Gavin Weightman— Working backwards from the ‘eureka moment’ offers an intriguing perspective: we find the bicycle an inspiration for the aeroplane, a talking automaton suggesting the telephone, early television dependent on discoveries made with a blowpipe and the microchip manufactured with a printing technique that dates from the nineteenth century.
Morten Høi Jensen— One day in mid-August 1936, the Danish modernist writer Tom Kristensen, author of the great novel Havoc (1928), stood in line in Politiken’s bookshop in central Copenhagen next to a tall, gaunt man with thick, black eyeglasses inquiring about a book in fluent, if accented, Danish. The
David Raskin — I first traveled to Marfa, Texas for the Chinati Foundation and Judd Estate (now the Judd Foundation) open houses in October 1995, about a year and a half after Donald Judd’s death in February 1994. Marfa wasn’t yet at the top of the art world’s “must visit”
Glenn Adamson — “Keep the Corean pot in memory.” With those words, the great potter Bernard Leach imparted one of his most treasured possessions to another great potter, Lucie Rie, in February 1947. The object in question was a Moon Jar – so named for its whiteness and nearly perfect
Joshua Shannon– From its very first days, the Trump administration and its supporters have sought to justify certain statements, proposals, and actions (and indeed to assert Trump’s popularity) by issuing lies or falsehoods labeled “alternative facts.” The term was first offered, and then defended, by Trump Counselor Kellyanne Conway, in
Interview with Monica Penick about her new book Tastemaker: Elizabeth Gordon, House Beautiful, and the Postwar American Home. YaleUniversity · An Interview With Monica Penick
Jenny Diski— The great advantage over real live creatures that my Three Bears had in common with Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, aside from not needing to be fed or produce droppings, was neoteny. Mickey and my ursine family looked only glancingly like a mouse or brown bears, and much more like babies.
Bernd Brunner— History often rewards great breakthroughs but ignores the preparatory steps that made those achievements possible. The Apollo program, for instance, has been documented in great detail and still receives ample attention, but what of the extraordinary labors that led to that summit? How was flight to the moon
David Ebony — The biannual pilgrimage to Venice for the venerable, and ever more enormous international art show known as La Biennale di Venezia, is a worthwhile endeavor for anyone interested in the evolution of contemporary art. Unfailingly, the show offers a rewarding experience whether the core exhibition is a
Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos— In his field diary entry of October 30, 1960, ethnographer Marcelo Díaz de Salas wrote down a brief story that he’d been told by Miguelito, a young boy about 11 years old, in the Tzotzil Maya village of Venustiano Carranza (located in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico):