The novel Lonesome Dove follows two retired Texas Rangers, Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae, who own the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium in the small Texas town of Lonesome Dove. As they drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Montana, they endure dust storms, dangerous river crossings, and conflict with the Kainai (Blood) people.

Lonesome Dove’s Woodrow Call and Captain Augustus McCrae

The two central characters in Lonesome Dove, Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae, are loosely inspired by real cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, respectively. Goodnight and Loving are the namesakes of the Goodnight-Loving Trail, which they themselves established in 1866. The historic cattle trail originated in west Texas, running southwest to connect with the Pecos River before continuing up the river’s valley to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. It was primarily used for the movement of Texas Longhorns, which later became unnecessary due to the arrival of railroads in West Texas in the early 1880s.

The fate of Loving is similar to that of Gus. While along a stretch of the Pecos River in 1867, Loving was trapped by Comanche braves and was subsequently shot in the arm and side. While he managed to escape to Fort Sumner, he later succumbed to his injuries after developing gangrene. Before he died, Goodnight promised to honor his wish of being buried in Texas. Although he was temporarily buried in Fort Sumner while Goodnight drove the herd to Colorado, he later had Loving’s body exhumed and transported home to Texas for it to be reburied.

Similarly, in the novel, Gus is wounded in the leg by two arrows during a conflict with members of the Kainai (Blood) tribe, leading to a fatal infection. Even though Gus’s leg is amputated in the novel, he still passes away from complications with blood poisoning. Before his passing, he asks Call to bury him in Texas. Although Call leaves Gus behind, he later retrieves his body and takes him to an orchard in San Antonio, where he buries him. Despite the similarities, McMurtry had insisted that Call and Gus were not meant to be accurate depictions of Goodnight and Loving. In fact, McMurtry himself has stated that Gus and Call are more closely influenced by Sancho Panza and Don Quixote.

Everyday Life of Texas Rangers

Although ten experienced frontiersmen were hired as rangers in 1823 for an expedition against bands of Native Americans, it was not until 1835 that a specific force known as the Texas Rangers was formally instituted by Texas lawmakers. Texas Rangers patrolled the frontier, fought in military battles, and arrested cattle rustlers. Despite stories of their bravery and heroism, that idea is somewhat hypocritical due to incidents of executing thieves without a fair trial, driving Native American tribes from their land, and, in some cases, the lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans along the border between Texas and Mexico. Post-Civil War, the role of Texas Rangers shifted to suppress lawlessness, track fugitives, protect the border, and manage conflicts.

While Gus and Call are retired Texas Rangers, they still uphold the law when they learn that the Suggs Brothers and their gang attacked Wilbarger and stole his horses, resulting in his death. When Gus, Call, Pea Eye, and Deets discover Jake Spoon with the Suggs Brothers, they hang him alongside them. As the Texas Rangers did, Gus and Call act as judge, jury, and executioner. However, despite adhering to a frontier code of justice, Jake is their old friend and former Texas Ranger himself who accompanied Gus and Call into Mexico to rustle cattle. The difference is that while stealing of horses was common in the frontier, riding with men who murdered a civilian was unforgivable, as in their eyes, Spoon shared the same responsibility. Call is known for his stoic nature, maintaining a strong moral boundary in the decision to hang Spoon.

Cattle Rustling Across the Borders

Following the end of the Civil War, cattle rustling became a problem in southwest Texas, especially around the 1870s, when the novel is set. Cattle theft began after the severe winter of 1863-1864, when large numbers of cattle strayed from their native range and ranchers had very little capacity to retrieve them. Consequently, cattle became an easy target for any horseman who wanted to make two to four dollars for nothing but driving the cattle across the river into Mexico. Cattle rustling posed very little risk, as by this time the Texas Rangers had disbanded and local Texas law enforcement had limited capacity to prevent cattle raids.

Raiding of Texas ranches was consistent between 1865 and 1878. It was estimated that at their peak, these cattle raids saw as many as 200,000 head of cattle stolen annually. However, ranchmen of Mexico also fell victim to Texas thieves who swam herds of cattle across the Rio Grande during the night, often leading them to Kansas markets. This is reflected in the novel when the Hat Creek outfit enters Mexico to rustle thousands of cattle and drive them towards Montana, in an attempt to establish the first cattle ranch north of the Yellowstone River.

Conditions on cattle trails were often unpredictable and treacherous. Many hazards included harsh weather, cattle thieves, difficult river crossings, stampedes, and conflicts with Native American groups. The Hat Creek company experiences dust storms, dangerous river crossings, and conflicts with Native Americans as they drive the herd through Texas.

Tensions With Indigenous Nations of the Plains

Early settlers in Texas and Native American groups often came into conflict with one another on the plains. Sometimes, their conflict was in relation to cattle theft. While Native Americans were more likely to steal horses, if their food supply was low, they were known to butcher beef, dairy cows, and oxen. Other times, they stole cattle to right wrongs or push white settlers from their hunting grounds. They were also known to start stampedes and kill cattle if they could not move them.

In the novel, fears of raids, ambushes, and attacks during cattle drives by Native Americans are common. It becomes a reality later in the novel when the Hat Creek outfit is in Wyoming, and their horses are stolen by half-starved Indians. Call, Gus, and Deets pursue them; however, Deets is killed by the last remaining Comanche brave. Gus and Pea Eye are later attacked by Kainai (Blood) warriors after the cattle drive arrives in Montana, an encounter that leads to Gus’ eventual death.

Blue Duck is an Indigenous man known by Gus and Call as a Comanchero. He is an antagonistic force in the novel responsible for raids, murders, rapes, and kidnappings. Blue Duck was a real Native American, but this was purely coincidental, and the similarities between the two end there. Blue Duck is in the novel as particularly violent and merciless.

The 1870s did see desperate and sometimes violent actions from Indigenous groups due to survival pressures, and intensified by the encroachment of white settlers, whom tribes viewed as invaders into their territory and hunting grounds. However, frontier violence was reciprocal, with settlers also committing violent acts against Native American groups. Blue Duck is more of a sensationalized stereotype, creating an antagonist that aligns with the fears of White settlers.

Diversity Within Cowboys

Despite conflicts between early settlers with Mexicans and Native Americans, there was a lot of ethnic diversity on the cattle frontier, with many cowboys of Black, Mexican, or Native American descent. Joshua Deets, an African-American former Texas Ranger and ranch hand at the Hat Creek Cattle Company, was inspired by Bose Ikard, a friend of Charles Goodnight who accompanied Goodnight and Loving on their 1866 trip to Colorado. While Ikard and Deets both worked as trackers and cowboys for their respective duos, Ikard died of natural causes in Texas, unlike Deets in the novel. However, Call carved an epitaph for Deets, similar to the one Goodnight carved for Ikard after his death.

While not based on any real-life individual, Bolivar, a former Mexican bandit, works as a cook for the Hat Creek Cattle Company. This is reflected in real-life, as before White settlers were prevalent across Texas, Spanish and Mexican ranchers brought generations of expertise and techniques in roping, riding, and handling livestock, which American ranchers and cowboys later adopted. While Bolivar is valued, Mexican workers in Texas sometimes faced discrimination and exploitation, specifically following the Texas Revolution and Mexican-American War. While Bolivar is not explicitly discriminated against, insight into Gus’ point of view early in the book suggests that breakfast is too important a meal for a Mexican bandit to be trusted to cook.

Is Lonesome Dove Accurate?

Lonesome Dove is not a strict historical account, but that was never McMurtry’s intention. Gus and Call have remained beloved heroes for many readers by drawing on real figures like Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, incorporating the hardships of cattle drives, and reflecting the lawlessness of the post–Civil War West. Lonesome Dove portrays a fictional narrative that closely mimics the real-life hardships that settlers and ranchers experienced. It is not an attempt to romanticize the Old West, but rather to capture the authenticity, to criticize it for the terrible culture and events that took place. As a result, Lonesome Dove stands not only as a classic Western novel but also as a powerful literary interpretation of life on the 19th-century frontier.

Arte Povera originated in the 1960s in Italy. The term, coined by the art critic Germano Celant, was translated as poor art and referred to the artists’ use of cheap non-artistic materials like metal scraps, rags, foil, earth, or wood. Arte Povera was a protest against the increasingly commodifying art sphere, as artists created works that fell out of the category of high-price elitist art. Read on to get familiar with six important works of the Arte Povera movement.

1. Arte Povera’s Iconic “Venus of the Rags” by Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto was perhaps the most popular of all Arte Povera artists. His Venus of the Rags became emblematic of the entire movement. Contrast was the main expressive method of the Arte Povera artists—the contrast of high and low, of outstanding and mundane, as well as highbrow gallery spaces and cheap materials found in trash or taken directly from nature. The visitor, confronted by piles of wood, scraps of metal, and live horses within the gallery space, stands astonished, almost identical to Pistoletto’s Venus, facing a stack of cheap rags.

Pistoletto’s sculpture featured a pile of cheap clothing items discarded in a corner. The unique sculpture of the goddess of beauty, Venus, is almost lost in it, standing with her back to the viewer. Pistoletto’s sculptures show how strange high art looks when it encounters the objective reality of the world outside art markets and collectors’ parties. Pistoletto reacted to the wave of student protests of the late 1960s and created work that commented upon destructive capitalism and elitism of the art world. Today, this sculpture has gained a new meaning: the fast fashion industry is one of the biggest polluting forces today, not just threatening our existence but also causing a detrimental impact on the climate.

