The crowd was so thick we could hardly see the painting. —LWH

Louvre Considers Moving Mona Lisa To Underground Chamber To End ‘Public Disappointment’

BY KAREN K. HO

When I took my mother back to Paris for her first visit in nearly five decades, there was no question we would go to the Louvre. I was more surprised that she wanted to stand in the long line to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503) for the few seconds we would get to take pictures and selfies with the famous painting.

This experience is often annoying and disappointing for tourists, with one recent analysis of 18,000 reviews deeming the Renaissance portrait “the world’s most disappointing masterpiece.” 

Da Vinci’s iconic image of an almost-smiling woman is protected by bullet-proof, anti-reflective glass, along with tightly-controlled temperature and humidity settings to ensure the painting’s conservation.

In an effort to remedy this situation, the Mona Lisa may be moved to an underground chamber, according to a report in The TelegraphTuesday.

Louvre director Laurence des Cars recently suggested the relocation of the popular artwork to a dedicated room constructed in the institution’s basement.

“We don’t welcome visitors very well in this room, so we feel we’re not doing our job properly,” de Cars told staff and supervisors. “Moving the Mona Lisa to a separate room could put an end to public disappointment.”

“We’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but this time everyone is in agreement,” Vincent Delieuvin, the Louvre’s chief curator of 16th-century Italian painting told the French newspaper Le Figaro.

“It’s a large room, and the Mona Lisa is at the back, behind its security glass, so at first glance it looks like a postage stamp,” he said.

The Louvre receives nine million visitors annually, and according to museum officials, the Mona Lisais the main attraction for 80 per cent of those people. During especially busy days, 250,000 people stand in the same line my mother and I did.

The painting’s popularity has prompted other attempts to improve the viewing experience, including a repainting of the gallery’s walls from eggshell yellow to midnight blue in 2019, as well as a shift in the queuing system for visitors.

But Delieuvin said that the impact of social media and mass tourism means a greater effort is required, especially after the artwork’s celebrity has risen after its theft in 1911. 

“In this day and age, you have to have seen something that everyone is talking about at least once in your life, and the Mona Lisa is clearly one of those ‘must sees’,” the curator said.

A new underground chamber for painting would be part of a future “Grand Louvre” renovation, with a new entrance to the museum. Visitors would bypass the glass pyramid entry and be lead directly to underground rooms: one for the Mona Lisa and the other for temporary exhibitions.

“The mood in the museum is now ripe,” said des Cars. “We have to embrace the painting’s status as a global icon, which is beyond our control.”

The budget for the Louvre’s overhaul is estimated at €500 million, according to Le Figaro. But the French economy has yielded worse-than-expected debt and deficit forecasts, resulting in President Emmanuel Macron’s government trying to reduce state spending by €25 billion in its next annual budget.

The Mona Lisa was also the site of a protest in January, after activists threw pumpkin soup at it. The painting suffered no damage, but the incident was denounced by culture minister Rachida Dati as an attack on French heritage.

SUSTAINABILITY

Daniel Humm courted disaster when he leaned into sustainability and reinvented Eleven Madison Park with a vegan menu.

BY JENNIFER CONRAD, SENIOR WRITER 

Eleven Madison Park is the kind of restaurant that’s sometimes called a temple of fine dining. In early 2020, Vanity Fair described its duck as “life-changing.” The following year, however, chef and owner Daniel Humm transitioned the Michelin-starred New York City restaurant to an entirely plant-based menu. Switching to vegan dishes meant blowing up the very foundation of his business. Humm believed his restaurant could be an example of how the industry could become more sustainable. But would people pay $400 a head for a vegan dinner?

When Eleven Madison Park reopened in June 2021, it faced a tidal wave of skepticism. A New York Times reviewer panned the restaurant, writing that a beet dish tasted like “Lemon Pledge” and smelled like a “burning joint.” While Eleven Madison Park no longer has a reputation for impossible-to-get tables, the dining room is full and buzzing again. It’s also the first entirely plant-based restaurant to receive three Michelin stars. Inc. spoke to Humm to hear about how he pulled off his plant-based pivot. –As told to Jennifer Conrad

.

