Imagining The Power Of Edouard Manet's 'Very Active Muse'
Maureen Gibbon's new novel, Paris Red, delves into the life of Victorine Meurent, Manet's favorite model and the central figure in some of his most famous paintings.
Visual Arts
How Iconic: A Word Is Worth Thousands Of Pictures
Inspired by the origins of the Oxford English Dictionary, the Noun Project uses crowdsourcing to gather an army of people to define words. But instead of using other words to do it, they use icons.
Why Bill Gates Is Commissioning Fine Art
From stylized photography that looks like a fashion shoot to a comic book journey about lockjaw, artwork from around the world illustrates the value of vaccines.
China's Artist Provocateur Explores New Medium: Heavy Metal
In 2011, police detained Ai Weiwei for 81 days. Now, he's released a song that's turned the experience into a heavy metal protest song, along with a dystopian nightmare video. The lyrics are explicit and angry. Ai says his music is for the many political prisoners who remain jailed.
China Builds Museums, But Filling Them Is Another Story
China has been building museums with abandon, opening about 100 annually in recent years. Two of the biggest opened on the same day last fall on opposite banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River. But filling these museums — with both art and visitors — is proving more challenging.