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The gun will be auctioned in France on Wednesday (June 19), where it's expected to sell for more than $50,000. For years, most Van Gogh experts have accepted the explanation that he shot himself in the chest with a pistol in a suicide in July 1890 Van Gogh lived on for 30 hours before dying from the wound. His last words, according to his brother Theo, were "the sadness will last forever." But in 2011, biographers Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh argued that Van Gogh didn't shoot himself, but was shot accidentally by 16-year-old René Secrétan, who was spending...

The Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)-Brahms The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will unveil a new Vincent van Gogh exhibition this Sunday, offering a rare—perhaps once-in-a-lifetime—opportunity to see the iconic Dutch painters’ masterpieces up close and in person. The exhibition runs through June 27. Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art showcases 56 Van Gogh paintings and drawings, most of which rarely travel from their homes in the two largest repositories of his work: the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, in the Netherlands. About a dozen additional works by the artist on loan from other...

The mayor of Mount Dora, Florida, will have to publicly apologize Wednesday afternoon for his city's overzealous code enforcement that targeted a home painted in the likeness of Vincent van Gogh's masterpiece, "Starry Night." More importantly, the city will remove a lien against the property and drop more than $10,000 in fines it had issued to the husband and wife who own the home, according to a settlement approved unanimously by the city council Tuesday night. The Orlando Sentinel reports that the settlement also includes the payment of $15,000 to homeowners Lubomir Jastrzebski and his wife, Nancy Nemhauser. The couple's...

New York's Guggenheim museum has turned down a request from President Donald Trump to borrow Van Gogh's work for the White House - instead offering him a gold toilet, media reports say. But the Guggenheim suggested a "solid, 18-karat toilet" could be offered as an alternative. The White House has made no comment.

The Guggenheim Museum offered President Trump a solid gold toilet from its collection as a "long-term loan" for the White House. Trump and first lady Melania had asked to borrow a Van Gogh painting from the museum, but the Guggenheim responded that it could not accommodate the request and offered the toilet instead, according to The Washington Post. “We are sorry not to be able to accommodate your original request, but remain hopeful that this special offer may be of interest," curator Nancy Spector wrote in an email to the White House, according to the Post.

The Guggenheim Museum has reportedly turned down a White House request to borrow a Van Gogh painting, and has instead offered the Trump administration the use of a golden toilet. The White House had asked the Guggenheim, based in New York, to borrow Landscape With Snow, Van Gogh’s 1888 work depicting a man and a dog walking through a field. But the Guggenheim’s chief curator, Nancy Spector, turned down the request, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. Instead she said the White House could loan an 18-carat toilet – an installation by artist Maurizio Cattelan. The fully functioning toilet, titled...

It's the art history/physics major in me, but the video is divided into chronological rough chunks: 1 - 1881-1887; 2 - 1888; 3 - 1889; 4 - 1890. Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) was one of the post-impressionists. The son of a minister and nephew of an art dealer, Vincent worked for his uncle in Paris. At first he was determined to follow his father's profession and became an evangelist to the poor, but he couldn't connect with the people he was trying to mentor. The bible in the still life in the first part was his memorial to his father....

A lost sketchbook belonging to Vincent van Gogh includes 65 never-before-seen sketches. The sketchbook - which is set to be published today - contains drawings from his most significant period while he was living in France. During this time, he was suffering from mental health problems which famously led to the artist cutting off his ear. However, he also produced some of his most famous paintings in this period. The discovery was made by retired University of Toronto professor Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov. She was asked by an art scholar in France to look at an album and was left stunned by...

A neat little video of 13 different Van Gogh's paintings turned into 3D scenes by Luca Agnani studios at the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands. They also made an entire film looking like one of his paintings, but thats copyrighted. Video Here

Police carrying out a crackdown on the Camorra organised crime group have recovered two Van Gogh paintings stolen 14 years ago. The masterpieces - Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuene and View of the Sea at Scheveningen - were painted by the Dutch artist early in his career. "They're safe," said Van Gogh Museum director Axel Rueger. "I no longer dared to hope that I could ever say that, after so many years."

Explanation: These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 near the bottom of the frame The third, NGC 6559, is right of M8, separated from the larger nebula by dark dust lanes. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is...

