Arts + Culture

Lindsay Stark|Gallery

Renewal

Aid worker Lindsay Stark's portrait of the ritual purification of a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

All Things Matter

His name was Herbert Matter, a man even the ornery Paul Rand described as possibly the least pompous person on the planet. When I was a junior in college, he taught me how to make a Photogram. He was 74 years old.

Mark Lamster|Essays

Peter Paul Rubens: Graphic Designer

In his day, Rubens was also revered as a diplomat, an architect, a classical scholar, and even a graphic designer.

Timothy Jack Ward|Slideshows

Gardens and Their Designers

When I loaded up my Budget truck and moved from New York to our nation’s capital, the last thing on, and the first thing off, was my plants.

Mark Lamster|Essays

The Art of Diplomacy

It's a rather satisfying bit of parallelism that the excerpt of my book on the political career of Peter Paul Rubens appears in the Wall Street Journal on the same day that Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is the …

Mark Lamster|Essays

A Bibliophile's Revelation

Domenichino's St. John the Evangelist seems, as much as anything, a celebration of the act of writing and the ecstasy of the written word. 

Justin Partyka|Gallery

The East Anglians

Image from photographer Justin Partyka's series, The East Anglians, about the decline of rural culture in the UK.

Owen Edwards|Essays

Not the Same Old Same Old

It’s hard not to agree that cars, though better designed and engineered than ever, are often pressed into plebian duty.

Ernest Beck|Projects

Emergency Response Studio

Report on artist Paul Villinski's mobile studio, which he converted from a trailer of the type used by FEMA to house victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Alexandra Lange|Essays

White Knight

With the opening of Less and More, the new exhibition of Dieter Rams' work, I'm reminded of how frustrating it is that his past work is not in production.

Steven Heller|Essays

People in Glass Apartments

People in glass apartments shouldn’t throw stones or other projectiles. Nor should they engage in private acts directly in front of their floor to ceiling windows.

Jane Margolies|Projects

Skin

Report on maternity clothes made in Colombia with local labor. (No seamstresses under the age of 50 need apply.)