text: French is used as the official language in areas of Pondicherry, Karikal and Chandannagar as they were former French colonies.


title: Geographical distribution of French speakers

text: French is a minor language in Jordan brought over by French colonists in Lebanon and Syria and Maghrebi and French expatriates. The growth of French in Jordan occurred primarily in the 20th century but it is still popular today. Amman is home to the Lycée Français, while the Institut français de Jordanie is another important Francophone institution in the country. According to the 2014 Francophonie report, 12,000 Jordanians were studying French at the primary level, 30,000 at the secondary level and 1,747 in universities.


text: As the Lebanese people historically call France "la tendre mère" (English: The Tender Mother), not only is speaking French in Lebanon common and encouraged, but it is also a self-identification with the French liberal and cultural spirit that was mainly the result of the French colonial period and educational, Christian religious and governmental enterprises. However, most Lebanese privilege French out of fascination and infatuation with the culture, not for any functional purposes.


text: While the Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language, a law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used".


text: Today, French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon, with about 40% of the population being Francophone and 40% Anglophone. The use of English is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value. On social media, French was used on Facebook by just 10% of Lebanese in 2014, far behind English (78%).


text: The Philippines has become one of the most active areas where French is being studied. Home of the first Alliance Française in the Southeast Asia (founded in 1912), it continues to educate many Filipinos and expatriates in the said language. There are currently two branches of Alliance Française in the Philippines, that of Manila and Cebu.


text: Although the language is not offered in elementary school, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued a proclamation encouraging the language to be an elective in high school. Also, French, along with Spanish, is a popular foreign language offered in many universities in the country. The University of the Philippines offers a bachelor's degree in European Languages, where French is one of the possible majors.


text: In Singapore, the top 10% of Primary School Leaving Examination graduates may choose to opt for French as a second or third language in secondary school, though the language is not an official language in Singapore, and is not commonly spoken among locals.


text: Syria, as well as Lebanon were French League of Nations Mandates following World War I, which put French language as one of the main official language in Syria. Following independence, French was demoted as the official language of Syria, but it remained taught alongside English in schools as the second foreign language. French remains widely spoken among intellectuals and members of the upper class in Syria and most educated Syrians are trilingual, speaking Arabic, English and French.


text: French is mostly popular in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo where the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle and l’École Française, Syria's only two French schools, are located respectively. In 2016, a new French school opened in Tartous increasing the total number to three.


text: Spoken by 12% of the EU population, French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, after German; it is also the third most widely known language of the Union, after English and German (33% of the EU population report to know how to speak English, whilst 22% of Europeans understand German and 20% French).


text: In Belgium, French is an official language in Wallonia and Brussels. French is the primary language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons, which are German-speaking) and in the Brussels-Capital Region, where it is spoken by the majority of the population often as their primary language. In the Flemish Region French is not an official language, with the exception of a dozen municipalities with language facilities for French speakers along borders with the Walloon and Brussels-Capital regions.


text: In total, native French speakers make up about 38% of the country's population. Including speakers of French as a second language, about 72% of the Belgian population can speak French.


text: French formally became the official language of France in 1992, but the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made it mandatory for legal documents in 1539. France mandates the use of French in official government publications and public education except in specific cases (though these dispositions are often ignored) and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words.


text: In Guernsey, English is the only official language, although French is sometimes used in legislation with a ceremonial capacity. Nevertheless, Norman (in its local forms, Guernésiais and Jèrriais) is the historical vernacular of the islands.


text: The Aosta Valley was the first government authority to adopt Modern French as working language in 1536, three years before France itself. French has been the official language of the Aosta Valley since 1561, when it replaced Latin. In the 1861 census, the first held after the unification of Italy, 93% declared being Francophone; in 1921, the last census with a question about language found that 88% of the population was French-speaking. The suppression of all French-language schools and institutions and violence against French speakers during the forceful Italianisation campaign of the Fascist government irretrievably damaged the status of French in the region. Italian and French are nowadays the region's official languages and are used for the regional government's acts and laws, though Italian is much more widely spoken in everyday life, and French is mostly used within cultural events. Though French was re-introduced as an official language after World War II, and by 2003 just 0.99% reported speaking French natively. French remains widely known as a second language, but it is no longer spoken as part of daily life. In 2001, 75.41% of the Valdostan population declared to know French, 96.01% declared to know Italian, 55.77% Franco-Provençal, and 50.53% all of them. School education is delivered equally in both Italian and French so that everyone who went to school in Aosta Valley can speak French to at least a medium-high level.


text: In Jersey, a standardized variety of French called Jersey Legal French is an official language. However, its use is generally restricted to parliament formalities or legal codes and contracts.


text: French is one of three official languages of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, alongside German and Luxembourgish, the natively spoken language of Luxembourg. French is primarily used for administrative purposes by the government, is the language in which laws are published since the law of 1984 and is also the primary language used to converse with foreigners. Luxembourg's education system is trilingual: the first cycle of basic school is in Luxembourgish, before changing officially to German for most branches; while in secondary school, the language of instruction changes to French for most subjects, such as mathematics and science. At the Luxembourg University courses are offered in French, German and English.


text: French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland (along with German, Italian and Romansh) and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called "Romandie", of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions and some cantons have bilingual status for example, cities such Biel/Bienne or cantons such as Valais-Fribourg-Berne. French is the native language of about 20% of the Swiss population and is spoken by 50.4% of the population.


text: French is the most popular foreign language studied in British schools. According to a 2006 European Commission report, 23% of UK residents are able to carry on a conversation in French. Other surveys put the figure at 15%.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: A torsion bar suspension, also known as a torsion spring suspension, is any vehicle suspension that uses a torsion bar as its main weight-bearing spring. One end of a long metal bar is attached firmly to the vehicle chassis; the opposite end terminates in a lever, the torsion key, mounted perpendicular to the bar, that is attached to a suspension arm, a spindle, or the axle. Vertical motion of the wheel causes the bar to twist around its axis and is resisted by the bar's torsion resistance. The effective spring rate of the bar is determined by its length, cross section, shape, material, and manufacturing process.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Torsion bar suspensions are used on combat vehicles and tanks like the T-72, Leopard 1, Leopard 2, M26 Pershing, M18 Hellcat, M48 Patton, M60 Patton and the M1 Abrams (many tanks from World War II used this suspension), and on modern trucks and SUVs from Ford, Chrysler, GM, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Nissan, Isuzu, LuAZ, and Toyota. Class 8 truck manufacturer Kenworth also offered a torsion bar suspension for its K100C and W900A models, up to about 1981.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Manufacturers change the torsion bar or key to adjust the ride height, usually to compensate for engine weight.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: The main advantages of a torsion bar suspension are soft ride due to elasticity of the bar, durability, easy adjustability of ride height, and small profile along the width of the vehicle. It takes up less of the vehicle's interior volume than coil springs.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Torsion bars reached the height of their popularity on mass-production road cars in the middle of the 20th century at the same time that unitary construction was being adopted. At a time when the mechanics of stress and metal fatigue in monocoque body frames was poorly understood, torsion bars were very attractive to vehicle designers as the bars could be mounted to reinforced parts of the central structure, typically the bulkhead. Using MacPherson struts to achieve independent front suspension with coil springs meant providing strong turrets in the frontal structure of the car.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: A disadvantage is that torsion bars, unlike coil springs, usually cannot provide a progressive spring rate. In most torsion bar systems, ride height (and therefore many handling features) may be changed by simply adjusting bolts that connect the torsion bars to the steering knuckles. In most cars with this type of suspension, swapping torsion bars for a different spring rate is usually an easy task. Longitudinal torsion bars extend under the passenger compartment, cutting into interior space by raising the floor, while in transverse systems, torsion bar length is limited by vehicle width.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Some vehicles use torsion bars to provide automatic levelling, using a motor to pre-stress the bars to provide greater resistance to load and, in some cases (depending on the speed with which the motors can act), to respond to changes in road conditions. Height adjustable suspension has been used to implement a wheel-change mode where the vehicle is raised on three wheels so that the remaining wheel is lifted off the ground without the aid of a jack. This example is of a vehicle that uses oleopneumatic suspension where a high pressure pump primes a pressure reservoir that feeds terminating spheres with hydraulic oil (LHM) to achieve suspension. The ride height is maintained by cross-linking front and rear suspension spheres using hydraulic connecting pipes.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: The first vehicle to use torsion bars was Leyland Eight designed by J. G. Parry-Thomas and produced from 1920 to 1923, however its rear suspension, patented in 1919, was retrospectively named "torsion bar assisted" by Leyland in a 1966 publication because the bars only complemented the leaf springs. Less than two dozen cars (including racing variants) were produced, and the suspension was only ever used again on Marlborough-Thomas racing cars few years later.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: In 1923 Parry-Thomas patented an updated design featuring a true torsion bar design with no leaf springs, however the inventor's death in a car crash in 1927 prevented its further development. Therefore the invention is often credited to the Porsche GmbH, which patented it in 1931 and later used in a lot of designs.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: The front wheel drive Citroën Traction Avant from 1934 was the first to implement the idea in a serially produced car, featuring independent front torsion bar suspension and a flexible trailing dead axle, also sprung by torsion bars. The flexibility of the axle beam provided wheel location features like a twist beam axle. Also in the 1930s, Porsche's prototypes of the first Volkswagen Beetle incorporated torsion bars—especially their transverse mounting style. Czechoslovakian Tatra's 1948 T600 Tatraplan employed rear torsion bar suspension, the only Tatra to do so.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: The system first saw military use in the Swedish Stridsvagn L-60 tank of 1934. Its suspension was developed by German engineers, including Porsche employee Karl Rabe who also held patents on torsion bar suspensions personally.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: It was used extensively in European cars like Renault, Citroën and Volkswagen, as well as by Packard in the 1950s. The Packard used torsion bars at both front and rear, and interconnected the front and rear systems to improve ride quality. Morris Minor and Oxford from the late 1940s onwards used a front torsion bar system very similar to the Citroën, as did the Riley RM models. The revolutionary Jaguar E-Type introduced in 1961 had a torsion bar front suspension very similar to the Citroën and Morris Minor, and an independent coil spring rear suspension using four shock absorbers with concentric springs.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: An early application of a torsion bar in an American car was by Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit who had introduced the innovative front axle flex suspension in 1934 Hudson and Terraplane cars and realized for 1935 that a transverse torsion bar linked to the rear axle was needed as an anti-roll bar to stabilize the cars. The single torsion bar was mounted through the frame sides behind the rear axle and then attached by arms and links to the front side of the spring U-bolt plates. Axle flex was discontinued for the 1936 model year.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Post-war the use of torsion bar front suspension was a defining feature of British Morris cars, starting with the Morris Minor of 1948, its larger Morris Oxford MO counterpart and the upmarket Morris Six MS, plus the Wolseley-badged upmarket variants of the latter two models. The designer of these cars, Alec Issigonis, was inspired by the Traction Avant's suspension, although the Morris cars were rear-wheel drive and used conventional leaf springs for their rear axles. The Minor used lever arm dampers with its torsion bars while the Oxford and the Six used innovative telescopic dampers. The Minor remained in production largely unchanged until 1972 and was replaced by the Morris Marina which also used the torsion bar-lever arm damper system for its front suspension—one of the last new cars worldwide to be introduced with the system and which remained in production until 1984. The Oxford/Six platform was developed through several revised series which used Issigonis' torsion bar system until 1959 when the new Farina Oxford was introduced using front suspension with coil springs, lower wishbones and lever arm dampers.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: The most famous American passenger car application was the Chrysler system used beginning with all Chrysler products starting with the 1957 model year in cars such as the Imperial Crown series, Chrysler Windsor, DeSoto Firedome, Dodge Coronet and Plymouth Belevedere although Chrysler's "Torsion-Air" suspension was only for the front axle; the same basic system (longitudinal mounting) was maintained until the 1981 introduction of the K-car. A reengineered torsion bar suspension, introduced with the 1976 Dodge Aspen, introduced transverse-mounted torsion bars (possibly based on the Volkswagen Type 3 passenger car) until production ended in 1989 (with Chrysler's M platform). Some generations of the Dodge Dakota and Durango used torsion bars on the front suspension.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: General Motors first used torsion bars on their light-duty pickup trucks in 1960 until it was phased out in 1963 where traditional coil springs are used up front for their 2WD trucks. Its first use in a passenger car was in 1966, starting with the E-platform vehicles (Oldsmobile Toronado, Cadillac Eldorado), 4WD S-10 pickups and Astro vans with optional AWD, and since 1988, full size trucks and SUVs with 4WD (GMT400, GMT800, and GMT900 series).


