# Stay Safe. 3D Virtual Tour of the National Gallery of Art (Washington)

Laura Lai at The British Museum (2019)

Photo by Laura Lai

by Laura Lai/ Review

The time to visit museums and art galleries are definitely put on hold because of this pandemic lockdown. And although pandemic outbreaks are not new to humankind, it should be the first time when such a global outbreak happens during the Internet era, in the times of computers and of the mobile devices. It means that if we cannot visit a museum or an art gallery, they can actually pay us a 3D visit. You do not open the door as to a classical guest, but you switch on your computer. And we both sit at the table. I may also happen to enjoy a coffee… .

The 3D virtual tour at the National Gallery of Art (in Washington) brings the outdoors at our doorstep and even at your table on your computer. The exposition ‘True to Nature’ offers a virtual feeling of being in nature. It reunites 100 oil paintings from the late 18^th century of different British, Danish, Dutch, French and Swiss painters.

            The first section is also for lovers of the Antiquity period of world history – like me. These painters of the 18^th century arranged themselves to go to Italy and paint the countryside, the ruins, to tombs, the Roman theater, the waterfalls – most probably without missing anything. For example, there is ‘Vesuvius Eruption’ (1779), ‘Vesuvius seen from the ruins of Pompeii’ (1827), or ‘The View of Naples with Vesuvius’, etc. [Just as a short parenthesis: Pompeii is a city near Vesuvius mostly frequented by rich Romans; it was founded in the 6^th century BC and covered with ashes, when the Vesuvius erupted in 79. In the 18^th century started the rediscovery of the old city with its temples, buildings, and even wall paintings. The 3D reconstruction of the buildings of Pompeii is also very fascinating to me.]

For all the painters this was a quest for naturalism. For me, it is a way to feed my fascination for Antiquity. It is fascinating to watch the gradual change caught on canvas. It reminds me of the fact that we all may look at the same thing and tell different things about it. It is also valid for persons: several people watching the same person and seeing different things about her/him, having different impressions about her/him that may be completely different. Sadly, opinions have no value unless they are pained in oil; it is then when the view becomes priceless. J

The second part of the exposition still reminds the visitor about the Antiquity – just another aspect of it. It is about the rocks and the caves presented in its great variety of shapes and colors, and about beautiful trees of different sizes, shapes, colors – as painting trees, besides being divinely beautifully especially in spring, they are also a great challenge for the painter.

The third part of the exposition presents something equally difficult to be caught on canvas: the colors of the sky in general, and at sunrise and sunset. Indeed, the sky itself exhibits sometimes so unique colors that are impossible to be obtained through a mixture of oil colors. But in the technology times a good camera can be of a great help to remember a beautiful sky color and to keep on trying to reach those natural colors.

The 3D virtual tours are a great opportunity during this pandemic lockdown. Internet helps the visitor to travel all over the world. But they are only a substitute – a great one, but a substitute – of a classical visit to a museum or art gallery. Let us take the example of The British Museum.

            I am equally fascinated by the Antiquity, meaning that I do not treasure one old civilization more than the other. However, there is a first among equals. To me, it is the Egyptian Antiquity. I have not got to Egypt, but I have been to the British Museum. There is a large section about ancient Egypt. I remember when I saw the Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian Gallery that is approx. from the year 200 BC and found in Egypt by French soldiers (1799). The virtual tour can teach lots of things, is great when one cannot afford long travels in order to visit a museum or art gallery, and a great solution for lockdown periods, but it cannot give the visitor the same emotion that the classical visit does.

Easter Confession. HAPPY EASTER!!!

photo by Laura Lai

by Laura Lai/Essay

This week is, for some of us, the Holly Week. For some of us, Easter will be celebrated this Sunday. And I am one of those. It is usually a week of prayer, and on Saturday at midnight we light our candle in church and pass the light to each other. This light is brought every year on Saturday from Jerusalem so that at midnight we can take it from church and bring it to our houses.

This pandemic that we definitely need to survive is theoretically called ‘virus’, but in practice is an invisible killer. Measures have been taken: on the one side, the laic state wants us all in houses and banned all gatherings (including the Church ones). On the other side, the Institution of the Orthodox Church understood the importance of these measures, respects these measures and there will be no gatherings in church. However, it is hard for the Church – and this is easy to understand – to see itself prevented by a damn pandemic to bring the light from Jerusalem and pass this light to the believers, as it traditionally does. Therefore, the laic state will allow people to get out in front of their houses and wait for the Church volunteers to bring the light from church. At first sight, it looks like the laic state and the Church have worked out this issue for the Easter night.

