Arts & Culture
Vile or Visionary?: Art Controversies of the Last Four Centuries
Many artists have pushed the boundaries of tradition with radical painting techniques, shocking content, or, in some cases, the use of offensive materials.
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9 Things You Didn’t Know Were Named After People
Some common words derive their names from people, though that source is often lost to history.
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Editor's Picks
Art Abuse: 11 Vandalized Works of Art
These are not improvements.
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange, American documentary photographer whose portraits of displaced farmers during the Great Depression greatly influenced later documentary and journalistic photography. Lange studied photography at Columbia University in New York City under Clarence H. White, a member of the
Why Is the Mona Lisa So Famous?
The reason for the Mona Lisa’s popularity is one of the painting’s many conundrums. Find out what all the fuss is about.
10 Musical Acts That Scored 10 #1 Hits
One of pop music’s most exclusive clubs contains some of its biggest stars.
11 Famous Movie Monsters
Ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night.
Art Restoration: Beyond Canvas
How do restorers of wall paintings save art exposed to the elements and other forces?
Odetta
Odetta American folk singer who was noted especially for her versions of spirituals and who became for many the voice of the civil rights movement of the early 1960s. After her father’s death in 1937, Odetta moved with her mother to Los Angeles. She began classical voice training at age 13, and she
Woman-Made: 10 Sculptors You Might Not Know
A woman made that!
Spotlight: Impressionism
Impressionist painting comprises the work produced between about 1867 and 1886 by a group of artists, headlined by Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir, who shared a set of related approaches and techniques. The most conspicuous characteristic was an attempt to accurately and objectively record visual reality in terms of transient effects of light and color.
Quizzes
Name That Hat! Quiz
Time to put on your thinking cap.
Famous Novels, Last Lines Quiz
Needless to say, spoiler alert.
Guess the Game Quiz
Roll the dice and go all in.
Iconic Pop Culture Villains Quiz
Do you know what famous villain’s costume was inspired by samurai? What bad guy’s middle name is Marvolo? Test your knowledge about pop culture’s dark side with this quiz about iconic villains!
Videos
Jeanne Gang on the future of architecture
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Featured Categories
Art
5 Revealing Paintings by Caravaggio
Learn before you look.
The Group of Seven Remembered
In the 1910s and ’20s, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven created Canada’s first important national art movement with their landscape paintings.
5 Incredible Native American Artists
Native American artists to know.
10 Modernist Art Movements
Is this high art, or could your kid do that?
Dance
Katherine Dunham
Katherine Dunham, American dancer and choreographer who was a pioneer in the field of dance anthropology. Her fieldwork inspired her innovative interpretations of dance in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. Dunham early became interested in dance. While a student at the University of
Savion Glover
Savion Glover American dancer and choreographer who became known for his unique pounding style of tap dancing, called “hitting.” He brought renewed interest in dance, particularly among youths and minorities. As a young child, Glover displayed an affinity for rhythms, and at age four he began
Agnes de Mille
Agnes de Mille, American dancer and choreographer who further developed the narrative aspect of dance and made innovative use of American themes, folk dances, and physical idioms in her choreography of musical plays and ballets. Her father was the playwright William Churchill DeMille, her mother
Mallika Sarabhai
Mallika Sarabhai Indian classical dancer and choreographer, actress, writer, and social activist known for her promotion of the arts as a vehicle for social change. The daughter of renowned physicist Vikram Sarabhai and dancer and choreographer Mrinalini Sarabhai, she was brought up in a culturally
Film
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini Italian film director who was one of the most celebrated and singular filmmakers of the period after World War II. Influenced early in his career by the Neorealist movement, he developed his own distinctive methods that superimposed dreamlike or hallucinatory imagery upon ordinary
Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay American director, producer, and writer whose best-known works explore the African American experience. DuVernay graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1995 with bachelor’s degrees in English and African American studies. After working for a few years in film
David Lynch
David Lynch American filmmaker and screenwriter who was known for his uniquely disturbing and mind-bending visual work. His films juxtapose the cheerfully mundane with the shockingly macabre and often defy explanation. Lynch’s father was a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and the
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola American film director, producer, screenwriter, and fashion designer known best for her films The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Lost in Translation (2003). In 2004 she was the first American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best director. Coppola is the