Exhibits in Europe

This year is the Year of George Sand in France (see my post on July 7). On August 19, Le Point briefly mentioned an exhibit, George Sand, Félix Nadar, portraits photographiques—a collection of Nadar's photographs of Sand and members of her family—at the Palais Jacques Cœur in Bourges until September 5. (A press announcement on the exhibit is available as a .pdf file.) The exhibit was blogged (with images) by Leary Calls.

Another little article from Le Point, also from August 19, mentioned a special event at the Château de La Roche-Guyon in France, "an unguided nocturnal visit through history from the 12th to the 20th century." I lived not far from this castle, when I was doing the research for my dissertation, and it has fascinated artists and other people for centuries (see the Cubist rendition of Georges Braque from 1909, for example). It was a fortified castle on the border between Normandy and the Île de France, which became the home of the descendants of the famous writer La Rochefoucauld (author of the Maximes, which you can read online in French and in English). General Rommel used it as his general headquarters in France during World War II, which caused it to be bombed by the Allies in 1944.

In another article (Au bord de l'Adriatique, la mémoire des images des guerres de notre temps, August 22) in Le Monde, Rémy Ourdan wrote about a new museum called War Photo Limited, in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The medieval jewel of the former Yugoslavia (which sadly I have never been able to visit), Dubrovnik was one of the most devastating cultural casualties of the wars that broke out as that country splintered into fractious republics (my translation):

In a house on Antuninska, a narrow alley in the heart of the fortress of Dubrovnik, a museum has opened its doors, with one goal: to tell the story of war in images. War Photo Limited was born from the meeting of two men, both in love with Croatia and with photography: a Belgian millionaire art lover, Frédéric Hanrez, age 40, and a photographer from New Zealand, Wade Goddard, age 34, now the museum's owner and director.

There are two exhibition rooms, both opened as of June 1. The museum's purview is not limited to the Balkan civil wars, however, since one current exhibition deals with American military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. The museum's Web site is full of images, so you know that I'm happy, since I don't think I will be making it to Dubrovnik anytime soon (although it is definitely on my list).