2. “To Invent of The Spot (12 Live Horses)” by Jannis Kounellis

In 1969, a Greek-Italian artist called Jannis Kounellis brought 12 live horses into the prestigious Galleria L’Attico in Rome. The animals calmly chewed on hay and occasionally gently explored the gallery space. Still, their quiet presence turned into a disruptive force of nature that turned the snobbish gallery space into something alive and functional. Some saw Kounellis’ piece as a celebration of pre-industrial techniques and the joyful superiority of natural experiences over urban ways of life. Indeed, the living and breathing horses seemed much more pleasant than the sterile exhibition space on its own.

In the years that followed, Jannis Kounellis repeated this performance several times. He considered its fleeting nature one of the most important aspects of the work. Unlike a painting or a sculpture that could be hung in place, sold, or passed from owner to owner, the presence of horses in time and space could not be replicated or captured. Each iteration of the performance was slightly different due to the animals’ natural behaviors. Kounellis’ animal performances thus were powerful anticapitalist actions focused on organic and genuine experiences of reality.

3. “Merda d’artista” by Piero Manzoni

One of the most provocative and scandalous gestures in the history of contemporary art was made in 1961 by Piero Manzoni. Manzoni died before he could participate in Arte Povera as a coherent movement, yet his works perfectly corresponded to the spirit and the goals of the movement.

In 1961, Manzoni presented 90 sealed tin cans, each one of them supposedly containing 30 grams of human feces. The labels on cans stated the title of the work and the date of its creation. Despite a rather repulsive concept, the works successfully and fairly expressed Manzoni’s disdain for the art market and the celebrity status of artists who stood in the way of creating quality art. Artists themselves turn into commodities, fetishized into prestigious pieces someone could own. Collectors rushed to get the most intimate and personal expression of an artist’s activity, so Piero Manzoni gave them exactly that.

Curiously, we still don’t know if the contents of these cans correspond to Manzoni’s claims, as any attempt to learn the truth ultimately leads to the work’s destruction. Even if someone mastered the courage to dismantle the work, it would hardly bring them any satisfaction. If someone broke into a sealed can with such a label to find exactly what the label stated, the situation would only turn even more absurd, unpleasant, and devoid of any exploratory excitement.

4. “Untitled (Eating Structure)” by Giovanni Anselmo

The contrast of materials and their interrelation played a surprising role in the work of Giovanni Anselmo. Anselmo juxtaposed organic and inorganic, light and heavy, eternal and short-lived. His most significant piece was the sculpture Eating Structure. Anselmo took two blocks of polished granite and loosely tied them with a copper wire. To fix the blocks, he placed fresh lettuce between them to add volume and tighten the wire. Over time, the water evaporating from lettuce caused it to fall apart. Thus, without the force holding the wire, the entire structure fell apart. To maintain the structure’s integrity, someone had to pay attention to the work and replace the lettuce. Alselmo’s work explored the ideas of replenishment and maintenance, as well as the care and attention required to balance any structure, be it a physical sculpture or an intangible feeling or relationship.

In one of his later interviews, Anselmo stated that initially, he used a piece of meat for the work to make the contrast between the living object and the stone even sharper. However, he soon changed his mind upon learning more about the global problem of hunger and the scarcity of food in certain parts of the world. Lettuce, in this case, was an easily renewable material that wasted significantly fewer resources and did not evoke associations with death and decay.

5. “Igloo with Tree” by Mario Merz

Many artists of various movements throughout history glorified utopian hi-tech futures or created images of idealized scenes, conditions, or events. Instead of continuing the cycle of creative daydreaming, Arte Povera artists grounded themselves in the present. For this reason, they relied on simple, readily available materials. Transformed into works of art, these materials received a chance to be appreciated anew.

In the 1940s, Mario Merz was a medical student at the University of Turin and a secret member of an anti-fascist organization. In 1945, he was arrested and imprisoned, and during his months in jail, he started to channel his stress into drawing. After being released, he chose to make art his full-time profession. The dominant motif in Merz’s art was the igloo—a shelter usually built from snow that protects people from cold, even in the most hostile parts of Canada and Greenland. The igloo is a symbol of home as a concept, as well as the safety and warmth it provides. The hemisphere form is also universal for many cultures and climates.

During his long artistic career, Mario Merz designed dozens of igloos from different materials. One of the most famous was a clear glass dome with a tree that grew right through it, not breaking the glass but becoming part of it. The structure was deliberately crude, as if assembled by hands in need of shelter. Merz’s igloos were manifestations of human resilience and determination to survive, the celebration of unbreakable spirit and our desire to make a home out of any place, however dangerous, hostile, and unforgiving it might be.

6. “Imprint” by Luciano Fabro: Destruction as an Arte Povera Statement

Luciano Fabro was one of the most prominent Arte Povera artists who worked extensively with glass. One of his most celebrated works was the opaque-glass circle with a footprint at the center, titled Imprint. The footprint strangely resembled the vision of a planet from space and, according to Fabro, celebrated the longevity of the Earth and our connection to it.

The work itself would not be as significant if it were not for its untimely and absurd demise. In 2013, during an exhibition opening in a Turin art gallery, an unnamed journalist representing Radio Switzerland reached to grab some canapés from a plate and knocked the sculpture, shattering it into countless pieces. Ironically, this event added an extra layer of commentary to Fabro’s idea of the Earth’s longevity and the Arte Povera artists’ concerns about the art world and media acting as destructive forces rather than promoters of art.

Tachisme originated in France in the late 1940s and represented a larger trend for art without limits and conventions. Tachisme artists used unconventional methods (like painting with tree branches or spreading ink over the surface with a hairdryer) and created fluid and lyrical forms. Their main goal was to create improvised and sincere art with little to no conscious involvement. Read on to learn 10 important facts about Tachisme and its artists.

1. Tachisme Was Part of a Bigger Trend in French Art

Tachisme was a French art movement that originated in the 1940s. It represented fluid abstraction, usually created intuitively. It was part of the larger movement in French and European art known as art informal—“informal art” in the sense that it lacked precise form and conventional format. Apart from Tachisme, art informal included other gestural and abstract art styles and art brut—art created by the outsiders of the conventional art market, who often had no formal training. Apart from France, Tachisme found its followers in other European countries. Particularly prominent was the art group CoBrA. The name of the group was formed using letters from the cities of the members’ origins—Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

2. It Had Cubist Origins

Despite several decades that separated Cubism from Tachisme, the latter movement actually relied on the former. Cubism was a deeply intellectual movement that relied on rationalism and analysis of real-life scenes in front of the artists. It was strictly figurative and deeply rooted in physical objectivity and properties of three-dimensional objects. Tachisme was the exact opposite of it: it celebrated pure abstraction with no real-world sources (although some artists later painted Tachist landscapes), and preferred intuition to calculation.

3. The Term Itself Was Much Older Than the Movement

The term Tachisme originated from the French word tache, meaning stain or drip.  For the first time, it was applied to the new movement in 1951 with a derogatory undertone. However, the use of this term has a much longer history. According to art historians, it was first applied to Divisionist and Pointillist artists in the 1880s. Divisionism was a technique of painting with small separate brushstrokes of unmixed color, layering them closely to one another. Allegedly, these strokes were meant to mix inside the viewers’ brains, turning into a luminous and vivid whole. Pointillism was essentially the same, only with small dots replacing the strokes.

4. Tachisme Artists Used Unconventional Techniques

Often, Tachisme painters relied on unconventional painting techniques to make their art more expressive. Hans Hartung took the idea of organic forms to a new level by dipping tree branches into paint instead of brushes. Other artists dripped paint from cans suspended over flat canvases or splashed it onto the surface.

Other unconventional methods were used. Henri Michaux frequently worked under the influence of alcohol or mescaline. According to one of the movement’s theoreticians, Georges Mathieu, an ecstatic state of mind was necessary to create a true and honest artwork. Michaux, according to contemporaries, was deeply insecure and at odds with the rules of the world around him. He experimented with substances to calm his mind and find inspiration. He also used a hairdryer to spread ink and painted using his left hand despite being right-handed.

5. The Founding Father of Tachisme Was Wols

The most prominent figure of Tachisme was the painter and photographer known as Wols. He was born Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze into a wealthy German family. His father was an art patron and a friend of Otto Dix, so the atmosphere at home promoted his artistic inclinations. Taking the advice of László Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian artist and Bauhaus professor, 19-year-old Wols moved to Paris to pursue art. There, his circle of friends included Fernand Leger, Max Ernst, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Wols had no formal training as an artist but compensated for it with enthusiasm, self-education, and decisive action. He painted his works using a technique similar to the Surrealist automatic drawing—a process of creating shapes and images without the conscious involvement of the mind.

6. Tachisme Was Different From Abstract Expressionism

Frequently, Tachisme is described as a French alternative to American Abstract Expressionism. Many of the movement’s artists were indeed inspired by their overseas colleagues. Painter Jean-Paul Riopelle came close to imitating the work of Jackson Pollock. Although the movements were close from a formal point of view, there were certain tonal differences between them.

Despite similar artistic methods and the focus on individual artistic expression, Tachisme was usually less aggressive and more refined than Abstract Expressionism. Moreover, it was different from a political point of view. Abstract Expressionism was weaponized by governmental institutions as a tool of propaganda for American values and creative individualism. One such case was the famous exhibition The New American Painting curated by the CIA. It did not matter that most artists did not share the ideology they were supposed to promote—still, their art was labeled as such and brought to other countries as examples of national creativity backed by the state. Tachisme, on the other hand, was made by politically active figures who had no ambitions of siding with the government and were largely left alone by the authorities. Many of them were activists, who supported the 1968 student protests and the anti-fascist movement.

