A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Art

  • La Visitacion

    Yesterday I took my daughter to the museum at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown. It’s privately funded and thus was not affected by the (recently concluded) government shutdown. The museum is small, but it features a wonderful collection from the Byzantine Empire and an impressive exhibit of pre-Columbian American artifacts. It also has, tucked away in Read more

  • The Lord God made them all

    Bertram of Minden, “Creation of the Animals,” from the Grabow altarpiece (1383) Read more

  • Pre-Christmas odds and ends

    The ATR household is off to visit family for the better part of the next week, so blogging will be light–well, even lighter than usual. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been reading ’round the Web lately: Christopher has several posts on l’affaire Rick Warren that are, as usual, very much worth your time. (See Read more

  • Blogs of Christmas past

    Since content will likely be light this coming week, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to offer up some representative posts from the previous four Decembers since I started blogging, as a kind of retrospective. (Note: some of these originally appeared on my first blog, “Verbum Ipsum,” but have been imported to WP; Read more

  • Rediscovering Correggio

    The Post had an article this weekend on the nearly forgotten Renaissance master Correggio (a.k.a. Antonio Allegri) who at one time ranked up there with the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo. What makes Correggio stand out is that his work is unconventional, even at times chaotic, by the standards of the day: Correggio’s paintings are Read more

  • Jan Lievens – “Forgotten Dutch Master”

    I recently saw this exhibit at the National Gallery. Lievens was a contemporary and friend of Rembrandt who became somewhat overshadowed, partly because some of his work was later mis-attributed to Rembrandt. The exhibit is an attempt to give him his proper due. I thought that his “Raising of Lazarus” was particularly striking. (This image Read more

  • Simple music, simple faith?

    I came across this in yesterday’s NY Times: Does Simple Music Form Simple Faith? I’m not really sure what to make of it, but I thought I’d pass it along. Essentially, the author asks if beautiful complex music (and other art) can actually be a hindrance to faith: The church has reason to fear great Read more

  • Christ the center

    As I had the day off yesterday with nothing much to do, I decided to spend a couple of hours at the National Gallery of Art, just a 15 minute or so walk from our place. It’s always been one of my favorite places in DC, going back to when I used to come here Read more