth century. The Chinese called this region Xian, which the Portuguese converted into Siam, the signature of King Mongkut reads SPPM Mongkut King of the Siamese, giving the name Siam official status until 24 June 1939 when it was changed to Thailand. Thailand was renamed Siam from 1945 to 11 May 1949, after which it reverted to Thailand. According to George Cœdès, the word Thai means free man in the Thai language, ratcha Anachak Thai means kingdom of Thailand or kingdom of Thai. Etymologically, its components are, ratcha, -ana- -chak, the Thai National Anthem, written by Luang Saranupraphan during the extremely patriotic 1930s, refers to the Thai nation as, prathet Thai. The first line of the anthem is, prathet thai ruam lueat nuea chat chuea thai, Thailand is the unity of Thai flesh. There is evidence of habitation in Thailand that has been dated at 40,000 years before the present. Similar to other regions in Southeast Asia, Thailand was heavily influenced by the culture and religions of India, Thailand in its earliest days was under the rule of the Khmer Empire, which had strong Hindu roots, and the influence among Thais remains even today. Voretzsch believes that Buddhism must have been flowing into Siam from India in the time of the Indian Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire, later Thailand was influenced by the south Indian Pallava dynasty and north Indian Gupta Empire. The Menam Basin was originally populated by the Mons, and the location of Dvaravati in the 7th century, the History of the Yuan mentions an embassy from the kingdom of Sukhothai in 1282
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Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
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Myanmar
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Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also known as Burma, is a sovereign state in South East Asia bordered by Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. About one third of Myanmars total perimeter of 5,876 km, forms an uninterrupted coastline of 1,930 km along the Bay of Bengal, the countrys 2014 census revealed a much lower population than expected, with 51 million people recorded. Myanmar is 676,578 square kilometres in size and its capital city is Naypyidaw and its largest city and former capital city is Yangon. Early civilizations in Myanmar included the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu city-states in Upper Burma, the Pagan Kingdom fell due to the Mongol invasions and several warring states emerged. In the 16th century, reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty, the country was for a period the largest empire in the history of Mainland Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area included modern Myanmar and briefly controlled Manipur. The British invaded Myanmar after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the 19th century and the became a British colony. Myanmar became an independent nation in 1948, initially as a nation and then, following a coup détat in 1962. For most of its independent years, the country has been engrossed in rampant ethnic strife, during this time, the United Nations and several other organisations have reported consistent and systematic human rights violations in the country. In 2011, the junta was officially dissolved following a 2010 general election. While former military leaders still wield enormous power in the country, there is, however, continuing criticism of the governments treatment of the Muslim Rohingya minority and its poor response to the religious clashes. In the landmark 2015 election, Aung San Suu Kyis party won a majority in both houses, Myanmar is a country rich in jade and gems, oil, natural gas and other mineral resources. In 2013, its GDP stood at US$56.7 billion, the income gap in Myanmar is among the widest in the world, as a large proportion of the economy is controlled by supporters of the former military government. As of 2016, according to the Human Development Index, Myanmar had a level of human development. The renaming remains a contested issue, many political and ethnic opposition groups and countries continue to use Burma because they do not recognise the legitimacy of the ruling military government or its authority to rename the country. The countrys official name is the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Countries that do not officially recognise that name use the long form Union of Burma instead, in English, the country is popularly known as either Burma or Myanmar /ˈmjɑːnˌmɑːr/. Both these names are derived from the name of the majority Burmese Bamar ethnic group, Myanmar is considered to be the literary form of the name of the group, while Burma is derived from Bamar, the colloquial form of the groups name
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Bangladesh
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Bangladesh, officially the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It shares land borders with India and Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and China are located near Bangladesh but do not share a border with it. The countrys maritime territory in the Bay of Bengal is roughly equal to the size of its land area, Bangladesh is the worlds eighth most populous country. Dhaka is its capital and largest city, followed by Chittagong which has the countrys largest port, Bangladesh forms the largest and eastern part of the Bengal region. Bangladeshis include people of different ethnic groups and religions, Bengalis, who speak the official Bengali, make up 98% of the population. The politically dominant Bengali Muslims make the nation the worlds third largest Muslim-majority country, most of Bangladesh is