7. Some Tachist Painters Turned Their Art Into Performances

Despite the movement’s umbrella term, different Tachisme painters treated its boundaries differently. One of the most eccentric and influential representatives was Georges Mathieu, who often painted in public and on stage. He presented aesthetic performances dressed in medieval garments, creating paintings of enormous sizes in just hours. Mathieu was also one of the movement’s theoreticians. In 1947, he drafted the four principles of lyrical abstraction: fast execution to avoid involving the artist’s consciousness, complete absence of references, no premeditated moves, and an ecstatic state of mind.

8. One of the Most Famous Tachists Found Inspiration in Astronomy

Inspirations for the colorful abstractions of Tachisme came from many sources. Hans Hartung, a German-French painter and one of the Tachist movement, had a deep obsessive interest in astronomy and mathematics from his childhood. The movements of stars and comets and the endless motion of the universe could be found in many of his works. For Hartung, space was never dark and frightening; rather, it represented our unity with the universe and hopes for something better.

As a German citizen living in France, Hartung met the beginning of World War II with anger and deep sadness. He enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and fought against the Nazi forces. After France was occupied, Hartung was arrested and imprisoned in a cell painted bright red to drive him insane and disrupt his vision. After seven months in prison, he was released and went to fight again. In 1944, he was severely wounded and lost his leg. Still, the physical trauma never stood in his way of creating art. Years later, the already aging artist suffered a stroke which confined him to a wheelchair. Unable to work with a brush, Hartung began to use an industrial paint gun.

9. Pierre Soulages Painted Tachisme All-Black

Although Tachisme is mostly associated with bold colors, there were some who preferred a more somber color palette. Pierre Soulages worked almost predominantly with black. He had a deep and personal relationship with this color: since his childhood, he only wore black, annoying his mother, who even asked him why he was wearing clothes for mourning so soon. According to the artist, as a child, he once painted snow with black ink, which led to incessant jokes from his siblings. As a mature artist, he mixed his own black paint with walnut oil, manipulating proportions to create the deepest color and the most expressive texture.

Soulages never allowed the framing of his works, insisting they should interact with air and space directly. He insisted that black was the most versatile color, transforming in various light conditions. He preferred natural light to artificial light. Before turning to painting, he worked with stained glass making, which allowed him to study light and the transformation of colors.

10. Tachisme Did Not Last Long

Unfortunately, the lifespan of Tachisme was rather short. The initial enthusiasm for expressive form and bold color wore off by the late 1950s. Although many painters continued to work in the same manner in the 1960s and 1970s, the colored dots and drips with no references to reality became too boring and expected. Some Tachist artists gradually moved to more figurative works. Generally, abstract art based on pure emotions and intuitive outbursts was on the decline, clearing the way for the more complex and multi-dimensional movement of conceptual art.

The Diary of a Young Girl, written by Anne Frank, a teenage German Jew, while in hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, is perhaps the most widely read account of the Holocaust. Quotes from Anne Frank’s diary and other writings are often part of official commemorations of the Holocaust and school curricula worldwide. Written under exceptional circumstances, Anne Frank’s account is a testament to perseverance and humanity in the face of the constant threat of persecution and death.

The Diary of Anne Frank

Anne Frank received her diary, a red-and-white plaid notebook, on her 13th birthday on June 12, 1943. At the time, the young Anne was living in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands with her older sister, Margot, and her parents, Otto and Edith Frank. Like many other German Jews, Otto had decided to leave Germany after Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933. In Amsterdam, Anne’s father opened a pectin firm, and, despite the initial financial struggles, the family began to feel at home, temporarily safe from the anti-Semitic persecution waged by the Nazi regime.

In the first entry, dated June 12, Anne expressed her hope to turn her diary into a close confidant: “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.” At the time, the 13-year-old did not yet know that the plaid journal would become her lifeline in the following years, a way to try to make sense of the unprecedented historical circumstances she was forced to witness. In the two years spent in hiding, writing in her diary “kept her company and kept her sane,” as Nathan Zuckerman, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979), remarked.

Anne Frank and her family went into hiding on July 6, 1942, less than a month after Anne’s birthday, when Margot was notified of her imminent deportation to a work camp in Nazi Germany. “So there we were, Father, Mother and I, walking in the pouring rain, each of us with a schoolbag and a shopping bag filled to the brim with the most varied assortment of items,” wrote Anne in her diary.

After unsuccessfully trying to secure visas to immigrate to the US, Otto began turning an extension, the “secret annex,” on the second floor of his firm’s headquarters at 263 Prinsengracht into a hiding place. Otto’s business partner, Hermann van Pels, and his family and dentist Fritz Pfeffer later joined the Franks in the annex.

Until August 4, 1944, when a group of German soldiers discovered and arrested them, along with their Dutch helpers, Anne recorded her daily life in the annex, her fears about the present, and her hopes for the future in her diary. She wrote letters addressed to a real and imaginary group of friends, mainly Kitty, a character created by Dutch writer Cissy van Marxveldt in the Joop ter Heul book series.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on Nazi Rule

The Frank family’s hopes that the Netherlands could provide a stable refuge from the persecution and anti-Semitic violence of the Nazi regime shattered on May 10, 1940, when German troops crossed the country’s borders (even though the Dutch government had declared its neutrality) on their way to France. The Dutch army surrendered five days later, on May 15.

As the Nazi authorities took control of the country, the approximately 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands had their rights and freedom gradually stripped away, as the Nazis, led by the Reichskommissar (Reich Commissioner) Arthur Seyss-Inquart, sought to exclude them from society. Soon, Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothes with the word Jood, meaning “Jew” in Dutch.

In her diary, Anne reported the worsening situation in an entry written on June 20, 1942, and listed the long series of restrictions introduced by the Nazi authorities against the Jewish population:

“Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required to wear a yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use street-cars; Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their own; Jews were required to do their shopping between 3 and 5 P.M.; Jews were required to frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops and beauty parlors; Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M.; Jews were forbidden to attend theaters, movies or any other forms of entertainment; Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts, hockey fields or any other athletic fields; Jews were forbidden to go rowing; Jews were forbidden to take part in any athletic activity in public; … You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that, but life went on. Jacque always said to me, ‘I don’t dare do anything anymore, ’cause I’m afraid it’s not allowed.’”

The Dutch population initially protested against the anti-Semitic measures, organizing a general strike in February 1941 following the arrest of several hundred Jews. In the following years, however, the Nazis began to systematically round up the Jews residing in the Netherlands and send them to the Westerbork and Vught camps. From there, starting in the summer of 1942, most prisoners were transported to the concentration and death camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The survival rate among the Dutch Jews was especially low, with only 27 percent of the deportees managing to return home after World War II. Adolf Eichmann, one of the main coordinators of the Holocaust, was favorably impressed by the efficiency of the deportation from the Netherlands, commenting, “In the beginning you could say that the trains from the Netherlands were really rolling; it was quite wonderful.”

In the “secret annex,” Anne Frank frequently commented on the unprecedented situation she lived in and the horrors of the Holocaust. “The world’s been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the scum of the earth rules over young and old, rich and poor,” she wrote on May 25, 1944.

On October 9, 1942, she had already confided to her imaginary friend Kitty:

“Dearest Kitty,

Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they’re sending all the Jews. … If it’s that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they’re being gassed. Perhaps that’s the quickest way to die.”

Unbeknownst to Anne, in January 1942, 25 high-ranking Nazi officials had coordinated the so-called “Final solution to the Jewish question” at the Wannsee Conference, setting in motion the plan for the systematic deportation and extermination of European Jews.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on Self

Anne Frank’s diary is not only an eyewitness account of a young Jewish girl living under Nazi rule, but it is also a literary work depicting the emotional, psychological, and ethical maturation of a young woman and writer. While the earlier entries focus on her outings with friends to ice cream parlors and encounters with the first admirers, in hiding, Anne turned to introspection, reflecting on her identity and place in the world.

“Even though I’m only fourteen, I know what I want, I know who’s right and who’s wrong, I have my own opinions, ideas and principles, and though it may sound odd coming from a teenager, I feel I’m more of a person than a child, I feel I’m completely independent of others.”

March 17, 1944

“I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.”

April 14, 1944

Some of the most widely known of Anne Frank’s quotes, these excerpts allow readers to get a glimpse of the young writer’s self-awareness regarding her personal development. During the long hours spent in careful silence to prevent any noise from betraying their whereabouts, Anne often turned to her diary for comfort and sanity. In his The Development of Anne Frank, John Berryman remarked how her unprecedented circumstances heightened Anne Frank’s “power of expression” and forced her to mature more quickly, drawing a parallel between her “conversion of the child into a person” to the conversion described by St. Augustine in his Confessions.

Anne Frank’s penchant for self-reflection also emerges from the following quote taken from the final entry on August 1, 1944:

“I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‘light-hearted’ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‘deeper’ Anne is too weak.”

