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Last year when Stan Lee died – the founder of the Marvel empire, creator of superheros like Spider Man and, together with Walt Disney, the most influential figure in the global comic market - his obituary was published in many of the world’s leading magazines. They praised him and the importance of his work in shaping cultural developments over the past decades. Did this represent a radical change of mind or was it just acknowledgment of his overwhelming commercial success?

“Marilyn Monroe – The Woman behind the Icon” is the name of an exhibition now on show at the Historisches Museum der Pfalz in Speyer. It brings to light another Marilyn Monroe, one that many people even today still don't know – a sensitive thoughtful person, an emancipated woman, a woman on a quest for self-fulfilment.  

This was a side of her that I first discovered many years ago in a well-researched and extremely moving biopic – and recently again when I came across some poetry she’d written.

On both these occasions I met a person whose real “me” was simply light years away from the image of the dumb blond, so consistently and relentlessly exploited and propagated for commercial imperatives.  

With the insights that it offers, this exhibition invites you to think not just about Marilyn Monroe but about iconic artists in general and their lives off stage. About the person behind the clichés.

Imagine somebody you don't know sends you an email asking you to talk about a painting you’ve never seen by an artist you’ve never heard about – with the proviso that all this will be filmed and the video of the encounter published later on in the internet. How would you react? 

The end of the year is fast approaching. For many people this is a time to reflect on what they hope the coming year will bring and plan for what they intend to do. And for some people it’s a time to stand back a little and ask themselves what really is important in their life.

Art and music therapy for the treatment of a range of disorders are now well established in Europe. Yet since 1st November the Canadian city of Montreal has gone one step further: in association with the city’s Museum of Fine Arts, doctors can now write their patients a prescription for a visit to the museum. The next visit to a museum – prescribed by your own doctor. How wonderful! 

As I was channel zapping recently I came across the blind auditions of The Voice of Germany and watched them, spellbound by the performance of one of the contestants. The singer was called Ludmilla Larusso, and hadn’t chosen a pop song but an opera aria, Nessun Dorma by Giaccomo Puccini and what she made of it was truly impressive. That by itself should have been extraordinary enough. But when she told us that she only discovered her vocal talent and began singing when she was well over the age of 40, I was really bowled over. And I was also extremely pleased because for me this was a marvellous illustration of one of my principles of life – that it’s never too late to embark on something new.

This moment will long be remembered, of that I’m quite certain. A telephone bidder had just bought Banksy’s Girl with Balloon picture for 1.4 million pounds when a concealed self-destruct mechanism built into the picture’s frame by Banksy himself sprang into action. And before the eyes of the incredulous spectators at the London auction house Sotheby’s the lower part of the picture emerged shredded from its frame. 

Recently I was invited to take part in a panel discussion at the European Forum Alpbach in the Tyrol. This place has the reputation of being “the most beautiful village in Austria”. I used one of the breaks to take a stroll around the village and take a closer look at it, and to my astonishment I saw that each house looks exactly like all the others – a stone ground floor painted white and the upper floors built of dark wood with balconies and each street-side balcony decorated with a profusion of red geraniums in full bloom. Never before had I seen such uniformity in any town or village. It was fascinating but also strange at the same time. And I began to wonder whether such rigorous conformity really could be beautiful. 

Seven years ago Taliban militia in Afghanistan destroyed the two largest statues of the standing Buddha in the world. The Bamiyan Buddhas were sacred objects that formed part of UNESCO’s world cultural heritage. Some three years ago the so-called IS destroyed over one hundred cultural sites in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. Other ancient buildings have fallen into ruin over the centuries without any malicious intent by third parties. Hardly a single masterwork from the ancient world can be now admired in its former glory – up to present, that is. When our New World has put undreamt of opportunities at our disposal … 

A few weeks ago I watched the Markus Lanz talk show on German TV for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised. Not just because Lanz seems to me an excellent host with a keen and probing mind but because the round of people he’d invited included the neuroscientist Henning Beck who has the knack of presenting his intriguing findings on how our human brain functions in an entertaining manner.

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. I love this quote by John Lennon. Well, how many of us love making plans? From complex plans for our future lives to detailed plans for our travels or even simple plans for our daily agenda, people have a natural tendency to try and shut out the uncertainty the future holds by making a plan. When we have a plan we feel safe and assured. The only problem is that a) things happen differently and b) to what we expected …

Imagine a lion in its natural state and natural habitat: if you wanted to approach it you’d probably have to be in some protective cage to avoid death or injury. Now imagine a lion in a zoo and you know that you can get very close to him without the slightest fear because it’s now he who is enclosed in the cage. The price for such an easy encounter with a lion is paid by the lion himself. The price he pays for the zoo visitors’ pleasure is life-long imprisonment.