From Caravaggio to Tribeca
An Old Master as a young man, Richard Wright’s influence on John Wilson, Tribeca galleries vs. street vendors, other things to know about NYC this week.
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The full trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 . The pitch...
The full trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 . The pitch perfection of Miranda completely forgetting Andy gives me hope that this will be a worthy sequel. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Roberta Fallon, Champion of Philadelphia Artists, Dies at 76
The artist, educator, and co-founder of local arts publication Artblog is remembered as a warm and energetic force in the community.
Roberta Fallon, Champion of Philadelphia Artists, Dies at 75
The artist, educator, and co-founder of local arts publication Artblog is remembered as a warm and energetic force in the community
Been thinking a lot about this Ted Chiang quote...
Been thinking a lot about this Ted Chiang quote recently: “I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism. And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
15 Art Shows to See in Los Angeles This Spring
Arshile Gorky’s road trip with Isamu Noguchi, Steve Arnold’s queer baroque aesthetics, Chicano photography, photography in the Black Arts Movement, and more.
Where Would Contemporary Art Be Without Plastic?
A new anthology on plastics in art reveals the philosophical conundrums and contradictions at the heart of a material the world relies on.
Vibe-coding gone wild . “Stories of family...
Vibe-coding gone wild . “Stories of family groceries delivered to data centers, and “world burnt bacon day” became memes — and resulted in class-action lawsuits against kitchen appliance manufacturers like Breville, Viking, and Cusinart.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Death of an Indian Tech Worker
"A wave of suicides and widespread AI-fueled layoffs reveal a workforce under extreme pressure."
A collection of thousands of photographs of NYC...
A collection of thousands of photographs of NYC restaurants (2002-2008) taken by Noah Kalina. Quite an archive of interior design from that era. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Bruno Pontiroli Tests the Boundaries of Familiarity in His Uncanny Wildlife Paintings
The scale of that whale! 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 Bruno Pontiroli Tests the Boundaries of Familiarity in His Uncanny Wildlife Paintings
Mystery Is Embedded in Julia Fish’s Architectural Art
The artist transforms the act of looking into an intricate modality that visualizes the interplay of geometry and architecture, prismatic light and musical notes.
Claude’s Constitution
A couple of weeks ago, AI company Anthropic published the constitution that they use to train their Claude LLM (“under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Deed , meaning it can be freely used by anyone for any purpose without asking for permission”). From the company’s news release :
The Case of the Green Covers is a risograph-printed...
The Case of the Green Covers is a risograph-printed zine that documents the history of the “Green Penguins”, “a series of hundreds of crime novels published with green covers by the UK publisher Penguin in the 1960s”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Podcast interview with two photojournalists who have...
Podcast interview with two photojournalists who have been covering ICE in Minnesota . “It’s a conversation about what they’ve seen, the vital role of photojournalism at this moment, and the personal toll of doing this work.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Haven’t watched this 90-minute video yet, but...
Haven’t watched this 90-minute video yet, but I’ve seen so many recommendations for it that I’m posting it as a to-do list item for myself: You are being misled about renewable energy technology . 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Vilcek Prizes Awarded to Immigrants in Fashion for Innovative Design
The Vilcek Foundation awarded $250,000 to Peter Do, Jacques Agbobly, Marcelo Gutierrez, and Uyen Tran. 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 Vilcek
A group of 50 Chileans recently spent several hours...
A group of 50 Chileans recently spent several hours powering a human-operated chatbot . Some questions were answered quickly but “when they didn’t know the answer, they walked around the room to see if someone else did”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Vilcek Foundation Awards Five Immigrants $250,000 for Fashion Documentation
Tanya Meléndez-Escalante, Diego Bendezu, Jalan and Jibril Durimel, and Natalie Nudell received the 2026 Vilcek Prizes in Fashion & Culture for their contributions to fashion representation.
Killing In The Name, The Minnesota Edition
Late last week, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello led a crowd gathered at the iconic First Avenue music venue in a spirited rendition of the band’s Killing In the Name. The band handled the music while the crowd, in the absence of Rage frontman Zack De La Rocha, sang the
The Border Patrol Is the Problem. It Always Has Been....
The Border Patrol Is the Problem. It Always Has Been. “If you are uncomfortable with what the Border Patrol is doing in Minneapolis, you are uncomfortable with the Border Patrol, full stop.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Wenting Zhu Cultivates a Kaleidoscopic Garden of Crystals in 100+ Petri Dishes
"Crystal Garden: Seasons" blends natural growth with artificial coloring. 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 Wenting Zhu Cultivates a Kaleidoscopic
Forgiveness
Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare, splendid poem “blessing the boats.” We had met at a poetry workshop and shared a resolution to write more poetry in the coming year, so we began taking turns each week choosing a line
When Jeff Koons Met Epstein
New revelations from the Epstein files, a hilarious protest against Melania's doc, the problem with archival art, our monthly crossword, and more.
Can you rewire your brain?
The metaphor of rewiring offers an ideal of engineered precision. But the brain is more like a forest than a circuit board - by Peter Lukacs Read on Aeon
On Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself... You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of
“Everybody wants to win”
Sports analogies often let us down. A colleague was explaining how measurement was difficult in many organizations, unlike a basketball game, where the time, the score and the stats are clear and obvious. He said, “everybody wants to win.” Depending on how you define ‘win’,
The Samurai Who Became A Roman Citizen
Last year, we featured here on Open Culture the story of how a samurai ended up in the unlikely setting of seventeenth-century Venice. But as compellingly told as it was in video essay form by Evan Puschak, better known as the Nerdwriter, it ended just as things were getting
‘I Promise You, You Have Your Soul.’
Three mothers, one struggle: saving their children with schizophrenia.
Bang the Drumstick Slowly
"About 26 billion chickens occupy Earth, but apart from the lucky ones in backyards, most are condemned to the hellscape that is industrial farming."
The Powerful Messages That Woody Guthrie & Pete Seeger Inscribed on Their Guitar & Banjo: “This Machine Kills Fascists” and “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender”
Photo by Al Aumuller, via Wikimedia Commons Like another famous Okie from Muskogee, Woody Guthrie came from a part of Oklahoma that the U.S. government sold during the 1889 land rush away from the Quapaw and Osage nations, as well as the Muscogee, a people who had been forcibly
Elon Musk and other internet racists started an internet...
Elon Musk and other internet racists started an internet war over Christopher Nolan’s casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, thereby immediately disproving their point. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Early this month, a wily coyote swam across San Francisco...
Early this month, a wily coyote swam across San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz. He was in such rough shape, observers thought he’d probably die, but he’s been snacking on birds and rodents and was recently observed fat as a pickle . 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Rilke on the Relationship Between Solitude, Love, Sex, and Creativity
"There is only one solitude, and it is large and not easy to bear... People are drawn to the easy and to the easiest side of the easy. But it is clear that we must hold ourselves to the difficult."
Seu Jorge’s Lovely Tribute to David Bowie
For his 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson enlisted Brazilian musical artist Seu Jorge to perform several of David Bowie’s songs in Portuguese. Jorge released an album of the songs about a year or so later. A few weeks ago, to mark the 10th anniversary