Our growing archive of info about art, design, and culture.
Before pills came in blister packs and prescriptions were filled by machines, medicine was the realm of leaves, roots, and bark. At the heart of this ancient world stood the apothecaries—early pharmacists…
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…
The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw was established in 1904, during a time when Poland was still partitioned and under Russian control. The need for a national art institution was pressing,…
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…
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…
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…
Long before the rise of classical civilizations, long before the pyramids of Egypt or the temples of Greece, a mobile people roamed the vast grasslands stretching from the Dniester River to the…
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…
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…
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…
Vincent van Gogh spent the final months of his life in the small French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, a short train ride from Paris. He arrived in May 1890 on the recommendation of…
Your brand’s color palette is more than just a visual flourish—it’s a psychological weapon, a trust signal, and a business strategy rolled into one. Yet far too many businesses get it disastrously…