The Louvre is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement (district or ward) and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French kings. The building was redesigned and extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings.
The history of the Fondazione Roma originates in 1539 from the birth of the Monte di Pietà of Rome. In 1836, on the initiative of deserving citizens, saw the rise of the Cassa di Risparmio. In 2007 the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma Foundation changed its name to Fondazione Roma, with the aim of highlighting its philanthropic aims. The Art Collection of the Rome Foundation is made up of a large and original corpus of works ranging from the fifteenth century to the present day. Based on a modest original nucleus coming from the collections of the Monte di Pietà and the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma, it has been significantly increased over the years with a purchasing campaign aimed at collecting and making the works accessible in a permanent exhibition space, specifically created at Palazzo Sciarra.
John Owen Hunwick was a British academic, author, and Africanist. He published several books, articles and journals in the African Studies field. He was professor emeritus at Northwestern University, having retired in 2004 after 23 years of service. Hunwick died in Skokie, Illinois on 1 April 2015, at the age of 79.
The Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) was officially established in 1963 to collect information on Ethiopian civilization, its history, cultures, and languages.The Institute includes a research and publication unit, a library, and a museum. It is located at Addis Ababa University, which was at the time of the IES's opening, named Haile Selassie I University after the last emperor of Abyssinia. The first director of the Institute was Richard Pankhurst and the first librarian was Stanislaw Chojnacki. Other directors include Fäqadu Gadamu, Taddesse Tamrat, Taddese Beyene, Bahru Zewde, Abdussamad Ahmad, Baye Yemam, and Elizabet Walde Giyorgis.