Anne Frank’s Quotes on People

Anne Frank’s surprising belief in the goodness of humanity despite the horrors of the Holocaust is perhaps her most famous quote:

“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

July 15, 1944

After World War II, when news of the death camps began to spread, Anne’s remark on human nature turned her diary into an emblem of prevailing humanity in the face of a systemic oppression specifically designed to negate her and her fellow Jews’ very right to exist. “Consider if this is a man,” famously asked Holocaust survivor Primo Levi in his poem, “Who toils in the mud/ Who knows no peace/ Who dies for half a loaf/ Who dies by a yes or a no.”

However, it would be mistaken to write off Anne’s quote as a naive faith in the goodness of humanity by a 15-year-old girl. Rather, her declaration is a desperate effort to find meaning in a suddenly meaningless world, and to hold on to hope amid a growing sense of doom.

In an essay titled Give!, Anne had already argued that “Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”

Reaffirmed against the backdrop of persecution, her faith becomes more poignant, a testament to her powerful voice that would resonate with so many generations of readers.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on the Future

During the two years spent in hiding, Anne Frank and the other inhabitants of the “secret annex” alternated between despair and hope regarding their future after the war. While news of the Allies’ advance increased their optimism, the forced proximity, lack of privacy, and frequent quarrels led to frustration and demoralization.

In a series of entries from 1943, Anne expressed her mounting dread, comparing her plans for the future to a “castle in the air.” A couple of quotes from October and November give readers a sense of her struggle against despair and emphasize the power of art:

“I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage.”

October 29, 1943

“I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we’re standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We’re surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other.”

November 8, 1943

Stuck in a present of constant danger, Anne saw her writing as a way to reaffirm her identity and secure her memory against the threat of erasure.

“I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me!”

April 5, 1944

In April 1944, Anne had already begun editing her diary, deleting some previous entries and adding some new ones. Her plan to publish her writing after the war dates back to March 1944, when she heard a speech by the Dutch Minister of Education in exile exhorting his fellow citizens to document their wartime experiences for posterity. For the young Anne, writing then became an act of self-assertion in the face of a hostile force that sought to annihilate her and her family.

Anne’s plan for her future tragically died with her in February 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she and her sister Margot contracted typhus. Her diary and other writings, however, survived the war thanks to Miep Gies, who kept Anne’s journal and other papers after the Franks’ arrest in 1944. After the war, she returned them to Otto, the only inhabitant of the “secret annex” to survive the Holocaust. Moved by his daughter’s writings, Otto published them in 1947 with the title Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex), the title Anne herself had chosen.

Today, the Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into over 75 languages, making Anne Frank a symbol of perseverance and her writings a “bid for immortality.”

The issues concerning gender and its boundaries were important preoccupations of many modern artists. Interested in the difference in external perception of men and women, as well as the limitations of such distinction, they adopted attributes commonly associated with the opposite gender into their works to deconstruct it. Read on to learn more about the art of drag and seven famous artists who manipulated gender markers in their art.

1. Marcel Duchamp’s Art of Drag: Rrose Sélavy

For the forerunner of conceptual art Marcel Duchamp, the dichotomy and relation of masculine and feminine was always a source of symbolic and philosophical musing. Even his mechanical installations like The Large Glass reflected upon the social and sexual rituals between genders.

In 1920, Duchamp revealed his feminine alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. Initially, Duchamp wanted to invent a character that was a radical opposite to him and thought of creating a Jewish persona to oppose his Catholic identity. However, he realized that a person of another gender would cause a much more radical effect. When read out loud, the name turned into a pun translated from French as “eros is life.”

Rrose represented a more sensual part of Duchamp’s character and was the personification of his art, blending intellect and vulgarity. Like many artists of his time, Duchamp was interested in the concept of creative androgyny and believed that the ideal artist should embrace both male and female traits of their character and ways of thinking. With the help of his friend Man Ray, Duchamp transformed himself into Rrose inside a photographic studio. Despite the use of feminine attributes such as makeup or jewelry, in the case of Duchamp, Rrose was not a woman’s costume but rather a way of authentic self-presentation and definition.

2. Barbette, the Forgotten Surrealist Icon

The aerial performer Barbette is largely forgotten today, yet he was an important figure in the Surrealist movement despite not creating visual art himself. His real name was Vander Clyde, and he was an American trapeze artist, usually labeled as a female impersonator. He appeared on stage as Barbette, wearing ostrich feathers and wigs, fascinating the audience with his acts. Jean Cocteau and Man Ray frequently attended Barbette’s European performances. Cocteau described that at the end of each performance, Barbette took off his wig to reveal a bald head, but instead of revealing his actual gender, he continued to perform the part of a man. From gentle and elegant “feminine” gestures, he transformed into a heavy and somewhat clumsy male athlete, awkwardly shuffling away from the stage.

During his performances, Barbette seamlessly moved between male and female personas, making the audience doubt his real identity. At the same time, his artistic skill and movement made him seem almost non-human. In his way of subverting and challenging gender boundaries through his performative actions, Barbette could be defined as one of the first performance artists. According to Vander Clyde himself, he initially found inspiration in the tradition of Shakespearean theater, where female characters were played by men. Barbette was much more than a circus performer in drag: he was an artist who confronted the public’s expectations of gender and dismantled them, not through aggressive attack, but through pure admiration of beauty.

3. Romaine Brooks

Romaine Brooks was one of the brightest artists who represented the Parisian queer community of the first half of the 20th century. She arrived in France as an American expat and built her oeuvre mostly by painting portraits of queer women from her social circle. Thus, issues of gender and sexuality were crucial for the conceptual landscape she worked in. The notion of queer identity, as well as the idea of separating sexuality from gender, was only emerging at the time. Many of Brooks’ painted characters illustrated the gendered dilemmas of the time.

Brooks herself wore short hair and tailored suits but never regarded them as male attributes. Rather, she argued for the actual comfort of these attributes. Moreover, they visually separated her from the normative expectations of femininity, acting as markers of belonging to another group. Brooks was rather critical of the over-masculinization of queer women and reflected it in a caricature portrait of her friend Una Troubridge who, in Brooks’ opinion, came too close to imitating a man.

4. Claude Cahun

French Surrealist Claude Cahun mostly worked outside of well-known art groups and collectives despite being friends with Andre Breton and some other artists from his circle. Cahun’s most important works were created in collaboration with their partner, Marcel Moore, and were mostly intended for personal use rather than for public display. Cahun’s own relationship with gender was complex and frequently stood outside of traditional binary dynamics. They say that “neutral” was the only gender that suited them permanently.

Together with Moore, Cahun created a series of images that recorded their transformation from woman to man to androgynous being. In these images, gender markers were often confusing and did not give a definitive answer. For Cahun as a queer person living in Nazi-occupied Jersey, experiments with gender presentation could have also been acts of protest and resistance against conservative and oppressive values.

5. Cindy Sherman

For Cindy Sherman, transformation is the main artistic technique. Using makeup, costume, and special effects, she explores various pop cultural and artistic characters, studying the markers of class, gender, and cultural relevance. One of the most famous early series features Sherman transforming into a collection of cinematic feminine archetypes. Although she was not attached to particular films or stories, these characters were nonetheless easily identifiable.

Later, she began experimenting with masculine and androgynous portraits as well. When Sherman poses or performs as a man, she deconstructs masculinity and gender boundaries instead of affirming them. Instead of viewing gender as a fixed category, she shows how we perform it and how easily it can be replicated. With the right clothes, makeup, and light, as well as a little bit of acting, the illusion of stable gender presentation reveals itself to the public, who recognize their own cherished attributes in it.

6. Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol’s social circle included drag performers who transformed onstage. By watching them, Warhol became interested in the idea of artifice and the construction of one’s external perception. In the 1980s, Warhol posed for a series of images wearing makeup and a wig. Instead of trying to appear conventionally feminine, he simply posed as an outer shell of a generic pop cultural character. Warhol tried on many identities, never actually intending to perform them. Rather, he explored visual attributes and the superficiality of culture.

For Warhol, drag queens represented “the way women used to be, and the way some people still want them to be.” Warhol himself was a gay man who existed somewhere in between traditional expressions of identity. His true identity was carefully and safely concealed under the layers of constructed characters, leaving room for manipulating gender and its attributes.

7. Ana Mendieta’s Version of the Art of Drag

For Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta, femininity was one of the most important aspects of artistic work. She moved from Havana to Iowa as a child, where she received her artistic training at a rather conservative University of Iowa. There, as a woman coming from a non-Western background, she was often misunderstood and dismissed both due to her ethnicity and gender. In her early works, she explored the issues of sexual violence and oppression. She quickly recognized the gendered boundaries in the art world and, for a time, searched for tools to address them.

One of Mendieta’s famous early works featured her visual transformation into a male artist. She asked her friend Morty Sklar to shave off his beard and then transferred his hair into her own face, making a “transplant.” In that way, she conceptually transformed herself into a male artist, hinting at the immediate change of aesthetic perception. Mendieta’s strong identification with feminine and feminist values for years acted as a barrier between her and the art world. Her manipulation of gender presentation represents not a desire for transformation but the absurdity of the attributes that form public perception.

France’s world-class artistic academies and revolutionary culture created the ideal breeding ground for talented and innovative artists to emerge. Today, some of the world’s most famous visual artists are French painters, who pioneered movements such as Impressionism and Cubism. But how well do you know your French artists? Meet 11 of the most important French artists as defined by their most famous masterpieces.

