If so, then you should check out our new project, Europeana 1989, which documents the time when the very symbol of the division of Europe was torn down, and states dominated by one-party dictatorships could finally move towards democracy.

One Europe, two perspectives

1989 presents the revolutionary year when Europe, torn in half after WW2, became one again. Walls crumbled, wire was cut, and families that were torn apart were united again…

It was a time for celebration. For the first time in decades, a sense of cohesion returned to Europe and we have been ‘one’ ever since.

So how come that, despite this grand unification, what we know about ‘life behind the Iron Curtain’ still comes just from our history books?
After all, history isn’t only about the objects in a museum or the accounts in a book – we make history ourselves, every day.

Europeana 1989

Our new project ‘Europeana 1989’ will launch soon and we are looking for your untold stories about the revolutionary events that led up to the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Share your personal experiences directly online or come to the collection day in Warsaw, where we will help to preserve your videos, pictures, objects and documents. Share your personal history with the world!

If you are interested in our project, please go to www.europeana1989.eu and sign up, or follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Cheyne posing as Napolean. Image: ‘Portrait of Napoleon I’ by Wojciech Eljasz. Biblioteka Narodowa – The National Library of Poland (Public Domain).

Cheyne posing as Rembrandt. Image: ‘Self Portrait at an Early Age’ by Rembrandt. Rijksmuseum (Public Domain).

Cheyne posing as Van Gogh. Image: Self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh – 1887 – Rijksmuseum (Public Domain).

It’s a tough choice, but we want you to choose between either Marie Antoinette or William Shakespeare. Click on the name below to vote! We’ll count up the votes at the end of this week and Cheyne will get to work on mimicking the portrait that receives the most votes. So get clicking and help us decide the next Europeana Twinsie.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

‘Portrait of Elizabeth Fry’, Wellcome Library, London, CC-BY-NC

But it wasn’t money that bothered Elizabeth. It was people. The kind of people not many other people bother about – prisoners.  She believed that prisons and the treatment of prisoners should be more humane. She fought for new legislation and won.

Brought up in a Quaker household (a conservative branch of Christianity also known as the Religious Society of Friends), Elizabeth was moved by the teachings of a Quaker preacher and, aged 18, began taking an interest in the poor, the sick and prisoners. She started a Sunday school to teach children to read, she visited the sick and gave clothes to the poor.

The majority of the next portion of her life was taken up with marrying Joseph Fry and having 11, yes 11 children (five boys and six girls).

The first time she visited a prison – Newgate Prison in the early 1800s – she was horrified. She found cramped and squalid conditions, and prisoners held without reasonable trial. Fry did what she could to help, taking food and clothes, even staying overnight there herself and encouraging members of the upper classes to do the same to experience it for themselves. In 1816, Elizabeth set up a school for the children who lived in prison with their parents.

‘Elizabeth Fry’, Wellcome Library, London, CC-BY-NC

A little nepotism never goes amiss and when Elizabeth’s brother-in-law was elected to parliament, he campaigned on her behalf and Elizabeth was able to address the House of Commons on the conditions faced in Britain’s prisons. She was the first woman to present evidence to parliament. Her influence changed how prisons in the UK are run, and was partly responsible for Prime Minister Robert Peel’s Gaols Act being passed in 1823.

And that’s a very brief history of how little Betsy Gurney became Elizabeth Fry, Angel of Prisons.

‘Elizabeth Fry is seated at a table in a large room surrounded by men and women prisoners listening to her’, Wellcome Library, London. CC-BY-NC

Explore collections relating to Elizabeth Fry in Europeana, including a memoir of her life, written by her daughter, Francis Cresswell.

Here at Europeana we are massive fans of Hawaiian artist and photographer Cheyne Gallarde, made famous through his self-portrait project entitled Universe of One. Funded via Kickstarter, his series of self-portraits transform him into an ever-expanding catalogue of characters. Inspired by the work of Cindy Sherman, he poses as a wide range of people, normally based on photographs that his fans send him of themselves – both male and female, of different ethnicities, and from different walks of life.

Cheyne posing as Vincent van Gogh in his first portrait for Europeana. Original – ‘Zelfportret’ by Vincent Van Gogh, Rijksmuseum, public domain.

Eager to promote the creative re-use of Europe’s culture treasures, Cheyne has accepted our challenge to re-invent some European classic portraits that are available in Europeana. With only minimal make-up, lighting and props, Cheyne will recreate our best-loved images, starting today with a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh from the Rijksmuseum.

