We’re excited to announce the first-ever Classical Pursuits webinar! We invite you to join us and Sean Forester on May 26 for a free webinar on Japanese art. Drawing on his experience as an artist, Sean will explore the connections between calligraphy and garden design, Zen and haiku poetry, and […]
Travel Pursuits
Splendid Isolation: The Allure of Iceland
A guest post by Mark Cwik A friend recently asked me to name three things that keep drawing me back to Iceland. The first two were easy and have remained the same through each trip I’ve made. First is the place itself, its wild beauty—mountains, volcanoes, glaciers, fjords, waterfalls, hot […]
Strength in What Remains Behind
A guest post by Sean Forester I hope you enjoy my painting of San Giorgio Maggiore at dawn. Those of you who travelled to Venice with Tom Jones and Ann experienced the calm grandeur of this vista. As I reflect on the scene, I can almost hear Mahler’s Adaggietto from his […]
ANN’S MUSINGS—My Penchant for Portugal
I confess that I have not yet been to Portugal but have been for some time under its sway. Classical Pursuits is going to Portugal this October because it has charmed and wooed me from afar. Why has this small corner of Europe come to sing so sweetly to me? […]
Countdown to Portugal: Five Reasons Why the Time to Go Is Now
We hope you’ll join us for Portugal: Poised Between Proud Tradition and Global Modernity in October 2016. There are so many reasons to visit Western Europe’s westernmost country, and in this post we present our top five. Portugal is small in size but offers such diversity of landscape, architecture, music, […]
GUEST BLOG—East Meets West; West Embraces East by Sean Forester
The Japanese prints, so the story goes, had first arrived in Paris in the 1850s as packaging protecting ceramics. The prints attracted the attention of Claude Monet, who hung works from his large collection on his dining room walls at his home in Giverny. Monet was not alone in seeking […]
TRAVEL PURSUITS—Bridging the Gulf Between Us
البعد جفاء “Distance equals disaffection.” ― Arabic proverb “Life is meant to be shared. We need each other.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita, a Ghanaian writer Lamentably, cultural divisiveness is stubborn. Travel is often touted as one of the best ways to build bridges and break down barriers. But it is […]
GUEST BLOG—The Best City in the World to Visit by Sean Forester
Each travel experience is unique, with its own set of rich memories. But what if you had to choose a favourite city? Would you choose the romance of Paris, the grandeur of Rome, the energy of New York? Perhaps your special city is Barcelona or Buenos Aires? In June, Travel […]
TRAVEL PURSUITS—Cuba! The times they are a-changin
“And keep your eyes wide The chance won’t come again” – Bob Dylan Sometimes one has the chance to be an eyewitness to history at a remarkable moment. Ten years ago, visitors were told what we now know to be true: that along with the end of the Castro regime would come […]
GUEST BLOG—Nella Cotrupi on Trieste and Tristezza
I flip pages of my memory like the pages of the many books we’ve read together. What do I come up with? The flotsam and jetsam of a world modern and yet defined by the ever-present layers of its past, its names, its words from many tongues, its wisdom, and […]