1.
John Travolta
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John Joseph Travolta is an American actor, producer, dancer, and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever, Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. He won his only Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty and has received a total of six nominations, in 2014, he received the IIFA Award for Outstanding Achievement in International Cinema. Travolta, the youngest of six children, was born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey and his father, Salvatore Travolta, was a semi-professional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Cecilia, was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a vocal group. His siblings, Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and his father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American, he grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture. He was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Scientology in 1975, Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School, but dropped out as a junior at age 17 in 1971. After attending Dwight Morrow High School, Travolta moved across the Hudson River to New York City and landed a role in the company of the musical Grease. Singing the Sherman Brothers song Dream Drummin and he then moved to Los Angeles to further his career in show business. Travoltas first California-filmed television role was as a victim in Emergency. In September 1972, but his first significant movie role was as Billy Nolan, around the same time, he landed his star-making role as Vinnie Barbarino in the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared. Travolta had a hit single entitled Let Her In, peaking at ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. In the next few years, he appeared in two of his most noted screen roles, Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever and as Danny Zuko in Grease, the films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, at age 24, Travolta became one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. His mother and his sister Ann appeared in roles in Saturday Night Fever. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album, in 1980, Travolta inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film, Urban Cowboy, in which he starred with Debra Winger. After Urban Cowboy, Travolta starred in a series of financial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career and these included Perfect, co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis, and Two of a Kind, a romantic comedy reteaming him with Olivia Newton-John. During that time he was offered, but turned down, lead roles in what would become box office hits, including American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentleman, both of which went to Richard Gere
2.
Christopher Plummer
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Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. After making his debut in Stage Struck, Plummer went on to a successful film career. Plummer has ventured into television projects, including the miniseries The Thorn Birds. Plummer has won awards and accolades for his work, including an Academy Award. With his win at age 82 in 2012 for Beginners, Plummer is the oldest actor ever to win an Academy Award and his fathers uncle was patent lawyer and agent F. B. Plummers parents were divorced shortly after his birth, and he was brought up at the Abbott family home in Senneville, Quebec and he is bilingual, speaking English and French fluently. Plummer is a cousin of actor Nigel Bruce, the British actor, best known as Doctor Watson to Basil Rathbones Sherlock Holmes. He had studied to be a concert pianist, but developed a love for the theatre at an early age and he began acting while he was living on Pine Avenue in Montreal and attending Montreal High. He attended McGill, at time he also took up acting. Whittaker, who was also stage director of the Montreal Repertory Theatre, cast Plummer, aged 18. Plummer made his Broadway debut in January 1953 in The Starcross Story and his next Broadway appearance, Home is the Hero, lasted 30 performances from September to October 1954. He appeared in support of Broadway legend Katharine Cornell and film legend Tyrone Power in The Dark is Light Enough, the play toured several cities, with Plummer serving as Powers understudy. Later that same year, he appeared in his first Broadway hit, Plummer appeared less frequently on Broadway in the 1960s as he moved from New York to London. From May to June 1973, he appeared on Broadway as the character in Cyrano. For that performance, Plummer won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, later that year, he played Anton Chekhov in Neil Simons adaptation of several Chekhov short stories, The Good Doctor. In the 1980s, he appeared on Broadway in two Shakespearean tragedies, Othello, playing Iago to James Earl Jones Moor, and the role in Macbeth with Glenda Jackson playing his lady. His Iago brought him another Tony nomination and he appeared with Jason Robards in the 1994 revival of Harold Pinters No Mans Land and had great success in 1997 in Barrymore, which he also toured with after a successful Broadway run. His turn as John Barrymore brought him his second Tony Award and he was nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for his 2004 King Lear and for a Tony playing Henry Drummond in the 2007 revival of Inherit the Wind
3.
Claude Monet
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Monets ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. From 1883 Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property, Claude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. He was the son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet. On 20 May 1841, he was baptized in the parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as Oscar-Claude. Despite being baptized Catholic, Monet later became an atheist, in 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the familys ship-chandling and grocery business and his mother was a singer, and supported Monets desire for a career in art. On 1 April 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts, locals knew him well for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy around 1856 he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, Boudin taught Monet en plein air techniques for painting. Both received the influence of Johan Barthold Jongkind, on 28 January 1857, his mother died. At the age of sixteen, he left school and went to live with his widowed, childless aunt, when Monet traveled to Paris to visit the Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Having brought his paints and other tools with him, he would go and sit by a window. Monet was in Paris for several years and met other painters, including Édouard Manet and others who would become friends. After drawing a low number in March 1861, Monet was drafted into the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for a seven-year period of military service. His prosperous father could have purchased Monets exemption from conscription but declined to do so when his son refused to give up painting. While in Algeria Monet did only a few sketches of scenes, a single landscape. In a Le Temps interview of 1900 however he commented that the light, after about a year of garrison duty in Algiers, Monet contracted typhoid fever and briefly went absent without leave. Following convalescence, Monets aunt intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete a course at an art school and it is possible that the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Monet knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter
4.
Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son
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Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son, sometimes known as The Stroll is an oil-on-canvas painting by Claude Monet from 1875. Monets light and spontaneous brushwork create splashes of colour, mrs Monets veil is blown by the wind, as is her billowing white dress, the waving grass of the meadow is echoed by the green underside of her parasol. She is seen as if from below, with a strong upwards perspective, a boy, their seven-year-old son, is placed further away, concealed behind a rise in the ground, only visible from the waist up, creating a sense of depth. The work is a painting of an everyday family scene. The work was painted outdoors, en plein air, and quickly, probably in a period of a few hours. It measures 100 ×81 centimetres, his largest work in the 1870s, the painting was one of 18 works by Monet exhibited at the second Impressionist exhibition in April 1876, at the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel. John Singer Sargent saw the painting at the exhibition in 1876 and was inspired to create a similar painting, Two Girls with Parasols at Fladbury. Monet sold the painting to Dr. Georges de Bellio in November 1876 and it was inherited by de Bellios daughter and her husband Ernest Donop de Monchy, acquired by Georges Menier in Paris, and sold in 1965 to Paul Mellon. He donated the painting to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 1983. Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son, National Gallery of Art The Stroll, Camille Monet and Her Son Jean, artchive. com Monet Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son, C
5.
National Gallery of Art
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The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D. C. located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated an art collection and funds for construction. The Gallery often presents temporary special exhibitions spanning the world and the history of art and it is one of the largest museums in North America. In 1930 Mellon formed the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, when quizzed by Abbot, he explained that the project was in the hands of the Trust and that its decisions were partly dependent on the attitude of the Government towards the gift. Designed by architect John Russell Pope, the new structure was completed and accepted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of the American people on March 17,1941. Neither Mellon nor Pope lived to see the completed, both died in late August 1937, only two months after excavation had begun. At the time of its inception it was the largest marble structure in the world, as anticipated by Mellon, the creation of the National Gallery encouraged the donation of other substantial art collections by a number of private donors. The Gallerys East Building was constructed in the 1970s on much of the land left over from the original congressional joint resolution. It was funded by Mellons children Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce, designed by famed architect I. M. Pei, the contemporary structure was completed in 1978 and was opened on June 1 of that year by President Jimmy Carter. The new building was built to house the Museums collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures. The design received a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1981, the final addition to the complex is the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. Completed and opened to the public on May 23,1999, the National Gallery of Art is supported through a private-public partnership. The United States federal government provides funds, through annual appropriations, to support the museums operations, all artwork, as well as special programs, are provided through private donations and funds. The museum is not part of the Smithsonian Institution, noted directors of the National Gallery have included David E. Finley, Jr. John Walker, and J. Carter Brown. Rusty Powell III is the current director, entry to both buildings of the National Gallery of Art is free of charge. From Monday through Saturday, the museum is open from 10 a. m. –5 p. m. it is open from 11 –6 p. m. on Sundays and it is closed on December 25 and January 1. The museum comprises two buildings, the West Building and the East Building linked by an underground passage
6.
Einstein and Eddington
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Einstein and Eddington is a British single drama produced by Company Pictures and the BBC, in association with HBO. It featured David Tennant as British scientist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington and this is the story of Einsteins general theory of relativity, his relationship with Eddington and the introduction of this theory to the world, against the backdrop of the Great War. It was first broadcast on BBC Two on 22 November 2008, the prelude is set in 1919 on Eddingtons expedition in Príncipe to observe the solar eclipse that year, before moving back in time to 1914. At the outbreak of the First World War, Eddington is appointed chief astronomer at Cambridge by Sir Oliver Lodge and instructed to research Einsteins work, in Berlin, with his marriage already under tension, Einstein falls in love with his cousin Elsa. A Quaker and therefore unable to go to war, Eddington sets out to bid farewell to his friend William Marston, as the latter goes off to war as an officer, but just misses Marstons train. When Einsteins wife arrives in Berlin, she discovers Einsteins affair and leaves him, Eddington finds his research into Einsteins work obstructed by a British ban on the circulation of German scientific literature. Realising that Mercurys orbit is precessing slightly less than it should be according to Newtons laws and they find that Einsteins work agrees with Mercurys orbit where Newtons does not, and send this reply back to Eddington. News of the gas attack also leads Einstein to an outburst against his fellow scientists, which leads to his being cut off from the university, and — overworking — he falls sick and Elsa leaves him. Even so, he manages to complete his work on relativity and on how starlight bends. As the war ends, Eddingtons sister and housekeeper, Winifred, the action returns to the Principe expedition, delayed by bad weather until the very last moment, while Einstein briefly returns to his ex-wife and children. News of his vindication reaches Einstein, and crowds of press arrive at his door just as Elsa returns to him, a year later, in the closing scene, Einstein visits Cambridge and meets Eddington. The closing credits remark on both scientists later work, Einsteins celebrity and Eddingtons obscurity, Einstein And Eddington is written by Peter Moffat and directed by Philip Martin, who both collaborated for the production of Hawking, a BBC biopic about the acclaimed physicist. It is produced by Company Pictures and the BBC, with HBO and Pioneer Pictures, location filming occurred at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, St Johns College, Cambridge, and on the Adriatic Coast of Croatia. The opening scene depicts the hauling of astronomical equipment up over rocks on the island of Principe, the eclipse was photographed from the Rosa Sundy plantation which had road access from the port of Santo Antonio. Sir Oliver Lodge did not instruct Eddington to find out about Einstein’s work and it was de Sitter in Holland who sent Einstein’s papers to Eddington, who then wrote a report on his work. Eddington asks for papers by Einstein in the library and is handed one paper with the comment ‘it’s all there is’, the paper in question was published in Annalen der Physik in 1905 along with four other ground breaking papers by Einstein. The library would have had very important journal plus many other papers by Einstein published in the decade up to 1914. Sir Oliver Lodge is given the role of criticising Einstein, supporting Newton