1. Claude Monet, Water Lily Series (1897-1926)

Claude Monet (1840-1926) transitioned from traditional realism to Impressionism, shifting his focus from defined subjects to the transient effect of light and atmosphere. He also popularized the “en plein air” painting techniques, completing full works in situ, rather than retreating to the studio. He also famously rejected the use of black paint for shadow, believing that black did not exist in nature as a flat void. As his career progressed, Monet became obsessed with seriality, painting the same subjects at different times of day to capture the “envelope” of light surrounding them.

Monet’s final years were defined by his massive Water Lilies series, which includes 150 variations of Monet’s lily ponds at his home in Giverny. He focused mainly on the surface of the water and the textures, always capturing the reflections of the land around the ponds. He deliberately removed the horizon line to transform the painting from a “window” into a vision.

2. Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884)

Georges Seurat (1859-1891) integrated ideas from the fields of science and optics into his paintings. He was also a pioneer of Pointillism (or Divisionism), which replaced fluid brushstrokes with countless tiny dots to create a more vibrant effect than blending. In contrast to the spontaneity of the Impressionists, as a Neo-Impressionist, Seurat applied meticulous precision to bring mathematical order to his subjects.

One of Seurat’s best-known artworks is A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This large painting shows a tranquil scene of suburban leisure, with bathers cooling off in the river. The work is made up of many tiny dots of pure color. Seurat placed these dots strategically, allowing the colors to complement each other and blend to create the overall vivid, neo-impressionistic effect.

3. Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)

Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) was a pioneer of French Romanticism. He rejected the polished lines of Neoclassicism and showed interest in the natural world and the expression of emotion. Training with Pierre Guèrin between 1816 and 1823, Delacroix began to develop his own style, prioritizing expressive brushstrokes and bold colors over lines. He favored exotic, violent, or highly emotional subject matter, creating a more visceral experience for the viewer.

Liberty Leading the People is one of Delacroix’s most important works. It is regarded as the symbol of revolution, justifying revolt, and stirring feelings of anger and passion in the viewer. The work was created after the July Revolution of 1830. Delacroix became intensely moved when witnessing the rising of the French national flag at Notre Dame.

4. Georges Braque, Violin and Candlesticks (1910)

Georges Braque (1882-1963) explored artistic expression through painting, collage, drawing, and sculpture. However, the artist is best-known for his Cubist works, made while working closely alongside Pablo Picasso. The pair worked together between 1908 and 1914, often even dressing the same way. Braque often sought to fragment objects so that they could be shown from multiple viewpoints simultaneously.

Violin and Candlestick is a monochrome painting, with shades used to accentuate the subjects of the work. It marks the cornerstone of the Analytic Cubism of Braque and Picasso. The object is not just distorted but deconstructed into a grid of overlapping planes.

5. Henri Matisse, La Danse (1910)

Matisse (1869-1954) was a founding member of the “Fauves” (Wild Beasts), a group of French artists who favored strong, unnatural colors in their work. He explored vivid colors with simplified forms, seeking a sense of rhythmic harmony and balance. He experimented with various methods, including “drawing with scissors,” merging the processes of coloring and carving.

One of his most famous artworks, La Danse (the Dance), was commissioned by a Russian art collector. Dancing figures in bright red colors contrast with the green on the bottom of the painting and the dark blue sky in the background. The use of just three colors moves the piece from a specific scene to a universal allegory. It was partly inspired by the performances of Isadora Duncan, who danced with passion and emotive fury, but also by Matisse’s visit to the Moulin de La Galette cabaret.

6. Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans (1849)

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) famously made large-scale, ultra-Realistic works of art, rejecting previous idealization. Usually, larger works were made when painting religious or historical subjects. However, Courbet introduced large-scale works depicting everyday scenes. By doing this, he undermined traditional French concepts of Monumental art and gained huge notoriety.

One of his famous paintings is The Burial at Ornans. This 22-foot-long canvas depicts a gathering of people during a burial, centered on a dark, open grave. With this monumental but mundane scene, he forced his elite audience to confront death as a physical end rather than a spiritual transition.

7. Édouard Manet, Olympia (1863)

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) was one of the first French painters in the 19th century to paint everyday, modern life. He acted as the essential bridge between the Old Masters and Modernism, effectively dismantling the “window” of traditional perspective to create a new, flat, and confrontational style. While he was deeply educated in the techniques of Titian and Velázquez, he modernized them by stripping away soft transitions and atmospheric depth in favor of harsh lighting, visible brushwork, and “flat” patches of color.

Olympia was one of Manet’s most controversial paintings, depicting a nude woman reclining on a bed in a leisured pose, whilst a servant stands by her bed presenting her with flowers. Manet based this notorious work of art on the famous painting by Titian known as Venus of Urbino (1538). It was revolutionary to place contemporary and provocative Parisian figures in compositions borrowed from classical art.

8. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Ball at the Moulin de la Galette (1876)

One of the founding members of Impressionism, Renoir (1841-1919) explored the depiction of light, shade, and atmosphere. In contrast with Monet, his paintings were neater and more “perfectionist” in style. Rather than focusing on darker subjects, he embraced the joy of Parisian life and the hedonistic atmosphere of 19th-century Paris.

In Ball at the Moulin de la Galette, Renoir captures the vibrant, sun-drenched leisure of the Parisian middle class on a Sunday afternoon. It was technically challenging to depict dozens of figures in motion while maintaining a sense of spontaneous energy. He achieved this through his signature use of dappled light, where patches of violet and yellow sunlight filter through the trees to break up the solid forms of the dancers’ clothing and the ground.

9. Paul Gauguin, Day of The God (1894)

The French painter Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was famous for traveling the world and his relationship with Vincent van Gogh. Frustrated by what he saw as the artificiality of 19th-century Europe, he abandoned his family and career to live in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands, seeking a spiritual and “savage” truth untainted by industrialism. From this, he pioneered Synthetism, rejecting realistic depth and naturalistic color in favor of bold, flat areas of saturated hues, heavy black outlines, and enigmatic, symbolic subject matter.

Day of the God is one of many artworks created by Gauguin that show life in Tahiti. The painting is structured in three distinct horizontal tiers, moving from a grounded reality at the top to a purely dreamlike, symbolic realm at the bottom. The three central figures represent the stages of human existence – birth, life, and death – positioned around a towering idol of the goddess Hina.

10. Paul Cézanne, The Murder (1867)

Paul Cézanne’s (1839-1906) works were admired for their tonal contrasts, impasto techniques, and structural elements. His early “dark period” was characterized by a heavy, almost violent manieriste style. He used a palette knife to apply thick layers of black, grey, and Prussian blue in scenes of high drama and eroticism. Later, he focused on the underlying geometry of nature.

The Murder is one of Cézanne’s earlier pieces, painted during his darker phase. It evokes a sinister tone, depicting two figures holding a third against his will. The two murderers are bathed in more light, whilst the victim stays in the shadow, but you can still see the pain on his face.

11. Edgar Degas, Ballet (The Star) (1878)

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was famous for depicting ballet dancers, both on and off stage. Rather than painting en plein air in the French countryside as many other impressionists did, Degas preferred working indoors, capturing the synthetic lighting of cafes, theatres, and interiors. Inspired by the off-center cropping of Japanese prints and the snapshot-like quality of early photography, Degas often placed his subjects in asymmetrical, “accidental” arrangements that created a sense of voyeuristic spontaneity.

One of Degas’ best-known works is Ballet or The Star. It depicts a lone ballerina dancing on stage. Degas captured her graceful movements perfectly. Here we see the famous essence of non-natural electrical light that Degas captured so well. The work is also a social commentary, as the grace of the dancer is juxtaposed with the shadowy figure of the “patron” in the wings.

Today, Gerda Wegener is mostly recognized as the wife of Lili Elbe, one of the first transgender women to receive gender-affirming surgery. However, Wegener was a celebrated and accomplished artist who created illustrations for magazines like Vogue and La Vie Parisienne. She also created paintings that celebrated femininity, sexual pleasure, and romantic encounters of queer women of her era. Read on to learn more about the forgotten Art Deco icon Gerda Wegener and her art.

Who Was Gerda Wegener, the Forgotten Art Deco Illustrator?

Gerda Wegener was born in the rural part of Denmark in 1885 and came from a conservative family of a church minister. Having been interested in art since childhood, she convinced her parents to let her study painting in Copenhagen. Initially, she was trained as a Realist painter, but the change of location triggered her to explore more daring domains of painting. Immersed in the life of the Danish capital, she focused on trendy art styles of the time and began painting stylized figures in fashionable dresses and heavy makeup.

Today, Gerda Wegener is unjustly forgotten. In the 1910s and 1920s, she was a rare woman artist and illustrator who enjoyed commercial success on the French art scene. She moved to Paris in 1912 with her then-husband and fellow art student Einar Wegener, who would later become known as Lili Elbe. In Paris, Wegener soon found a job working as a fashion magazine illustrator. From magazine illustration, she moved to portrait painting and working on commissions. She created advertisement posters and magazine campaigns and became particularly famous for her erotic illustrations. Wegener mostly relied on the aesthetics of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, moving between fluid, natural forms and geometry. Rich decorations, detailed garments, and makeup, as well as complex maximalist interiors, dominated her work.

In the early 20th century, art education became more available to women, consequently granting them access to the art market and professional self-actualization. Their gendered perspectives were in many ways different from those offered by their male colleagues—especially when it came to depicting women’s bodies and personalities. Instead of the all-encompassing male gaze, these artists offered visual spaces designed and entirely controlled by women. Similarly to Tamara de Lempicka, Wegener painted women as conscious agents of their sexuality, beauty, and life choices.

