A new film captures the courage and heartbreak of Detroit's dramatic history.
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Former Fleet Foxes drummer Josh Tillman charts new lyrical and musical territory as Father John Misty on the new album Fear Fun.
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In the sense that a mutt has several genetic influences and not necessarily one that’s dominant, that descriptor is a fitting title for Americana troubadour Cory Branan’s newest album, Mutt.
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Light in the Attic Records illuminates the solo work of Lee Hazlewood from his fertile late '60s era with The LHI Years: Singles, Nudes & Backsides (1968-71).
|
!WAR reminds us of why feminism was cool and that
the fight for equality is not over.
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Controversy over a recent Formula One race in Bahrain illustrates the confused place of politics in sports.
|
Listening to Yann Tiersen’s Skyline
feels a bit like catching up with an old friend: though you might have to get reacquainted, chances are you’ll enjoy doing it.
|
Cuban, Afrobeat, lounge and ambient-electronic music all meld beautifully to offer the perfect summertime soundtrack on Congo Sanchez's album Volume 1.
|
In "Bonsai People - The Vision of Muhammad Yunus," Holly Mosher’s new documentary about microcredit loan pioneer Muhammad Yunus, Mosher uses a clever method to tell her story.
|
For decades, Chicano culture has been built on a legacy of soul music, doo wop, zoot suits, and classic lowriders.
|
On Cynic's New Year, Horse Feathers
maintains the stark contrast between their uplifting arrangements and dark,
poetic lyrics that have become a trademark of their sound.
|
The Alabama Shakes have come out of nowhere to break big, and once you listen to their debut album, Boys & Girls, you'll understand why.
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What's new in Cuban music and how they do it differently than we do.
|
On its Illusion EP, Poor Moon offers folky tunes fit for cloudy, slow-moving mornings when a cup of tea beckons to rub off the haze of sleep.
|
If there was ever a doubt it was possible to put a youthful, energetic spin on classic country music without being disrespectful, Chuck Mead has buried it on Back at the Quonset Hut.
|
Northern Ireland is covered in images of sectarian conflict, but the Belfast Interface Project aims to refashion old murals to reflect a shared future.
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There's plenty of cool outlaw art on the street, but these three artists engage the audience to diagnose community ills and promote healing.
|
Cool Nightmare, the follow-up EP to the debut album of Portland-based quintet Radiation City, captures the oddities and eeriness of nighttime gloom with infectious pop hooks and impressive production.
|
Justin Townes Earle sings the lyrics of a world-wise, yet still young man on "Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now."
|
Polari occupies a special place in the history of gay culture, but the subversive dialect is now endangered.
|
When Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, New York, couldn’t pay the bills, it tapped into the strength of its community with cooperative ownership. Less than a year later, the bookstore is thriving....
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An architect converts the obsolete payphones that line New York’s city sidewalks into tiny public libraries....
|
Jeju Island’s remarkable sisterhood of haenyeo, free-diving grandmothers, is on the edge of extinction
|
Modern scrimshaw artists are carving edgier images into whale bones.
|
“Dead Letters: The Very Best Grateful Dead Fan Mail” showcases the depth of devotion of Dead Heads everywhere.
|
In the new Batgirl storyline, comic heroine Barbara Gordon was cured of her paraplegia. Much of the disability community was infuriated...
|
Photographer Mandy Barker serves up a meal made of very unconventional—and inedible—ingredients...
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“Masters of American Music” showcases legendary jazz artists.
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A documentary about how Detroit turns its desolate lots into vegetable plots.
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Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s new film is at once realistic and humanistic.
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It’s time for baby boomers and retirees to embrace their age.
|
A Japanese manga book makes learning about wine tasting fun...
