In much of the world, owning a lakeside home is desirable. But in the Dutch town of Loosdrecht, residents live within the lake itself, with houses on their own impossibly skinny islands. All I want is a little hut in the woods home on a strip of an island.
The Winners of the 2026 Pure Street Photography Awards Invoke Happenstance and Commotion. This year’s Pure Street Photography Award winners were chosen from close to 1,600 entries across 50 countries, with photos of everyday. A beam of sunlight that appears to be shooting straight out of a phone during a selfie, a rainy, moody street shot from ground level that makes every water splash look like its own tiny explosion.
The Film Experience is a free online course from MIT about movies & cinema. “This course concentrates on close analysis and criticism of a wide range of films, from the early silent period, classic Hollywood genres including musicals, thrillers…
What makes art famous and valuable? Who makes art famous and valuable? Those questions can feel impossible to answer. But in the case of Vincent (someone often referred to by only his first name more than 125 years after his death), we know the answer. It was Jo (pronounced “Yo” in Dutch), his 28-year-old sister-in-law, who inherited hundreds of his paintings that, at the time, had little market value. Jo is the reason that we see Vincent’s art absolutely everywhere today. We should all know her name.
Worth a Thousand Words: The Literary Map Painting Collection
As both an avid reader and a map librarian, I love a literary map, an image that can transport you into the world of the book. Literary maps record the location of places, whether real or imaginary, associated with authors and their works. Henry John Firley, a prolific literary map producer in the mid 20th century, stated,
“From the literary maps comes an extra stimulus which lends a sense of reality to the fictional portrayal of place and dimension, distance, and time. This seeming closeness to reality is felt by the reader as he visualizes a narrative with the aid of a map; for the reader the maps hold a power beyond mere abstract symbolism. The imaginative power of the author can better be illustrated if the flame of his experience is reflected by the background of graphic concepts.”
In 2019, the Library received a donation of 10 beautiful literary map paintings, commissioned by the Harris-Seybold Company for their “Maps of Books” promotional calendars. While the prints created of these works are found in libraries around the world, these original paintings have a unique vibrancy and vividness that cannot be translated to a print copy. …Maps
