August 19, 2026

Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave’ Is Reimagined as a Giant Public Carpet Made of 700,000 Flowers

Every two years, Brussels transforms its historic Grand-Place into a monumental work of floral art. For its 24th edition, the Brussels Flower Carpet looked to Japan, recreating Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa with more than 700,000 flowers. Originally created in the early 1830s as part of Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, The Great Wave off Kanagawa depicts an enormous wave curling above three boats with Mount Fuji rising in the distance.

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August 17, 2026

17th-Century Dutch Painting Restoration Reveals a Missing Soldier Playing a Drinking Game

At first glance, Pieter de Hooch’s Figures in a Courtyard looks like a quiet scene of everyday life. Sunlight washes across the brick courtyard. A woman raises a glass while a man smokes a long clay pipe; nearby, a young girl approaches with glowing coals. Yet the gathering once had another participant: a soldier, whose disappearance altered the painting’s entire social dynamic.

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