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With all that’s wrong with the world, let’s at least stand up for polite social interaction...
|
Dorothy Collective turns your toy box into a hotbed of subversion...
|
India’s hugely popular films wage a cultural war on extremism...
|
Why Oprah Winfrey understands women and the power of television better than anyone else
|
Doug Rickard’s “A New American Picture” captures serendipitous flashes of modern life from Google Street View...
|
A night at the museum with pianist Jason Moran and the recently departed Sam Rivers—an avant-garde jazz giant and saint of the seventies loft scene in New York.
|
Fast food’s pioneering juggernaut McDonalds is paving its future path with modern ambiance and cosmopolitan menu items. Is the corporation poised to leave Ronald McDonald for dead on the side of the road?...
|
For many people, the legendary songstress put Cape Verde on the map...
|
An environmental writer takes issue with The Sound of Music, only to be won over by his daughters’ reenactment of its opening scene in their home hills of Nevada, a place decidedly not the green world of the Austrian Alps...
|
A Chicago arts program preserves the city’s most famous music...
|
Hanni El Khatib's doo-wop-tinted punk rock vibrates with pure adrenaline...
|
Blue Hour is a patient, instrumental soundtrack for complex emotions...
|
Kiran Ahluwalia weaves global aesthetics into a sensual tapestry...
|
A dramatic triptych shows a rural Chinese mining town slowly suffocating...
|
Gary Hustwit's latest documentary provides a glimpse into the world of innovative urban design...
|
An Iranian marital drama that turns into a complex, class-conscious exploration of Islamic faith...
|
Why believing in Santa Claus makes us bad people...
|
A new hip hop song re-imagines “F*ck tha Police” for the Smartphone generation...
|
Who wants lasers and glitter when you can have a good old stick?...
|
A conservative publication encourages its readers to revisit George Orwell’s “A Hanging,” and then re-examine their stance on capital punishment.
|
Not homebrewed beer, not coffee, not artisan soda—the geekiest beverage is good old French bubbly...
|
Sleek, clutter-free modernist homes are not for everybody. In fact, sometimes they’re not even for modernist architecture writers…
|
Troubled Israeli youths get back on track by going off road...
|
One person’s sleeptalk is another’s collectible recording...
|
An architect embraces the economic slowdown...
|
An aspiring actor endures the indignity of auditioning for commercials...
|
Photographers restage and recreate iconic works of art by painters from Rembrandt to van Gogh in surprising ways, both paying homage to the artists and offering cultural criticism….
|
Seeing the world in black and white (with subtitles)...
|
If you’re not familiar with K-Pop, here’s an introduction to one of the most influential music genres on the planet...
|
“Made by Hand” is a film series that shows the beautiful, painstaking work that goes into artisanal products...
|
A conductor’s unexpected path to Carnegie Hall...
|
After more than 150 years, the great American soda fountain still inspires...
|
After nearly four years of prolonged economic struggle people were bound to start asking: Where is the music that speaks to my problems? The answer to this question may be closer than you think...
|
Sketch artist Gary Bedard drew Occupy protestors each with a dollar bill taped over his or her mouth, saying, “The dollar bill speaks to ending silence on corporate greed”...
|
Is there a better way to teach students about war than glorifying and apologizing for violence?...
|
Fashion may be a moving target, but one thing is for sure: Naming babies after living politicians and celebrities is out of style...
|
Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
Ben Grasso’s spectacular paintings expose the American dream for what it really is: an empty house broken into a million pieces...
|
Esko Lönnberg’s avant-garde documentary about obscure Finnish rock band Circle plunges into the deep end of post-modern cinematography...
|
There's only one way to get a sense of America’s food waste: dumpster diving!...
|
Kenneth Bowser’s documentary portrays Phil Ochs like the hero of a silver-screen Western...
|
The siege of Nanking has been chronicled in a number of dramas and documentaries—but none as lush and majestic as this recent Chinese epic...
|
Like Dead Can Dance before them, Prince Rama's spiritually tinted music transcends both creed and genre...
|
Banjoist Jake Schepps adroitly balances the refined and the rustic on his arrangements of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók's folk music...
|
Asa's Beautiful Imperfection is a sparkling pop album colored with exciting international touchstones...
|
A photo essay from Shannon Galpin of Mountain2Mountain who rode through Afghanistan by bike and motorcycle...
|
When times are tough, people tend to seek art out. This piece kicks off a four-part series examining how the art of today's Great Recession compares to that of two crisis moments of the past -- the Great Depression of the 1930s and the 1970s Recession.