But I am not convinced that it is so. This pandemic looks more ‘snak(e)y’ to be worked out so easily. To me, it looks more like this damn pandemic has used the weaknesses of both the State and the Church to continue this Easter tradition, so that it can reach its goal of increasing the death toll.

            In concrete terms, what the State and Church have done looks as follows: if we are allowed in front of our block of flats (because many of us do not leave in a house or a villa) it means at least 20 people waiting for the Church volunteers to bring the light, volunteers that have seen other groups of people and to whom they passed the light. Furthermore, when we, the believers, take this light we traditionally say ‘Jesus has arisen!’ and the other one replies ‘It’s true! He has arisen’. If each of us stretches the arm, we may take the light from 1,5 – 2 meters social distance, but are we all going to pay attention without exception? Gatherings and small conversations are sufficient elements for this damn pandemic to increase its death toll.

It is up to each believer’s conscious to do what it thinks is right in the Easter night. I am also a believer in God. Easter is my favorite holiday. I wait for Easter with an emotion hard to describe. Spring is my favorite season. I love seeing the trees in spring and to hear the birds joyfully singing in trees! For my mother, Easter is also a special holidays, because it is on the 1^st day of Easter that she has given birth to me. Thanks God that I was born healthy. It is through Divine Grace that God gave me LIFE. And like all of us, I also was not born with a candle in my hand. But ALIVE and HEALTHY!

            Therefore, I believe I have a responsibility to protect the LIFE that God has given me. In so far, I have not smoked or drunk and I have moderate eaten. For Easter during this pandemic I will also do what my conscious tells me to do. I will leave this damn pandemic to win this Easter battle, so that I can win the war: to enjoy as many Easters as I am given by God, to go to church many more times that I skipped during the pandemic, to light as many candles as I want afterwards, and on Easter, not only to receive a light from a Church volunteer that has it from Jerusalem, but to be able myself to go to Jerusalem and light a candle!

I personally stood strong like a rock in front of strong winds and heavy rains that wanted me shaped in a way or another I dislike. This pandemic is just like one of those winds and rains. But if we stay strong like a rock, this pandemic wind will blow less and less strongly until it will cease. The rain will stop, too. There will be sunshine and many

HAPPY & HEALTHY EASTERS AHEAD!!!

# Stay Safe. Virtual Museum Tour (I)

by Laura Lai/Comment

Writing is… a writer is… and there are so many definitions as heads are. I agree with the one saying that writing is a ‘temperamental inclination’. A writer will always look for some moments alone and for a quiet and/or inspiring place (or corner of a place), in order to detach itself from its observations of people and life, and write about it. Some write to create another world – a fantasy world, usually better or perfect. Others write to describe the real world as reflected in an artistic mirror. Others to make a point. To communicate. And so on.

            But this coronavirus times – that many of us witnessed more in artistic movies than in reality – is pushing everybody to keep social distancing, without allowing visits or gatherings. The society responds to the rules imposed by this invisible killing enemy with advices to isolate and keep your routine. What routine to keep for those used to spent time outdoors?! These people live the excitement of discovering a new life! And some may realize now what it means to be a writer. ‘Boring! Outdoors is more beautiful’ – would many of them say. That’s because they only enter the ‘boring environment’ of a writer without writing, but doing other interesting activities. In this ‘boring environment’ the writer detaches itself from the ‘beautiful outdoors’ to create something fascinating. Therefore, a virtual museum tour instead of a proper museum visit is not a big routine change for a writer – it is still indoors. And it stays fascinating.

I have heard that Google Arts & Culture made a list of world museums that I can virtually visit. I wanted to make a great use of these ugly coronovirus times and make the tour of the National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City) and that of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (South Korea), because I visited lots of museums in Europe, but for these ones I am not sure that I will have the resources to visit too soon, if ever. I ended up visiting the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center from St. Louis (USA), first of all because I am a history-lover, and second, because I am researching for several years already, in order to write a novel whose plot takes place during WWII, but the archives I am interested in were bombed and burned. However, the evil was equally dark and every piece of documentation helps in recreating the setting and the atmosphere of a historical novel, but not necessarily a documentary as the archives were bombed.

