A MUSEUM OF VISION: CELEBRATING THE HUMAN EYE

A NEW MUSEUM OF VISION:

A CELEBRATION OF THE HUMAN EYE

Kudos to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and museum chairs Drs Marmor, Truhlsen and Medow, for launching an extraordinary new Museum of Vision, to be unveiled at the AAO headquarters in San Francisco next year. 

This public museum of over 38,000 objects will be a fascinating and edifying resource for young and old to learn about our most prized possession, our sight, and all that Ophthalmologists are doing world-wide to protect our vision throughout our lives.
Here is the link to a short video which details the Academy’s wonderful new initiative.

https://lnkd.in/d4jYBzg

THE PALE BLUE DOT

THE PALE BLUE DOT

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. 

“On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

(Excerpted from Carl Sagan, _Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space_)

The Earth, from the Moon 

NASA photo Apollo 11

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE AND LA SPREZZATURA

Baldassarre Castiglione 

Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael)

c.1515

Louvre

THE GREAT COURTIER

(Il GRANDE CORTIGIANO)

Each time I have been to the Louvre, while everyone else is jostling for a quick look at La Gioconda (aka la Mona Lisa, that painting behind velvet rope and bullet proof glass ), I go to the room perpendicular to that room, and the next room, and say hello to the FOUR other Leonardos in the Museum, and to this sublime and elegant Raffaello portrait of the Courtier Baldassarre Castiglione, and usually, there is no one around me, because they are all angling for that long view of Lisa Gherardini. 

Go figure.

It was Baldassarre Castiglione who “walked the walk” as well as “talked the talk” of the Renaissance humanist: a courtly gentleman, polyglot and polymathic, suave and urbane, author and poet.  It was Castiglione  in his famous 1528 book, Il Cortigiano (The Courtier), who first defined that virtually untranslatable Italian word for elegant and effortless nonchalant coolness, Sprezzatura.

The guy was supersmart and supercool. 

Ars longa!

LEONARDO DA VINCI, THE UNIVERSAL HUMANIST

LEONARDO, THE UNIVERSAL HUMANIST

On the eve of the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Leonardo Da Vinci (2 May 2019), the superb medical journal, The Lancet, is paying homage this month to this greatest of geniuses and humanists.

Take a moment to observe and really see this wondrous red chalk portrait and read this elegiac tribute paragraph from the editors of The Lancet

“Leonardo's approach to life was built upon a vision of unity. The singular lens he used contrasts with modern dichotomous ways of seeing and thinking that separate the arts and sciences, and underlies Leonardo's diverse body of work spanning anatomy, neurology, optics, embryology, cardiology, medical education, architecture, engineering, and, of course, fine art. He perceived art and science as complementary dimensions of human experience, also believing that people and animals were inextricably entwined and interdependent on each other for survival. This was manifested in his (then radical) transition to a vegetarian diet, and through his appreciation of nature—in biodiversity and geology, and particularly through his use of the analogy of the microcosm of the human body reflecting the macrocosm of the Earth.”

The Lancet April 6,2019

Portrait of a man (possibly a self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci)

Biblioteca Reale, Torino

c. 1512