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Our country is in need of a reinvigorated discussion about the death penalty. Here’s a cultural to-do list to get you prepared...
|
Under the candy-pink veneer of pop culture website The Frisky hides a true feminist heartbeat. Just check out Today’s Lady News….
|
After considering 15,000 submissions from more than 190 countries, an online jury chose a logo they hope will become an internationally recognized symbol for human rights...
|
Through shows like the highly acclaimed The Wire, Generation Kill, and Treme, David Simon has shown that television can be more than a tool for appeasing audiences and stoking ratings. It can be a medium that forces us to reconsider our world....
|
Architect Peter Williams, who knows firsthand that poor housing results in poor health, is on a mission to design healthy homes for impoverished communities in the UK; Cameroon; Saint-Marc, Haiti; and beyond, through his nonprofit Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments (ARCHIVE)...
|
Stanford University cognitive scientist Lera Borditsky conducts groundbreaking research on how language shapes thoughts, making her a figure of controversy among traditional linguists like Noam Chomsky. Boroditsky makes the bold claim that “different languages invite speakers to develop different cognitive skills.”...
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Following the successful path of community-supported agriculture programs, two arts organizations develop a similar program for the art world...
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As the old saying goes, “One man’s dry cleaner shop is another man’s concert hall.”...
|
Rock ’n’ roll helped America win the Cold War. India’s film industry threatens to take down Islamic Fundamentalism.
|
From the seat of a tricycle rickshaw, Beijing-based artist Nicholas Hanna steers the art of temporary calligraphy into the fast lane...
|
Artist Tom Deininger takes impressionist perception to a new level with his re-creation of Monet’s masterpiece Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, composed entirely of found objects.
|
Is that a heap of garbage or a work of art?...
|
Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
When schools are low on money, cash-strapped teachers often pick up the bill for extra supplies. A new business hopes to make it less expensive...
|
Adrian Fisk’s iSpeak photography project hopes to give a voice to the voiceless—all 2.5 billion of them...
|
Although they look like crumpled wads of cash, Dan Tague’s miniature money sculptures hide a hidden, anti-capitalist message...
|
How boxing got knocked out of the American consciousness...
|
Why Garrison Keillor still loves radio. Originally published in the September-October 2005 issue of Utne Reader...
|
One teacher’s pragmatic defense of liberal arts education has a refreshing, mortal urgency...
|
A feminist teaches film to men serving time for armed robbery and murder. Discussing movies like Crooklyn, The Hurt Locker, and Thelma & Louise chips away at their hard-edged vision of what it is to be a man….
|
Last month, a program called Documenting Endangered Languages received $3.9 million in funding to rescue the world’s disappearing languages, which may hold clues to our cultural and biological histories…
|
A European dance night promises an extra sensational experience for everyone—including the Deaf...
|
The Dorothy Collective turns iconic toys into mischievous satire...
|
What I found when I found my people...
|
A portrait made from 13,138 dice expresses the randomness of life...
|
The 100-year-old organization looks to research that may illuminate its future...
|
A dynamic performance artist brings environmentalism to underserved urban communities through the projects Life Is Living and The Living Classroom…
|
Are face and neck tattoos the latest status symbol of the upper middle class?...
|
Photographer Todd McLellan takes things apart and shows you what’s inside.
|
James Mollison’s latest photo essay shows the stark difference between people from different world regions and cultures...
|
The Arbor portrays the working-class travails of Northern England’s housing projects...
|
Indie record label Asthmatic Kitty's documentary, Make, explores the frontiers of creativity...
|
A Swedish documentary offers a refreshing, unbiased look at the black power movement...
|
A veteran Texas singer-songwriter rises well above her peers...
|
Elegaic chamber music has never sounded so enchanted...
|
Garage à Trois combine rock and punk with the technical proficiency of jazz.,,
|
Superman was born from the creative minds of two Jewish teens whose boyhoods were steeped in comic books and science fiction—and a real-life traveling Jewish strongman named Zisha Breitbart….