Generally speaking, this approx. 1-hour virtual tour is for me the ideal tour, because first, the virtual visitor can make a few clicks and have a general look at what the museum exhibits (please click here). Then, the virtual guest is welcomed by two hosts – one of them being the granddaughter of two survivors giving a more personal dimension to the visit. Finally, each of the two guests take turns in explaining piece by piece what the virtual visitor has seen by itself at the beginning (please click here). Their presentations are structured by themes under the motto: Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people. It is more than a motto, rather a demonstrated hypothesis of this virtual tour.

            When I posted on this blog the essay ‘When the Holocaust is not a Rock Star…’ in June 2019 (the article continues here), I was outraged by the results of a public opinion poll showing a high number of people who never heard of this genocide, or who heard of it, but that they do not believe that it truly happened. And my point was that this poll results were as they were because the Holocaust is not a rock star, otherwise most probably everybody would know about it and believe all the mass media gossips, manufactured legends and all fake news as being very real. However, all the genocides people learn about happened in the 20^th century – meaning the century of the photography, the video recording and of that television. The Fuehrer is on the photo, on camera, on TV – he exited, no denial. Many naked bodies, working starved to death are on photo, on camera and on TV – they did not existed. What is that I do not understand?! Is this because some human minds refuse to believe that people can do such a thing to people? And if some of us refuse to believe, it solves the problem? The fact that the human mind may refuse to believe that such manmade atrocities are possible is not even a plausible assumption, because people have been killing animals hunting and people have been going to war against other people for millennia. It is hard to understand… . (to be continued)

# Stay Safe. Virtual Museum Tour (II)

The nazi were a large group who loved death in all its aspects. Some evil spirited creatures that got together, organized themselves, in order to joyfully create sufferance and murder. In this museum in St. Louis the virtual visitor learns about the well-known T4 nazi operation (1939) – paradoxically or in a mocking way called ‘mercy operation’ – to kill disabled people. They knew exactly what families have a disabled child or member of a family, they knew exactly where to go and what to say: that their loved ones will be taken to special centers for a better treatment (in reality, experiments and murder). The loved ones home were even receiving cards from their disabled members that they are doing well and better. Truly evil! The hosts of the ‘Holocaust Museum & Learning Center’ in St. Louis connect this to the official and well known ‘Arian perfect race’ ideology, in which in 1939 the disabled had no place. In other documentaries on this issue, I have seen calculations made by the nazi government comparing governmental spending for educating a healthy child and for educating a mentally or physically disabled child. I remember it was four times more to educate disabled children. Therefore, I think the nazi needed money for war, but they also needed a ‘superior race’-based political doctrine, because they needed votes and mass support. The reason why I think that this ‘perfect race’ idea was just an excuse to murder is because the Fuerher himself was not an exponent of his own preached theory: he was definitely not blond; and his athletic body is questionable.

            The overcrowded ghettos were also a reality – on photo, on camera and in registers. The nazis were keeping records of all the evil they were doing. This is what the virtual visitor learns, too. But I still did not understood why they were keeping such good records. Was it because in their evil minds they were proud of what they were doing, and that the sufferance of the others was amusing them and that they wanted to remember this ‘great fun’. Don’t we all usually take pictures of places we love seeing, of people we spent great time with and we want to remember? Maybe this explains the records, that exist on paper, on photos, on camera. Anyway, in the ghettos people were given a kind of a toy coin as ghetto currency that was useful in the ghetto, but not outside. The virtual tour showed the steps taken to genocide: first the stereotypes, then the way of thinking that was in prejudice terms, then the action of discriminating and from here to ghettos and mass murder there was only one step.

The large amount of records showed that the nazi were very much engaged in a dehumanization process – a process of constant sufferance, of pain, of live experiments, of rapes and killings that were probably satisfying their inner evil. It must be hard for some of our Internet generation to believe such a thing, especially when we are all ‘pals’ on Internet with all strangers and we send each other ‘emojis’ and ‘likes’! But here is something hard to understand for me!