Who Was Gerda Wegener’s Favorite Model?

Many of Wegener’s works featured a bold, slender woman with a thin face, full lips, and bold eye makeup. While art collectors and viewers guessed who Wegener’s favorite model was, the truth was hiding in plain sight. It was Einar Wegener, the painter’s partner, who kept his secret for years.

Before her transition, Lili Elbe was an accomplished landscape painter who worked under her birth name, assuming male identity. Despite the significant advancements in women’s rights, painting, especially that of a strong expressive landscape, was considered to be a male domain. Even for Elbe, her painting practice was aligned with the male traits of her character so much that she stopped creating art after she began her transition. Still, for several years, she dressed in women’s clothing and posed for her wife in the privacy of their home and studio. According to the story, she realized her gender identity during one of the posing sessions when Gerda asked Lili to pose instead of a female model who failed to show up.

By 1913, Wegener started to use the name Lili Elbe and even appeared in public as Einar Wegener’s cousin. In Paris, however, the couple gradually began to live more openly. By the end of the 1920s, Elbe learned about the possibility of having gender-affirming surgery in Germany. She went through three successful surgeries, but unfortunately, her heart failed after the fourth one.

Lili was the patient of Magnus Hirschfeld, the pioneering sexologist who launched his Institute of Sexual Research in Germany in 1919. Hirschfeld advocated for gay and trans rights and offered medical help to those who could not get it from other practitioners due to widespread transphobia.

Inside the Institute, Hirschfeld created a safe space for his patients, even offering them jobs and shelter. Hirschfeld gathered a team of psychiatrists, gynecologists, and endocrinologists who were focused on the issue of transgender identity and gender-affirming surgeries. The Institute was the first and, for a while, the only institution that performed such surgeries. Unfortunately, after the Nazis came to power in Germany, Hirschfeld was stripped of his citizenship, and the institute was raided. A group of pro-Nazi university students attacked the Institute staff and patients and burned their research archive, ruining priceless collections of studies and cases.

Elbe was not the first transgender woman to receive gender-affirming surgery—the first being Dora Richter several years prior. However, unlike Richter, who worked as a domestic servant and lacemaker, Lili Elbe was part of the artistic bohemian circles, with her story set in decorations of Art Deco opulence. Gerda Wegener played a crucial role in the story of Elbe’s transition as a supportive partner. The act of dressing up and posing was, for both Elbe and Wegener, the act of liberation and expression of love and acceptance.

How Wegener’s Sexuality Defined Her Art?

Gerda Wegener’s sexuality was not easily definable. However, historians are sure that she maintained a relationship with her partner even after Lili began her transition. In Paris, Lili and Gerda lived openly as a queer couple of women. After their marriage was annulled by the King of Denmark, the couple went their separate ways, finding other partners.

Still, queer desire played an important role in the oeuvre of Gerda Wegener. After the couple’s move to Paris, Gerda began experimenting with her art and making it provocative and bolder. The significant body of her work at the time was lesbian erotica of varying degrees of explicitness. Erotic images were often stylized in almost Rococo aesthetics, with lace stockings and crinolines adding exotic and opulent fleur to their subjects.

Not all images, however, were explicit. Some images simply showed her and Lili Elbe strolling by a seashore or singing. Still, these paintings represented the romantic involvement of queer women, depicted on their own terms. Apart from erotica and images of feminine pleasure, it featured images of domesticity, comfortable leisure, and socializing. Thus, Wegener’s art offered a unique perspective of female queer sexuality, multi-faceted and joyful.

Did She Face Any Public Backlash?

Due to her art and association with Lili Elbe, Gerda Wegener faced prosecution and other legal issues several times in her life. The Danish government did not recognize the difference between gender and sexuality at the time and viewed transgender individuals only through a heteronormative lens. For that reason, both Wegener and Elbe had to prove that their relationship was strictly platonic and that Lili was attracted to men only. Following the same logic, their marriage was officially annulled by the King of Denmark in 1930, regardless of the couple’s opinion. However, it allowed Lili to change her name and sex legally.

Erotic illustrations by Wegener were so scandalous they were published only in underground books that skipped the eye of censors and everyday bookstore visitors. Few brave galleries that agreed to show her erotic work faced protests and public scandals.

Gerda Wegener remained a loyal friend and supporter of Lili Elbe even after their marriage was dissolved. Moreover, the funds she accumulated through her successful artistic career financed Elbe’s surgeries and recovery. Unfortunately, after Lili Elbe’s death, she did not recover mentally or professionally. By the mid-1930s, Wegener’s style fell out of fashion as the public began to favor more refined and intellectual art forms.

Gerda Wegener in “The Danish Girl”: Is the Movie Accurate?

In 2015, Tom Hooper directed the biographical drama The Danish Girl, which retold the story of Elbe’s romantic and creative life. The film was based not on the actual story but on a fictionalized retelling published in a book with the same title. It received numerous awards and nominations and re-ignited interest in the story. However, many transgender activists criticized the film for a fetishistic portrayal of Elbe’s transition that was based on fantasy rather than actual transgender experiences. In relation to the story of Gerda Wegener, the movie downplayed the artist’s role and her continuous support for Lili.

The Barbizon School included a group of French artists who worked in the French village of Barbizon during the middle of the 19th century. They focused on painting French nature and rural scenes, revolutionizing the concept of landscape painting. Barbizon School artists like Camille Corot, François Daubigny, and Jean-François Millet were important precursors to Impressionism. Read on to learn five important facts about the Barbizon School and its artists.

1. The Barbizon School Emerged in a French Village With the Same Name

Despite the label of an art movement, the Barbizon School never existed as a body of art theory formulated in a manifesto with a precise list of participants. The name for the movement came from the Barbizon village located near the Fontainebleau forest, not far from Paris. In the mid-19th century, this picturesque village turned into an artists’ colony and a place where landscape painting was transformed once and for all. Back then, it was a rather remote and underdeveloped location that was made accessible only after the significant development of railroads in the region.

At the time of the Barbizon School’s activity, Barbizon had only one street and around 40 houses in total. Today, the small city hotel the artists used to stay in has been transformed into a museum. Like many art movements of the century, the Barbizon School opposed rigid standards of art education and artistic practice of the time. Artists usually worked inside their ateliers and trained by copying antique sculptures and Old Masters paintings. The primary focus was on historical and religious painting, battle scenes, and mythology. The Barbizon School presented a relevant alternative to it, addressing contemporary reality.

2. The School Subverted the Concept of Landscape Painting

Before the Barbizon School, landscape painting was considered to be mostly a backdrop to the central events of the painting—a religious, mythological, or historical scene or a commissioner’s portrait. Gradually, landscapes started to grow symbolic qualities and were used as religious allegories.

Preference of certain landscapes for a while stood in the way of creative progress. Italian vineyards, fields, and antique ruins were deemed the most worthy of subjects. It took a while before the artists started to rely on scenes that were close to their disposal. In particular, such an approach was employed by the Dutch landscape artists in the 17th century. These landscapes quickly gained prominence as alternatives to religious paintings that fell out of favor after the Reformation. They were generally small, rarely symbolic, and usually intended as decorations.

Most frequently, the landscape was constructed rather than recreated. The famous English artist Thomas Gainsborough used stones, pieces of broccoli, and moss to create small artificial landscapes he would later turn into paintings. Even if a painted landscape was inspired by a real scene, it was nonetheless improved by adding extra elements or removing those that ruined artistic harmony. Nature, as it turned out, was never as harmonious as Western artists of the time would have liked it to be. Landscape as an expressive method was fully employed by the artists of Romanticism. In their works, imaginary nature became a character that interacted with human protagonists and illustrated their spiritual and emotional turmoil.

The Barbizon School took a different approach. They valued natural scenes as they were and aimed to preserve the effects of natural light and space in their painted scenes. Instead of painting imaginary tropical jungles or traveling to Italy, which had been the favorite artistic spot for centuries, Barbizon School artists started to look for subject matter in their homeland. French villages, small rivers, fields, and forests at home were similarly worthy of depiction and adoration. Some of their predecessors already shared a similar point of view.

Although it is hardly obvious to us today, in the 19th century, the members of the Barbizon School made a radical gesture that was quite shocking and provocative. Even the mere decision to leave the capital and its art institutions for a remote village with one street and no post office was a statement of sorts. By choosing Barbizon, these artists declared their commitment to finding inspiration and sources for their art in real life.

3. Critics Were Not Enthusiastic About Their Work

In the first years of the movement, the critical reception of the Barbizon School was largely negative. Critics who were used to grandiose and expressive scenes were offended by the mundane and all-too-familiar scenes of French villages and forests. Muddy roads, shabby old churches, and farm animals were allegedly too far removed from the notions of good taste and aesthetic harmony. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot started his career as a conventional Salon painter but found it insufficient. After his transition, critics labeled his works as naive and awkward, refusing to show his pieces at the Paris Salon.

One of the most scandalous works of the School was Jean-François Millet’s painting of wheat gleaners at work, with their backs bent uncomfortably. Critics were outraged that Millet placed peasants on the same pedestal as ancient heroes by focusing an entire painting on their work. The upper classes, afraid of yet another revolution that would endanger their privileges, reacted to the work with poorly concealed anger. The farm workers on whose labor these privileges were built greatly outnumbered the higher classes and could cause a threat if they managed to recognize their worth.