|
Felines and humans have cohabitated for millennia. But who domesticated whom?...
|
Blending literature and architecture, a visual pop artist creates a seven-story tower of books to celebrate her city's designation as the world book capital.
|
Phil Ochs, a protest singer from the ‘60s and ‘70s, lived a short, tragic, enigmatic life...
|
Polynesia’s Tuamotu Islands provide the setting for the classic real-life adventure Kon-Tiki and the modern-day organic-worshipping New Testament Church cult….
|
In New York City, an intense battle over new bike lanes has erupted into a fierce cultural war. But this isn’t the first time a new mode of transportation has opened a schism…
|
As filmmaker Terrence Malick grapples with God’s inscrutability in Tree of Life, a feminist viewer grapples with his depiction of woman as a symbol of virtue....
|
In this age of with-us-or-against-us political discourse, even the arts are sometimes complicit in promoting fixed, simplistic, polarizing views as the only way to solve complex social issues.
|
An architect praises the lousy economy, comparing the loss of business to a farmer allowing a field to lie fallow for a season to regenerate. What surprisingly positive effects have you found in the economic slowdown?...
|
What does the last meal say about the man awaiting execution?...
|
We used to name our children to honor inspiring leaders, heros, and artists. That’s no longer the case...
|
At a small Portland pub, you can help change the world by drinking tasty microbrews...
|
Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
Are those patrons that support all types of art an endangered species?...
|
U.S. historical markers are typically nonconfrontational—except for the fake ones put up by Norm Magnusson along U.S. Interstate 75...
|
A viral sensation pulls back the curtain on Southern hip-hop...
|
An experimental comic book lets you deep into the characters’ minds. That is, if you know how to get in...
|
Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
Effervescent artist Agustina Woodgate sews poems into second-hand clothes, with one eye on store security…
|
A blog looks at abandoned places and the reasons they became ghost towns...
|
Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
The inside story of a shy photographer who no longer owns his own face...
|
Despite what dad and granddad have always said, sports may not be the best way for boys to “build character”—or so suggest artists in a new exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
|
Paul Walde makes artsy percussion music from insect behavior...
|
All you need is scotch tape, an internet connection, and the willingness to vandalize private property...
|
Miranda July's latest film, narrated by a stuffed cat, is odd and profound...
|
A ribald ride through sexual scandal by documentary genius Errol Morris...
|
A former Earth Liberation Front activist is regretful, but not entirely repentant...
|
A darkly tinted folk album asks big questions and revels in simple pleasures...
|
An Icelandic modern classical composer channels the bombast of a coal mine brass band...
|
The forerunner of the Afro-Peruvian music revival returns with a Latin American menagerie...
|
Critics extol the mind-nourishing virtues of “cultural vegetables”...
|
Criticizing any aspect of hip-hop culture is a task fraught with danger. But author Thomas Chatterton Williams is unafraid to enter the fray…
|
One man, 100,000 toothpicks, and a whimsical kinetic replica of San Francisco you have to see to believe…
|
Retro-camera apps rewrite history in real time—or at least edit it—as we see fit...
|
Opening wide this weekend, Terrence Malick’s fifth film, Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, is the auteur’s most ambitious and emotionally rewarding. . . .
|
Soundset is a yearly menagerie of hip hop’s best and brightest stars...
|
A look around the web to see how folks are celebrating the man at 70...
|
Academics embrace the Flying Circus...
|
The interview that forever changed the way Alan Lomax interviewed musicians...
|
Experimental-minded, camera-wielding Frenchmen ISO a formerly graceful, gently (or not so gently) aging city willing to show its dark nether regions for artistic photo shoots. Serious inquiries only.
|
The greatest saxophonist in jazz closes out the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival with a memorable performance...
|
Day two of a three-day chronicle of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival...
|
From Professor Longhair’s civil defense helmet to Gregg Allman’s “Whipping Post;” the first of three on-the-scene chronicles from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival...
