This summer we are wishing "buenas vacaciones” to one of Rienzi’s paintings: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s The Nativity is on holiday, loaned to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, Spain. This three-part blog series discusses The Nativity and its unusual medium, and chronicles the painting’s journey overseas to the Prado with Rienzi’s director, Katherine Howe.

As the Electronic Records Archive Start-Up grant, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, concludes, the MFAH has piloted an Electronic Transfer Protocol (ETP) consisting of a database application and procedures for its use. The ETP supports the transfer of institutional electronic records into archival custody with metadata and access privileges intact. In its final version, the ETP will also support . . .

The name Guinness may first have become famous because of the world-renowned brewery, but today the name might be just as recognizable to fashion aficionados as it is to beer drinkers. That’s thanks to fashion icon Daphne Guinness . . .

The success of a house museum depends upon the interpretive plan for the site—the story that the house will tell, including place and time, characters, and context—the draw, if you will. But what does one do when a house has been “rewritten” several times over?

Who’s that cover girl starring on the Kenwood House exhibition catalogue? None other than the indisputably beautiful Mary, Countess Howe. Putting her best (elegantly dressed) foot forward in her full-length portrait by Thomas Gainsborough, she stands proudly in a dress that would have been at the height of fashion in the mid-1700s. Her pale complexion and arsenal of expensive accessories also attest to her aristocratic status.