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Porsche used four-wheel torsion bar suspension for their 356 and 911 series from 1948 until 1989 with the introduction of the 964. They are also used in the front suspension of the 914 as well as the rear suspension of the 924, 944, and 968. Honda also used front torsion bars on the third generation Civic and other variants built on the same platform including the Ballade and first generation CRX.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: The German World War II Panther tank (and some Tigers) had double torsion bars. Needing bars longer than the width of the tank to get the required spring rate and maximum elastic bend angle from available steel alloys, designer Ernst Lehr created a suspension that effectively folded the bars in half. For each wheel, one rod was attached to the suspension arm, while another was mounted to a nearby point on the frame. On the opposite side of the tank, the two rods were attached to each other and fitted into a pivot. Deflection of the suspension arm caused both halves of the double torsion bar to twist. A disadvantage of the torsion bar suspension used in Tiger and Panther tanks (and many other WWII-era tanks and other AFVs) was the inability to incorporate an escape hatch through the bottom of the hull, a common feature of WWII-era tanks, as the torsion bar arrangement would have blocked crew access to such a hatch; however, the absence of leaf, coil or volute springs often left a large expanse of the side of the hull clear to include a side-escape hatch, and it was rare for a tank to be flipped over in such a way that all top-side hatches were unable to open, which is the purpose of ventral hatches.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Many contemporary main battle tanks use torsion bar suspension, including the American M1 Abrams, German Leopard 2, and Chinese MBT-3000, though the newest generation of tanks such as the Russian T-14 Armata utilize an adjustable hydraulic suspension. Due to their small size, tremendous load capacity, and relative ease of service, torsion bar suspension has been ideal for tanks, though it is not without disadvantage. The large travel and high elasticity of the torsion bars results in a "rocking" motion when the tank is moving or coming to a sudden stop. A gun stabilizer must be used to compensate for the rocking motion. Due to the massive weight of a main battle tank, compared to an automobile, there is a much greater risk of breaking a torsion bar on sudden bumps or maneuvers, and if it is not replaced in short order the reduced suspension can affect the maneuverability of the vehicle, and in extreme cases risk immobilizing the vehicle as the reduced capacity of the suspension causes additional torsion bars to break.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Some front-wheel drive automobiles use a related type of torsion beam suspension, usually called a twist-beam rear suspension, in which the rear wheels are carried on trailing arms connected by a laterally mounted torsion beam, as found on the Mitsubishi Debonair. The actual springing medium for these is usually coil springs. The torsion beam functions both as wheel locating arm and as an anti-roll bar to resist lateral motion of the wheels as the body leans in turns. Its advantages are that it is inexpensive to manufacture and install, and engages a minimum amount of interior volume, leaving more space for the carriage of passengers, cargo, and other components. Because the torsion beam acts in the lateral plane, not vertically, the twist beam axle cannot provide ride height adjustment, and it suffers, to some extent, similar car handling limitations as other beam axle suspensions. However these limitations may not be apparent on the road, because of the trend towards firmer, more sporty suspension setups with more limited wheel travel. Twist-beam rear suspensions were pioneered on the Volkswagen Golf in the early 1970s, and remain common on compact cars and minivans.


title: Torsion bar suspension

text: Torsion bars were sometimes used instead of conventional coil valve springs in some older motorcycles, such as the Honda CB450, and also on the Panhard Dyna X and Panhard Dyna Z cars of the 1950s. They were also used in the door mechanism of the DMC DeLorean automobile.


title: La Plata

text: La Plata () is the capital city of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. According to the , it has a population of 654,324 and its metropolitan area, the Greater La Plata, has 787,294 inhabitants. It is located 9 kilometers (6 miles) inland from the southern shore of the Río de la Plata estuary.


title: La Plata

text: La Plata was planned and developed to serve as the provincial capital after the city of Buenos Aires was federalized in 1880. It was officially founded by Governor Dardo Rocha on 19 November 1882. Its construction is fully documented in photographs by Tomás Bradley Sutton. La Plata was briefly known as "Ciudad Eva Perón" (Eva Perón City) between 1952 and 1955.


title: La Plata

text: The city is home to two important first division football teams: Estudiantes de La Plata and Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata.


title: La Plata

text: After La Plata was designated the provincial capital, Rocha was placed in charge of creating the city. He hired urban planner Pedro Benoit, who designed a city layout based on a rationalist conception of urban centers. The city has the shape of a square with a central park and two main diagonal avenues, north to south and east to west. In addition, there are numerous other shorter diagonal streets. This design is copied in a self-similar manner in small blocks of six by six blocks in length. For every six blocks, there is a small park or square. Other than the diagonal streets, all streets are on a rectangular grid and are numbered consecutively. Thus, La Plata is nicknamed "la ciudad de las diagonales" (city of diagonals). It is also called "la ciudad de los tilos" (city of linden trees), because of the large number of linden trees lining the many streets and squares. The linden tree is one of a number of deciduous Northern Hemisphere tree species which dominate La Plata's parks and streets; ash, horsechestnut, plane, sweetgum and tulip tree are among the other examples. Palms and subtropical broadleaf evergreen trees thrive but are comparatively infrequent.


title: La Plata

text: The city design and its buildings are noted to possess strong Freemason symbolism as a consequence of both Rocha and Benoit being Freemasons.


title: La Plata

text: The designs for the government buildings were chosen in an international architectural competition. Thus, the Governor Palace was designed by Italians, the City Hall by Germans, etc. Electric street lighting was installed in 1884 and was the first of its kind in Latin America.


title: La Plata

text: The neo-Gothic cathedral of La Plata is the largest church in Argentina. It is located on the central park, Plaza Moreno, and is the 58th tallest church in the world.


title: La Plata

text: The Teatro Argentino de La Plata is one of the most important opera houses in Argentina, second to the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. The construction was funded by the first inhabitants of La Plata, but as maintenance was very expensive it was later donated to the Province of Buenos Aires. On 18 October 1977 the building was almost completely destroyed by a fire. This has been noted as one of the largest losses to La Plata's historical heritage. It was later replaced by a new building, which houses the theatre's orchestra, choir and ballet, boasting several halls.


title: La Plata

text: The University of La Plata was founded in 1897 and nationalized in 1905. It is well known for its observatory and natural history museum. Ernesto Sabato graduated in Physics at this university; he went on to teach at the Sorbonne and the MIT before becoming a famed novelist. Doctor René Favaloro was another famous alumnus. During its early years, the university attracted a number of renowned intellectuals from the Spanish-speaking world, such as Dominican Pedro Henríquez Ureña.


