Build Yourself a World Apart By Studying History and Art

Not a day goes by without some depressing reminder that our freedom is slipping away, whether it’s new taxes, new restrictions on blogging, new intrusive measures to protect against terrorism, or the ever-growing threat of the socialized rationing of medical services.  Each day we have to renew our commitment to fight the decline of American [...]

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The Power of History and Art Combined

Through the HistoryThroughArt program, you’ll learn to see history in a new way by combining the abstract lessons of history with the visual power of art!

Aren’t you tired of history books that bombard you with too many facts? Having trouble seeing the “big picture”? Are you convinced that understanding history is just not [...]

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Columbus and Isabella

I wish I had had time for all the posts I had planned for Columbus Week at Powell History, but these past months of teaching–I’m finally off for Christmas break!–have been wonderfully draining. Only now have I found the time to write about a wonderful new find I made.
Recently, I discovered a fascinating painting by [...]

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Imagine the Moment! (Columbus’s Discovery of America)

…Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness.
Ah, that night Of all dark nights!
And then a speck –
A light! a light! a light! a light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on.”
–Columbus, by Joachin Miller
The [...]

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Will It Really Matter?

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte changed history.  In 1868, Jean-Leon Gerome showed us why.

Bonaparte Before the Sphinx, by Jean-Leon Gerome
Few figures in history are more controversial than Napoleon.  In his scholarly work “Napoleon: For and Against”, Pieter Geyl, a highly regarded academic historian, characterizes the litany of debates concerning this key figure over the past two [...]

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Discover the Greatness of Sir Edward Everett Millais!

OK.  Let’s switch tracks.  Modern politics is so depressing, and I’m sure we all need a metaphysical pick-me-up after thinking about Iran-Israel.
I recently got two great art books for my birthday, and when I tell you that one of them was full of Victorian nudes, but that it’s the other one I’m most excited about, you’ll have some idea [...]

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What’s in a Building?

The world’s tallest building is under construction…in the Middle East.
After recently watching an interesting documentary about Dubai (in the United Arab Emirates) on 60 minutes, I briefly became fascinated with that city. The documentary called it “the largest construction site on the planet”–already boasting a phenomenal indoor ski slope, and man-made island groupings in the [...]

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Columbus, Through the Eyes of an American Patriot

The following excerpt is from the Columbiad, an epic poem by Joel Barlow, a member of the Connecticut Militia in 1776, and later diplomat and poet.  It is the closest thing I have ever found to an objective assessment of Columbus’s place in history, and it is beautifully written:
I sing the Mariner who first unfurl’d
An eastern [...]

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The Seeker’s Anthem

I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the Ridley Scott film “The Conquest of Paradise.”  The movie falls prey to the modern fixation with realism, and thereby loses sight of the power of art to dramatize the abstract meaning of history rather than relate its purely concrete chronology.
That said, I am a big fan of the Vangelis [...]

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Columbus: The Essence of a Man

The young man sits perched on a mooring post, looking out to sea, with a thoughtful gaze that suggests it isn’t the objects before him that truly have his attention, but rather a vision of something that others, if they were present, would not perceive.

This young man is not, however, merely day-dreaming.  His is not [...]

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