I think it is courageous to leave everything behind and to leave in the world with only a suitcase. I believe is dignifying to look for work and make your living. At some point many people – the fact that they were Jews is just an exacerbated detail, believers and non-believers, rich and poor, old and young, adults and children – left to make a fresh start anywhere in the world they would be taken, but they were not accepted and returned home, meaning sentenced to death to Fuerher’s greatest satisfaction. And these people were not the murders in this WWII story, but the victims, who did not look for financial assistance anywhere, but security, the right papers to work and to make their living. In this virtual tour, the guests learn also about some people and some countries that made an exception: the Swiss took thousands of Jewish children that later had no parents to return to, the Danes accepted Jews, and some of them even reached Shanghai, where they were secure and could work. It is hard to understand… . (to be continued)

# Stay Safe. Virtual Museum Tour (III)

by Laura Lai/Comment

This museum is also called a ‘learning center’ and, although well documented myself, I still learned some new things, too. For example, I learned the name of Ernst Hiemer (1900-1974) that I have never encountered so far in any of my readings or documentaries. I do not think it skipped me, because I would have definitely remembered.

            The adults were massively manipulated by the Fuehrer. I know manipulation is a powerful weapon in itself. I know that the Fuerher is an example in this sense. But I doubt that he was mastering such a technique that could change good neighbors today, into enemies the next morning. Indeed, in other documentaries there are testimonials of survivors saying that their long good neighbors became the next day enemies. I strongly doubt that manipulation technique can twists minds from one day to another.

Therefore, I tend to believe that the Fuehrer was the embodiment of something far more powerful and beyond our understanding than a learned by the book manipulation technique. It must have been more difficult for the Fuerher to bring on his side the children, because they are spiritually pure. And he needed a team and a strategy. Ernst Hiemer was part of the larger nazi team and part of the strategy, as an anti-Jewish children’s book writer. In 1938, he wrote a collection of seventeen children’s stories (‘Der Giftpilz’/ ‘The Poisonous Mushroom’) and in 1940 he published another collection associating the Jews with different types of animals (probably without even realizing that in this context the animals were more lovely than what the humans were doing!). In 1942 he made all the effort to collect popular expressions about the Jews in ‘Der Jude im Sprichtwort der Voelker’.

            I have also learned about the different badges the victims were wearing. We are familiar with the yellow ones, for Jews, in general. But I learned that there were also yellow with white, which meant ‘race violator’, there were also yellow with red, which meant ‘Jewish political prisoner’, there were badges for German political prisoners, homosexuals, etc.

            I finally discovered a complete map of all tens of thousands work camps, sub-camps, slave camps  and since 1942 the six death camps that would spare the nazi to waste bullets on murdering prisoners and pass to gas for mass murder. It is the first time I see on the map how far the following death camps were from each other: Chelmo, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz. The hosts of this virtual tour museum considered important for the visitors to know that some prisoners fought for their freedom. It is a question I have never asked myself. I know that humanly speaking is very hard, if not impossible, to still have strength to fight back when one is dehumanized to such an extent, relocating in an strange and overcrowded ghetto or camp with only a suitcase or nothing, knowing nothing of the loved ones, wearing always the same dirty cloths, working to death through starvation, surrounded by diseases and death. Women were shaved or had a rough haircut to look and feel awful, in order to make mattresses out of human hair. Awful! Then there was a long research investigation on a lamp that shows up on a camp picture and said to be make of human skin. Creepy!

            Even though, some found the strength to fight back for their freedom. In this sense, there is a great movie based on a true story that emphasized exactly this fight for freedom: ‘Escape from Sobibor’ (1987 – Jack Gold, director). I know the movie well, as I watched several times. It is a well done movie!

To sum up, the virtual museum tour at the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center in St. Louis (USA) ended in a positive and optimistic note. And I am a happy endings lover. I know about the official ‘superior race’ nazi party ideology, but I tend to believe also in a group of evil spirited people, who got together and worked in a organized way, in order to get the political power to have the freedom to unaccountably satisfy their desire for sufferance and murder. In this way, I can explain myself the brainwashing of so many tens of millions of people, with rare exceptions that were not touched by this evil and that took risks to continue doing good, and who have beaten evil by doing good, as the Bible says. Last, but not least, I consider that all the victims of different backgrounds, sexual orientations, races, etc. in camps and in the war trenches was a whole generation chosen by God in the fight against evil. They were chosen so that He makes a point – that He always wins. Just that for us, the price is hard to bear and we need more divine strength. But now that the war is over, does this mean that the fight between Good and evil is over, too? If the Good is always The Same, is it possible for the evil to have metamorphosized into something more subtle and less visible? Typical questions during virus pandemics while quarantined at home. I can’t wait to take a walk in the beautiful outdoors. From indoors though, I wish a …

HAPPY and HEALTHY EASTER!