|
An anti-billboard promotes the beauty of North American Skies...
|
Photographers Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman add a surprising new layer of context onto Twitter...
|
Get familiar with the 2011 Utne Independent Press Award nominees for best arts coverage…
|
Suggest to the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris that some of the band’s newly reissued songs are near-classics, and he’ll correct you: They already are …
|
Dawes reinvents folk for a new generation...
|
Folky duo Holly Golightly on the pleasures of homesteading, gallows humor, and the American Civil War...
|
Get to know our nominees for the 2011 Utne Independent Press Awards for the best Social/Cultural coverage...
|
An ingenious mash-up channels the cast of Jersey Shore through the foppish wit of Oscar Wilde...
|
“Ruin porn” aesthetically disconnects human suffering from devastation...
|
Experimental art venue Open Field lets patrons pick the exhibit...
|
Symmetry goes sublime in Everynone’s new short film...
|
Steve Earle on his new record, his first novel, a play in progress, and acting on HBO…
|
An intimate tale of modern infidelity is the latest slow-burning masterpiece from Romania’s new wave...
|
At a remote Russian Arctic weather station, two men spin an epic story about mistrust, survival, and, ultimately, reconciliation...
|
A lively portrait of Pakistan’s Bhutto family reveals thorny progress in the Islamic country...
|
Walt Whitman’s lines “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” are more true today than ever before…
|
Chris Burden’s burden has long been how to follow the daring and provocative work of his youth; now, nearly forty years later, he's back in the limelight, and his work stunningly reflects our modern world...
|
Your guide to the 17 coolest releases and reissues on Record Store Day...
|
The typical U.S. historical marker, cast iron with raised lettering, usually raises more questions than it answers. Artist Norm Magnusson’s I-75 Project uses the form for a different sort of provocation…
|
Italian producer Alessio Natalizia's dreampop project is the culmination of years of moonlit bedroom tune-crafting...
|
Multi-instrumentalist Colin Stetson plays fluttering compositions for sax, French horn, and clarinet...
|
Singer-songwriter Alela Diane has a rich, gossamer, downright entrancing voice...
|
The 69-year-old icon recently performed in China for the first time, only after agreeing to submit a set list to the National Ministry of Culture…
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In an age with 14 million registered musical acts on MySpace, have all the good band names been spoken for?...
|
An aging rock fan sticks around for the encore...
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Watch the video for the title track of Julianna Barwick’s “The Magic Place,” reviewed in the latest issue of Utne Reader...
|
It has often seemed a foregone conclusion, but it has finally happened: Dissident Chinese artist and blogger Ai Weiwei has been detained in a Chinese government crackdown…
|
Long before the work of street artists like Banksy hit the mainstream, the hard streets of Southern California were ruled by the placas of los Sureños...
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Building a community out of a shared love of music, one track at a time...
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Our art director explains the process of illustrating brainy kids from cold climates…
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Some of the most creative, passionate, adaptable leaders have a background in the arts...
|
Amid all the din and the distractions at the South by Southwest music festival, it’s easy to forget that songwriting still holds currency. Utne Reader is proud to be sponsoring two SXSW showcases that reveal the art of the song is alive and well…
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How a record of humanity, currently situated 10 billion miles from its source, may end up as the most influential cultural artifact ever...
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Joe Sacco’s illustrations force viewers to confront economic disaster...
|
Speech patterns mimic music’s ability to invoke some emotions...
|
An Italian pop-historian is decoding clues to art’s unsolvable mysteries...
|
In “American Qu’ran,” the artist Sandow Birk attempts to bridge several vast divides—between art and religion, between America and Islam, and between expression and faith...
|
Videos of flash mobs never fail to make me smile...
|
A zine for children of Elvis impersonators turns into a documentary...
|
Malian and Cuban musicians have reconvened to explore their countries’ musical and cultural links...
|
Julianna Barwick’s ethereal sound is somewhere between a lullaby and a hymn...
|
The Persuasions cover 14 of Bob Dylan's most famous songs in doo-wop style...