We have given him full reign over our public domain collections so over the next few weeks, we will be sharing  his recreations of Europe’s most recognisable faces. Then we are handing the control over to you – you decide his next challenge.

Can you guess who he will be next? Keep your eyes peeled!

The  concept, according to the official European Literature Night website, is ‘One night – many experiences: public readings of contemporary literature performed by well known personalities at attractive and unusual venues in cities across Europe.’ In brief, it’s about capturing imaginations and new audiences by bringing individuals and societies together in creative ways.

For example, at the British Library in London, UK, there’s a free panel discussion on ‘Writing, Creativity and Translation‘, exploring the role of translation in European fiction. Then the main evening event sees eight exceptional writers, from groundbreaking new talent to leading names, joining BBC journalist and presenter Rosie Goldsmith for readings and conversation: Norbert Gstrein (Austria), Miha Mazzini (Slovenia), Erwin Mortier (Belgium/Flanders), Ece Temelkuran (Turkey), Jordi Punti (Spain/Catalonia) Jáchym Topol (Czech Republic) Birgit Vanderbeke (Germany) and Frank Westerman (Netherlands).

Readings of contemporary literature will be taking place across Europe on 15 May. Pictured – Literature in Focus event with Slovenian writer Svetlana Makarovič, Trubar Literature House in Ljubljana, 2010, Slovenian National E-Content Aggregator, CC-BY-ND

In Prague, Czech Republic, 18 locations play host to 18 new translations of contemporary European literature by renowned actors and celebrities, including Catalin Dorian Florescu from Switzerland and Wilhelm Genazino from Germany. Readings will take place at all locations in parallel. Venues include theatres, clubs, cinemas and coffee shops, institutes of architecture, museums, universities, industrial settings like Vltavská Metro Station and several other venues. More information

In Bulgaria, ten cities (Burgas, Varna, Veliko Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Pernik, Pleven, Plovdiv, Ruse, Sofia and Shumen) will hold European Literature Night events. A series of public readings will take place in unconventional urban spaces. Every half an hour, famous actors and other public figures will read excerpts from works of modern European literature. The night’s event is inspired by the assumption that literature is a tool for mutual understanding and cultural exchange that helps to overcome barriers in communication. More information

Other cities taking place include Dublin (works from 12 countries are read by Irish celebrities in 12 unusual venues), Lisbon (on 24 May), Bucharest (on 29 May – literature lovers travel between readings on donated bicycles!), Brussels (16 May), Slovakia (ten cities – Bratislava, Košice, Michalovce, Prešov, Rožňava, Trebišov, Trenčín, Trnava, Vranov nad Topľov and Žilina), Edinburgh, Florence, Malmo, Munich (7 June) and Vienna.

Reading events like this one will be taking place all across Europe on 15 May. Pictured – ‘Vili Rezman (second from the left) presenting his awarded work in Konzorcij, at Mladinska knjiga Bookstores during Fabula Festival of Stories 2009′. Slovenian National E-Content Aggregator, CC-BY-ND

Screenshot of the Tumblr with a sketch by Marina Yee, a silhouette by Walter Van Beirendonck, the Antwerp Six and a graduate silhouette by Walter Van Beirendonck. Images: all rights reserved.

You are currently preparing the upcoming exhibition, ‘Happy Birthday Dear Academy’, can you tell us a little bit about it?
Karen: This exhibition is part of a bigger project about the 350th birthday of the Royal Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. This anniversary is celebrated with multiple exhibitions throughout Antwerp from September onwards. You can check the project’s website at www.happybirthdaydearacademy.be for the full programme. The whole project is curated by Walter Van Beirendonck, head of the fashion department.

The fashion department has existed for 50 years and gets a Momu exhibition showcasing work of the students of the fashion department. Through graduation silhouettes, drawings and film, the exhibition will trace the evolution of the academy over 50 years. From a small department under Mary Prijot, through the breakthrough of the Antwerp Six and Martin Margiela, and the next generations of designers under the direction of Linda Loppa and Walter Van Beirendonck, the fashion department of the Antwerp academy has grown into an institution of international acclaim with more than 40 nationalities of students. The artistic principles of the teaching methods and the results (careers) are under the spotlight in this intense and wonderful exhibition.

Poster for the upcoming exhibition at MoMu. All rights reserved.