“I was a competitive cyclist when I was young and then had an accident and decided to become a chef. I started climbing this mountain of working for the best [restaurants] and winning awards. In 2017, we became the best restaurant in the world [on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list], and that was sort of the last of the awards. That moment was one of the most disorienting times for me. The whole world is looking at us and opportunities are starting to pour in. For 20 years, every day we talked about how to become the best restaurant in the world. Never for a moment did we talk about what would happen if we reached it.

“During the pandemic I’m like, I did it all. And I enjoyed that climb, but then it just felt emptier and emptier. There was a night where the city was getting shut down. We had everyone together and said, ‘We’re going to clean up, and we’re going to see each other in a few weeks.’ That team has never been together again. We were closed for 16 months. We were facing bankruptcy. We lost a lot of our team because we couldn’t continue to pay them, and that was super heartbreaking.

“I’m a co-founder of an organization called Rethink Food. In New York, before the pandemic there were a million [people who] were food insecure. Within the first two weeks, that number doubled. I decided that we would bring some chefs back, and turn Eleven Madison Park into a community kitchen. We started cooking meals in these little cardboard boxes, like 6,000 meals a day. I felt for the first time in my entire life that my work cooking actually matters.

“You don’t need to be an expert to understand that the food system has issues and that animal farming is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. I wanted to take it to the extreme with Eleven Madison Park, to go fully plant-based, because it pushed us as creatives. We had to take butter away. We had to create a new language: What is the new creaminess or what can add viscosity to a stock? I’m so happy with it because it created this whole new cuisine. We started a farm in Upstate New York. We’re taking inspiration from ancient cuisines from all around the world. Before we just looked at France.

“You’ve got to really nurture [new ideas] before letting other people in. If we’d had 200 people on the payroll in a restaurant that’s in motion, so many people would have told me ‘it will never work’ that I would have been way too scared to do it.

“As we got closer to reopening, I couldn’t sleep at night. ‘We just had almost two years of no money, and now we’re opening a restaurant that is only vegetables. Will anyone even come?’ I’m realizing this isn’t just an artistic endeavor. ‘People are back on the payroll. If [guests] don’t come, then then this whole thing doesn’t matter. If we fail, then no one else is going to try to do it.’

“The first year was very hard. I had to dig very, very deep into me, and the team did as well. I’ve learned a lot from criticism, but the truth is, we believed in the product so much. We really went internal for almost a year, gave no interviews, nothing. We focused on the work. It was like a whisper campaign. We wanted everyone eating here [to become] our ambassador. 

“In the darkest of times, it was like, ‘Do we need to bring meat back? Because if this doesn’t work, then 200 people are out of a job.’ Thankfully, we all held each other accountable and said, ‘It’s tough right now, but let’s continue.’ All of a sudden, we saw light again and little things happened. It almost felt like at the very beginning of my career.

“A new universe of influential, important people started coming in, like Malala Yousafzai, people from the U.N., food activists. Our audience is younger. It’s more diverse. It’s people who put their money to something that matters. And, by the way, your experience is way more luxurious than ever before because this is something you can only get in one place.

“A big turning point was when we became the first restaurant to get three Michelin stars as a fully plant-based restaurant. I never saw this coming. Other things started to happen too: We’ve been part of the documentary You Are What You Eat on Netflix. There’s a new investor group that is interested in partnering with me, because we have proven that this is sustainable and viable. It’s a beautiful thing. 

“Even if only a little bit of what we do trickles into the mainstream, to me that is what winning looks like today. I don’t believe the entire world needs to be plant-based. But maybe we think a lot more about what we eat.

“If you really want to make change, you have to have a mindset of progress over perfection. You’ve got to try something. It’s less challenging for a smaller restaurant because they’re not under such a microscope. Maybe they have one vegetable option and maybe over time they have three. Try eliminating plastic or stop using plastic wrap. Maybe there are other areas where you’re not perfect, and that’s fine.”

Hello from Fannie of Fearless Flying Fannie. I want the little girl in your life to reach her adult dreams. Email loisw@hwhpr.com to get my good luck pin. Every bit of encouragement helps. Go girl go!