covered by the Bengal delta, the largest delta on Earth. The country has 700 rivers and 8,046 km of inland waterways, highlands with evergreen forests are found in the northeastern and southeastern regions of the country. Bangladesh has many islands and a coral reef and it is home to the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world. The countrys biodiversity includes a vast array of plant and wildlife, including critically endangered Bengal tigers, the Greeks and Romans identified the region as Gangaridai, a powerful kingdom of the historical subcontinent, in the 3rd century BCE. Archaeological research has unearthed several ancient cities in Bangladesh, which had trade links for millennia. The Bengal Sultanate and Mughal Bengal transformed the region into a cosmopolitan Islamic imperial power between the 14th and 18th centuries, the region was home to many principalities which had inland naval prowess. It was also a center of the worldwide muslin and silk trade. As part of British India, the region was influenced by the Bengali renaissance, the Partition of British India made East Bengal a part of the Dominion of Pakistan, and was renamed as East Pakistan. The region witnessed the Bengali Language Movement in 1952 and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, after independence, a parliamentary republic was established. A presidential government was in place between 1975 and 1990, followed by a return to parliamentary democracy, the country has also been affected by poverty, natural disasters, hunger, dominant party systems and military coups. Bangladesh is a power and a major developing nation. Listed as one of the Next Eleven, it has the 46th largest economy and it is one of the largest textile exporters in the world. Its major trading partners are the European Union, the United States, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, with its strategically vital location between Southern, Eastern and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh is an important promoter of regional connectivity and cooperation
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China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
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Indonesia
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Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country located mainly in Southeast Asia with some territories in Oceania. Situated between the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is the worlds largest island country, with more than seventeen thousand islands. At 1,904,569 square kilometres, Indonesia is the worlds 14th-largest country in terms of area and worlds 7th-largest country in terms of combined sea. It has an population of over 260 million people and is the worlds fourth most populous country. The worlds most populous island, Java, contains more than half of the countrys population, Indonesias republican form of government includes an elected legislature and president. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special Administrative status and its capital and countrys most populous city is Jakarta, which is also the most populous city in Southeast Asia and the second in Asia. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, other neighbouring countries include Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support the second highest level of biodiversity. The country has abundant natural resources like oil and natural gas, tin, copper, agriculture mainly produces rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cacao, medicinal plants, spices and rubber. Indonesias major trading partners are Japan, United States, China, the Indonesian archipelago has been an important region for trade since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Indonesia consists of hundreds of native ethnic and linguistic groups. The largest – and politically dominant – ethnic group are the Javanese, a shared identity has developed, defined by a national language, ethnic diversity, religious pluralism within a Muslim-majority population, and a history of colonialism and rebellion against it. Indonesias national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, articulates the diversity that shapes the country, Indonesias economy is the worlds 16th largest by nominal GDP and the 8th largest by GDP at PPP, the largest in Southeast Asia, and is considered an emerging market and newly industrialised country. Indonesia has been a member of the United Nations since 1950, Indonesia is a member of the G20 major economies and World Trade Organization. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek name of the Indós, the name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia. In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians—and, his preference, in the same publication, one of his students, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago. However, Dutch academics writing in East Indies publications were reluctant to use Indonesia, they preferred Malay Archipelago, the Netherlands East Indies, popularly Indië, the East, and Insulinde
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Sri Lanka