title: La Plata

text: Under Alvear's administration (1922–1928), Enrique Mosconi, the president of the state oil company "Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales", created the La Plata distillery, at the time the tenth largest in the world.


title: La Plata

text: On 10 December 1945, in the Parish church of St. Francis of Assisi in this city, Juan Domingo Perón and Eva Duarte were married.


title: La Plata

text: In March 1976 the Argentine military seized power following a coup d'état, which involved the disappearing of a number of students from La Plata. The military junta had implemented what was called the National Reorganization Process which was a set of policies used by the regime to destroy left-wing guerrilla forces and oppress resistance to its rule. The process included kidnappings, torture and murder. Meanwhile, the Montoneros, a leftist guerilla group, responded violently to the junta and its actions as they enlisted other Argentines to join their campaign against the regime. Those enlisted included young, left-wing, politically active students from the organization named the "Unión de Estudiantes Secundarios" (Union of High School Students) of La Plata. The UES was committed to achieving school reforms and other political reforms through demonstrations and protests that irked the ruling regime. Many of these students were kidnapped and killed as part of this conflict.


title: La Plata

text: In October 1998, UNESCO approved the city's bid to gain recognition as a World Heritage site. The approval is still pending due to various objections to the criterion of maintaining architectural and landscape features during recent decades, which in the opinion of other specialists, has caused severe damage to the original design and contextual aesthetics.


title: La Plata

text: The Estadio Ciudad de La Plata, also known as the "Estadio Único", opened on 7 June 2003, as one of the most modern football stadiums in Latin America. Various other construction and renovation projects have continued, including the addition of a roof structure. Estudiantes has become a permanent tenant of the new stadium while their own stadium is being modernized; Gimnasia La Plata has only played occasional home games in this stadium. In 2011, the Estadio Ciudad de La Plata was one of the host sites for the 2011 Copa America including an opening-round match between Argentina and Bolivia, a semifinal game, and the third-place final. Now, the stadium is additionally used for concerts and Puma matches.


title: La Plata

text: During 2009, following a series of agreements between the city municipality, the governor of the province and the nation's presidency, progress was made in the final transfer of the land of the Paseo del Bosque to Estudiantes and Gimnasia La Plata clubs. On 24 June 2009, the Deliberative Council adopted the convention and the ordinance for which Gimnasia and Estudiantes clubs received "grants" for the lands on which their home grounds are currently located within El Bosque (The Forest).


title: La Plata

text: On 28 October 2007, Pablo Bruera was elected mayor with 26% of the votes, replacing Julio Alak, who had been mayor since 1991.


title: La Plata

text: On 25 February 2009, La Plata debuted a parking system that uses text messaging (SMS), thus becoming the first city in Argentina to use technology applications to control parking.


title: La Plata

text: Pasaje Rodrigo A traditional "galería" (the older version of shopping malls in Argentina), which had been opened in 1929 by Spanish immigrant Basilio Rodrigo and had been closed to the public for 10 years, reopened its doors in April 2009 as Pasaje Rodrigo shopping mall.


title: La Plata

text: On 25 October 2015, Julio Garro was elected mayor with 41,35% of the votes, replacing Pablo Bruera, who had been mayor since 2007.


title: La Plata

text: Located in the north-eastern area of the province of Buenos Aires, La Plata is surrounded by Ensenada and Berisso to the northeast, Berazategui and Florencio Varela to the northwest, San Vicente and Coronel Brandsen to the southwest and south, and Magdalena, to the southeast, occupying an area of 893 km.


title: La Plata

text: The metropolitan area of La Plata includes the neighborhoods of Tolosa, Ringuelet, Manuel B. Gonnet, City Bell, Villa Elisa, Melchor Romero, Abasto, Gorina, José Hernández, Ángel Etcheverry, Arturo Seguí, Los Hornos, Lisandro Olmos, Villa Elvira and Altos de San Lorenzo, all of which have community centers that operate as local delegations.


title: La Plata

text: La Plata has a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa" under the Köppen climate classification). During winter, temperatures are cool during the day and cold during the night, even reaching below freezing. The average temperature in the coldest month, July, is . Winters tend to be cloudier than summer, averaging around 10 overcast days from June to August, compared to 6 overcast days from December to February. Summers are warm to hot with a January high of while nighttime temperatures are cooler, averaging . Spring and fall are transition seasons, featuring warm daytime temperatures and cool nighttime temperatures, highly variable with some days reaching above and below . The city is fairly humid, owing to its coastal location, having an average monthly humidity higher than 75%. La Plata receives of precipitation annually, with winters being the drier months and summer the wetter months. On average, La Plata receives 2,285 hours of sunshine a year, or 51% of possible sunshine, ranging from a low of 41% in June and July to 62% in February. The highest temperature recorded was on 18 December 1995 while the lowest temperature recorded was on 14 June 1967.


title: La Plata

text: Snowfall is extremely rare in the city with only 5 major snowfall events: July 1912, 1928, 22 June 1981, 9 July 2007 during the July 2007 Argentine winter storm, and on 6 June 2012.


title: La Plata

text: The region lies on the Punta del Este fault, and its latest event occurred on 30 November 2018 at 10:27 UTC−3 with a magnitude of 3.8 on the Richter scale. This earthquake was totally unusual in La Plata, a city where the last earthquake had been on 5 June 1888 (128 years before) with a magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale.


title: La Plata

text: Given the federal system of government in Argentina there are three orders or ranks: the National, Provincial and Municipal.


title: La Plata

text: Power of the executive branch in La Plata is exercised by the municipal mayor, elected by popular vote every four years with the possibility of unlimited reelection. The town hall is known as the Palacio Municipal, and is located in the block surrounded by streets 51, 53, 11 and 12, in the city center. It is one of the important buildings that surround Plaza Moreno, and is opposite the cathedral.


title: La Plata

text: The city government is divided into different areas. These are: Private Secretary, Secretary General, Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Public Management, Social Development Secretariat, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Modernization and Economic Development, Ministry of Justice, Secretary of Health and Social Medicine, Chief of Staff, Regional Market La Plata, Management Consortium Puerto La Plata, Executive Unit Revenue Agency, Environment Agency Implementation Unit, Human Rights Department, Ministry of Government, Policy Planning Council, Regional Production and Employment, and the city council.


title: La Plata

text: As it is the capital of the Province of Buenos Aires, La Plata is also home to the three provincial powers: the provincial executive (led at the moment by the Governor) along with its ministries, the judiciary, and the provincial Legislature.


title: La Plata

text: According to the National Economic Survey 2004–2005, out of a total of 23,844 local listings 90% are dedicated to the production of goods and services, 4% belonged to the Civil Service, 2% are for semi sideshows or removable; 1% are for worship, political parties and unions, and the remaining 2% was in the process of classification.


title: La Plata

text: La Plata has a Stock Market (Bolsa de Comercio) founded in 1960, a member of the Argentine stock market system.


title: La Plata

text: In the city there are branches of major banks operating in the country, including Banco Nación, Banco Provincia, Banco Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Banco Hipotecario, HSBC, Citigroup, Banco Itaú, Francés, Macro, Standard Bank, etc.


title: La Plata

text: "Trenes Argentinos" operate a rail service (Roca Line) between La Plata and Constitución station in Buenos Aires via Berazategui. It runs every 24 to 30 minutes Mondays to Saturdays and every 40 minutes on Sundays. In addition, there is a shuttle service "Tren Universitario" between La Plata station and Policlínico operating five to eight times a day.


title: La Plata

text: The greater metropolitan area, according to the National Census of Population and Housing 2010, has a population of 787,294 inhabitants.


title: La Plata

text: The Spanish community's contributions include the renowned Spanish Hospital. Spain has also acknowledged the community by installing a consulate in the city of La Plata.


title: La Plata

text: The Arab community also has several institutions, including the Syriac Orthodox Welfare Assoc, Assoc Islamic Argentino de La Plata, and the Lebanese Society of La Plata.


title: La Plata

text: The Jewish community of La Plata has numerous institutions. These include AMIA La Plata (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina), which has under its orbit Hebrew School Chaim Nachman Bialik and the Jewish cemetery of the city, the Beit Chabad La Plata, part of Chabad Lubavitch Argentina.


title: La Plata

text: La Plata hosts one of the most renowned universities in Argentina, the National University of La Plata (Spanish: Universidad Nacional de La Plata, UNLP).


title: La Plata

text: Students come to these four universities from every part of Argentina and other countries, giving the city a rich young multicultural lifestyle.


title: La Plata

text: La Plata is a planned city, characterized by a strict grid crossed with diagonal avenues. The two major diagonals, 73 and 74, cross the city from east to west and from north to south, respectively. They converge in Plaza Moreno at the center of the city. This square houses the foundation stone and is the main square of the city. To either side are the City Hall and cathedral of La Plata. Highlights of the city are the Museum of Natural Sciences, the building of the Interior, the Provincial Legislature, the new theater and the hippodrome. Many of these buildings were built at the time of the founding of the city, following an international call for proposals.


title: La Plata

text: Another work is the parent company of "Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires", located between the streets 6, 7, 46 and 47. This building was designed by architects Juan A. Buschiazzo and Luis Viglione. It opened on 19 April 1886, being amended in 1913 and in the 1970s.