New York was recently the scene of a heated debate on the status of Muslim women under Islamic law. In it, one of the bravest women in the world, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, faced off against three other Muslim women and a hostile moderator, Barkha Dutt. Dutt, known for her soft spot for Muslims in her own country of India, ... Hirsi Ali immediately recognized she was being set up to run a gauntlet of criticism and so chose to go for the jugular. “I reject Islamic law because it’s totalitarian ... because it’s bigoted and especially bigoted against women… Where...

How crop artist Stan Herd made an acre-wide ode to "Olive Trees" If you're flying through Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport this fall, keep an eye out for Vincent van Gogh's "Olive Trees" from your airplane window. It won't be hard to miss — this aerial crop art covers more than an acre of land. The unique ode to van Gogh is the work of landscape artist Stan Herd, reports Mary Abbe for the Star Tribune. It was commissioned to honor two milestones: the Minneapolis Institute of Art's centennial and the 125th anniversary of van Gogh's death. "It's an iteration of...

New York City's spring art auctions get underway Tuesday with exceptional pieces by Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Vincent Van Gogh and others whose work continues to fuel a robust market for impressionist, modern and contemporary art. Picasso's "Women of Algiers (Version O)," estimated to bring over $140 million, is poised to become the most expensive artwork sold at auction, while Giacometti's "Pointing Man" could set an auction record for a sculpture if bidding soars to an expected $130 million.

...Al-Muhallab said, “You must use deception in war, for it is more effective than reinforcements.” Some methods of deception include: a. Planting spies. b. Reconnaissance. c. Feigning an intent to attack an area other than the actual target, for when the Prophet (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam) wanted to attack one area, he would give his army the impression they were going to attack another. “If a man’s chest is too narrow to hold his own secret, then the chest of the one with whom he stores the secret is even narrower” [Poetry]. And be on guard against your enemy at...

NORFOLK Ayaan Hirsi Ali stood before a slide of the caged Jordanian pilot about to be set afire by Islamic State group extremists. That, she said at Chrysler Hall on Tuesday night, will be the norm if they are not defeated. "You are going to see people beheaded, their hands and legs cut off, the mass enslavement of women," warned Hirsi Ali, a sharp critic of Muslim leaders and radicals and an advocate of women's rights. "We have had over a long period of time... even before the Reagan administration, so many warning signs that we have ignored," Hirsi Ali...

Ali was raised in a strict Muslim family, but after surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, beatings and an arranged marriage, she renounced the faith in her 30s. ... Thomas Doherty, chairman of American studies, refused to sign the faculty letter. He said it would have been great for the university to honor "such a courageous fighter for human freedom and women's rights, who has put her life at risk for those values."

Christian County Sheriff Joey Kyle said investigators found the charred remains of a human ear when responding to reports of vandalism at a White River Cooperative Electric substation in Spokane Nov. 15. “We found damage to the facility,” Kyle said. “We found a knit cap that was singed and a piece of charred remains that looks like an ear. Once we figured someone got zapped we started calling around to the hospitals. Sure enough we found a burn victim at St. Johns.” Kyle said there was obviously more than one person involved. “I would imagine more than one,” he said....

SNIPPET: "British Jihadi Anjem Choudary Tweets On March 19, 2011, British jihadi Anjem Choudary, spokesman for the banned Islam4UK organization, co-founder of Al-Muhajiroun, and spiritual advisor to the UK Islamist group Muslims Against Crusades (MAC),[18] launched a Twitter account and began tweeting. MAC made headlines last week for threatening a British MP who subsequently called on their activities to be closely monitored by law enforcement.[19] According to his Twitter account, Choudary is "a Muslim who believes that Islam is something we must believe in (Tawheed), live by (Shari'ah) and struggle and sacrifice for (by way of Daw'ah and Jihad)."[20] In...

Geert Wilders: "I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands" Final remarks of Geert Wilders at his trial in Amsterdam, June 1st, 2011 Mister President, members of the Court, I am here because of what I have said. I am here for having spoken. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak. Many have kept silent, but not Pim Fortuyn, not Theo Van Gogh, and not I. I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology...