Writing can help you, “The benefits of words” by Nayla Chidiac

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Nayla Chidiac has a PHD in Psychopathology and for thirteen years, she had a consultation on post traumatic psychology at Sainte Anne psychiatric hospital in Paris. When she applied for a job there in 1997, she was asked to find an idea and founded therapeutical writing workshops at Sainte Anne psychiatric hospital in Paris in the service which already included musicotherapy and … Read More

At Christie’s and at Galerie Kugel, Hubert de Givenchy’s taste is revived.

parisdiaArt, Auction, Books, Furniture2 Comments

It took a whole year for the French and International teams of Christie’s to organize this “house” sale of Hubert de Givenchy‘s two properties: his apartment in the Hôtel inhabited by the Bemberg on rue de Grenelle, and his country house of Manoir du Jonchet. Bedrooms, gardens, a few salons have been reinvented on avenue Matignon and the privileged visitors … Read More

A romantic concert, a book signing and Monet’s Japanese woodblock prints…What a week!

parisdiaAuction, Books, Performing arts1 Comment

When you receive an invitation to a concert in a “Viennese salon 1820-1830”, you worry that it won’t be genuine. But when I arrived at Mairie du 9e arrondissement and sat facing a beautiful Rosenberger 1820 piano owned by the Roman pianist Luca Montebugnoli, I suddenly realized how romantic and charming the evening would be. What I could not guess beforehand … Read More

Guy Ladrière, a very special collector…

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Guy Ladrière is an established antique dealer on quai Voltaire, facing the Louvre. He started his career with Charles Ratton (1895-1986), a specialist of primitive arts, who organized the major 1930 exhibition of African and Oceanic art at the Pigalle theatre. He learned from him the sense of aesthetics of objects. His passion for research and his fantastic eye have … Read More

Marcel Proust and his mother at MahJ

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Marcel Proust was baptized but he loved his mother who was Jewish. At Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Professor Antoine Compagnon and curator Isabelle Cahn have produced an exhibition on the writer’s Jewish world with -disappointingly- already well known paintings recently shown at Musée Carnavalet and at IMA. The greatest discovery of the show is Baruch Weil, 1780-1828, his … Read More

“The Christie affair”, by Nina de Gramont

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I had read only one book of short stories by this talented and distant cousin, “Of Cats and Men” published in 2001. She has since published five more books and her latest one, “The Christie Affair” is on the New York Times best seller list. And it is a fantastic read. Nina used an article on Agatha Christie’s disappearance for … Read More