Soon, Gustave Courbet and his Realist painting would shatter the remaining conventions one more time, demonstrating uncompromising honesty and refusal to ask for his place in art history. Courbet simply came and took it, bringing his poor farmers, stone breakers, and provincial crowds with him.

4. They Focused on the Effects of Light

The painters of the Barbizon School rarely painted bright and sunny days, preferring the complex play of light and shadow under clouded skies. In terms of time, they also preferred transitional periods when the sun was either setting or just rising. They relied on soft forms and loose brushwork to show the hazy atmosphere of fields and forests.

Charles-Francois Daubigny built a boat that doubled as an artist’s studio. Equipped with easels, paints, and brushes, he traveled French rivers and painted his works directly from the boat. Such a position allowed him to find new angles and to capture the play of light in water that transformed the landscapes around him. Daubigny disliked the subjective component of Romantic painting and believed that images of nature should not incorporate the artist’s bias. Often, he deliberately chose scenes that were not the most aesthetically pleasing for representation to avoid commentaries on the poetic qualities of his work. Later, Claude Monet would find inspiration in his method and build a similar traveling studio on a boat.

5. The Barbizon School Was the Precursor of Impressionism

The invention of portable paint tubes allowed artists to work outside of their studios, and the Barbizon School artists were among the first to take advantage of this opportunity. The change of location affected the style and quality of the painting, as well as its relation to the reality it was modeled from. The Barbizon School landscapes were spatially and temporarily connected to places they were inspired by and thus contained fewer assumptions and imagined elements. Their paintings contained the immediate impression of natural scenes in the moment while the feelings were still fresh.

Impressionism blended the technical and conceptual ideas of the Barbizon School with contemporary studies in light and optics. The famous Impressionists Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet were affiliated with the School and drew inspiration from it. There were, however, other important movements influenced by the School. Barbizon painter Theodore Rousseau preferred a more somber palette and spaces enclosed by trees and other natural elements. His human figures were usually small, nearly lost in the vast and overpowering landscape. In their nature, Rousseau’s works were much closer to Realist painting in their dark and provocative sincerity.

Sigmar Polke’s works were both whimsical and mystical, ironic and politically sharp. He made political statements, provoked conversations, and transgressed the boundaries of contemporary art. For the 1986 Venice Biennale, Sigmar Polke designed a pavilion that changed color in response to weather and human presence. Read on to learn more about 8 important works created by the amazing Sigmar Polke.

1. Sigmar Polke’s Early Works: Chocolate Painting, 1964

In 1964, while still studying at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, Sigmar Polke started rethinking the cultural and political divide his country faced after the war. As a child, he lived in East Germany before his parents escaped to the West. Disenchanted with both promises of Communism in the East and Capitalism in the West, Polke developed a short-lived art movement he called Capitalist Realism. It relied on contemporary capitalist aesthetics in opposition to Soviet Socialist Realism and was visually similar to Pop Art.

Before Pop Art, food was mostly present in art in the form of raw or homemade products like fruit, meat, or freshly baked bread. As the mode of consumption changed from making the products to simply purchasing them, the imagery of food transformed. Instead of products, customers began to choose between brands and manufacturers. This tendency was reflected in Pop Art paintings that copied popular packages and logos. However, Sigmar Polke’s work, in that sense, was different from others. His food paintings from the 1960s did not feature any particular brands. Rather, the works represented a familiar aesthetic of popular capitalist consumerism that triggered the desire to buy.

2. Bunnies, 1966

Bunnies was the next step in Polke’s work, where he began to not only explore the popular visual culture but gradually started to transform it into something familiar only to him. He turned a photographic image of models wearing Playboy bunny costumes into an optical illusion composed of many colorful dots. Some of these dots were blurred or overlapped each other, creating an impression of a poorly printed street poster. Polke used tones that corresponded to those used in the commercial printing process yet nonetheless reproduced the image with acrylic paint and brush. His mechanical repetition of dots left the image recognizable but blurry and worn out, as repetitive pop cultural symbols gradually lost their value.

3. Potato House, 1967

Sigmar Polke rarely worked with sculpture—most of his sculptural works referred to his early experimental periods. In 1967, he created a shelter-like structure from wooden grids. Each block of the grid had a raw potato fixed on it. Some critics saw it as a mockery of the contemporary Minimalist movement, which frequently relied on grids and see-through structures.

Potatoes were the most common food in Germany at the time when post-war scarcity and restrictions were still in place. The existence of Polke’s potato structure had two possible outcomes: either it would sprout and continue its life cycle in a new form, reinforcing and covering the grid structure, or it would succumb to the atmosphere and start rotting. Many art experts compare Potato House to a later work of the Swiss conceptual artist Urs Fischer, who built a small village out of bread. Fischer’s work, however, suggested gradual decay as the only possible option.

4. Telepathic Session II (William Blake – Sigmar Polke), 1968

Apart from experimenting with mediums, in the 1960s and 1970s, Polke developed the same approach to substances, taking various drugs and often creating under the influence. Drug-induced states were part of his spiritual and occult explorations. Telepathy was one of the concepts that occupied his mind.

In 1968, Sigmar Polke created a series of works that allegedly represented instruments for telepathic sessions with famous artists of the past. The works consisted of two panels with grids and plugs, which were essentially hybrids of Ouija boards used in spiritual seances and early computers. One such figure Sigmar Polke wanted to connect to was William Blake, legendary English poet, artist, and author of prophetic books. Another similar work supposedly established contact with Max Klinger, a famous Symbolist and Art Nouveau artist. Despite creating cutting-edge contemporary art with materials and techniques unseen before, Polke always highlighted the importance of knowing and remembering one’s roots, both to honor them and to learn from past mistakes.

5. Dr. Bonn, 1978

Despite the mystical undertones of his work, Sigmar Polke was never an escapist and always a politically active artist who reacted to the events around him. In 1972, the West German authorities arrested members of the Red Army Faction, a militant left-wing group that organized terrorist attacks on US military bases in Germany. Five years later, the key members of the group, including its leaders Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Ulrike Meinhof, were found dead in their cells. The officials hastily explained the events as collective suicide, yet many facts did not add up. A few months later, Polke created a painting that resembled a newspaper cartoon. In it, a faceless German bureaucrat named Dr. Bonn (Bonn was established as the capital of West Germany after the war) is trying to shoot himself with a slingshot under the watchful eyes of Baader and Raspe.

6. Watchtower, 1984

Sigmar Polke had little reservations when discussing the difficult and traumatizing legacy of German history and the responsibility of previous generations for the events of World War II and the Holocaust. If anything, his imagery was sometimes too raw and shocking. He painted swarms of swastikas in bright gouache colors, reconstructed concentration camp gates, and locked his paintings behind them.

His 1984 series Watchtower relied on an identical stenciled image of a structure adjacent to concentration camp walls. Sigmar Polke managed to imitate the haunting effect of a moving light searching for those trying to escape: the tower is only visible from certain vantage points, where paint reflects the gallery room light. He printed the image, adding silver oxide in the ink. The final result was both captivating and deeply unsettling. The flickering tower provoked anxiety and terror, as if the viewers were about to be discovered by whoever was guarding the tower.

7. The Spirits That Lend Strength Are Invisible III (Nickel/Neusilber)

Manipulation with chemical elements occupied Sigmar Polke’s mind for quite a long time. The state of transformation, both mental and physical, immediate and prolonged, was present in many of his works, yet this fully manifested itself in his alchemical experiments. His art was supposed to change with the world around it instead of passively waiting to become obsolete. Polke traveled the world to find pigments and natural materials he could use in his works. He went to Pakistan and Afghanistan and learned the techniques Indigenous Americans used in their art.

The Spirits That Lend Strength Are Invisible was a series of paintings inspired by Polke’s trip to North America. The title came from Native American sources that the artist carefully studied. For his work, he used minerals that were present only in North America and were significant for the Indigenous population, such as meteorite powder. He then used crushed minerals to color clear resin and poured it over the canvas. Into still-wet resin, he incorporated Neolithic-era tools made by the ancestors of Indigenous Americans and bits of silver leaf.

8. Athanor: Sigmar Polke’s Work That Shook the Venice Biennale

Sigmar Polke’s alchemical approach to art made his works transcend the boundaries of conventional painting and turned them into responsive and active substances. He launched chemical reactions on canvases that transformed his works over time, with their appearance changing radically over the course of days and years. This approach makes Polke’s work incredibly different for museum conservation and restoration departments. It is still debatable whether they should halt these reactions to stop works from deteriorating or leave them as they are and embrace Sigmar Polke’s artistic vision.

The most famous manifestation of his artistic principles happened in 1986 during the Venice Biennale. Polke occupied the entire West German pavilion with the work called Athanor, or the alchemist’s kiln. Inside the pavilion, he placed a real meteorite and rock crystals and painted the walls with abstract images. However, his main point was not in the paintings themselves, but in their compositions. He used pigments such as cobalt chloride, that reacted to the weather, humidity, temperature, and light conditions around them. Amazed visitors watched Polke’s art transforming and reacting to their presence, as more and more human bodies filled the pavilion.

Museums play a vital role in preserving history and educating the public about people, places, animals, art, and artifacts from all around the world. While there are museums in just about every major city across the globe, some are vast institutions that you could spend days wandering through, poring over the depth and diversity of their collections. Join us as we explore the world’s largest museums based on factors such as footprint, collection, and visitor numbers.

You can also explore our lists of must-visit History and Art museums, or find out which are the most visited museums in the world.

