Everyone knows that Georges Seurat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte, or A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, resides at the Art Institute of Chicago. Or at least everyone who’s seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off knows it. The Art Institute appears as … | Continue reading
“A brush makes watercolors appear on a white sheet of paper. An everyday object takes shape, drawn with precision by an artist’s hand. Then two, then three, then four… Superimposed, condensed, multiplied, thousands of documentary drawings in successive series come to life on the … | Continue reading
Ancient Greece and Rome had plenty of literature, but practically none of it survives today. What exactly became of almost everything written down in Western antiquity is the subject of the video above by ancient-history Youtube channel Told in Stone, previously featured here on … | Continue reading
With 26 lines and 472 stations, the New York City subway system is practically a living organism, and way too big a topic to tackle in a short video. Architect Michael Wyetzner may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flooding, night and weekend service disruptions, … | Continue reading
“I have invented a new way of imitating flowers,” Mary Delany, a 72-year-old widow wrote to her niece in 1772 from the grand home where she was a frequent guest, having just captured her hostess’ geranium’s likeness, by collaging cut paper in a nearly identical shade. Novelty rek … | Continue reading
Jokes about “reality television” being a contradiction in terms go as far back in pop-culture history as the format itself. But the fact remains that, deliberately or otherwise, its programs do reflect certain characteristics of the societies that produce them. Before turning int … | Continue reading
If you’re a regular Open Culture reader, you have hopefully thoroughly immersed yourself in The Map of Physics, an animated video–a visual aid for the modern age–that mapped out the field of physics, explaining all the connections between classical physics, quantum physics, and r … | Continue reading
We’ve featured the work of Spanish filmmaker Cristóbal Vila before: His short film “Inspirations” celebrated the mathematical art of M.C. Escher. “Fallingwater” animated one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s finest creations. And “Nature by Numbers” showed us geometrical and mathematical f … | Continue reading
That we spend much, if not most, of our lives working is, in itself, not necessarily a bad thing — unless, that is, we’re bored doing it. In the Big Think video above, London Business School Professor of Organizational Behavior Dan Cable cites Gallup polls showing that “about 70 … | Continue reading
In 2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The award itself came as less of a surprise than did the fact that Shoplifters was the first of Kore-eda’s films to win it, given how long he’d been the most widely acclaimed Japanese filmmaker alive. And thou … | Continue reading
Sandro Botticelli painted it, how many of us whose tastes run to the female form really see it that way? 'I've always been struck by how Venus is strangely asexual, and her nudity is clinical,' says gallerist James Payne, creator of the Youtube channel Great Art Explained. | Continue reading
If you don’t listen to rap, you’ve heard the same questions over and over in response to that confession. One of the most common is “But have you heard De La Soul?” — which in recent years was easier said than done, at least on streaming platforms. “What kept De La’s tunes out of … | Continue reading
Composed of over 1000 engravings from the 19th century, the short animation Still Life (above) is “a meditation on subject/object dualism,” exploring “the idea that we live in a world of objects and a world of objects lives within us.” It’s created by Conner Griffith, an experime … | Continue reading
As generations have come of age with few or no memories of the existence of the Soviet Union, a common misconception about Berlin has become more common. Because the German capital was divided between the former East and West Germany, it’s easy to assume that it must have lay on … | Continue reading
Our definition of budget cookery may differ from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey‘s. True, the world famous restauranteur and cookbook author speaks of cheap cuts with messianic zeal, but the episode of Gordon Ramsey’s Ultimate Cookery Course dedicated to Food on a Budget, above, als … | Continue reading
Outdoor enthusiasts of a non-vegetarian stripe, do you weary of garden variety energy bars and trail mix? Perhaps you’re feeling adventurous enough to make your own pemmican, variously described by Tasting History’s Max Miller, above, as “history’s Power Bar” and “a meaty version … | Continue reading
