The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: the cuckoo’s nest, fruitful work, keys and locks, commander in fief; perfect sound forever, and more.
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Should You Sit Out the Armory Show?
One line on the blue-chip behemoth, Independent 20th Century highlights overlooked artists, and more.
Reasoning together
Jürgen Habermas, the great defender of deliberative democracy, lived up to its demands: he never feared changing his mind - by Emilie Prattico Read on Aeon
Thinking about your purpose
I don’t believe we’re each born with a purpose. We have more freedom than that, the freedom to choose the impact we’ll make. Our work, though, does have a purpose. The change we seek to make. The people we’re here to make it for. When we commit to work with purpose, it
Say what you want
The problem is with the “and.” (Often a ‘but’ in disguise.) I want to make the art I have in my head, and I want the market to love it. I want to have the wedding of my dreams, and I don’t want to worry about money, and I want my cousins and friends to […]
How Else Marie Pade, a Prisoner in World War II, Became Denmark’s First Female Electronic Composer
Before she became a composer of electronic music, Else Marie Pade was a sick child listening to the radio. Frequent kidney inflammations consigned her to bed for long periods of time, which would constitute neither her last nor her harshest experience of confinement. She was
What If We Just Stopped? “We’re in the Looney Tunes stage...
What If We Just Stopped? “We’re in the Looney Tunes stage of the end of social, where we’ve glided well past the edge of the cliff and it’s slowing dawning on us that the only way left is down. Fast.”
The Armory Show in One Sentence
This year's edition seemed awfully quiet and downcast, making the financial sector trade show on the floor below seem like a riot in comparison.
Independent 20th Century, the Mise en Abyme of Art Fairs
Despite the mind-boggling amount of spectacular works on view, I was reminded at each turn that the Breuer Building has been turned into an art mall.
The Polish Pavilion Dissolves You in the Politics of Sound
At the Venice Biennale, whale songs become a means for communication, opening up a dialogue on accessibility.
Scans of City Textures
Using a handheld scanner, designer/illustrator Noah Nolet captures textures from surfaces in cities around the world, including Tokyo, LA, Paris, Kyoto, NYC, and Berlin. On his website , he offers city packs of hundreds of scans for sale and free sample packs as well. You can
Homer’s Catalogue of Ships from the Iliad. Where the...
Homer’s Catalogue of Ships from the Iliad. Where the Greek ships that set out for Troy were from and what they may have looked like. “No Homeric ship survives. What we have are pictures: a handful of painted sherds of the twelfth century BC…”
El Museo del Barrio Apologizes for Renting Space for 9/11 Conspiracy Event
The Harlem institution said it was "not aware of the full program, content and speaker list for this event.”
Practical Engineering: Are beavers actually good at...
Practical Engineering: Are beavers actually good at building dams? (A: Yes, duh.)
Christie’s Launches Pop Culture Division to Court Millennial and Gen Z Buyers
Ringo Drum Kits Lennon Gretsch Christies March 2026
Fantastic Plants Spring from Taehyoung Maria Jeon’s Digital Illustrations
Taehyoung Maria Jeon reimagines the plants cohabitating in her apartment, beginning with leaves and stems before venturing into surreal terrain. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little
A Tale of Two Trap Houses: Being Cuckooed Ruined My Friend’s Life—But Did It Then Help Save Him?
"Drug gangs have moved off Britain’s streets and into vulnerable people’s homes. Addicts like my friend are easy targets, but the reality can be more complicated than it seems."
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. Brad Pitt...
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth . Brad Pitt returns as Booth, the character he played in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but 8 years later. Screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, directed by David Fincher.
How to Fall in Love Better: A Field Guide to Enlightened Enchantment
Enchantment, J.R.R. Tolkien believed, is “as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life.” But enchantment is a story we tell ourselves that tells us back to ourselves, and like every story, it can be true or false. Love is
Trace is a daily puzzle game where you build a “recipe”...
Trace is a daily puzzle game where you build a “recipe” of up to 4 steps to turn a starting set of numbers into another set of numbers.
The lessons four Islamic polymaths — al-Biruni, Alhazen,...
The lessons four Islamic polymaths — al-Biruni, Alhazen, Avicenna and al-Khwarizmi — hold for students today : “breadth over specialisation, and never let constraints get in the way”.
Heaven’s Melodic Strains
"From a certain height, the problem becomes one of knowledge itself: Do you believe what you hear, or do you hear what you believe?"
Photographer Tyler Mitchell Wins Crystal Bridges's $250K Prize
The National Gallery of Art names a new head of American Art, Sharif Bey wins the Spector Craft Prize, a Solange sculpture heads to the High Line, and more in Art Movements.
50 Songs That Explain America. “The songs were chosen on...
50 Songs That Explain America . “The songs were chosen on the basis that they told me something, sonically or lyrically or emotionally or vibrationally, about America and the idea of America.”
The 🔥🔥🔥 New Social App: NPR Podcasts Comments Section on Spotify
{Ira Glass voice} On this week’s episode of This American Life , the story of middle schoolers too young for social media chatting in the comments section of NPR’s podcasts on Spotify. From the transcript : And it was just, like, gibberish. There was a bunch of new comments,
Shimmer: Dreaming the Posthuman
This thought-provoking exhibition at the Frist Art Museum explores human interconnectedness with the more-than-human world.
Red Moons and Lightning Illuminate Sarah Lee’s Uncanny Landscapes
Supple mountains cradled by lakes and forests are tinged with magical realism. 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 Red Moons and Lightning Illuminate
How to rescue an orphaned baby elephant. “The baby...
How to rescue an orphaned baby elephant . “The baby elephant needs a mother to run to. And the fact is that the mother is a 30-year-old Nigerian man right now.”
Jimbōchō Book Town
I visited Jimbōchō today, a neighborhood that’s home to more than 100 used bookstores. Many sell only Japanese books, but some of them have books in English or sell magazines, posters, or visual books that are interesting to browse no matter what language you speak. I visited
Emerson on How to Trust Yourself
"It is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
What Happens After Repatriation?
“Tide of Returns” investigates the histories and futures of handmade dolls repatriated to an Indigenous Australian community.
What Can Photographs Say in a World Full of Images?
An exhibition at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College examines how artists utilize serial configurations of pictures and text to prompt questions about seeing.
