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Maritime China

Far from turning its back on the sea, the fate of Qing China was tied as much to tides and storms as to cavalry and walls - by Ron Po Read on Aeon

Every Book of the Bible Explained in One Video

Whether we’re religious or not, we can all agree that the Bible isn’t just a book. In fact, it’s at least 66 of them, 39 Old Testament and 27 in the New, and that’s just in the Protestant tradition. Even if you’ve never read a single page of the Bible, you may well have a […]

The night clerk

At 2:30 in the morning, the night clerk at the hotel is a great help if you’ve locked yourself out of your room. But if you want to complain about the hours of the gym, the hotel’s environmental footprint or even their late check-in policy, you’re almost certainly wasting their

bell hooks on the Power of Being in the Margins

Fifteen years into reading and writing in order to learn how to live, I looked back on these marginalia on the search for meaning and realized that the people whose lives and work have most moved me and fed me, consoled me and inspirited me, were people who existed in the

Our Summer Art Reading List

Whenever I’m stuck in a reading rut, I find that art books of any kind are the only ones that can rescue me. This time, it’s Kory Stamper’s True Color , a transfixing story about the man who originated Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definitions for

Watching an Art Conservator Restore a Damaged Painting

There’s something so relaxing about watching art conservator Julian Baumgartner restore this damaged painting, a self-portrait by Italian painter Emma Gaggiotti Richards . I love how he paints tiny cracks in the damaged areas to match those in the rest of the painting. There

12 Art Books to Kick Off Summer

A novel lampooning the art world, Megan O’Grady’s meditation on art and living, the man who defined color in the dictionary, Nan Goldin’s tender photo essay, and more.

Roadside Attraction

"The desert has a changeling effect, transforming lights into magic, desert into space, visitors into lovers, me into something apart from what I actually am."

Still in Sound

Sound artists compose sonic and multisensory interpretations of abstract paintings for this new exhibition at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado.

Perhaps businesses are collecting too much data for...

Perhaps businesses are collecting too much data for their own good . “Each morning at 10am, I get an email from Caroline in the finance team showing the cash we have in the bank compared with the same day last year. This fact offers no hiding place.”