The academy has been around for 50 years. MoMu was founded 10 years ago. What role does MoMu play in preserving and researching the history of the fashion academy?
Karen: Most ‘Belgian’ designers that  MoMu collects come from this school. Many designers are not Belgian by birth, but are labelled Belgian because of their education in Antwerp. Their silhouettes and collections are the primary focus of MoMu’s collection and exhibition policy. The Antwerp school is also responsible for MoMu’s 10-year existence, so the two are very interrelated. We are now also collecting the graduation silhouettes from the most important Antwerp-trained designers for our archives. MoMu also gives an award each year to the student with the most artistic merit, whose silhouettes we showcase in our gallery.

You are currently curating our Europeana Fashion Tumblr. What will you be showing on the Tumblr this month and how does it connect to the upcoming exhibition?
Karen: It connects through my research of the graduates’ collections for the exhibition. Each week I will post some graduation images from a different decade, starting with those of the Antwerp Six and Martin Margiela, followed by the student generations of the nineties and noughties. Not all of them are in the exhibition because they didn’t survive time, but I think it is worthwhile sharing them in the virtual world. The evolution of the work will hopefully tell a little bit of the story of 50 years of Antwerp fashion.

Go to: http://europeanafashion.tumblr.com/

Photograph by Karel Fonteyne. The Antwerp Six (L to R: Marina Yee,Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, Dirk Van Saene) and Martin Margiela were the first generation of fashion students from the Antwerp Academy to rise to international success in 1986. All rights reserved.

This post first appeared on the Europeana Fashion blog.

The Gallery is located in Cork in Ireland and has a permanent collection of over 2,000 works, ranging from eighteenth century Irish and European paintings and sculptures, through to contemporary video installations. At the heart of the collection is a selection of Greek and Roman sculpture casts, brought to the museum in 1818 from the Vatican Museum in Rome. The collection is also particularly strong in Irish art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Below we showcase some of the lovely works of the Crawford Art Gallery. For more, view the full collection on Europeana.

Over the last two weeks, we have asked you to tell us your what Europe means to you through one of its cultural treasures from Europeana. And of course to vote for your favourite pick. We would like to thank you all very much for your great contributions and votes! The winner of the contest – the object with the most votes – is Gashi Egzon with a photo of the interior of a Cathedral, which was formerly the Mosque in Cordova. Congratulations Gashi! You are the happy winner of the Google Nexus 7 Tablet!

‘The interior of Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba. This image represents the treasure that Europe has and that’s great and rich cultural heritage along with diversity that’s not seen everywhere. On one place you can see and experience culture at it’s finest.’ - Gashi Egzon

Interior of a Cathedral, formerly the Mosque in Cordova – Public Domain

You sent us many more great European treasures from the Public Domain, so see below for a small selection of what Europe means to you. Want to see all the entries? Go to our Facebook Gallery!

Map of the North Atlantic Ocean – 1867. Biblioteca Virtual del Patrimonio Bibliográfico (Public Domain).

Today it is a totally different story – along with the flight I will be taking, tens of thousands of other commercial flights a week make the world a smaller place and cross the Atlantic Ocean. In the 1920s, it was an unattained human and engineering feat that could be compared with man landing on the moon in the 1960s. But look at what progress has been made:  in 2010 alone, 2.5 million passengers crossed the Atlantic between London Heathrow and New York JFK airports, the busiest transatlantic route by a large margin. The Atlantic Ocean stood as a significant obstacle to the aviation pioneers of the 19th and early 20th centuries and now it is simply a way of getting from A to B – thanks to the efforts of a few brave aviators that we remember today.

    
The aviators, Coli and Nungesser, who attempted to fly non-stop across the Atlantic in the L’Oiseau Blanc. San Diego Air & Space Museum (Public Domain).  Portrait of Nungesser in 1920. French National Library (Public Domain).

On this day in 1927, French World War I aviation heroes, Charles Nungesser and François Coli set off on their ill-fated journey in an attempt to pilot the first non-stop transatlantic flight with a fixed-wing aircraft and bag the $25,000 Orteig Prize. The prize was offered on May 19, 1919, by New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig to the first allied aviator(s) to fly non-stop from New York City to Paris or vice-versa. Most were attempting to fly from New York to Paris, but a number of French aviators including Nungesser and Coli planned an attempt to fly in the opposite direction, from Paris to New York. The pair flew a specially built Levasseur PL.8, a single engine, two-seat long-distance biplane aircraft modified from an existing Levasseur PL.4.

Promotional post card of the L’Oiseau Blanc. Unknown Author (Public Domain).