|
Countdown to Zero wears its agenda—complete, global disarmament—on its sleeve...
|
Tom Shadyac’s earnest new feature is a documentary about the interconnectedness of all life...
|
In Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s first European film, romantic travelogue quickly gives way to philosophical treatise...
|
Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
Love really is like a magic penny. Or at least it sort of is.
|
Whether you look in the publisher’s warehouse or the pages of a book review, literary women are underrepresented...
|
Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
Because of the Great Recession, artists struggling in the once-booming Meccas of New York and Los Angeles are increasingly desperate to find greener, less expensive art towns to work in...
|
Physically integrated dance companies blur lines, cross barriers...
|
Architect Jim Williamson recollects the aesthetic frustration and unexpected epiphany of his first project as an architect in Midland, Texas, the commission for the gravesite of the wife of an oil millionaire....
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Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
New articles about DMX and Pharoahe Monche show that rappers aren’t educated at the School of Hard Knocks—they’re sent back for reeducation by an ever-watchful mainstream media.
|
How Rusto lost its luster for street artists....
|
A look back at the best books of 2010....
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Artist Adam Watson reimagines Star Wars through a Dr. Seuss lens….
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Art Director Stephanie Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
Imagine a museum that assaults every sense as you walk through its rooms....
|
A ribcage-rattling hum, a head-enveloping buzz, a bracing beat: These are the main elements in Bear in Heaven’s exquisitely constructed music, which is as much a physical as an auditory experience....
|
Robert Plant’s late-career detour into string-flecked Americana has come as a surprise—especially to die-hard Zep fans who just want to hear him wail on “Immigrant Song” until he takes the stairway to heaven....
|
Rahim AlHaj was hounded out of Iraq in the early 1990s after his song “Why?” became a hit among the anti-Saddam political resistance....
|
Artist Francesca Woodman killed herself in 1981 at the age of 22....
|
This funny and illuminating exposé chronicles the unlikely rise of a French videomaker named Thierry Guetta, who became a Los Angeles street-art phenomenon....
|
A smart, honest snapshot of black power’s legacy, Night Catches Us captures a heated transitional moment in the civil rights struggle, smack dab between the empowerment of hard-won gains and the disillusionment of later mistakes....
|
A new documentary by Martin Scorsese sheds light on the famously unproductive and opinionated Fran Lebowitz....
|
Classical music would be more enjoyable if we knew what the heck was going on....
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Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
By presenting large-scale public art works that show how climate change impacts all of us, “350 Earth” reveals just how interconnected the world is....
|
Now more than ever there’s nothing new under the sun, but is that such a bad thing?
|
Some Mardi Gras Indians literally own their looks...
|
Nigerian actor and director Kunle Afolayan raises the bar and transforms the film genre from fast and cheap to slow and crafted....
|
Beautiful Basque tree carvings tell tales of adventure...
|
The song that we all know yet few of us love and even fewer can sing...
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The $40 billion-a-year video industry represents a new frontier for writers....
|
Dale Phelps turned his bout with cancer into woodblock prints...
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Every city is different on a gay writer’s eye-opening tour...
|
Street artists are trying to show you something besides their art....
|
Patterson Clark creates art out of invasive plant species....
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A new documentary examines the life and career of Glenn Burke, baseball's first openly gay ballplayer....
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How American artists, who are not often associated with baseball, have long paid homage to the sport, and what their works can reveal about baseball’s role in American society.....
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Writing for Maisonneuve Sheila Heti argues that actors need to find a new way to fully portray what it means to be human today....
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The documentary Neshoba shows that it took decades for any sort of justice to be meted out for crimes that happened in 1964 when a mob of Mississippians killed three civil rights workers who’d come to the state to register local blacks on voting rolls....
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In this intimate first-person documentary, filmmaker Doug Block takes a common experience in many parents’ lives—watching their child leave home for college—and transforms it into an absorbing, affecting, and universal story....
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This new edition of The Night of the Hunter restores the film’s proper dimensions, paying apt tribute to a classic whose elemental battle between love and hate has famously been cited in everything from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing to Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear....
