Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means and Her Moving Elegy for Her Soul Mate
"Attention without feeling ... is only a report."
Headlines
- All
- Africa
- Asia
- Business
- Culture
- Environment
- Europe
- Gaming
- Markets
- Middle East
- Movies & TV
- Music
- Politics
- Science
- South America
- Tech
- World News
Why Wall Labels Matter
Plus, Sarah E. Bond on polychromy in ancient art, a Miami artist’s ode to queerness through water, and a sculptor’s shapeshifting art.
Misguided optimization
Industrialism brought us the idea of optimization. Incremental improvements combined with measurement to gradually improve results. We can optimize for precision. A car made in 2026 is orders of magnitude more reliable because the parts fit together so well. We can optimize for
The Dead Sea Scrolls: Discover the Secrets of the Bible’s Oldest and Strangest Texts
The appearance of the Dead Sea Scrolls was the most important document discovery of the twentieth century. Yet, in some sense, they didn’t deliver what many assumed to be promised within: that is, the basis for a complete revision of everything we thought we knew about
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Maria Popova
The creator of The Marginalian and author of the new book Traversal responds to 25 questions on writing, reading, and creativity.
An Animated Introduction to the Antikythera Mechanism: The World’s First Analog Computer from Ancient Greece
From TED-Ed comes an animated introduction to the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek device that dates back to the 2nd century BCE. TED writes: “In 1900, Greek divers stumbled upon a 2,000-year-old shipwreck whose contents would shake our understanding of the ancient
For Warmth: Thich Nhat Hanh’s Poetic Antidote to Anger
How to keep your soul from leaving you.
The ‘Godmother’ of Weed vs. Her Uncle, the DEA Agent
"Cannabis officials courted a rising pot star to join New York’s legal market. Then a stunning police raid upended everything and shattered a family."
Keith Haring on Creativity, Self-Doubt, and the Love of Life in the Face of Death
"It is very important to be in love with life... Life is very fragile and always elusive. As soon as we think we 'understand,' there is another mystery. I don’t understand anything. That is, I think, the key to understand everything."
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower: Rilke’s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times
"What is it like, such intensity of pain?"
The Sticky Politics of Wall Texts
I never thought I would become an art critic who complains about exhibition didactics. And yet, after a visit to the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, here I am.
How White Elites Drained Ancient Art of Its Color
The publication of “Chroma” represents an important shift by museums toward recognizing polychromy and its entanglement with white supremacy.
John Altoon’s Fever Dream Drawings
After a stint in 1950s New York, the LA-based artist abandoned abstraction and painting in favor of dreamlike, sexually charged drawings.
Plunging Into Bex McCharen’s Trans Queer Atlantic
Through oceanic quilts and photographs, the artist transforms Miami’s waters into a site of refuge, memory, and belonging.
The Shapeshifting Sculpture of Diane Simpson
From one angle, her sculptural constructions appear deep, but from another flat; here they look angled, there not.
