Professional Auction Services from Ripley Auctions

When it comes to buying art, there are no better places than art auctions conducted by auction houses, big and small. These multi-faceted platforms provide art collectors with a wide selection of artworks – sometimes even the rarest ones – and greatly facilitate the process of acquiring art in general. Whether you are an emerging art collector or an ordinary individual, you must know where to find and buy art most conveniently. If that is something you aim at, you should consider Ripley Auctions, one of the most instrumental platforms offering professional auction services to their dedicated clients.

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Major Types of Religious Art

The ancient concept of religion has always been and remains one of the fundamental parts of people’s existence. This immemorial phenomenon has long altered the way we live our lives. The historical impact of religion is vast, but what really makes minds agitated is how rich and deep religious art is in reality.

From Christian to Buddhist, Jewish to Islamic, art has been central to the development of cultures and nations across the globe. Thousand of years ago, it divided into several distinct parts to erect new cultural concepts in societies. So, what are the major types of religious art developed historically?

Major types of religious art 

Major Types of Religious Art

Painting & iconography

Symbolism is the key element of paintings and icons depicting religious figures and stories, often with a complex moral narrative. Antique religious icons hold a special place here due to their vivid portrayal and illustration of scenes and events that played a significant role in our history.

Major Types of Religious Art

Sculpture & architecture

This form of art dates back to ancient Egypt, where it was common to curve walls and mount statues of deities. One more example is Roman mosaics as a representation of religious ideas in a beautifully terse form. Also, let’s not forget about stained glass that you might encounter in many churches and cathedrals around the world.

Major Types of Religious Art

Sacred music

You must have heard about psalm chanting. Sacred music is a specific attribute of Christian art, used by believers as a form of worship. The idea of sacred music originated long ago but developed in Renaissance Europe, bringing new branches to music traditions of the time.

Major Types of Religious Art

Ritual dance

Last but not least on this list is the art of dance, which also has its part in religion. The most known example is African culture. People wearing symbolic masks and costumes of animals and spirits are dancing during the ritual or certain ceremony in celebration of their gods.

Mizuma, Kips & Wada Art Gallery in New York

The constellation of NYC galleries and museums constitutes a vast and thriving contemporary art scene of the city. Many distinguished and intelligently built collections are being exhibited by the most dedicated curators and exhibitors all the time. If you want to pay a visit to the art capital of the US and find some worthy places to go, then Mizuma, Kips & Wada Art Gallery in New York should definitely be on your list.

Mizuma, Kips & Wada Art Gallery in New York

A contemporary art gallery by definition, this place comprises the very best fine art from Asia, Europe, and America, offering the visitors to relive an unrivaled experience. A special focus is paid to Asian art, as the gallery has been in a close bond with Asia’s art market since 1996.

The gallery consists of three distinct art establishments: Mizuma, Kips, and Wada Garou galleries. With locations in Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, and Indonesia, this multi-dimensional venue comes across as a whole complex aimed at sharing contemporary art worldwide. Within the walls of this remarkable place, you can find a variety of works, ranging from oil painting to photography. This beautiful art gallery in New York fosters high exhibition standards, and “Archetype,” one of its latest shows, would be a good introduction to them.

Mizuma, Kips & Wada Art Gallery in New York

“Archetype” is an art exhibition of Kariya Hiroshi. Held on March 4 – April 5, it was represented by an amazing art installation created of cut-out faces from newspaper articles. The faces were stuck to a wall and laid out on the floor in such a way that they looked at each other, thus creating a rather interesting visual effect. The artist emphatically calls his brainchild “face-off sutra,” which gives us some keys to understanding the meaning of the exhibition. However, like any other artistic creation, it was and still is open to interpretation.

How Will Coronavirus Affect Loan Administration in the USA?

COVID-19 has undermined every industry and every business sector imaginable, with banks and lending institutions suffering from a dual adverse effect. Simon Mosheshvili, Senior Vice President of Latin American Operations at Digital Edge, shares his insights on how the loan administration niche could respond to the COVID-19 challenges productively.

How Are Lending Servicers Affected?

One of the unpredictable yet far-reaching effects of COVID-19 was the quarantine and travel restriction leaving millions of people without work or with a reduced workload, and correspondingly lower salaries. Such a decline in people’s earnings has inevitably reduced their ability to pay their loans, which posed a liquidity issue for the lending organizations. Thus, the lenders conducting loan administration are facing numerous challenges, such as non-returned loans from those who lost their jobs or are on a mandatory leave because of their company’s pause in operations. Besides, they must manage their own employees, providing them with opportunities to work remotely and paying them salaries. Finally, they need to find money for issuing new loans to those who found themselves amid the global pandemic without any financial reserves.

How Should Organizations Respond?   

At the first glance, the situation seems critical for both lenders and borrowers. But for the loan administration companies to preserve their positive relationship with customers and to support them in the hard times, it is vital to respond to these challenges proactively. The most constructive responses include:

  • Making more services available online;
  • Consulting the borrowers on loan forbearance and skipping of payments;
  • Provision of precise loan appraisals and refinancing advice online;
  • Provision of all loan approval information to reduce the financial uncertainty among clients and to inform them what they can count on.

How Will Loan Administration Change?  

As organizations are gradually learning to exist in the new conditions of the global pandemic, one thing is clear – business operations will never be the same, loan administration included. Financial institutions are likely to feel the heaviest burden of the crisis following the quarantine as lots of people lose jobs and can’t afford paying their loans back. Thus, it’s imperative to develop new strategies for clients to manage their loans, to offer more flexible options, and to support the clients in the hard times, helping them recover financially and close the loan without getting into a debt pit.

All You Should Know about Microsoft Dynamics Solutions

Managing your company’s relationship with clients, as well as planning the resources of your business, has never been as easy as it has become with Microsoft Dynamics 365. This cloud-based ERP and CRM platform emerged as a complex solution for businesses of all types and sizes to boost productivity, advance automation, and introduce AI tools for better business management. The offer was released by Microsoft in 2016 and for the past four years, it has gained much popularity among entrepreneurs for its affordability, flexibility, and variety of included features. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 set contains business applications of all kinds, allowing each client to choose the necessary functionality and customize the services for their unique business needs.

Pros and Cons of Microsoft Dynamics

One of the most evident advantages of the Microsoft package for businesses is its low cost of entry, allowing any business, even that with a small budget, to try it out. Simon Mosheshvili, an experienced entrepreneur and expert in information technology, also praised Microsoft Dynamics for the extensive analytics of customer data allowing a better insight into customer behaviors and preferences, thus paving the path for any business service improvements. In addition to these analytical tools, Mr. Mosheshvili admitted that the CRM solution from Microsoft has advanced omnichannel customer engagement tools that improve the brand’s relationship with the loyal customer community and increase clients’ loyalty.

Apart from these evident pluses, however, some issues still require being mentioned to give an objective snapshot of how Microsoft Dynamics can help your business. It’s notable that Microsoft doesn’t market the platform directly, but does it with the help of third-party affiliates, which may raise some support and pricing issues. Besides, there have been several complaints across the Web about lengthy management of queries and complaints by the platform’s support. Hopefully, these issues have been fixed as the platform evolved on the market.

Where Can You Use It?

Microsoft is a company with tons of digital solutions for businesses, so if you work with its products or require the integration of CRM/ERP platforms with D365 or O365, Microsoft Dynamics is the platform to choose. It also integrates seamlessly with PowerAutomate and PowerBI, raising your business capabilities to the next level.