Arts & Culture
What’s So Special About Stradivarius Violins?
Violins built by the Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari (1644?–1737) have a special mystique in the classical music world.
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8 Fruits to Try Before You Die
Here are eight amazing fruits you should try...if you can find them in a local grocery store or farmer's market.
Roger McClean—iStock/Thinkstock
Editor's Picks
10 Paintings You Should See at the Met in New York City
Learn before you look.
The Thousand and One Nights
Collection of Middle Eastern and Indian storiesThe Thousand and One Nights, collection of largely Middle Eastern and Indian stories of uncertain date and authorship. Its tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor have almost become part of Western folklore, though these were added to the
5 Incredible Native American Artists
Native American artists to know.
Maya Lin
Maya Lin is an American architect and sculptor concerned with environmental themes who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The daughter of intellectuals who had fled China in 1948, Lin received a bachelor’s degree in 1981 from Yale University in New
hip-hop
Hip-hop, cultural movement that attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and ’90s and also the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and/or rhyming speech that became the movement’s most lasting and influential art form. Although widely considered a synonym for rap
The “Howl” Heard Round the World
In 1956, Allen Ginsberg’s groundbreaking Beat poem “Howl” was published in the collection Howl and Other Poems.
Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is a self-described “obsessional artist,” known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. She employed painting, sculpture, performance art, and installations in a variety of styles, including Pop art and Minimalism. By her own
Street Photography: How a Single Camera Brought About a Genre
The invention of the Leica camera allowed photographers to move through the streets and capture moments that come and go in the blink of an eye.
Spotlight: Impressionism
Impressionism 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
How Fred Astaire became a dancer
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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 was an 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 is an 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 was an 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
Mallika Sarabhai
Mallika Sarabhai is an 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
Film
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini was an 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
Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay is an American director, producer, and writer whose film and television projects explore the African American experience. Among her best-known works are the film Selma (2014), the documentary 13th (2016), and the miniseries When They See Us (2019). DuVernay was the first African
David Lynch
David Lynch is an American filmmaker and screenwriter who is 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
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola is an 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