Latest news with #GirlWithaPearlEarring
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fine Arts Fiesta set for May 15 through May 18 in Public Square
May 13—WILKES-BARRE — Have you ever pictured yourself as "Mona Lisa," that mysterious lady that Leonardo da Vinci painted so long ago? Or do you have more in common with the stalwart farmers of "American Gothic" that Grant Wood immortalized? Perhaps you'd get a kick out of seeing yourself as Johannes Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring," or Edouard Manet's "The Fifer" or even one of Raphael's "Two Cherubs," who look so thoughtful. When the 69th Fine Arts Fiesta comes to downtown Wilkes-Barre on Thursday, May 15, through Sunday, May 18, you won't have to imagine yourself as the subject of any of those artists. Thanks to a concept the Fiesta's executive director, Brian J. Benedetti came up with, as you wander around Public Square you'll find representations of 20 masterpieces, from Frida Kahlo's "Self Portrait with Monkeys" to Roy Lichtenstein's "Girl With a Ball." And there will be holes cut out in each one so you can pose for a picture. "This is getting back to the roots of the Fiesta," Benedetti said, noting that when the event started it focused on artistic and educational exhibits. This year, you can pick up a brochure "The Portrait & The Human Figure: A Walk in Art History" at the Fiesta information booth and, as you search for the images, you'll be able to brush up on some facts about the artists and their art. The Fiesta also will include the many features people have come to love in recent years: four days of live entertainment, with this year's headliner The Badlees performing at 7 p.m. Saturday; tents filled with more than 300 pieces of juried artwork from local adult and student artists; face-painting, story time and crafts geared especially toward children, vendors offering an assortment of artistic and crafted items, and plenty of food. THE SCHEDULE OF LIVE ENTERTAINMENT INCLUDES: Thursday, May 15 * 10:50 a.m. Welcome from Gina Malsky, Pledge of Allegiance with children from Building Blocks Learning Center, Mayor George Brown opens Fiesta * 11 a.m. Susquehanna Prep Glee Club * 11:30 a.m. Wyoming Valley West Small Chamber Orchetra * 12:30 p.m. Anne Chairge's Flute Studio * 1:30 p.m. Wyoming Valley West Middle School Band & Jazz Band * 3 p.m. Rhythmic Republic Dance Studio * 4 p.m. Mr. Toad "Spoken Word" * 4:30 p.m. Wyoming Valley West High School Jazz Band * 5:30 p.m. Wyoming Valley West High School Concert Choir * 6:30 p.m. Annual Awards Ceremony & The Howard B. and Mary Anne Fedrick Friend of the Arts Award * 7:45 p.m. Little Theater of Wilkes-Barre Friday, May 16 * 10 a.m. Wyoming Valley West Middle School Spartan Singers * 10:30 a.m. Wyoming Valley West Middle School Orchestra * 11:45 a.m. Dallas Middle School Mountaineer Band/Chorus * 12:45 p.m. Wilkes-Barre Academy Creative Performing Arts (CAPAA) Music * 2 p.m. Rockology * 3 p.m. Wilkes-Barre Academy Glee Club * 4 p.m. Rising Stars Performing Arts Academy * 5 p.m. Dance Theatre of Wilkes-Barre * 6 p.m. Southside Five * 7:30 p.m. Flaxy Morgan 30th Anniversary Band Saturday, May 17 * 10:55 a.m. Carl Achhammer Jr. on Trumpet, National Anthem * 11 a.m. Joan Harris Dance Center * Noon Rising Stars Theater Company * 1 p.m. Katrina Lykes Music Studio * 2 p.m. Wyoming Valley Barbershop Harmony Chorus * 2:30 p.m. Mt Zion Abundant Praise Dance Ministry * 3 p.m. Mt Zion Mass Choir * 3:30 p.m. PATAsphere * 5 p.m. Dustin Douglas & The Electric Gentlemen * 6 p.m. Set up for Headliner * 7 p.m. The Badlees Sunday, May 18 * 10:30 a.m. The Wyoming Valley Poetry Society * Noon Lazy River Jazz Band * 1:30 p.m. Jr. Mozart Club of Wilkes Barre * 2:30 p.m. Contra Dance/The Contra Rebels * 4 p.m. Brendan Brisk Band
The Guardian
13-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘In plain sight': How The Hague museum was secret hideout from Nazi forced labour
The 13-year-old boy answered the doorbell. 'Tell your dad I'm here,' said a man, who stored his bicycle and then disappeared upstairs. It was 1944, and right under the noses of Nazi command, people were hiding in the attic of The Hague's Mauritshuis museum from forced labour conscription – Arbeitseinsatz – under which hundreds of thousands of citizens from the Nazi-occupied Netherlands were conscripted to work in Germany. The memories of 93-year-old Menno de Groot – a Dutch-Canadian who was that young boy – form an extraordinary part of a book and an exhibition of the secret history of the Dutch museum during the second world war. 'He must have gone all the way to the attic,' de Groot tells his granddaughter Kella Flach in a video for the exhibition, referring to the man who he assumed had arrived to go into hiding. 'I don't know how many were up there. I have no idea how they lived up there, how they got there.' The chance find of a logbook by de Groot's father, Mense de Groot, an administrator who from 1942 lived in the Mauritshuis museum with his wife and children, including Menno, inspired researchers to examine the museum's history. 'People were hiding in November 1944 because of the Arbeitseinsatz, but hiding in the Mauritshuis was hiding in plain sight,' Quentin Buvelot, a researcher and curator, said. 'It was a house in the storm.' Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion Art from the museum, including Johannes Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring, was first hidden in a bomb-proof bunker underneath the building and later stored in locations around the Netherlands. The German-born museum director Wilhelm Martin played a careful role, allowing the Nazis five propaganda exhibitions while also quietly resisting. A newly discovered note on Martin's retirement in 1953 revealed he was involved in supporting people who had gone undercover on Assendelftstraat and in the museum. 'Martin doesn't say how many, but he says that on a daily basis, 36 loaves of bread were delivered … And we also found [an expenses claim] for a first-class carriage to Maastricht, where he went with the Girl With a Pearl Earring under his arm on 11 May 1942,' said Buvelot. Secret concerts were also held in the museum's basement between 1942 and 1944, according to Frank van Vree, an author and researcher at the NIOD institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 'They were held to support musicians who were cornered by their resistance to German measures, especially compulsory membership of the Nazi Kultuurkamer,' he said. 'People who refused to become members were out of work.' Mense de Groot, who was hired to work at the museum when the janitor retired, also worked for the resistance. 'He usually got Trouw, an underground newspaper,' Menno de Groot says in the exhibition. 'And my dad, he copied them, made more copies. 'Menno, are you ready? I've got 25 here.' I folded them up small, then I put them under my shirt and went to where people were living and distributed them.' Life under occupation was a series of difficult choices, according to Eelke Muller, a historian and NIOD specialist in looted art. 'There was little knowledge [before this research] about how culture could be a political instrument for resistance from the Netherlands but also a strong ideological instrument for the occupier,' she said. 'Every museum, every civil servant in times of war was confronted with huge dilemmas: do you choose principled resistance, enthusiastically get behind Nazi ideas, or are you somewhere in the middle?' Raymund Schütz, a historian and researcher at The Hague city archives, said while important archives are only partially open due to privacy concerns, oral history still reveals surprising stories. 'This was the political centre of the city, the spider in the web of the occupying authorities,' he said. 'But sometimes the lion's den is a good place to hide.'
