The World’s Most Popular Art Museums

The largest and perhaps the most famous art museum in the world, this relic is best known for being the home of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

On a regular day, the Louvre would host up to 15,000 guests and display as many as 380,000 precious objects—a truly symbolic institution that has remained beloved by artists, art critics, and art-lovers alike for over 228 years.

Informally referred to as “The Met,” this American art museum has 17 departments and over 2 million works within its permanent collection.

Opened in 1870, this slightly more contemporary museum contains works by the likes of Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, and Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. It also houses the world’s oldest grand piano!

Before becoming a world-class art museum, Uffizi Gallery was a governmental building whose name means “offices” when translated to English.

Constructed between 1560 and 1580 and designed by Giorgio Vasari, this historic building houses Michaelangelo’s only free-standing painting, “Doni Tondo” and is visited by an average of over 2 million foreigners every year. If you ever find yourself there, don’t forget to search for the secret Vasari Corridor which stretches over the Ponte Vecchio river.

Last but certainly not least on this list is the crowning glory of England’s art galleries, the Tate Modern where ever art lovers want to play Australian online games now. Founded by sugar businessman Henry Tate in 1897 Liverpool, the innovative (革新的) Tate displays symbolic works by more progressive artists such as Salvador Dali, Picasso, Rothko, Duchamp, and Parreno.

Human rubbish can be a cockatoo’s treasure. In Sydney, the birds have learned how to open dustbins and throw rubbish around in the streets as they hunt for leftovers. People are now fighting back.

When cockatoos learn how to open dustbin lids, people change their behavior, using things like bricks to weigh down lids (盖子), to protect their trash from being thrown about. That’s usually a low-level protection and then the cockatoos figure out how to defeat that. That’s when people strengthen their efforts, and the cycle continues.

Tricks such as attempting to scare the parrots off with rubber snakes don’t work very well. Nor does blocking access with heavy objects such as bricks; cockatoos use force to push them off. Hanging weights from the front of the lid or placing items such as sneakers and sticks through a bin’s back handles work better. Researchers didn’t see any birds get inside bins with these higher levels of protection.

The findings suggest an arms race, but the missing piece is how the birds will respond as people try new ways of blocking bins. Some survey responses suggest that the parrots are learning.

Cockatoos may stay away from strategies that take too long to beat. Bricks, for instance, are easy to quickly push off a bin; breaking sticks placed through the bin’s back handle could take more time. Perhaps if enough people in a neighborhood adopt a highly effective method, Clark, a behavioral ecologist says, the cockatoos may not find it worth it to stop by.

In Mombasa on the coast of Kenya is a place called Haller Park. People flood there to see 180 local species of plants and trees, and a variety of animals including hippos and giraffes.

In The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, Jane Goodall discusses the park as an example of how our injured Earth can be restored and healed. At one point the park was “a large and frightening five-hundred-acre scar (伤疤) where almost nothing grew” because a cement (水泥) company dug large amounts of stone out of the ground. The company decided to repair the damage. Year by year, by growing flowers, fruit and vegetables and with introduction of wild animals, the area was changed.

It’s extremely important, Jane Goodall says in the book, that people — especially young people — know how positive action can still turn around the frightening path of climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and the ongoing global pandemic (疫情). “It’s mostly because people are so overpowered by our stupidity that they feel helpless,” Goodall states. They need to hear stories of “the people who succeed because they won’t give up.”

Jane Goodall is one of those people herself. She is the world’s leading chimpanzee (黑猩猩) expert; UN Messenger of Peace; winner of the 2021 Templeton Prize; activist through the Jane Goodall Institute and its many projects that help local communities and the environment; and author of numerous books, the first of which, In the Shadow of Man, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

Goodall speaks plainly and effectively throughout the book. As troubling as this current pandemic is, “we must not let this take our attention away from the far greater threat to our future — the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity,” she says. Goodall calls each of us to action: “Let us use the gift of our lives to make this a better world.”

Food waste has been of major global concern for many years now. It is estimated that every year, 1.3 billion tons of edible food — equal to a third of global production — which would be enough to feed three billion people, is wasted. This is particularly shocking when one considers that every day, people go hungry. Ending food waste would certainly solve this problem, but unfortunately, it is not as easy as that.

A huge amount of agricultural produce goes to waste as a result of unreasonable quality standards that overemphasize colour, shape and uniformity in appearance especially with regard to fruits and vegetables. The result was that farmers worked with agricultural scientists to focus on the appearance and volume of their products and organic farming had to take a back seat.

Food is also wasted when fresh or processed produce that is close to or at the best-before date in many developed countries, is got rid of by retailers and consumers. And this is often a result of poor supply chain management and the overshopping which has been ordinarily existing in western households for a long time.

Another way that wastage occurs is when edible food remains unused or left over and is got rid of from household kitchens and eating places. How many of us refuse leftovers and insist on freshly-prepared meals three times a day on a daily basis? Then there are eating places, particularly in North America, that prefer to throw out unused and untouched food rather than allow their employees to consume it or give it to the homeless.

Given its complexity, reducing and ending food waste requires an overall approach, but it must be solved as it is critical to creating the zero-hunger world. Doing so, we would meet the Sustainable Development Goal (可持续性发展目标) which is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.