Giant Wieners, Drag Queens, and Curtis Sliwa at “The Most American Pageant Ever!”
The absurdist performance art event at Times Square felt more like an elegy during this national moment.
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Required Reading
This week: the Louvre reopens the room where it happens, a Texas artist’s outdoor collection, Nancy Drew in the public domain, Rachel Cusk and Natalie Portman have beef, and more.
What’s On the Sandwich Named After You at the Local Deli?
Following a prompt from Joanna at Cup of Jo … The local deli or sandwich shop names a sandwich after you. What would be on it? Perhaps another way of asking the question: what’s your favorite sandwich that’s a little bit unusual? I love a classic BLT, banh mi, or jambon
Why are American ambulances so expensive? In part...
Why are American ambulances so expensive? In part because Medicare pays only a fraction of the actual cost of an ambulance ride and the uninsured often don’t pay at all, so the privately insured get bills of $13,000 for a $2600 ride.
We’re Squandering LEDs’ Potential to Save Our Night...
We’re Squandering LEDs’ Potential to Save Our Night Skies . “Our main failure isn’t a technical one. It’s that we have yet to revise our thinking about lighting at night. We use LED technology just as we did the old sources of light.”
A Matter of Form (1984)
In addition to leading the animation studio at the National Film Board of Canada, René Jodoin made several animated films that explored geometric forms and motion, including the one above, A Matter of Form from 1984. Set to the rousing notes of Schubert’s Military March, this
Patrick Dougherty’s ‘Stickwork’ Installations Conjure Connections with Nature
For more than four decades, the artist has reimagined the technical and sculptural capabilities of one simple material: twigs. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month.
An online edition of all 85 of the Federalist Papers ,...
An online edition of all 85 of the Federalist Papers , presented as they were originally serialized in newspapers, with on eye on good typography and readability .
“ This map shows the predicted density of...
“ This map shows the predicted density of underground networks created by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These networks form one of Earth’s circulatory systems, moving massive amounts of carbon, nutrients, and water across plant communities.”
The Children Who Loved a Killer
“The Carr family took in Steven Judy, hoping to ‘save’ a troubled teen. They didn’t know he would become one of the most hated men in America.”
All the Queens houses
To the trained eye, the personalised homes of Queens, NYC, evoke everything from a Venetian streetscape to a Chinese temple - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon
David Hockney’s Endless Scroll
The late artist’s digital paintings at Serpentine, Tate gets a new director, beyond the myth of Brazilian modernist Chico da Silva, and more.
The savage bites back
Rooted in Brazilian modernism, anthropophagy devours and transforms culture, subverting colonial fears of cannibalism - by Sofia Cándano Read on Aeon
How Reporting Creates Change: A Conversation with Pamela Colloff
Writing is always going to be hard and why it's worth the struggle.
Industrialism and the slippery slope
One of the best traditional bakeries in New York has a kitchen you can see from the counter. People wait in line for their handmade French baguettes, and the confirmation that they were made right here and right now is reassuring. I noticed that the baker was using a mechanical
A Free Online Archive Lets You Explore 5.8 Million Works of Art Spanning 5,000 Years of History
Though it’s traditionally meant “last in a progression or series,” as Merriam-Webster puts it, the word ultimate has been more often used in recent decades to mean “the best or most extreme of its kind.” The name of a recently launched digital archive performs a rare inversion,
How Did Everything Begin?: Animations on the Origins of the Universe Narrated by X‑Files Star Gillian Anderson
We previously brought you the BBC series of short animated videos, A History of Ideas. Produced in collaboration with the UK’s Open University and narrated by Harry Shearer, these fun introductions to such philosophers as Simone de Beauvoir and Edmund Burke, and such weighty
Oh wow, The Verge made a 70-minute video on how The...
Oh wow, The Verge made a 70-minute video on how The Clapper became a viral sensation . When I was a kid, we didn’t have a Clapper, no one I knew had one, and I couldn’t understand why every single household didn’t have one of these magical devices.
Protesters Decry Chinatown Museum’s Acceptance of “Jail Money” at Town Hall
Leaders of New York’s Museum of Chinese failed to persuade protesters that a $35 million grant from the city was not tied to the construction of a borough jail.
Frozen Polygon Waves
Well, this is just absolutely lovely: photographer and artist Jan Erik Waider shot these videos of cracked-but-unbroken Baltic Sea ice undulating with the gentle motion of the sea. Mesmerizing…I could watch these for hours. Tags: Jan Erik Waider · mesmerizing · video
Tate Names Dia Leader Jessica Morgan as Next Director
The British curator will return to London to helm the museum network beginning next year.
Beyond Greece and Rome
"A dramatic shift in perspective is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world.’"
Carl Jung on Creativity
The question of what it takes to create — to make something of beauty and substance that touches other lives across space and time — is one of the deepest, oldest questions, perhaps because the answer to it is so unbearably simple: everything. We bring everything we are and
Beyond the Myth of Chico da Silva
Presenting da Silva with Amazonian artists of different generations undermines the Western notion of the artist as an isolated genius.
What do America’s earliest restaurant menus teach us...
What do America’s earliest restaurant menus teach us about America? “A menu describes what a restaurant serves — but a menu also describes who is being served. They reflect the class, gender, political, technological, and environmental shifts of history.”
Debra Broz’s Kitschy ‘Superorganisms’ Are Both Familiar and Strange
The Seattle-based artist's quirky sculptures are made from from found figurines. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Debra Broz’s Kitschy
Remembering Christine Borland, John Will, and Astrid Furnival
This week, we honor an artist who explored human fragility through science, a pioneering British textile artist, and a champion of digital art.
A list of Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail...
A list of Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail , including an Apple Powerbook 100, a SGI R4000 Indigo, the Motorola Envoy (PDA), and some Thinking Machines CM-5s. “This is a Unix system, I know this!”