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon we bring you this: a busker fittingly playing “Time” in front of the nearly 2000-year-old Pantheon in Rome. That the police try to break up the show hardly matters. The busker continues, and returns on othe … | Continue reading
Coming after the maturation of the market for high-fidelity stereo systems but before the advent of home video, the nineteen-seventies provided just the right cultural and economic conditions for a heroic age of the record album. What’s Going On, Blue, Blood on the Tracks, Exile … | Continue reading
Monty Python icon John Cleese had this to say about Marjorie Taylor Greene yesterday: “She is the perfect example of someone who is not intelligent enough to realise that she’s not very intelligent. Hence her enormous self-confidence. Sadly, her supporters are even less intellige … | Continue reading
Last fall, Banksy traveled to Ukraine and spray-painted a series of murals that offered a stinging commentary on the war launched by Vladimir Putin and Russia’s military forces. Now, to mark the first anniversary of the invasion, a defiant Ukraine has released an official postage … | Continue reading
When Venice was way under water a decade ago, we posted about it here on Open Culture. By that time, the City of Canals was supposed to have been protected by MOSE, a $7 billion flood-control system not actually completed until 2021. But a drought struck the following year, and w … | Continue reading
Image by Casa Buonarroti, via Wikimedia Commons I admit to having a hard time keeping grocery lists. Do I write them by hand? If so, do I do it in a dedicated notebook, on a refrigerator pad, or on any old scrap I find around? Do I compose them electronically, using some combinat … | Continue reading
Few American novelists of the twentieth century looked as professorial as Kurt Vonnegut, at least in a rumpled-fixture-of-the-English-department way. But though he did rack up some teaching experience, not least at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he could hardly have been a conventio … | Continue reading
Some real talk from retired geometry teacher Wendy Lichtman, above, the author of several math-themed YA novels: Not many 15-year-olds care that two parallel lines are crossed by a transversal. “But right here are two parallel lines,” she continues, pointing to a pink and orange … | Continue reading
Some good news: Maya Angelou’s 1969 memoir I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, a recounting of her first 17 years, including a rape at the age of 7 or 8 by her mother’s boyfriend, and her subsequent emotional trauma, no longer leads the American Library Association’s Office for Inte … | Continue reading
No art form is as subject to trend and fashion as the Hollywood film — except, perhaps, the Hollywood trailer. If you came of age as a moviegoer in the nineteen-nineties, as I did, you’ll remember hearing hundreds of gravelly-voiced promises of transportation to “a world where th … | Continue reading
Back in 1964, Shel Silverstein wrote The Giving Tree, a widely loved children’s book now translated into more than 30 languages. It’s a story about the human condition, about giving and receiving, using and getting used, neediness and greediness, although many finer points of the … | Continue reading
For the enthusiast of unidentified flying objects, we live in interesting times indeed. Back in 2021, as we previously featured here on Open Culture, the CIA declassified and published thousands of pages of UFO-related documents. In just the past few weeks, three UFOs were shot d … | Continue reading
Image by Eric Nagle, via Wikimedia Commons On the island of Crete, in the village of Vouves, stands an olive tree estimated to be 3,000 years old. Hearty and resilient, “the Olive Tree of Vouves” still bears fruit today. Because, yes, olives are apparently considered a fruit. Arc … | Continue reading
It would be clichéd to describe Leonardo da Vinci as a man ahead of his time. But in the case of the quintessential Renaissance polymath, it may well be one of those clichés firmly rooted in truth. In fact, that rooting has just grown even firmer with the discovery of a triangle … | Continue reading
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this: John Water giving a tour of his 1980s apartment. Highlights of the tour include: his collection of portraits of murderesses (preferably murderesses who have since found religion), an electric chair, a witches’ br … | Continue reading
Perhaps, this past Valentine’s Day, you caught a screening of James Cameron’s Titanic, that nineteen-nineties blockbuster having been re-released for its 25th anniversary. You may have even found yourself feeling a renewed appreciation for the film’s precision-engineered mixture … | Continue reading