1. The Louvre Is the Largest Museum in the World

Of all the museums in the world, the Louvre in Paris is the largest by gallery space, covering more than 780,000 square feet, while the full complex is 2.3 million square feet. The museum was once a medieval fortress and the home to French kings before being converted into a vast Parisian Museum. It was opened to the public during the French Revolution in 1793 with just 537 paintings, many of which had been confiscated from the royal family and church during the Revolution.

In the 1980s, President François Mitterrand launched the “Grand Louvre” renovation project and commissioned Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei to design a new central entrance. Unveiled in 1989, the striking modern Glass Pyramid stirred significant public debate before becoming an internationally recognized architectural landmark.

The Louvre is home to some of the most important art and artifacts in the history of human civilization, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, and Eugène Delacroix’s iconic masterpiece Liberty Leading the People. Because of its incredible scale, you could literally spend days wandering through the Louvre, which is why so many people come back again and again to take in more.

2. The Smithsonian Institution Is the Largest Museum Complex

The Smithsonian Institution is the largest complex of museums in the world, with 21 different galleries and museums spread across the United States, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of African Art, and the National Air and Space Museum. Together they hold more than 155 million items and specimens, less than 1% of which are on display.

The Smithsonian also runs a large zoological park, containing a long A to Z of animals from the tiniest insects to the largest mammals. And, alongside these sites, there are eight different research stations where diverse fields are explored, including marine biology, astrophysics, environmental research, and American art.

The collections include many icons of American history, including the Star-Spangled Banner (the actual flag that inspired the national flag), the Apollo 11 Command Module, Dorothy’s ruby slipper from The Wizard of Oz, and the legendary Hope Diamond. It also has the only Leonardo da Vinci painting on public display in the Americas, Ginevra de’ Benci.

3. Russia’s State Hermitage Museum Has the Largest Collection of Paintings 

While other museums have achieved record-breaking scale and floor space, the State Hermitage Museum in Russia currently houses the largest collection of any single museum in the entire world. They own more than three million artifacts that date from the Stone Age to the early 20th century.

Once the home of Russian Tsars, this impressive stretch of six buildings running along the river Neva was converted into a court museum in 1764 by Catherine the Great to house her impressive collection of paintings. One of the museum’s star attractions is its Gold Rooms, showcasing priceless gold masterpieces from Eurasia, the Orient, and the Black Sea Littoral. They also own masterpieces by Western artists, including Rubens, Titian, Goya, Picasso, and Van Gogh. It is estimated that if you looked at everything for just one minute, it would take 11 years to see the full collection.

Since the 18th century, the museum has maintained an official resident population of around 50 to 70 cats to guard the vaults and galleries against rodents. Empress Elizabeth ordered the first cats from Kazan in 1745, and today they even have their own press secretary, medical staff, and annual celebration day.

4. The National Museum of China Is the Largest Single-Building Museum 

The National Museum of China, located on the eastern side of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, holds the record as the largest single museum building in the world. Formed in 2003 through the merger of the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, it now stands as one of the most important cultural institutions in Asia.

Inside its 48 exhibition halls, visitors can explore more than 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, from Neolithic jade carvings to Qing dynasty relics. The halls are structured around a central forum 260 meters long. There is also a subterranean level that houses the primary permanent collection, showcasing 5,000 years of dynastic relics, including the famous Shang bronzes and Han dynasty jade suits.

Upper gallery floors feature themed galleries dedicated to subjects such as calligraphy, classical furniture, and diplomatic gifts. With its sheer scale and unrivaled collection of Chinese cultural treasures, the museum continues to draw millions of visitors each year.

5. The Grand Egyptian Museum Is the Largest Museum for a Single Civilization

The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Giza is the largest museum in the world devoted to a single civilization. Situated just two kilometers from the Giza Pyramid Complex, the GEM represents a monumental investment in preserving Egypt’s heritage. Construction began in 2005 and was completed in 2023 for $1 billion, with the museum’s grand opening in November 2025.

The museum displays the complete collection of Tutankhamun’s treasures for the first time, alongside colossal statues and artifacts spanning Egypt’s 5,000-year history. Other highlights include the 110-ton pink granite obelisk of Ramesses II, mounted on an elevated pedestal at the entrance, and a colossal 11-meter-tall statue of Ramesses II in the Grand Hall. There is also Khufu’s solar boat, originally buried next to his pyramid to carry him into the afterlife. The Grand Staircase is lined with 60 colossal statues, sarcophagi, and architectural elements from pharaonic history.

The GEM is designed not only as an exhibition space but also as a major research and conservation center, redefining how the world engages with ancient Egyptian culture.

6. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Is the Largest Museum in the Americas 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest museum in the Americas. While its gallery space is smaller than the Louvre, at 630,000 square feet, the Met’s total floor area stretches to an extraordinary 2.2 million square feet, making it the most expansive museum in the Western Hemisphere.

Opened in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum’s aim was “to bring art and art education to the American people.” Since this time, it has more than fulfilled its role, housing an impressive array of around 50,000 different objects spanning more than 5,000 years of human history. These range from the columns of ancient Greek temples to indigenous African wood carvings, along with Canova’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa, 1804-6, and John Singer Sargent’s infamous Madame X, 1883-84.

For fashion lovers, the museum houses the Anna Wintour Costume Institute, which holds over 33,000 historic and modern garments. The annual Met Gala, held on the first Monday in May, serves as the primary fundraiser for the department and is one of the fashion world’s most high-profile red carpet events.

7. The Vatican Museums Display Centuries of Papal Collecting

The Vatican Museums in Vatican City are an extraordinary public art complex displaying treasures assembled by the Roman Catholic Church and successive popes over more than 500 years. If you follow the official visitor route through the various interconnected corridors, wings, and courtyards, you will cover a distance of around seven kilometers, or over four miles. The interior exhibition space covers over 43,000 m² (460,000 sq ft) across 54 distinct galleries and 1,400 individual rooms and chapels.

There are several distinct museums within the complex, including the Pio-Clementino Museum of classical Greek and Roman sculpture, where you can see Laocoön and His Sons; the Gregorian Egyptian and Etruscan Museum; the Raphael Rooms, which are four monumental papal suites painted by the Renaissance master; and the Sistine Chapel, famously decorated by Michelangelo. There is also the Vatican Historical Museum and Carriage Pavilion, with historic papal carriages and cars.

The collection ranges from ancient Egyptian sarcophagi and classical Greco-Roman statuary to High Renaissance masterpieces, contemporary religious art, and global ethnographic collections. This makes it a pilgrimage site for art and history lovers alongside the faithful.

8. Tokyo National Museum Houses Imperial Treasures of East Asia

The Tokyo National Museum, located inside Ueno Park in Tokyo, is Japan’s oldest national museum. Established in 1872, it combines an expansive architectural complex with a collection of extraordinary cultural significance. While 120,000 objects might seem modest when compared with some other museums on this list, they cover Japanese history from prehistoric times to the modern era, and there are also artifacts from across the Silk Road. This includes 10% of all designated national treasures in Japan.

It is a multi-building complex in Ueno Park. The Honkan main gallery was built in 1938 and houses prehistoric Japanese pottery, samurai armor, ukiyo-e prints, and Buddhist sculpture. The Toyokan is a five-floor gallery dedicated to Asian art. The Heiseikan delivers archaeology collections and special exhibitions. The Gallery of Horyuji Treasures is a modern gallery showing religious artifacts donated by the ancient Hōryū-ji temple in Nara.

Collection highlights include the Prehistoric Dogū & Haniwa, intricate terracotta figurines from the prehistoric period, samurai swords and armor, woodblock prints by old masters, and gilt bronze Buddhist statues.

9. Museo Nacional de Antropología Celebrates Indigenous Mexico

The Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Museum of Anthropology) in Mexico City is Mexico’s most visited museum and widely regarded as one of the most important anthropology and archaeology museums in the world. Located within Chapultepec Park, it houses the world’s most comprehensive collection of pre-Columbian Mexican art and heritage.

The museum complex is enormous, covering around 915,000 square feet, including 23 permanent exhibition halls connected by a vast central courtyard. Many halls open directly into outdoor gardens containing reconstructed ancient monuments and ruins.

The museum holds more than 600,000 artifacts, including treasures such as an Aztec Sun Stone used for cosmology and to measure calendar cycles; Olmec colossal heads; the reconstructed tomb of the Maya ruler Pakal the Great; and a replica of Moctezuma’s elaborate feather crown (the original Penacho is housed at the Weltmuseum Wien in Austria)

10. British Museum Holds Eight Million Objects of Global Cultural Heritage

The British Museum in London is the world’s first national public museum, established in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759. Dedicated to human history, art, and culture, it chronicles the story of human civilization from its earliest beginnings to the modern day. Initially holding just 71,000 objects, it expanded quickly, so much so that collections had to break away to form independent institutions, including the Natural History Museum (1881) and the British Library (1973). Today it has over eight million objects and almost one million square feet of display space.

Collection highlights include the Rosetta Stone, a stele carved with Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Ancient Greek text, unlocking the translation of Egyptian Hieroglyphics. There are also the controversial Elgin Marbles, taken from the Parthenon in Athens. There is the treasure of the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

The museum also holds extensive collections covering Egypt and the Sudan; Greece and Rome; the Middle East; Britain and Europe; Asia; Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; Prints and Drawings; and Coins and Medals. Only about 1% of the collection is on public display.