The Lighting of the Historic Bridge Across the Mississippi River to Commemorate the 215th Year Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, 59, has been president of the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design since 1988. An architect, artist, writer and social activist, he divides his time between homes in Galena, Athens and an island off the coast of Greece.

There are few more tantalizing names in contemporary culture than Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, both as a European and American artist, architect, writer, and poet. His cultural and intellectual roots are firmly planted in Europe as a citizen of both Finland and Lithuania.

Αcording to the United nations and other sources, since the beginning of the uprising in Syria, over 10.000 people have been killed by Bashar-al-Assad and many more injured. Thousands of protesters have been killed by security forces. Over 1 million refuges are suffering this winter without food, clothing, or selter are in Libanon, Jordan, and Turkey.

"I wish I could be declared a heretic so they would publicly burn me at the stake."

The latest poetic and conceptual work by the Finnish-Lithuanian artist and poet, Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, is a romantic installation that recalls a fictional event that took place in the year, 1514, when the poet was sent by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I (1459-1519), on an epic journey to chart and record the newly discovered territories of Central and South America.