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Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia near south-east India. Sri Lanka has maritime borders with India to the northwest and the Maldives to the southwest, Sri Lankas documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to World War II. Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon, Sri Lankas recent history has been marred by a thirty-year civil war which decisively ended when the Sri Lankan military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. A diverse and multicultural country, Sri Lanka is home to many religions, ethnic groups, in addition to the majority Sinhalese, it is home to large groups of Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils, Moors, Burghers, Malays, Kaffirs and the aboriginal Vedda. Sri Lanka has a rich Buddhist heritage, and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka is a republic and a unitary state governed by a semi-presidential system. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the capital and largest city. Along with the Maldives, Sri Lanka is one of the two countries in South Asia that are rated among high human development on the Human Development Index. In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names, according to the Mahavamsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the land Tambapanni, because his followers hands were reddened by the red soil of the area. In Hindu mythology, such as the Mahabharata, the island was referred to as Lankā, in Tamil, the island is referred to as Eelam. Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanā or Taprobanē from the word Tambapanni, as a British crown colony, the island was known as Ceylon, it achieved independence as the Dominion of Ceylon in 1948. The country is known in Sinhalese as Śrī Laṃkā and in Tamil as Ilaṅkai, in 1972, its formal name was changed to Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka. Later in 1978 it was changed to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as the name Ceylon still appears in the names of a number of organisations, the Sri Lankan government announced in 2011 a plan to rename all those over which it has authority. The pre-history of Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years, the era spans the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and early Iron Ages. Among the Paleolithic human settlements discovered in Sri Lanka, Pahiyangala and it is said that Kubera was overthrown by his demon stepbrother Ravana, the powerful emperor who built a mythical flying machine named Dandu Monara. The modern city of Wariyapola is described as Ravanas airport, early inhabitants of Sri Lanka were probably ancestors of the Vedda people, an indigenous people numbering approximately 2,500 living in modern-day Sri Lanka. According to the Mahāvamsa, a written in Pāḷi, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Yakshas and Nagas. Ancient cemeteries that were used before 600BC and other signs of advanced civilization has also discovered in Sri Lanka
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Vietnam
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Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 92.7 million inhabitants as of 2016, it is the worlds 14th-most-populous country, and its capital city has been Hanoi since the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976, with Ho Chi Minh City as a historical city as well. The northern part of Vietnam was part of Imperial China for over a millennium, an independent Vietnamese state was formed in 939, following a Vietnamese victory in the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Following a Japanese occupation in the 1940s, the Vietnamese fought French rule in the First Indochina War, thereafter, Vietnam was divided politically into two rival states, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified in what is known as the Vietnam War, the war ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975. Vietnam was then unified under a communist government but remained impoverished, in 1986, the government initiated a series of economic and political reforms which began Vietnams path towards integration into the world economy. By 2000, it had established relations with all nations. Since 2000, Vietnams economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world and its successful economic reforms resulted in its joining the World Trade Organization in 2007. It is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Vietnam remains one of the worlds four remaining one-party socialist states officially espousing communism. The name Việt Nam is a variation of Nam Việt, a name that can be traced back to the Triệu Dynasty of the 2nd century BC. The word Việt originated as a form of Bách Việt. The form Vietnam is first recorded in the 16th-century oracular poem Sấm Trạng Trình, the name has also been found on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bao Lam Pagoda in Haiphong that dates to 1558. Then, as recorded, rewarded Yuenan/Vietnam as their nations name, to also show that they are below the region of Baiyue/Bach Viet. Between 1804 and 1813, the name was used officially by Emperor Gia Long and it was revived in the early 20th century by Phan Bội Châus History of the Loss of Vietnam, and later by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The country was usually called Annam until 1945, when both the government in Huế and the Viet Minh government in Hanoi adopted Việt Nam. Archaeological excavations have revealed the existence of humans in what is now Vietnam as early as the Paleolithic age, Homo erectus fossils dating to around 500,000 BC have been found in caves in Lạng Sơn and Nghệ An provinces in northern Vietnam. The oldest Homo sapiens fossils from mainland Southeast Asia are of Middle Pleistocene provenance, teeth attributed to Homo sapiens from the Late Pleistocene have also been found at Dong Can, and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu, Lang Gao and Lang Cuom. The Hồng Bàng dynasty of the Hùng kings is considered the first Vietnamese state, in 257 BC, the last Hùng king was defeated by Thục Phán, who consolidated the Lạc Việt and Âu Việt tribes to form the Âu Lạc, proclaiming himself An Dương Vương
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