All young illustrator Dalia Messick wanted was to create a famous comic strip. She tried for the first time after graduating from high school in the mid-1920s, with no luck. She moved to Chicago to study at the Art Institute of Chicago, then took a job designing greeting cards and …
The images are striking. A toddler, his tiny sock caught on barbed wire as he’s passed through a barricade in Albania. A couple holding hands as they walk down a street filled with burning wreckage from a Haitian earthquake. A young refugee from the war in Sierra Leone jubilantly raising …
Most of what I know about poetry can be summed up in this opening line: “There once was a girl from Nantucket …” I’m kidding, of course (kind of). But we’re talking poetry today because American poet Louise Glück was just awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature. In announcing …
In 2017, a replica of the ancient Greek Parthenon, widely acknowledged to be the first symbol of democracy, was erected in Kassel, Germany. Built from 100,000 banned books, it was the creation of Argentinian artist Marta Minujin and erected on the site where thousands of banned books were burned by …
When tattoos began popping up everywhere in our research this week, we took it as a sign and discovered Maud Stevens Wagner, credited as the first female tattooist in the United States. Born in Kansas in 1877, little is known of her early life. By adulthood, Maud was performing as …
Julia Child mastered French cuisine, but before Paris she lived in Sri Lanka and China working for the US government.
Misty Copeland’s journey from ballet prodigy to inclusivity advocate springs solely from an art form that brings her joy.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is an investigative journalist who writes for The New York Times Magazine about racial inequality. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for commentary for her essay in “The 1619 Project,” a special edition of the magazine that traces the influence of slavery in the United States. “At …
One of the most glamorous actresses of the 1930s and 1940s, Hedy Lamarr was promoted as “the world’s most beautiful woman.” She co-starred with the likes of Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy. She dated Howard Hughes. She produced movies at a time when, particularly for a woman, that …