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Possessing a wholly unique tenor, the 71-year-old Charles Lloyd’s latest album finds him unequivocally assured....
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A concept album, Return of the Century navigates a sinister world of cult compounds and polygamist societies....
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Whether you use it as a soundtrack for motion or meditation or both, A New Day is a great way to keep things chill....
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"Queloides" is an art exhibit that seeks to contribute to current debates about the persistence of racism in contemporary Cuba and elsewhere in the world....
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Art Director Stephanie
Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration…
|
Graphic Designer Yanko Tsvetkov creates fake maps of Europe that chart the stereotypes of people in various countries....
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A photographer captures the process of identifying the remains of hopeful Mexican immigrants who perish on their journey to the United States….
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New York artist Dalton Ghetti carves the graphite on the tips of used pencils to fashion brilliant mini-sculptures….
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Utne Reader Art Director Stephanie Glaros explains the process behind an Utne Reader illustration….
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Camp film god John Waters talks about his new memoir, “Role Models,” and virtually every sentence out of his mouth is priceless....
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Wallace Shawn is a radical playwright, occasional essayist, and the voice of Toy Story’s bumbling dinosaur Rex. In a new interview Shawn talks about theater as an artistic medium....
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The animated adaptation of My Dog Tulip, J.R. Ackerley’s 1956 cult masterpiece of interspecies love, is headed for theaters....
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After accompanying a biologist on a real-life environmental rescue mission, artist Christine Baeumler created a show that addresses ecological degradation….
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The rockers from the band Hypernova explain….
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According to one classically-trained voice instructor, some heavy-metal vocalists succeed in areas where even classical singers struggle....
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In what is labeled a “Chrome Experiment,” Arcade Fire teams up with Google to provide personalized music videos....
|
Emerging artistic disciplines are poised to shake up accepted notions of art history, criticism, and academic research.
|
The wah-wah pedal isn’t just an electric guitar effect, it’s a peacemaker, famous MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer tells Wax Poetics…
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Artist Patrick Maun tackles genocide and conflict minerals through the politically potent medium of poster....
|
Sculptor Chris Gilmour's work transforms cardboard headed for the recycling plant into meticulous life-size sculptures of everyday items....
|
Mexican puppet-theater troupe lets indigenous youth speak out....
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In Rwanda, women have started drum groups to help cope with the trauma of genocide....
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Scripting a ballet is an art in itself...
|
MADE THE HARBOR by Mountain Man (Partisan)...
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THE WAY OUT by the Books (Temporary Residence)...
|
NEXT STOP . . . SOWETO, VOLUMES 1, 2, AND 3 by various artists (Strut)...
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CARRIER: Untangling the Danger in My DNA by Bonnie J. Rough (Counterpoint Press)...
|
BYE BYE, MISS AMERICAN EMPIRE by Bill Kauffman (Chelsea Green)...
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MORAL GROUND: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson (Trinity University Press)...
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AJAMI (on DVD; Kino International)...
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THE OATH (on DVD; Zeitgeist)...
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FAVELA ON BLAST (on DVD and digital download; Mad Decent)...
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Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, directs a new play, Swimming Upstream: A Testimony, a Prayer, a Hallelujah, an Incantation, written by sixteen women from New Orleans.
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What do the interiors of airplanes owned by African dictators look like?...
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Photographer Andrew Zuckerman has released a book of incredible bird photographs....
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The web comic War is Boring is now a graphic-novel memoir....
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Brandon Bird's art reimagines pop culture icons Nicolas Cage, Jerry Seinfeld, Christopher Walken, and more.
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Matt Might provides an “illustrated guide” to a Ph.D....
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Photographer Carl Corey documents Wisconsin taverns for posterity.
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The DIY, counter-cultural aesthetic of underground music is at odds with its newly-found electronic immediacy...
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Photos taken near Ground Zero show that the area, despite being the site of a terrorist attack, is not so different than the rest of the city…
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Zina Saunders creates powerful portraits of same-sex couples…
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New access to the writings of Nina Simone give insight into how tortured the singer really was.