title: La Plata

text: It is a very green city, with its largest park being the ""Paseo del Bosque"" (or simply 'the forest'). Twenty-two other parks and squares contain much of the city's trees and greenery. Other landmarks include the lake, the Martin Fierro amphitheater, the Parque Pereyra Iraola, the Zoo and Botanical Garden, the Victorian astronomical observatory, and the Natural History Museum. One notable attraction is the Children's Republic, which is said to have inspired Walt Disney to build Disneyland after he visited it during a trip to Argentina.


title: La Plata

text: In 1977 the city lost one of its most valuable monuments to a fire: the Teatro Argentino de La Plata, predominantly built in a neoclassic style. After the fire, a new brutalist style theater was built in its place. The city also has the Estadio Ciudad de La Plata, a stadium influenced by modern High-tech architecture, planned and built after a national competition during the 1970s. It was amended in a subsequent project to expand capacity and include a roof. The construction of a semitransaparent deck of kevlar and plastic resins was finished in January 2011.


title: La Plata

text: The city was awarded at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889, an event in which the new city was given the two gold medals awarded in the categories "City of the Future" and "Better performance built."


title: La Plata

text: The municipal cemetery of La Plata was established in 1886 for the new capital of the province of Buenos Aires. It was designed by Pedro Benoit. It lies on the intersection of Avenue 31, 72 and diagonal 74 in the southern tip. It has some remarkable architectural features, both in its main entrance and in many of the family vaults, including neoclassical, Neo-Gothic, Art Nouveau (in its variant of Catalan Art Nouveau), Art Deco and Egyptian revival styles. The main entrance is an impressive neo-classical portico with Doric columns. The Catholic chapel, in Romanesque revival style, was finished in 1950.


title: La Plata

text: Its annex, the Jewish Cemetery, belongs to the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina in La Plata and is located on Avenue 72.


title: La Plata

text: The main soccer clubs in the city are Estudiantes de La Plata (known as "pinchas") and Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, both of which currently play in the Argentine Primera Division. Estudiantes is the sole team within the city to win a national or international title. La Plata has Liga Amateur Platense de fútbol that encompasses various clubs in the region, such as Club Atlético Estrella de Berisso, La Plata FC, Asociación Nueva Alianza, and Club Everton.


title: La Plata

text: Basketball has a place in the Torneo Nacional de Ascenso (National Ascent Tournament), through Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata. In addition, through the Asociación Platense de Basquetbol, La Plata has leagues and tournaments for all levels and categories, including Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, Estudiantes, Centro Fomento de Los Hornos Club Atenas, Unión Vecinal, Centro de Fomento Meridiano V, and Club Cultural y Deportivo Juventud.


title: La Plata

text: Auto racing also has its importance in the city in the form of the Turismo Carretera. There is also a race track named Autódromo Roberto José Mouras in honor of the historic Chevrolet driver died in Lobos in 1992. Gastón Mazzacane is from the city as well. After 21 races in Formula 1, he also competed in the Champ Car and Top Race V6 series.


title: La Plata

text: Culture has a major role in the city of La Plata. This is reflected in the large amount of cultural centers, theaters, museums, cinemas and libraries that are in the city, as well as the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and the observatory.


title: La Plata

text: There were big personalities in the cultural sphere from the city: Paula Almerares (opera singer, soprano); Dante Anzolini (conductor); Efraín U. Bischoff (historian), José Walter Gavito (sculptor), Osvaldo Golijov (classical composer), Robert Noble (journalist and socialist politician, founder and first editor of the newspaper Clarín), Emilio Pettoruti (painter), Ernesto Tenenbaum (Reporter), María Dhialma Tiberti (writer), Iñaki Urlezaga (classical dancer), Álvaro Yunque (writer), Jorge and Federico D'Elia (actors); Adabel Guerrero (dancer, actress), Alejo García Pintos (film and television actor), Benjamín Rojas (actor and musician), Freddy Villarreal (comedian, actor), Héctor Bidonde (actor), Juan Palomino (actor), Oscar Alberto "Lito" Cruz (actor), Maxi Ghione (actor), Pablo Andrés Martínez (actor), Carlos Mancinelli (musician), among others.


title: La Plata

text: It is worth mentioning other important personalities, not being natives of La Plata, influenced the city's cultural life as Raúl Amaral (writer, poet and journalist. It was part of Ediciones del Bosque), Joaquin V. Gonzalez (historian, educator, writer and politician) and Rafael Hernández (politician and journalist), both founders of the UNLP, Pedro Bonifacio Palacios "Almafuerte" (Poet); Josefina Passadori (writer) Ernesto Sabato (writer and artist), Carlos "Indio" Solari (musician and band member platense Redonditos Patricio Rey and Ricotta), among others.


title: La Plata

text: The city has a great attraction to music, whereas all festival concerts are organized. In addition, this is formed big band music and folklore of Argentina such as Los Redondos, Virus, Guasones, Opus Cuatro, Infonoise, among others.


title: La Plata

text: The city of La Plata has the particularity of being the only place (with Berisso and Ensenada) in the country where the burning of Momos (Dolls similar to those cremated at the Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain) is held every New Year's Eve. Hundreds of dolls are burnt to celebrate the end of the year and the beginning of a new year. Competitions for the best doll is awarded by the La Plata municipality and media.


title: La Plata

text: Every 18 April is International Day For Monuments and Sites. That day, buses with tour guides leave from the Centro Cultural Pasaje Dardo Rocha to the various historical monuments of La Plata, Berisso and Ensenada, being the activity free.


title: La Plata

text: In addition, every year on 19 November, the anniversary of the city is held with recitals and a fireworks show at the Plaza Moreno.


title: La Plata

text: In La Plata, as well as in all of Argentina, the first day of spring is celebrated along with National Student's Day on 21 September. On this date, the municipality organizes concerts both in the Paseo del Bosque and Plaza Moreno.


title: La Plata

text: Carnival is one of the major popular celebrations in the history of mankind. This celebration has its origins in the pagan rituals of Bacchus, the God of wine. The first Carnival goes back more than five thousand years to one of the ancient civilizations and historical regions in southern Mesopotamia, modern-day southern Iraq, then it passed on to Egypt and finally to the Roman Empire. From there it was celebrated throughout Europe and it was brought to America by the Spanish and Portuguese sailors. The term carnival comes from the Latin expression "meat Levarium", which means to remove the flesh, referring to the prohibition of eating meat during forty days after


title: La Plata

text: this celebration takes place. In recent times Carnival is one of the most popular celebrations, with shows, parades in costumes; however, the original sense it had at the beginning has changed nowadays. Among the most widely known carnival celebrations, we have the one in Gualeguaychu, province of Entre Rìos, Argentina. Up to now Carnival is celebrated most of all in the northern provinces in our


title: La Plata

text: The patron saint of the city and the party of La Plata is Saint Ponciano, the 18th pope of the Catholic Church, who died in Sardinia on 19 November 235. On 19 November is the feast of the Catholic parish of St. Pontian, pope and martyr.


title: La Plata

text: The most important tourist sites are located in the heart of the city's founding, between Streets 51 and 53, being the center of the city's Plaza Moreno. The square separates two great works of the city: the Metropolitan Cathedral of La Plata "Immaculate Conception" and the Palacio Municipal.


title: La Plata

text: The city of La Plata has many monuments and historical sites. Among them are: the Banco Provincia de Buenos Aires headquarters, the Curutchet House, Casa de Gobierno Provincial, Casa Mariani – Teruggi, Centro Cultural Islas Malvinas, Centro Cultural Meridiano V, Centro Cultural Pasaje Dardo Rocha, Iglesia San Benjamín, la Legislatura Provincial, Museo de Ciencias Naturales, the Quinta Oreste Santospago, the Rectorado de la UNLP, Museo Ferroviario of Tolosa, the Teatro Municipal Coliseo Podestá, the Anfiteatro Martín Fierro, the Estadio Ciudad de La Plata, entre otros.


title: La Plata

text: Moreover, staying at the city of La Plata the visitors can tour the monuments of the neighboring cities of Berisso and Ensenada (formerly part of La Plata), finding among these to the Street New York, the Swift Refrigerator, Ukrainian Catholic Parish Our Lady of the Assumption, Old Station Cultural Centre, Fort Barragán and Historical Museum, the Ensenada Rotary Bridge, among others.


title: La Plata

text: Quema de Muñecos is a traditional celebration every New Year. Young people create giant figures stuffed with fireworks. People vote for the best giant figure. After midnight all the figures are burnt in different parts of the city. The most voted get a prize.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark or National Church, sometimes called the Church of Denmark (, literally: "The People's Church" or unofficially , literally: "The Danish People's Church"; , literally: "The Congregation"), is the established, state-supported church in Denmark. The supreme secular authority of the church is composed of the reigning monarch and Denmark's Parliament, the Folketing. , 73.2% of the population of Denmark are members, though membership is voluntary.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Chalcedonian Christianity was introduced to Denmark in the 9th century by Ansgar, Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen. In the 10th century, King Harald Bluetooth became a Catholic and began organizing the church, and by the 11th century, Christianity was largely accepted throughout the country. Since the Reformation in Denmark, the church has been Evangelical Lutheran, while retaining much of its high church pre-Reformation liturgical traditions.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The 1849 Constitution of Denmark designated the church "the Danish people's church" and mandates that the state support it as such.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The Church of Denmark continues to maintain the historical episcopate. Theological authority is vested in bishops: ten bishops in mainland Denmark and one in Greenland, each overseeing a diocese. The bishop of Copenhagen is "primus inter pares".


title: Church of Denmark

text: The Church of Denmark is organized into eleven dioceses, each led by a bishop, including one for Greenland (the Faroe Islands was a twelfth diocese until 29 July 2007). The most senior bishop ("primus inter pares") is the bishop of Copenhagen, currently Peter Skov-Jakobsen. The further subdivision includes 111 deaneries and 2,200 parishes. There are about 2,400 ordained pastors (Danish: "præst").