Page turning is to ASMR as the electric bass is to rock. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s popular Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response video series (find it here) has seen episodes devoted to iconic Second Wave feminist magazines and a couple of late 20th-century pop up artist’s … | Continue reading
Imagine two prisoners, each one placed in solitary confinement. The police offer a deal: if each betrays the other, they’ll both get five years in prison. If one betrays the other but the other keeps quiet, the betrayer will walk free and the betrayed will serve ten years. If nei … | Continue reading
The Austrian symbolist painter, Gustav Klimt, a driving force of the Vienna Secession, has joined the ranks of famous, dead artists being served up as pricey, super-sized, Instagram-friendly immersive experiences. Jane Kallir, author of Gustav Klimt: 25 Masterworks and co-founder … | Continue reading
Images via JustSayGnome The Noam Chomsky Garden Gnome. That’s right, I said it, the Noam Chomsky Garden Gnome. Over at justsaygnome.net, you can buy “Gnome Chomsky the Garden Noam.” Here’s is how it’s generally described: Just over one foot in height, the fully painted Gnome Chom … | Continue reading
Nearly two centuries after his death, the eighteenth-century utilitarian philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham — or most of him, anyway — still sits in state in the main building of University College London. For a time in the mid-twenty-tens, he was equipped with the Pa … | Continue reading
If a painter is ahead of his time, his work won’t sell particularly well while he’s alive. If an architect is ahead of his time, his work probably won’t exist at all — not in built form, at least. Such was the case with Étienne-Louis Boullée, who constructed few projects in the e … | Continue reading
Before Super Bowl LVII fades too far into the background (being an Eagles fan, it can’t fade fast enough for me), it’s worth flagging this great ASL performance of Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Above, you can watch Justina Miles, a nursing student at HBCU Bowie State Univer … | Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times published an article headlined “How to Stop Ruminating.” If your social media feeds are anything like mine, you’ve seen it pop up with some frequency since then. “Perhaps you spend hours replaying a tense conversation you had with your bo … | Continue reading
Care to take a guess what your smart phone has in common with Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira? Both can be used to track fertility. Admittedly, you’re probably not using your phone to stay atop the reproductive cycles of reindeer, salmon, and birds, bu … | Continue reading
Your Pretty Much Pop hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Al Baker talk through various ethical and narrative problems having to do with the creation of artificial life. We all watched M3GAN and Steve Spielberg’s A.I., and also touch on After Yang, Ex Machin … | Continue reading
Punk is not only not dead, it’s getting a fresh burst of energy, thanks to The Unglamorous Music Project, a female collective in Leicester. In accordance with punk tradition, musical ability is not a primary concern. Shockingly, life experience is. With five, six, and seven decad … | Continue reading
Zaha Hadid won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most prestigious award, in 2004. She was then in her early fifties — practically a schoolgirl by the standards of her profession — and had only completed four buildings. Yet the Pritzker committee already suspected that she saw po … | Continue reading
Many of us built our first LEGO models in childhood and, a few years thereafter in adolescence, read our first Lord of the Rings novel. We continue to look fondly back on such formative cultural experiences in adulthood, and indeed, some of us retain a genuine appreciation for th … | Continue reading
The vinyl record–we’ve shown you how they were made way back in 1937, and also in 1956. But how about nowadays, during the renaissance of vinyl? Above, Wired visits Jack White’s Third Man Records vinyl pressing plant in Detroit, Michigan to “find out exactly what goes into the cr … | Continue reading
ChatGPT, the system that understands natural language and responds in kind, has caused a sensation since its launch less than three months ago. If you’ve tried it out, you’ll surely have wondered what it will soon revolutionize — or, as the case may be, what it will destroy. Amon … | Continue reading
In the year 1966, “it seemed to Western youth that The Beatles knew — that they had the key to current events and were somehow orchestrating them through their records.” So writes Ian McDonald in the critical study Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties. But … | Continue reading