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Our growing archive of info about art, design, and culture.

  • The Dark Side of Voodoo Art

    The Dark Side of Voodoo Art

    Voodoo art, sometimes spelled Vodou or Vodun depending on the region, remains one of the most misunderstood traditions in global religious art. Its dark, mystical reputation in the Western imagination clashes with…

  • Kawasaki: The History of its Art

    Kawasaki: The History of its Art

    At first glance, Kawasaki may appear to the outsider as merely a gray corridor between Tokyo and Yokohama—a place of warehouses, smokestacks, commuter lines, and functional modernity. But beneath that utilitarian shell…

  • Drunk on Beauty: Wine’s Contribution to Art

    Drunk on Beauty: Wine’s Contribution to Art

    Wine has played a central role in human culture since the ancient world, and artists have turned to it again and again as a subject filled with symbolic meaning. It appears in…

  • The Art of New Orleans Cemeteries

    The Art of New Orleans Cemeteries

    New Orleans is unlike any other city in America, and nowhere is that more evident than in its cemeteries. Locals call them “Cities of the Dead,” and it’s an apt name. Behind…

  • Pena Palace: Sintra’s Romantic Icon

    Pena Palace: Sintra’s Romantic Icon

    The site now occupied by the Pena National Palace was originally home to a modest Hieronymite monastery founded in 1503 under the patronage of King Manuel I. Located high in the Sintra…

  • Biography: Adriaen Brouwer

    Biography: Adriaen Brouwer

    Adriaen Brouwer was born in the small Flemish town of Oudenaarde in 1605 or 1606, during a time of both religious conflict and artistic flourishing in the Spanish Netherlands. Very little documentation…

  • Surgical Art Through the Ages: Gruesome Yet Gripping

    Surgical Art Through the Ages: Gruesome Yet Gripping

    For centuries, artists have turned their gaze to the operating table, capturing scenes of surgery that range from deeply symbolic to disturbingly realistic. These works reveal a time when surgery was not…