Fearless Flying Fannie Has Created a Good Luck Pin To Remind Young Girls Of Their Own Unique, Special Powers

 

Author Eliot Hess Describes The Significance Of The Feathers In The Story

 

Pins Will Be Distributed At All Personal Appearances

 

 

Fearless Flying Fannie by Eliot Hess will be released by Genius Cats Books on April 16, 2024.  Pre-orders are now available at all online booksellers. 

 

First book party signing at Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL. Sunday, April 21, 2024, 11AM

 

Reader can preorder from Books & Books now!https://shop.booksandbooks.com/book/9781938447952

 

(If you know of a children’s charity, Eliot Hess would like to donate a few books in your honor. Please see contact information below)

 

 

 

listen to my latest podcast. I asked Avi Ivan every possible question about his travels and then some. He has traveled to 69.1 per cent of the earth, checking out different worlds and looking at the art that the region reflects. He had the guts to do what most of us never had the opportunity to do. He certainly changed my attitude on life after this interview. Let’s see what he does to yours.

Art Lovers Forum Podcast – Episode 13 – Avi Ivan
 

This is the first Art Lovers Forum I am doing extemporaneously. I usually have a prepared introduction with a list of questions. I guess my free spirited, number 13 episode, is appropriate for the art explorer I am about to interview. Avi Ivan has traveled to 69.1 per cent of the earth studying art. The list of places he has traveled to is below. I met Avi in South Africa. It was happenstance. He joined a group, Fountainhead Arts, that Eliot and I were touring with. Everyone in the group was fascinated by Avi’s travels so I wanted him to tell us more on this podcast. Welcome Avi.

 

Listen to episode 13 of the Art Lovers Forum podcast here – https://www.artloversforum.com/e/episode-13-avi-ivan/

       

The Art Lovers Forum Podcast is also available on popular podcast sites:

 

Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/art-lovers-forum-podcast/id1725034621

Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/5FkkeWv83Hs4ADm13ctTZi

Amazon Music – https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/77484212-60c5-4026-a96f-bd2d4ae955c6

Audible – https://www.audible.com/pd/Art-Lovers-Forum-Podcast-Podcast/B0CRR1XYLZ

iHeartRadio – https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1323-art-lovers-forum-podcast-141592278/  

 

 

 

 

Contact:

Lois Whitman-Hess

loisw@hwhpr.com

I thought about her all the time. My side of Union Turnpike was called Forest Hills. I don’t remember this part of the story. What a tragedy. —LWH

Mary Ann Zielonko, Partner of Kitty Genovese, Dies at 85

The murder of Ms. Genovese, and her neighbors’ reaction to it, generated headlines. The nature of her relationship with Ms. Zielonko was a different story.

By Clyde Haberman

Published April 6, 2024 Updated April 7, 2024

For 60 years, Kitty Genovese has endured as a symbol of big-city apathy, the victim not only of a knife-wielding killer but also of her neighbors’ reluctance to get involved. Two weeks after a man named Winston Moseley stalked, raped and murdered her in Queens late at night in March 1964, a New York Times article reported that 38 of her neighbors had heard her cries for help, yet did nothing.

That account turned out to be significantly flawed. Most of those 38 people were unaware of what was actually happening; they thought they were merely hearing a fight, perhaps a lovers’ quarrel. Investigations later determined that few of them had caught even a glimpse of the attacks. Nonetheless, the death of 28-year-old Catherine Susan Genovese has long remained a paradigm of urban anonymity and indifference.

Something else was out of kilter in the reporting back then. Ms. Genovese had been living for a year with Mary Ann Zielonko. In those days they were typically referred to as roommates. In fact, they were lovers. When the police investigators became aware of that, they questioned Ms. Zielonko as a possible suspect. After a night of bowling with friends, she had been asleep in their Kew Gardens apartment while the attack took place below.

“I was very numb, I would say, from the whole thing,” she toldRetro Report, a Times series of video documentaries exploring old news stories and their lasting effects, in 2016. “I felt, wow, she was so close, and I was sleeping, and I didn’t know what happened, and that I could have saved her. You know? That’s what I really think still.”

Ms. Zielonko died on Wednesday at her home in Rutland, Vt., where she had lived since 2000. She was 85. Rebecca Jones, her domestic partner and sole survivor, said the cause was aspiration pneumonia.

In a 2004 interview with The Rutland Herald, Ms. Zielonko said she had once talked with a man whom she believed to be the last person, other than the killer, to have had contact with Ms. Genovese.

“She cried to him, and he wouldn’t open his door,” Ms. Zielonko said, adding: “I knew he was afraid of everything, even to leave his house, but that doesn’t excuse him. That’s what I’m saying. Maybe people need to open doors. When someone reaches out for help, open your door, take a chance.”

She took the name Mary Ann later in life. When born on June 22, 1938, in New York, she was Mary Katherine Zielonko. Her childhood was troubled, Ms. Jones said, with her first four years spent in an orphanage. Her parents — John Zielonko, a draftsman, and Mildred (Wood) Zielonko, a registered nurse — did not marry until she was 4. By the time she was 8, they had divorced.

Most of Ms. Zielonko’s youth was spent in Vermont and New Hampshire. She attended Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, where she received a bachelor’s degree in 1974 and a master’s degree in research statistics and management in 1977.

She met Ms. Genovese at a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village, and they were working at different bars when Ms. Genovese was murdered. Ms. Zielonko later worked for years at General Dynamics Electric Boat, a designer and builder of submarines in Groton, Conn.

“We just hit it off,” she said of Ms. Genovese in a 2004 interview with The Chicago Tribune. “We meshed. I’m very quiet, and she talked a lot. We both had struggles with our sexuality, as did many people back then. We had a quick bond.” Nonetheless, she said, “We were in the closet a lot,” and Ms. Genovese’s family was long unwilling to recognize the relationship.

After the murder, she said, she resolved not to turn her back when she saw someone in distress. She told The Rutland Herald of having driven home from work one day when she saw a man and a woman arguing by the side of the road. He hit her. Ms. Zielonko pulled her car over, stepped out and asked the woman if she needed help. She responded by running into Ms. Zielonko’s car.

“I drove her home, but never saw her again,” Ms. Zielonko said. “I could have just driven by that night, but I said, ‘I’ll take a chance.’”

This is one of the greatest gifts ever to be bestowed on an art collector. We bought this statue called “Mother” at the Southern Guild Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa February, 2024 on a Fountainhead Arts trip. It will be delivered to us at the end of May when the show for Artist Justine Mahoney will be over. 

Eliot and I were just on Instagram and discovered this video where Justine is reciting a poem she wrote for sculpture. 

Eliot and I are totally amazed because we randomly selected this statue out of a dozen being displayed. It was the first gallery that we went to on our trip and we just bought. The gallery was one of the most stunning we have ever seen the statue just called out to us. I know that sounds crazy but that’s what happens. 

This is the poem:

“Mother”

“The mother constellated in me when I became a mother.

Though mothering can be embodied by all genders I believe.

She is seen as a creator and destroyer in mythology.

Perpetually pregnant and lactating, feeding, nurturing children, the world, ideas, into being.

She gave birth to the gods. She is the source of everything.

The anima mundi

She bends over backwards, twisted out of shape, propping herself up.

The life force. Omnipotent.

She takes up space and expands over time.

Earthbound, cow like, whale like, weighted and heavy.

She is the earth and the sea.

Constantly regenerating her body.

A pollinator.

She creates and creates and creates.

She’s not only human she is animal and plant.

She birthed the fertility cults of Gaia and Demeter.

The goddess Juno alludes to the domestic role of motherhood.

She is not civilised, she is anti civilisation.

Fecundity personified

The juice of life

She is self love and self mothering

She is never too much

She denies no one

She is huge

The great creatrix

The matriarch

Rhythms Cycles Phases

Conception

Birth

In her shadow aspects she is the bad mother porous with no boundaries unendingly dark and cavernous overwhelmingly possessive secret hidden abyss destroyer devourer dominant

She gives gives gives poisons exhausted stuck blocked

She becomes thunder hurricanes tsunamis

Shiela Na Gig, the vulva revealing goddess carved on standing stones throughout

Ireland and Europe, the pre religion mother goddess.

