Do you think that creativity is an innate gift? Think again. Many people believe that creative thinking is difficult – that the ability to come up with ideas in novel and interesting ways graces only some talented individuals and not most others. The media often portrays creatives as those with quirky personalities and unique talent....
What obligation does a portrait photographer have to their subject? Is it their duty to cast that person in the best light, or the most revealing light? As chief curator at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography, I have worked with the images of fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon on a handful...
1 January 2023 marked the centenary of the birth of Ousmane Sembène, the Senegalese novelist and filmmaker hailed as the “father of African cinema”. Over the course of five decades Sembène published 10 books and directed 12 films across three distinct periods. He has been celebrated for his beautifully crafted political works, which range in...
Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently dismissed Erika López Prater, an adjunct faculty member, for showing two historical Islamic paintings of the Prophet Muhammad in her global survey of art history. Following complaints from some Muslim students, university administrators described such images as disrespectful and Islamophobic. While many Muslims today believe it is inappropriate...
New research finds that corporate executives are more likely to increase their profits from insider trading when individual state income taxes go up, presumably because the executives are attempting to offset the increased taxes they will be paying. By the same token, executives are more likely to engage in less profitable insider trading when their...
With the world’s population topping 8 billion last year, it’s clear that humans have achieved a unique status in Earth’s history. We are the only creature that dominate all other organisms on the planet, from animals and fungi to plants and microbes. It remains to be seen whether humans can retain this dominance as we...
In Boston, there are reports of people pronouncing the letter “r.” Down in Tennessee, people are noticing a lack of a Southern drawl. And Texans have long worried about losing their distinctive twang. Indeed, around the United States, communities are voicing a common anxiety: Are Americans losing their accents? The fear of accent loss often...
Nina Childress sits down with Thomas Chatterton Williams to discuss painting, punk, and the politics of bad taste. The French-American artist Nina Childress has built a decades-spanning career around the indefatigable interrogation of ‘bad’ art and taste. Shaped by the rebellious spirit of punk rock, her approach has always been heterodox and fluid. Since the...
As his solo exhibition opened at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the artist explains his fascination with the evolution of living species. ‘I made Error (2022) this summer, for a group exhibition at the CENTQUATRE-PARIS, focusing on the theme of seeds. As in all my work, I wanted to tell a story: the story of seeds, from...
A new peer-reviewed study, which analyzes Florida housing markets battered by hurricanes, finds that affected areas tend to gentrify slightly in the years following a storm: the average income of new buyers increases while long-term demand stays stable. The authors of the paper—who are based at Resources for the Future (RFF), the University of California San...
