Arts & Culture
Art Movements, Styles, and Schools
Art movements break up tens of thousands of years of art history into time periods or categories that have common techniques, themes, or philosophies.
© Universal History Archive—Universal Images Group/Getty Images
This Land Is Your Land
This Woody Guthrie composition has become something of an alternative patriotic anthem in the U.S. due to its focus on inclusion and equality.
Al Aumuller— NYWTS/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. LC-USZ62-113276
Editor's Picks
10 Paintings You Should See at the Met in New York City
These ten paintings have caused scandals and sparked mysteries—and you can find them only at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Start to unravel the complicated histories of Madame X, The Horse Fair, and more in this list. Earlier versions of the descriptions of these paintings first
The Thousand and One Nights
The Thousand and One Nights, collection of largely Middle Eastern and Indian stories of uncertain date and authorship. Its tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor have almost become part of Western folklore, though these were added to the collection only in the 18th century in European
5 Incredible Native American Artists
These five artists have combined their Indigenous roots with revolutionary artistic techniques to preserve their cultures in the face of adversity. Through their various media, they represent themselves, their identity, their families, and their tribes. list, Native American, art, pottery,
Maya Lin
Maya Lin is an American architect and sculptor concerned with environmental themes who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The daughter of intellectuals who had fled China in 1948, Lin received a bachelor’s degree in 1981 from Yale University in New
hip-hop
Hip-hop, cultural movement that attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and ’90s and also the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and/or rhyming speech that became the movement’s most lasting and influential art form. Although widely considered a synonym for rap
The “Howl” Heard Round the World
Sixty years after its publication in 1956, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” still echoes loudly. Not only did it alter the landscape of mid-20th-century poetry, but it also sounded a clarion call for the counterculture that followed and raised consciousness for generations to come. Arguably, however, its
Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is a self-described “obsessional artist,” known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. She employed painting, sculpture, performance art, and installations in a variety of styles, including Pop art and Minimalism. By her own
Street Photography: How a Single Camera Brought About a Genre
Candid images of the everyday, of common or unusual scenes playing out in public, are so ubiquitous in today’s image-flooded culture that it’s hard to remember that street photography as a genre formed only a little more than a half-century ago. A number of well-known artists were taking
Spotlight: Impressionism
Impressionism comprises the work produced between about 1867 and 1886 by a group of artists, headlined by Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir, who shared a set of related approaches and techniques. The most conspicuous characteristic was an attempt to accurately and objectively record visual reality in terms of transient effects of light and color.
Quizzes
Name That Hat! Quiz
Time to put on your thinking cap.
Famous Novels, Last Lines Quiz
Needless to say, spoiler alert.
Guess the Game Quiz
Roll the dice and go all in.
Iconic Pop Culture Villains Quiz
Do you know what famous villain’s costume was inspired by samurai? What bad guy’s middle name is Marvolo? Test your knowledge about pop culture’s dark side with this quiz about iconic villains!
Videos
How Beauty Looking Back reflects Japanese history
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Featured Categories
Art
5 Revealing Paintings by Caravaggio
The art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon writes of Caravaggio that “[h]e was a violent man, but he lived in violent times, and he was as much sinned against as sinning.” That may be an excuse for a man who was a murderer as well as a hugely influential artist of the late 16th and early 17th centuries,
The Group of Seven Remembered
Say “Group of Seven,” and most folks will assume you are referring to the organization of the world’s leading industrialized countries, whose annual summit provides the mother of all photo opportunities for the leaders of the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, and, until its
5 Incredible Native American Artists
These five artists have combined their Indigenous roots with revolutionary artistic techniques to preserve their cultures in the face of adversity. Through their various media, they represent themselves, their identity, their families, and their tribes. list, Native American, art, pottery,
10 Modernist Art Movements
The turn of the 20th century was a time rife with change, chiefly in the way in which people began to perceive civilization as a whole and its overall goal. The outbreak of World War I, or the supposed War to End All Wars, and the unprecedented devastation that ensued challenged the foundations of
Dance
Katherine Dunham
Katherine Dunham was an American dancer and choreographer who was a pioneer in the field of dance anthropology. Her fieldwork inspired her innovative interpretations of dance in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. Dunham early became interested in dance. While a student at the University of
Savion Glover
Savion Glover is an American dancer and choreographer who became known for his unique pounding style of tap dancing, called “hitting.” He brought renewed interest in dance, particularly among youths and minorities. As a young child, Glover displayed an affinity for rhythms, and at age four he began
Agnes de Mille
Agnes de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer who further developed the narrative aspect of dance and made innovative use of American themes, folk dances, and physical idioms in her choreography of musical plays and ballets. Her father was the playwright William Churchill DeMille, her
Mallika Sarabhai
Mallika Sarabhai is an Indian classical dancer and choreographer, actress, writer, and social activist known for her promotion of the arts as a vehicle for social change. The daughter of renowned physicist Vikram Sarabhai and dancer and choreographer Mrinalini Sarabhai, she was brought up in a
Film
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini was an Italian film director who was one of the most celebrated and singular filmmakers of the period after World War II. Influenced early in his career by the Neorealist movement, he developed his own distinctive methods that superimposed dreamlike or hallucinatory imagery upon
Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay is an American director, producer, and writer whose film and television projects explore the African American experience. Among her best-known works are the film Selma (2014), the documentary 13th (2016), and the miniseries When They See Us (2019). DuVernay was the first African
David Lynch
David Lynch was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who is known for his uniquely disturbing and mind-bending visual work. His films juxtapose the cheerfully mundane with the shockingly macabre and often defy explanation. Lynch’s father was a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and fashion designer known best for her films The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Lost in Translation (2003). In 2004, she was the first American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best director. Coppola is