Cultural notes from all over

 

The importance of Taylor Swift:  The video of her song "The Fate of Ophelia" features Swift costumed in white in imitation of Friedrich Heyser's painting, and hundreds of people are crowding into a small regional museum in Germany, the Hessische Landesmuseum in Wiesbaden, to see the original.  They don't seem to care about the rest of the treasures, like tourists who queue for hours to squint at "Mona Lisa" and then exit the Louvre, muttering about how small it is.

Have you seen this painting?  Picasso's 1919 gouache "Still Life with Guitar" disappeared from a consignment of pictures traveling from Madrid to Granada for a show called "Still Life:  The Eternity of the Inert."   It measures 5 x 4 inches, which means it may have been slipped into a pocket or tote bag.

As Americans continue to hyperventilate about a rapper performing in Spanish at a sacred event (the Superbowl halftime show) the British prove themselves much more open to that scary concept diversity.  Stormzy, the rapper whose legal name is Michael Omari Owuo, Jr., has been elected an honorary fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.  In 2018 he established the college's Stormzy Scholarship for black UK students.

Speaking of the Louvre...

.....was Inspector Clouseau on duty during this jewel robbery?  They apparently got away with the crown jewels of Empress Eugenie.

KV62 -- better known as the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun in Luxor, Egypt -- is in its worst condition since it was discovered a century ago.  Water leakage has caused cracks in the ceiling and fungi are attacking the incredible murals.  Professor Mohamed Atia Hawash of Cairo University said, "We have the ability to monitor risks scientifically but the absence of a culture of prevention means we only react after disaster strikes."  

The Curse of Tut's Tomb is not taken seriously by serious people, but Chinese archeologists are very wary about opening the tomb of China's first emperor Qin Shu Huang.  A century after his burial in 210 BCE, the historian Sima Qian warned of "crossbows and arrows primed to shoot at anyone who enters the tomb" and mercury used to simulate the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers and the sea.  Maybe robots?

It's been said that the young have stopped watching television, but come on.  Sir David Attenborough, 99, has become the oldest person to win a daytime Emmy award for "Secret Lives of Orangutans."  Dick Van Dyke, who won last year for something not ape-related, didn't hold that record long at 98.