In a Roman villa at the center of a nasty inheritance dispute, a Caravaggio masterpiece is hidden from the public
I teach Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, so when I was visiting Rome in January 2023, how could I not try to see a notorious villa that was up for sale and involved in a nasty inheritance dispute? The Villa…
How whiteness was invented and fashioned in Britain’s colonial age of expansion
Fashion is political — today as in the past. As Britain’s Empire dramatically expanded, people of all ranks lived with clothing and everyday objects in startlingly different ways than generations before. The years between 1660 and 1820 saw the expansion…
What is Afrofuturism? An English professor explains
What is Afrofuturism? An English professor explains
Before the Ouija board: William Rossetti’s diary gives an insight into Victorian séances
Death and disease are no strangers to the streets of Britain. By the late 19th century, tens of thousands of people had contracted fatal infections, such as cholera, smallpox and scarlatina, beginning with the first cholera epidemic of 1832, when…
Anxiety can often be a drag on creativity, upending the trope of the tortured artist
In the U.S., anxiety disorders affect about one-third of the population. So it’s no surprise that a good number of artists and writers also suffer from anxiety and depression. But whereas some critics see Vincent Van Gogh’s striking paintings and…
Nel Law stowed away on her husband’s ship to Antarctica. She was the first Australian woman to see its ‘crystalline strangeness’
I know many people born in 1961 – they are my contemporaries and friends. It doesn’t seem so long ago. Their lives and experiences seem modern to me. They don’t seem old: certainly, none of them have problems working their…