The aircraft disappeared after its takeoff from Paris. The intended flight path was a great circular route, which would have taken them across the English Channel, over the southwestern part of England and Ireland, across the Atlantic to Newfoundland, then south over Nova Scotia, to Boston, and finally to a water landing in New York. Crowds of people gathered in New York to witness the historic arrival, with tens of thousands of people crowding Battery Park in Manhattan to have a good view of the Statue of Liberty, where the aircraft was scheduled to touch down. After their estimated time of arrival had passed, with no word as to the aircraft’s fate, it was realised that the aircraft had been lost. The disappearance of L’Oiseau Blanc is considered one of the great mysteries in the history of aviation.

Several famous aviators made unsuccessful attempts at the New York–Paris flight before relatively unknown American Charles Lindbergh won the prize in 1927 in his aircraft Spirit of St. Louis. The disappearance of L’Oiseau Blanc has been called ‘the Everest of aviation mysteries’. If the aircraft had successfully completed its journey, Lindbergh would probably not have made his own historic flight, and might instead have set his sights on crossing the Pacific, which might have prevented Amelia Earhart from attempting her own journey. When Lindbergh did succeed with his own flight across the Atlantic, the international attention on his achievement was probably enhanced because of the disappearance of ‘L’Oiseau Blanc just days earlier.

So next time you are on a transatlantic flight, at 30,000ft looking down at the mass expanse of the Atlantic, spare a thought for the pioneers who were brave enough to advance mankind’s ambitions to go faster, further and higher.

I have always loved Tchaikovsky’s ballet music. I remember dancing around to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and feeling the romance and tragedy of Swan Lake. I also got hold of a book of sheet music for The Nutcracker to play on the piano myself. 15 years later, it is still painful to me that I cannot master it, but his music continues to capture my imagination because of the wonderful stories it depicts.

Did you know…

- Tchaikovsky loved Mozart, found Wagner boring and hated Brahms (with whom he shared a birthday!).
- As a child, Tchaikovsky complained that he could not sleep because of the music in his head.
- Music did not become Tchaikovsky’s life until age 23 when he left his clerk’s job at the Ministry of Justice.

Europeana holds hundreds of recordings of Tchaikovsky’s music, nearly 100 videos related to him, and some of his sheet music, such as this handwritten and signed example of a song called ‘Romance’.

‘Romance’ by Piotr Illitch Tchaikovsky, Bibliotheque national de France, public domain
View this item in Europeana.

What’s more, you can also find braille music scores, which can be downloaded and used in Braille Music Reader. Try these ones: The Doll’s Funeral or German Song in E-Flat Major.

Or how about a twist on a Tchaikovsky classic by another great composer. Claude Debussy arranged ‘Le lac des cygnes’ as a duet on piano (four hands – one piano!).

‘Le lac des cygnes / Tchaikovsky ; [arr. pour piano à 4 mains par] Claude Debussy‘, Bibliotheque national de France, public domain. View this item in Europeana

Tchaikovsky’s music inspired wonderful sets and costumes in its productions. Here’s a souvenir programme from a 1921 production of ‘The Sleeping Princess’ (otherwise known as ‘Sleeping Beauty’) at the Alhambra Theatre, London. It contains a synopsis of the story as well as an article by Leon Bakst, producer and designer, about his passion for Tchaikovsky’s ballets and a nervous first encounter with the man himself when Bakst was just a young student.

Souvenir programme for ‘Ballet in five scenes after Perrault’s tale, The sleeping princess (La belle au bois dormant)’, Bibliotheque national de France, public domain View this item in Europeana

Flick through the programme to see a range of wonderful costume and set designs, as well as letter from composer Igor Stravinksy, expressing his delight at the new production of Tchaikovsky’s work.

Design by Leon Bakst for the costume of the Fairy Carabosse, in the souvenir programme for ‘Ballet in five scenes after Perrault’s tale, The sleeping princess (La belle au bois dormant)’, Bibliotheque national de France, public domain. View this item in Europeana

And if you’re not interested in the ballet, take a look at the fabulous adverts, which tell you something about the London ballet audience of the ’20s. I love the first one, which aims to help those theatre-goers who find it hard to sleep – the solution: ‘Get into a mustard bath’! Also shop for ‘Riding outfits for children’, ‘Inexpensive tea gowns’, ‘Dance frocks’ and ‘The very latest cigarette cases for ladies’. Well, if you’re going to the ballet, you must make sure you’re on trend with your fashions!