title: Church of Denmark

text: Each parish has a parochial council, elected by church members in four-year terms. The parochial council leads the practical business of the local church and decides employment of personnel, including the pastors, musicians, verger, and sacristan. The pastor (Danish: "præst") is subordinate to the council, except in spiritual matters such as conducting church services and pastoral care. Parishes in the same local area are grouped into deaneries, with one priest serving as Rural Dean. Deaneries, parochial councils, and pastors are all subordinate to the bishop of the diocese.


title: Church of Denmark

text: A special feature is the possibility of creating voluntary congregations ("valgmenighed") within the Church. These account for a few percent of church members. They are voluntary associations, electing their own parochial council and parish pastor, whom they agree to pay from their own pockets. In return, they are exempt from church tax. The voluntary congregation and its pastor are subordinate to the bishop of the diocese, and members remain full members of the Church. Historically, when a parish was dominated by a conservative majority and priest, the liberal minority would often set up a voluntary congregation with their own priest – and vice versa. Today the voluntary congregations are often a solution for people who find the idea of a free church appealing, but wish to keep some bonds to the church.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Another, less commonly used feature is parish optionality ("sognebåndsløsning", literally "parish bond release"). If a Church member is dissatisfied with the particular pastor of his residence parish, he may choose to be served by another pastor who matches better with his Christian views, for example in a neighbouring parish.


title: Church of Denmark

text: According to official statistics from January 2021, 73.8% of Danes are members of the Church of Denmark, 0.5 percentage points less than the previous year. Membership rates vary from 56.0% in the Diocese of Copenhagen to 83.6% in the Diocese of Viborg. In recent decades, the percentage of Danes that are members of the church has been slowly declining, the most important reasons being immigration from non-Lutheran countries, withdrawal of some members, and a somewhat lower rate (59.5%) of Danish infants being christened.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Any person who is baptised (usually infant baptism) into the Church of Denmark automatically becomes a member. Members may renounce their membership and later return if they wish. Excommunication is legally possible but a rare occurrence. Examples include declared Satanists. A church member supporting reincarnation was excommunicated, but the Supreme Court overturned the excommunication in 2005.


title: Church of Denmark

text: According to the latest inquiry about 2.4% of church members attend services every week, although on Christmas Eve more than a third of the population attends. The church is still widely used for traditional family ceremonies including christenings and confirmations. In the year 2017, 32.7% of weddings and 83.3% funerals were performed in the Church of Denmark, and 70% of children in grade 7–8 were confirmed. The level of weekly church attendance is similar to that in Norway and Sweden.


title: Church of Denmark

text: According to a 2009 poll, 25% of Danes believed Jesus is the Son of God, and 18% believed he is the saviour of the world.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The church is aimed at having a wide acceptance of theological views, as long as they agree with the official symbolic books as stipulated in the Danish Code of 1683. These are:


title: Church of Denmark

text: Revised versions of the Old and New Testament were authorised by the Queen in 1992. A revised Hymn Book was authorised in 2003. Both the Bible translations and the Hymn Book implied widespread public and theological debate.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Historically, there is a contrast between a liberal current inspired by N. F. S. Grundtvig and more strict, pietist or Bible fundamentalist movements (such as Indre Mission). These tensions have sometimes threatened to divide the Church. "Tidehverv" is a minor fraction based on a strict Lutheranism and anti-modern, national-conservative views.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The Church of Denmark is member the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe and the Porvoo Communion.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The Communion Service includes three readings from the Bible: a chapter from one of the Gospels, from one of the Epistles or another part of the New Testament and, since 1992, from the Old Testament. Texts are picked from an official list following the church year. Some liturgical features have a fixed content but are free to the form. This accounts for the Common Prayer following the sermon, where the priest is encouraged to mention the royal house. Some will simply mention "the Queen and all her House" whereas others will list all members of the royal house by name and title.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The sermon, as in other Protestant churches, is a central part of the service. The priest takes a starting point in the text of that Sunday, but is free to form a personal message of it. At special occasions, even non-priests may be allowed to preach. Hymns are also very central. In contrast to Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, Danish congregations sit while singing and stand while listening to Bible readings.


title: Church of Denmark

text: As in other Lutheran churches, the Church of Denmark recognizes only two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. These are usually included in the Communion Service. Formerly, individual or shared confession was a condition to receive the Lord's Supper. An official confession ritual still exists, but is now used very rarely. There are also official rituals for confirmation, wedding, blessing of a civil wedding and funerals. Emergency baptism may be performed by any Christian if necessary, and later the child will then be "ratified" in Church.


title: Church of Denmark

text: As supreme authority of the Church of Denmark, the monarch must be a member (article 6 of the Constitution). This applies to the royal princes and princesses as well, but does not apply to their spouses. Traditionally, though, every foreigner who has become a member of the royal family has converted or become a member of the church; as a result, the Prince Consort Henrik converted from Catholicism before marrying the Queen in 1968, and Mary Donaldson also converted from Presbyterianism before marrying Crown Prince Frederik in 2004.


title: Church of Denmark

text: With the Reformation in Denmark in 1536, Lutheran Christianity was established as the state religion. For the next century, in a time when religious wars swept Europe, harsh persecution of other faiths followed (Lutheran orthodoxy). Exceptions were granted only to foreign diplomats. For at least a period in the 16th century, small circles of clandestine Catholicism prevailed. From 1683, Roman Catholic, Reformed and Jewish congregations were allowed in the new town of Fredericia, the latter two also in Copenhagen. Non-Lutherans were also allowed in Friedrichstadt and on Nordstrand in Slesvig and in Glückstadt in Holstein. With the constitution of 1849, freedom of religion was introduced in Denmark, but Lutheranism remained the state church.


title: Church of Denmark

text: A religious community does not need any state approval in order to enjoy the freedom of religion granted by the constitution. However, state-approved congregations ("godkendte trossamfund") enjoy several privileges. They may conduct legal weddings, establish own cemeteries, get residence permits for foreign priests, are exempt from corporate and property tax, may apply for means from the state lottery fund, and members may tax-deduct membership fees and presents to the congregation.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Additionally, those congregations recognised by royal decree before 1970 ("anerkendte trossamfund") may name and baptize children with legal effect, keep their own church registers and transcribe certificates on the basis of such registers.


title: Church of Denmark

text: This legal distinction between "recognised" and "approved" communities remains, but is mainly a historical one. Communities recognised before 1970 includes only eight well-established Christian communities as well as one Jewish community. From 1970 until the 1990s only a few more Christian congregations were approved, but since 1998, a much more liberal practice has ensued. Since then, a board of independent experts decide about approval of new religious communities. The board includes professors of law, religious studies and theology and works under the Ministry of Justice, deliberately separate from the Ministry of Ecclesiastical affairs. It merely investigates whether the organisation fulfills basic definitions, such as having a doctrine, creed and cult, in order to be called a congregation of faith. In 2003, the approval of the Forn Siðr religion caused some public debate.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The Church is in practice barred from having official positions in political or other matters, since it has no central bodies that could define such stances: nor a spiritual leader (such as an archbishop), nor a central assembly or synod. Bishops have the last say on doctrinal questions within their respective dioceses. The Queen (in practice the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs) and Parliament are the central bodies, but they usually keep to administrative matters and abstain from interfering with spiritual questions. Church laws are rarely changed, and, when it happens, only administrative matters are affected.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Firstly, these principles are generally believed to ensure a non-sectarian, tolerant church where parishioners and priests enjoy a high degree of freedom to practise their own interpretation of Lutheran Christianity. Secondly, many Danish politicians and theologians claim that only this church-state-model will ensure the division of politics and religion, since the Church cannot interfere with political matters or even claim to speak with one voice on behalf of its members. They frequently discourage the term state church and argue it is, as its name states, the "people's church".


title: Church of Denmark

text: Article 66 of the Danish Constitution stipulates a church ordinance shall be laid down by law. This promissory clause dates back from the first Constitution of 1849 but was never put into practice. It was feared that splits could occur if a central authority were created.


title: Church of Denmark

text: In very few cases have politicians deviated from their traditional hands-off course in church doctrinal matters. Where they have done so, it has been with the declared aim of preventing a possible split in the church. "See the issues of Female clergy and Same-sex marriage below."


title: Church of Denmark

text: The Church of Denmark conducts civil registration of births, deaths, change of name etc. (vital records). The keeping of such "kirkebøger" ("church books") is a centuries-long tradition, dating from when the parish rectors were the only government representatives in rural areas. In 2002-03 the traditional church records were replaced by a new national electronic registration system called "Personregistrering". After protests in 2005, the Minister for Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs Bertel Haarder announced that people who for various reasons did not want to send their registration forms (e.g. births and namings) to the local church office could now send their forms to a central office located in Nykøbing Falster.


title: Church of Denmark

text: In 2010 parents' duty to report the birth of their child was abolished. Instead, it was decided that in the future it was the task of the midwives to report all births in Denmark (only when a midwife isn't present at the birth of a child are the parents still obliged to report the birth of the child).


title: Church of Denmark

text: Article 4 in the Constitution of Denmark stipulates that "The Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the Established Church of Denmark, as such, it shall be supported by the State." On the other hand, article 68 ensures that citizens are not obliged to pay personal contributions to any religion other than their own. It has been questioned how these two principles can co-exist. Non-members do not pay church tax, but an additional state subsidiary accounts for 12% of the Church's income. This means every citizen, even a non-member, contributes with an average of 130 kroner annually (US$23). In addition, the bishops are high-ranking officials whose salary is fully paid by the state. In return, certain public tasks are carried out by the Church, such as conducting vital records registries and managing graveyards which are open to all denominations.