The Empress in the Tarot

Demeter going to the ends of the earth to find her daughter Persephone in the underworld

Gaia the personification of the earth who formed the universe”

#justinemahoney #vigil #mother #jung #jungianpsychology #jungianarchetypes #mothering #southernguild #sculpture #process

Episode 11

Raymond Elman is an American artist, publisher, editor, and writer. While he has had a very successful career as an artist, we are talking to him today about why he created an online video art publication platform which has already featured (500) video conversations with some of the most interesting and accomplished people from the art world. The videos are produced in short segments so that you immediately get right to the point of the conversation. The production will captivate you.

First called Inspicio in 2014, its name was changed to ArtSpeak last year. It was easier to pronounce and remember.

ArtSpeak is sponsored by the Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media in The College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts at Florida International University in Miami.

Ray earned two degrees, a BS (1967) and an MBA (1968) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. While attending UPenn, Ray took all of the studio art courses he could schedule. After graduating from Penn, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where he took studio art courses at New York University (NYU) and met his mentor Knox Martin (1923-2022). Martin motivated Ray to “give up his day job” and move to the Provincetown art colony.

When Ray was living in the Provincetown area on the northern tip of Cape Cod from 1970 to 2012, he co-founded Provincetown Arts magazine with Christopher Busa in 1985. The magazine is still being published today.

Listen to episode 11 of the Art Lovers Forum podcast here – https://www.artloversforum.com/e/episode-11-elman-raymond/

The Art Lovers Forum Podcast is also available on popular podcast sites:

Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/art-lovers-forum-podcast/id1725034621

Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/5FkkeWv83Hs4ADm13ctTZi

Amazon Music – https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/77484212-60c5-4026-a96f-bd2d4ae955c6

Audible – https://www.audible.com/pd/Art-Lovers-Forum-Podcast-Podcast/B0CRR1XYLZ

iHeartRadio – https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1323-art-lovers-forum-podcast-141592278/

Jayda talks about the psychological force of patterns. You never knew this stuff.

 

Enter the world of art by meeting artists, collectors, and gallerists who will tell you how and why they love their creative life with the Art Lovers Forum podcast, hosted by Lois Whitman-Hess

 

 

Episode 10 – Jayda Knight

 

 

Jayda Knight (Aka Flying Knight) is a visual & street artist known for her idiosyncratic Neo-Deco Symbolist art. Jayda received a BFA & BArch from Rhode Island School of Design. She worked with Eugene Lee in set design for Saturday Night Live and off-Broadway shows in New York which influenced her creative approach.

 

Jayda explores pattern both as a metaphor as well as a visual to create narratives inspired by contemporary topics. Jayda draws from quotidien, societal, sexual, and personal subject matter to create a descriptive storytelling delivered in the form of symbolic patterns.

 

An underlying darker sub-text inherently lingers-this psychology in her work is often only accessible to the careful viewer, but playfully veiled behind a Decorative Arts approach. The intentional contrast between the surface and the deep are part of what makes her work both accessible and challenging. This combined narrative in her work juxtaposed with a nostalgic flair, is often described as a visual form of the Historic-present.

 

Jayda has collaborated with several institutions including the Miami City Ballet, Oolite Arts, Lincoln Road Improvement District and Timeout and is a grant recipient from The Gottlieb Foundation.

 

Listen to episode 10 of the Art Lovers Forum podcast here – https://www.artloversforum.com/e/episode-10-jayda-knight/

 

 

The Art Lovers Forum Podcast is also available on popular podcast sites:

 

Apple Podcasts –https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/art-lovers-forum-podcast/id1725034621

Spotify –https://open.spotify.com/show/5FkkeWv83Hs4ADm13ctTZi

Amazon Music –https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/77484212-60c5-4026-a96f-bd2d4ae955c6

Audible – https://www.audible.com/pd/Art-Lovers-Forum-Podcast-Podcast/B0CRR1XYLZ

iHeartRadio – https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1323-art-lovers-forum-podcast-141592278/