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Indie rock is a noun, not a verb. And it’s a poor musical descriptor besides …
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A new photo essay captures Minneapolis sex workers during their downtime...
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Ranjit Bhatnagar creates tantalizing images from his weekly greenmarket purchases…
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Broadsides turn poetry into guerrilla art...
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A review of four attempts to reimagine Christopher Nolan’s dreamscape action flick Inception....
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Give an artist an ancient crop-harvesting machine and he'll create evocative sculptures that question the relationships between people, society and technology with a pile of spare parts....
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Paste magazine has put together a list of eight literary works that are ripe for graphic novel adaptation....
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If you attend a large commercial powwow, you are more likely watching a sort of American Indian Idol instead of a sacred and ancient ceremony…
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Food blog The Stew has list of ten goofy food festivals happening around the world this summer....
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There's a new online resource for those who visit—and plan to visit—the houses of great writers....
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Two Dutch artists think that Brazil's slums can be beautiful. As part of a massive public art project, they're hiring locals to paint their neighborhoods...
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A look at Ghana’s tradition of creating beautiful custom-built coffins….
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Taking the stage at dusk on a steamy Minnesota night, the men of Devo probably felt they had something to prove. So prove it they did…
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“Long periods of inactivity can suddenly accelerate and time takes on a different dimension in bursts of controlled power…”
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The city's newest work of public art is a 30-foot-tall fiberglass eye....
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The British Film Institute announces a search for 75 rare films....
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Watch artist David Kassan paint on an iPad....
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A blogger is collecting pictures revealing the variety and beauty of bookshelves...
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Director Oliver Stone’s apparent willful ignorance of Hugo Chavez’s faults undermines his film’s legitimacy...
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What would you do with nine clunky cigarette-vending machines? Louis Rastelli decided to fill them with small-batch art objects....
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Studying the brains of jazz musicians through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology...
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Film critic Rob Nelson weighs in on the controversial director’s latest documentary on Latin America, which lambasts the media and celebrates Hugo Chavez.…
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IN PERSON AND ON STAGE by John Prine (Oh Boy)...
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GURRUMUL by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu (Dramatico)...
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CABO VERDE INSTRUMENTAL by various artists (Lusafrica)...
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A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF BOOKS by Fernando Báez (Atlas & Co.)...
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THE SECRET WORLD OF DOING NOTHING by Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren (University of California)...
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KISSES (Oscilloscope; in theaters and video on demand July 16)...
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THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (First Run Features; on DVD July 20)...
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ICONS AMONG US (IndiePix; on DVD and video on demand)...
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Strange Maps collects "cartographic curiosities" online...
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A documentary about Appalachian and Himalayan music suggests there’s a deep universal taproot of musical expression …
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Phony wildlife photography warps nature and is rarely revealed...
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I don’t know whether to ride on Kara Ginther’s custom bike saddles or display them in a gallery…
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Photographer Dwight Eschliman reveals the ingredients that make up a Twinkie...
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In March, painter Owen Maseko was arrested for art his government said "undermined the authority of the President." His response? More art and more undermining...
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This new Amnesty International video is a potent artistic depiction of the sadness and tragedy of the death penalty...
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Eric Fischer has created a bundle of striking maps, each depicting where in certain cities locals and tourists take photographs....
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The sci-fi magazine Redstone Science Fiction wants you to imagine disability as a simple fact in your vision of the future....
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A freelance game designer has redesigned a page from one of Horatio Alger’s novels as a scenario from the old computer game Oregon Trail...
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The blog English Russia has instructions for making a globe of your own country, city, or even town....
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Joshua Langlais sets out every day to photograph someone new….
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The English are up to their old tricks again....
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Charles Schulz didn’t just write about and draw the children of Peanuts. He had comics about teenagers, too....
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A film about a plastic bag blowing across desolate landscapes in search of its maker--sound like a drag? It is, and profoundly so....
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Cult filmmaker John Waters narrates a new documentary about a unique teaching tool for detectives….
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