René Magritte (1898–1967) was a key proponent of Surrealism, a painter who blended dream and reality, and broke with conventional attitudes and perspectives. In the exhibition La trahison des images (September 21 to January 23, 2017), the Centre Pompidou in Paris showcases his work.
Centuries of peat harvesting left the ground in the province of North Holland, Netherlands, flooded, creating the Loosdrecht Lakes. Today, this area of natural ridges and mini- islands is dotted with vacation homes and draws water sports enthusiasts as well as other visitors.
Many museums expect visitors to be quiet, but here, you can be as loud as you like!
The Drum Museum in Tokyo has some 800 traditional percussion instruments on display, and visitors are even invited to try playing some themselves. The highlights of the collection are the enormous Japanese taiko drums.
The Museum of Sound in St. Petersburg, Russia, has a most unusual assortment of musical instruments, including a washboard equipped with bells and whistles, a contrabass clarinet made of sewer pipes and a ghostly sounding theramin.
At the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, in the U.S., visitors can view electric guitars played by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carlos Santana and other musical legends. Visitors are encouraged to make some noise!
Culture clash
Hats off to headgear! Whether it’s worn for protection or to make a stylish statement, there’s more to a hat than meets the eye!
A heady mix-up
With its elegantly curved brim and as many as three creases in its crown, the Stetson is quite simply THE traditional cowboy hat. But before its invention in 1865, most American cowboys likely wore bowler hats.
The mad hatter
The Englishman who wore the first top hat was allegedly locked up for disturbing the peace, but his headgear soon became a symbol of the elegant class. Now, it’s the hat of choice for steampunks, magicians and doctoral candidates in Scandinavia.
An imperial error
The beret – or Basque beret, as it is known in France and elsewhere – is associated with peasants, artists and guerrillas. But it evidently wasn’t invented by the Basques, as Napoleon supposedly thought, but by the Béarnais – though nobody dared to contradict the emperor at the time.
Día de los muertos, Mexico’s Day of the Dead, is not a cause for lamentation: Wearing elaborate costumes and traditional face paint, people parade through the streets of Mexico City every November 2.