title: Church of Denmark

text: While the debate about separation of church and state emerges occasionally in Denmark, the current arrangement is supported by most political parties. It has been challenged for decades by the left wing and by atheists; more recently also by some ideological liberals and some members of free churches.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Proponents for a separation (disestablishment) argue the state church violates equality of religions and the principle of the secular state. Proponents for the current system argue that membership is voluntary, that the existence of a state church has ancient historical roots, and that the church fulfils certain administrative tasks for the state. They also argue it would be difficult to decide whether church-owned real estate should be handed over to the state or not. The former possessions of the Catholic Church were ceded to the Crown at the reformation in 1536.


title: Church of Denmark

text: According to a poll conducted by the free daily MetroXpress in April 2007, 52% wished to split church and state, 30% were against, and 18% undecided. Minister for Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs Bertel Haarder, spoke out against a split: ""Church and state will be separated when more than half of the population are no longer members. N. F. S. Grundtvig said so, and I support that."" The opposition Social Democrats also argued against a split, but said there should be more equality between denominations, possibly by a state subsidiary paid to other approved religious communities as well. Immigrant groups and the Muslim society are divided on the issue, as some think official Christianity is preferable to a purely secular state.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Pure equality of religions exists only in a minority of Western European countries. Besides Denmark, only the Faroe Islands, Iceland, England and Greece have official state churches, while Scotland has an officially recognised "national church" that is not connected to the state. Spain, Portugal, Italy and Austria have official ties to Catholicism (concordat), but these ties do not extend to Catholicism being recognised as the state religion in these countries. Further there are varying degrees of public funding of the church in Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Norway, Sweden, in most cantons of Switzerland, and in the Alsace-Moselle region of France.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The ordination of women, having been discussed within the church since the 1920s, has been allowed since 1948, despite some rather strong early resistance from the clergy. The then Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs was contacted by a parochial council who wished to employ a female priest. He decided there was no legal obstacle to that. The first woman to become a bishop was instituted in 1995. Today two thirds of theology students are women, and the clergy is expected to have a female majority in the near future.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Among a small conservative minority, resistance to women ordained as clergy remains. In 2007 the Bishop of Viborg, known as a moderate conservative, revealed that he had given special consideration to priests who were known to be against ordained women. He had organised ordination ceremonies in such a way that new priests who so wished could avoid shaking hands with, or receiving the laying on of hands from, women ordained as priests. According to the bishop, this had happened twice in the 100 ordinations he had performed. The matter became headline news amidst a debate about Muslim fundamentalists who refuse to shake hands with members of the opposite sex. The Minister for Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Bertel Haarder, said he would discuss the matter with the bishops, but also stated that tolerance for various views should be respected. In contrast, the Minister for Employment, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, thought that the priests in question should be dismissed, as public employees are obliged to shake hands with anyone.


title: Church of Denmark

text: A 2011 poll of the Danish public found that 75.8% of Danes approve of same-sex marriages being performed in the church.


title: Church of Denmark

text: According to a 2011 survey of 1137 priests, 62% of them supported same-sex marriage in the Church on the same basis as for heterosexuals, while 28% were against. A map of the results hints at the traditional west–east division, with a conservative wing being dominant in central West Jutland (the former Ringkjøbing Amt) and on Bornholm, but liberal priests dominating in most other cities.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Since Denmark approved same-sex civil unions (registered partnership) in 1989, the question of church blessing ceremonies for such unions emerged. After an enquiry from the Danish National Association of Gays and Lesbians in 1993, bishops set up a commission to reach a stance on the matter.


title: Church of Denmark

text: An early stance on registered partnerships was reached in 1997. Bishops maintained that the ceremony of marriage was God's framework for the relation between a man and a woman, but this view of marriage was not affected by the fact that some people chose to live in a responsible community with a person of the same sex, approved by society, i.e. a registered partnership. The bishops disapproved of institutionalising new rituals, but couples who wished a non-ritualised marking in church of their registered partnership should be obliged. In such cases, it would be up to the rector to decide, and he should seek advice from his bishop.


title: Church of Denmark

text: At this time, many churches chose to bless registered partnerships, however this blessing was distinguished from a legal ceremony, which was performed by a mayor or another municipal official.


title: Church of Denmark

text: On 15 June 2012 the Church of Denmark made the decision to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies and not merely bless them; therefore Denmark now recognises same-sex marriages. In early 2012 Minister for Equality, Ecclesiastical Affairs and Nordic Cooperation, Manu Sareen introduced a bill approving same-sex marriage, which was passed in parliament in June 2012. A wedding ritual with liturgy has been developed and presented to parliament by the eleven bishops who are in favor of same-sex marriages being performed in church. Manu Sareen and a majority of bishops initially proposed the ritual would not declare the same-sex couple 'spouses', but 'life partners' ("livsfæller", a Danish neologism), but the minister later changed his mind on this detail. Two conservative organisations within the church, Inner Mission and Lutheran Mission, as well as one of the twelve bishops, maintain their protests against same-sex marriage. It will be up to each individual priest to decide whether he or she will conduct marriages of same-sex couples. The first same-sex couple was married on Friday 15 June.


title: Church of Denmark

text: The process towards the official recognition of same sex marriage in the Church of Denmark began on 8 February 1973, when 'Provo Priest,' Harald Søbye, performed a wedding of a male couple, although not legally recognised, on a suggestion from a journalist at the newspaper Ekstra Bladet, which announced it as 'The World's First Gay Wedding'. On 25 February 1973, Harald Søbye performed another wedding, this time of a female couple, in a television programme. The state prosecutor investigated the cases, but concluded that the priest's use of his vestment was not illegal. Søbye had been retired in 1964 for political activism, but remained an ordained priest within the church. During the next 15 years, Søbye performed approximately 210 blessings or weddings of same-sex couples.


title: Church of Denmark

text: When Denmark introduced registered partnerships in 1989, the issue of same-sex marriage for some years received little attention. Church blessings of these partnerships slowly gained ground (see above). Later, the possibility of registered partnership, or same-sex marriage, performed by the church came under discussion. The issue was brought up in an unusual way by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2004, who said he would approve of such a change, although he claimed to speak as a private person on this issue, not as prime minister.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Views among proponents vary whether such a ceremony should be called 'marriage' or merely 'registered partnership' "(registreret partnerskab)", as the original same-sex civil union was called. In practice, clergy have been allowed to decide for themselves whether to perform same-sex marriages or not, similar to the right to deny remarriage of divorced persons (a policy employed by a conservative minority of priests).


title: Church of Denmark

text: A further controversy is that this new practice may be against the Danish constitution; §4 of the Danish constitution states: ""The Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the Established Church of Denmark, as such, it shall be supported by the State.""


title: Church of Denmark

text: §4 not only establish "Folkekirken" as the state church, but also gives certain boundaries as to what the state church is. It is forced to follow the Lutheran doctrines and if, as some critics claim, the Lutheran doctrines explicitly state that homosexuality is a sin then it is a violation of the constitution to allow gay marriages in the state church.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Gay and lesbian clergy exist, and this is generally considered a strictly personal issue. Parish councils are central in selecting and employing new priests, including interviews with candidates. Once employed, parish priests are public servants and cannot be discharged except for neglect of duties, which will finally be the bishop's decision.


title: Church of Denmark

text: In 2011 a female priest serving two small island parishes was fired after controversies with the parish council of Agersø, while the neighbouring Omø supported her. She claimed to have been ousted because of her sexuality, but the parish council rejected this accusation and mentioned 'cooperation problems' as the cause. Twenty years earlier she had come out as lesbian and a practitioner of sadomasochism in a Swedish TV programme.


title: Church of Denmark

text: In 2009 a parish priest in Tingbjerg, a Copenhagen suburb, moved away from the parish to a secret address after assaults against his vicarage, his car and the parish church. The vicarage was put up for sale. According to Avisen.dk, local youths claimed they harassed him because he was openly homosexual, among other reasons. The priest himself denied this was the issue, but rather claimed the assaults were part of a general tendency in the 'crumbling district', and intensified after he spoke out in public about the local youth crime. A Sunday service held a few weeks later was attended by several prominent guests supporting the priest, including Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Minister for Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs Bertel Haarder, and photographer Jacob Holdt.


title: Church of Denmark

text: Tingbjerg is a single-plan public housing area, marked by gang violence and youth crime, and the most criminal district of Copenhagen.


title: Church of Denmark

text: In 2000, the Church of Denmark's ecumenical department publicly criticized the Roman Catholic declaration "Dominus Iesus", which controversially used the term "ecclesial community" to refer to Protestant denominations, including Lutheran churches. The Church of Denmark argued that there is a destructive effect on ecumenical relations if one church deprives another of the right to be called a Church and that it is just as destructive as if one Christian denies another Christian the right to be called a Christian.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: The vagina and vulva have been depicted from prehistory onwards. Visual art forms representing the female genitals encompass two-dimensional (e.g. paintings) and three-dimensional (e.g. statuettes). As long ago as 35,000 years ago, people sculpted Venus figurines that exaggerated the abdomen, hips, breasts, thighs, or vulva. There have long been folklore traditions, such as the "vagina loquens" ("talking vagina") and the "vagina dentata" ("toothed vagina").


