The Happiness Ruse
How did feeling good become a matter of relentless, competitive work; a never-to-be-attained goal which makes us miserable?
Author: Cody Delistraty
The Opera Backstage
Edgar Degas and the stories we tell ourselves, at the opera and everywhere else.
The Intelligence of Plants
What if plants are smarter than we think—a lot smarter?
Why Is the One Percent So Obsessed With Magic?
A profile of Steve Cohen, a.k.a. the Millionaires’ Magician, who’s made a killing doing parlor magic for the wealthy
Fra Angelico’s Divine Emotion
The fifteenth-century Italian artist Fra Angelico invented emotional interiority in art
What’s the Use of Beauty?
Edouard Manet’s notion of beauty changed starkly near the end of his life. Who determines what is or isn’t beautiful? And why are we so drawn to it?
Market Values
How close, really, is the link between art and society?
Her Name is Laure
An exhibition at Paris’s Musée d’Orsay centers on a black model named Laure in Édouard Manet’s Olympia and reinterrogates the role of black people in art history.
The Future of Writing
An exhibition at the British Library in London questions the future of writing.
How Germany’s Far Right is Co-opting Art History
What does Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1866 painting ‘Slave Market’ say about today’s extremist politics?
