Contemporary Muslim artists continue to adapt Islamic patterns to challenge ideas about fixed culture
What is culture? In today’s globalized world, we are familiar with seeing various cultural objects and ornamentation outside of their original location or context. If culture is not fixed and bound to a particular location, how does culture move and…
LGBT+ history: the story of camp, from Little Richard to Lil Nas X
Although camp is difficult to define, it probably doesn’t need much description. Ever since 1956 – when former teenage drag queen Little Richard began performing his tribute to anal sex, “Tutti Frutti”, while wearing a six-inch pompadour, plucked eyebrows, and…
Libraries around the world are helping safeguard Ukrainian books and culture
My mother was born in Sambir, Ukraine, and my father in Przemyśl, Poland. They both spent their childhoods as refugees. They lived among displaced Ukrainians who fled to Austria and Germany as the Red Army advanced in July 1944. My…
Artists organize to offer new visions for tackling climate change
In April 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued another report on the dire situation of the planet. The climate crisis is becoming hard to ignore as extreme weather events become commonplace across the globe. Recently, the Pew Research…
Heritage algorithms combine the rigors of science with the infinite possibilities of art and design
The model of democracy in the 1920s is sometimes called “the melting pot” – the dissolution of different cultures into an American soup. An update for the 2020s might be “open source,” where cultural mixing, sharing and collaborating can build…