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In 1866, Gustave Courbet painted a picture of a nude woman with her legs apart, entitled "The Origin of the World". When this was posted on Facebook 150 years later, it created a censorship controversy. Contemporary artists can still face backlash for depicting the female genitals; Megumi Igarashi was arrested for distributing a 3D digital file of her vulva. Works created since the advent of second-wave feminism circa 1965 range from large walk-through installations (Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely) to small hand-held textile art pieces. Sometimes these are explicitly works of feminist art: Judy Chicago created "The Dinner Party" to celebrate 39 women of history and myth, many of whom had fallen into obscurity. Other artists deny that their works reference the female genitalia, although critics view them as such; the flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe are a case in point.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In 2021, medical professionals have found that knowledge of female reproductive organs remains poor, among both men and women; some modern works such as "Femalia", "101 Vagina" and the Great Wall of Vagina seek to combat this ignorance by providing accessible depictions of the normal diversity of a range of vulvas.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Other forms of creative expression beyond visual art have brought the discussion of female sexuality into the mainstream. Playwright Eve Ensler wrote "The Vagina Monologues", a popular stage work about many aspects of women's sexuality.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Various perceptions of the vagina have existed throughout history, including the belief it is the center of sexual desire, a metaphor for life via birth, inferior to the penis, visually unappealing, inherently unpleasant to smell, or otherwise vulgar. The vagina has been known by many names, including the ancient word (now considered a vulgarism) "cunt", euphemisms ("lady garden"), slang ("pussy"), and derogatory epithets. Some cultures view the vulva as something shameful that should be hidden. For example, the term "pudendum", the Latin term used in medical English for the external genitalia, literally means "shameful thing".


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Positive views of the vagina use it to represent female sexuality, spirituality, or life, e.g. as a "powerful symbol of womanliness, openness, acceptance, and receptivity ... the inner valley spirit". Hinduism has given the world the symbol of the "yoni", and this may indicate the value that Hindu society has given female sexuality and the vagina's ability to birth life. Other ancient cultures celebrated and even worshipped the vulva, for example in some ancient Middle Eastern religions and the paleolithic artworks dubbed "Old Europe" by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. As an aspect of Goddess worship such reverence may be part of modern Neopagan beliefs.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Two-dimensional and three-dimensional representations of the vulva, i.e. paintings and figurines, exist from tens of millennia ago. They are some of the earliest works of prehistoric art.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: The cave of Chufín located in the town of Riclones in Cantabria (Spain) has prehistoric rock art which may be a depiction of the vulva. The cave was occupied at different periods, the oldest being around 20,000 years ago. Aside from schematic engravings and paintings of animals, there are also many symbols, such as those known as "sticks". There is also a large number of drawings using points ("puntillaje"), including one which has been interpreted as a representation of a vulva.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: A Venus figurine is an Upper Paleolithic statuette portraying a woman. Most have been unearthed in Europe, but others have been found as far away as Siberia, extending their distribution across much of Eurasia. Most of them date from the Gravettian period (28,000–22,000 years ago), but examples exist as early as the Venus of Hohle Fels, which dates back at least 35,000 years to the Aurignacian, and as late as the Venus of Monruz, from about 11,000 years ago in the Magdalenian.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: These figurines were carved from soft stone (such as steatite, calcite or limestone), bone or ivory, or formed of clay and fired. The latter are among the oldest ceramics known. In total, over a hundred such figurines are known; virtually all of modest size, between 4 cm and 25 cm in height. Most of them have small heads, wide hips, and legs that taper to a point. Various figurines exaggerate the abdomen, hips, breasts, thighs, or vulva. In contrast, arms and feet are often absent, and the head is usually small and faceless.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: The ancient Sumerians regarded the vulva as sacred and a vast number of Sumerian poems praising the vulva of the goddess Inanna have survived. In Sumerian religion, the goddess Nin-imma is the divine personification of female genitalia. Her name literally means "lady female genitals". She appears in one version of the myth of "Enki and Ninsikila" in which she is the daughter of Enki and Ninkurra. Enki rapes her and causes her to give birth to Uttu, the goddess of weaving and vegetation. Vaginal fluid is always described in Sumerian texts as tasting "sweet" and, in a Sumerian Bridal Hymn, a young maiden rejoices that her vulva has grown hair. Clay models of vulvae were discovered in the temple of Inanna at Ashur; these models likely served as some form of amulets, possibly to protect against impotency.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Sheela na gigs are 11th and 12th-century figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva. They are architectural grotesques found on churches, castles, and other buildings, particularly in Ireland and Great Britain, sometimes together with male figures. One of the best examples may be found in the Round Tower at Rattoo, in County Kerry, Ireland. There is a replica of the round tower sheela na gig in the county museum in Tralee town. Another well-known example may be seen at Kilpeck in Herefordshire, England.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Such carvings are said to ward off death and evil. Other grotesques, such as gargoyles and hunky punks, were frequently part of church decorations all over Europe. It is commonly said that their purpose was to keep evil spirits away through the use of apotropaic magic. They often are positioned over doors or windows, presumably to protect these openings.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Weir and Jerman argue that their location on churches and the grotesque features of the figures, by medieval standards, suggests that they represented female lust as hideous and sinfully corrupting. Another theory, espoused by Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts, is that the carvings are remnants of a pre-Christian fertility or mother goddess religion. A 2016 book by Starr Goode called the "Sheela na gig: The Dark Goddess of Sacred Power", traces these images throughout history and contributes a discussion of the universality of "female sacred display" in it meanings and functions back to the origins of culture as seen in the Paleolithic cave art through the inclusion of the image in contemporary art, particularly feminist art.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: The vagina loquens, or "talking vagina", is a significant tradition in literature and art, dating back to ancient folklore motifs. These tales usually involve vaginas talking due to the effect of magic or charms, and often admitting to their unchastity.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Another folk tale concerns the vagina dentata ("toothed vagina"). The implication of these tales is that sexual intercourse might result in injury, emasculation, or castration for the man involved. These stories were frequently told as cautionary tales warning of the dangers of unknown women and to discourage rape.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In 1966, the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle collaborated with Dadaist artist Jean Tinguely and on a large sculpture installation entitled "Hon - en katedral" (also spelled "HON—en Katedrall"), which means "She - A Cathedral", for Moderna Museet, in Stockholm, Sweden. The outer form is a giant reclining sculpture of a woman with her legs spread. Museum patrons can go inside her body by entering a door-sized vaginal opening. Saint Phalle stated that the sculpture represented a fertility goddess who was able to receive visitors into her body and then "give birth" to them again. Inside her body is a screen showing Greta Garbo films, a goldfish pond and a soft drink vending machine. The piece elicited an immense public reaction in magazines and newspapers throughout the world.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In 1968, Monica Sjöö painted her most famous work, "God Giving Birth", depicting a naked woman standing to deliver her baby, with its head protruding from her vulva. It is an expression of Sjöö's spiritual journey at that time and represents her perception of the Great Mother as the universal creator of cosmic life. The painting and its concept created much controversy and "God Giving Birth" was censored on several occasions; at a group show in London the painting led to Sjöö being reported to the police for blasphemy.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In 1975, American lesbian artist Tee Corinne published her "Cunt Coloring Book" which featured multiple line drawings of women's vaginas. She created the book to give sex education groups a useful tool for understanding vaginas. In 1981, after three printings she had to change the name to "Labiaflowers", but this affected sales so she promptly changed it back to the original name.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: From 1974 to 1979, Judy Chicago, a feminist artist, created the vulva-themed installation artwork "The Dinner Party". It consists of 39 elaborate place settings arranged along a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical famous women. Virginia Woolf, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Theodora of Byzantium are among those honoured. Each plate, except the one corresponding to Sojourner Truth (a Black woman), depicts a brightly-colored, elaborately styled butterfly-vulva form. After it was produced, despite resistance from the art world, it toured to 16 venues in six countries to a viewing audience of 15 million. Since 2007, it has been on permanent exhibition in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. Chicago gave Georgia O'Keeffe a prominent place in "The Dinner Party", because some modern feminists believe that O'Keeffe's detailed flower paintings such as "Black Iris III" (1926) evoke a veiled representation of female genitalia. O'Keeffe consistently denied the validity these Freudian interpretations of her art.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: "Femalia" is a book of 32 full-color photographs of vulvas, edited by Joani Blank. It was first published by Down There Press in 1993 and republished by Last Gasp in 2011. The photographs, by several photographers, are presented without commentary, except for Blank's brief introduction to the volume as a whole. The author wanted to present accurate images of the subject, in contrast to pornographic or medical ones.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: American Annie Sprinkle turned her genitals into performance art with her "Public Cervix Announcement", first unveiled in the early 1980s and then reprised for her 1990s touring show, "Post-Porn Modernist". In it, she lay back in a reclining chair on a low stage, inserted a speculum into her vagina, and invited members of the audience to look at her cervix. The phrase was taken up in 2018 by cancer charities in Britain and Australia asking women to take a Pap test (smear test) to rule out cervical cancer.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Modern artistic representation of the vagina coincides with 18th century anatomical dissection and identification of the genitalia (i.e., William Hunter). Contemporary art, from a feminist perspective, has revisited and deconstructed the androcentric view of woman genitalia and the stereotypical identification with female subjectivity (e.g., Ana Mendieta, Enrique Chagoya, Vik Muniz, Candice Lin).


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: The London performance art group the Neo Naturists had a song and an act called "Cunt Power", a name which potter Grayson Perry borrowed for one of his early works: "An unglazed piece of modest dimensions, made from terracotta like clay – labia carefully formed with once wet material, about its midriff".


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: "The Vagina Monologues", a 1996 episodic play by Eve Ensler, has contributed to making female sexuality a topic of public discourse. It is made up of a varying number of monologues read by a number of women. Initially, Ensler performed every monologue herself, with subsequent performances featuring three actresses; latter versions feature a different actress for every role. Each of the monologues deals with an aspect of the feminine experience, touching on matters such as sexual activity, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the various common names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the pieces is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Starting in 2006, when "no one was talking about [vulvas and art]", Jamie McCartney spent five years creating the work for which he is best known, the Great Wall of Vagina, featuring casts of the vulvas of hundreds of women. The Brighton-based artist began the project in response to the rise in labiaplasty, wanting to provide realistic, non-pornographic portrayals of the widespread variation of anatomy. "Don't change your parts, change your partner," became one of his slogans, along with the over-arching message “You’re normal. Whatever you’ve got down there, leave it alone.”. By 2015, he said the cultural climate had shifted. “A lot of vagina and vulva artworks are going on. It’s almost like a movement." His own project continued to evolve, displaying the Wall at Triennale di Milano museum, and casting more women at the Red Tent Revival festival in the United States.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: On the other side of the world, another male artist conceived of a similar project at about the same time. Once he had the idea, Greg Taylor tried to persuade female artists to take it on, but they declined, so he pressed ahead, creating scores of white porcelain vulvas, "each individual portraits of different women, each as gripping as a face". "CUNTS and other conversations" (2009) was deemed controversial for both its title and content, with Australia Post warning the artist that the publicity postcards were illegal. The work was purchased by the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, after Taylor did one final cast, of the vulva of Kirsha Kaechele.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Aidan Salahova, an Azeri and Russian artist and gallerist, was invited to submit pieces for the Azerbaijan Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (held in 2011). One of her artworks was entitled "Black Stone", a reference to the object at the centre of Mecca, venerated by Muslims worldwide. The real Black Stone is surrounded by a silver frame; Salahova's sculpture had "a vagina-like marble frame", according to an article in ArtInfo. Two of her artworks previously approved by the ministry of culture were ordered to be covered and eventually removed from the exhibition a day before the opening, "because of government sensitives towards the nation's status as a secular Muslim country". Officials claimed that the works had been damaged during transportation. Commenting on the conflict, the pavilion curator Beral Madra stated that the concept of the removed sculptures had been misinterpreted by the government, and added that in over 25 years of curating she had not "ever experienced this kind of conflict".


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In 2012, an image of an 1866 Gustave Courbet painting of the female genitals, entitled "The Origin of the World", being posted on Facebook led to a legal dispute. After a French teacher posted an image of the painting, Facebook considered the image to be pornographic and suspended his account for violating its terms of use. "The Huffington Post" called the painting "a frank image of a vagina." Mark Stern of "Slate", who called the painting a stunning, brilliant "cornerstone of the French Realistic movement", states that the teacher then sued the website for allegedly violating his freedom of speech. In 2012, New York artist Sophia Wallace started to work on the multimedia project "Cliteracy" to challenge misconceptions about the clitoris.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In October 2013, artist Peter Reynosa painted the pop singer Madonna "in the shape of a defiant yonic symbol", titling the red and white acrylic work "I Am the Cunt of Western Civilization", a 1990 quote from the singer.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: A site-specific walk-through vagina was installed at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg in 2013, in the decommissioned women's prison that had held anti-apartheid activists such as Winnie Mandela. The artist, Reshma Chhiba, observed that "Not many people - men or women - are unfazed about walking through this vaginal canal." The soundtrack of laughter and screaming acted as "a battle cry which revolts against the prison". According to "TimesLIVE", it was part of a larger multisite project entitled "The Two Talking Yonis" (yoni being the Sanskrit word for vulva) The artist contextualized her work within the epidemic of sexual violence in South Africa, calling for respect for the female body.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: "101 Vagina" is a 2013 black-and-white photo-book by Philip Werner, with a foreword by Toni Childs. The book contains 101 close-up nude photos shot in a non-provocative way, along with an accompanying story or message written by each woman about her vagina. The book's photos and stories were exhibited five times in Australia in 2013, with a US and Canadian tour in 2014 taking in six locations. Werner was initially inspired by "The Vagina Monologues" and subjects were found via social media after Werner publicised his objective to create a book that had both an educational and celebratory goal. Stories accompanying the photos discuss various themes, including ageing, pregnancy, Brazilian waxing, first sexual encounter and poor body image. In Sydney the exhibition was visited by police responding to a complaint that the images were visible from the street. Images were required to be censored as part of a group exhibition at The Sydney Fringe.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Lena Marquise is a Russian-born, American visual and performance artist. Her work often covers the subjects of sex work and censorship, eliciting critical response for its controversial eroticism. In 2014, at Art Basel Miami, Marquise performed in an installation artwork, "Body As Commodity", in which she charged cellphones with her vagina. Musical artist Usher visited JJ Brine's VECTOR Gallery, and stories on whether he did or did not charge his phone ensured widespread media coverage of Marquise's work.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In Japan, artist Megumi Igarashi has drawn attention for her work featuring vaginas and vulvas, which she considers "overly hidden" in Japanese culture compared to male genitalia. In July 2014, Igarashi was arrested for distributing 3D data of her vulva to contributors to her crowdsource campaign. She has also made vagina-themed sculptures. While police charged Igarashi for her vulva- and vagina-themed artworks, there are several phallus festivals in Japan in which participants parade with massive penis sculptures, a practice which is deemed acceptable by authorities.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In 2015 Anish Kapoor, a Turner Prize-winning artist, created controversy with his sculpture entitled "Dirty Corner", a "massive steel funnel set in broken stone, placed in the garden of the...Palace of Versailles", which he claims is a depiction of the vagina of the former Queen of France.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: The streetart project "Clitorosity," started by Laura Kingsley with her chalk drawings of the clitoris in public places, is a "community-driven effort to celebrate the full structure of the clitoris", that has since spread to almost 100 cities.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: In 2018, British artist Laura Dodsworth created a book and corresponding documentary which featured 100 photographs of vaginas. The book, named 'Womanhood' showed each woman vagina alongside her personal story. It featured the stories of trans women, women who had suffered female genital mutilation, women who had given birth and women who had been sexually assaulted. she decided to do the project after her success with men in 'Manhood' and wanted to give the same voice the men had but for women.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: "Pynk", a 2018 song by Janelle Monáe, featured a music video in which the dancers wore distinctive pink vulva trousers.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: "Diva", a huge piece of installation art, was unveiled in 2020 at a rural art park in Brazil. Its creator, , described how 20 men laboured to dig the vulva, 33m long, 16m wide, and 6m deep into the hillside. It provoked a culture war-type split between those who supported the work and the supporters of right-wing president Bolsonaro


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: For the 2021 redesign of her Los Angeles house, model and actress Cara Delevingne commissioned "a 'pussy palace', a tactile pink suedette-lined secret room" and a "vagina tunnel" . According to "Architectural Digest", the latter, created by Stephen Reynolds, is "a secret passageway concealed behind a low, painted panel, which leads from the living room to an adjacent bunk room. One enters the so-called rebirth canal through a vulval soft sculpture (think Judy Chicago on acid) and then proceeds to crawl out of a round washing-machine door suggestive of a rectum."


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Following advances in understanding the anatomy of the clitoris, 21st century artists and activists have taken on the task of representing the clitoris in contemporary art. Unlike the vulva, the clitoris is internal and therefore invisible. In 2016, Lori-Malépart Traversy made an animated documentary about the unrecognized anatomy of the clitoris. In 2017, Alli Sebastian Wolf created a golden 100:1 scale model anatomical of a clitoris, called the "Glitoris" and said, she hopes knowledge of the clitoris will soon become so uncontroversial that making art about them would be as irrelevant as making art about penises.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Also internal and invisible are the ovaries, which became a motif for former East Berliner Jess de Wahls, "enfant terrible of British textile arts". The Crafts Council credits her with coining the term "retex sculpture" (upcycling textiles), and her self-taught art follows in the feminist tradition of working with fibre. Her 2014 solo exhibition "Big Swinging Ovaries" included hand-stitched portraits of women such as Sue Black, Baroness Black of Strome, as well as many representations of the eponymous organs: "her trademark symbol, ovaries, which take on various incarnations depending on how the mood takes her -- transformed as a cactus, as a rainbow in the sky, or a defiantly raised middle finger." Prior to her 2018 Australian exhibition, "Frankie" magazine pointed out that most people—even women—probably don't know what ovaries look like Wahls said, "the Big Swinging Ovaries name and design has very much become a brand and a visual tool for expressing many of my creative, political and social thoughts as a woman, a feminist and a textile artist.”


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Other artists using these to make a point include the Ovaries Project, "painting abstract ovaries that resembled watercolor flowers" onto Tshirts featured in "Vogue" and selling them to benefit women's health initiatives. The Tate holds a work by Luciano Fabro entitled "Ovaries" (1988), depicting carved marble eggs held in a pair of steel cables.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Likewise, the uterus holds its place in art. Wangechi Mutu uses Victorian medical images as a base on which to layer meanings. Mutu's 12-panel series "Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors"(2004) is made up of collaged digital prints. The series is held by the Saatchi Gallery.


title: Vagina and vulva in art

text: Zoë Buckman, "known for her multidisciplinary explorations of feminism and mortality", created "Champ" in response to the MeToo movement. It was displayed first at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Its 2018 re-creation as a "rotating 43-foot-high neon outline of a uterus with fiberglass boxing gloves in place of ovaries" and installed on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood.