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Arts & Culture

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His Heart Was in the Highlands

Robert Burns’ fierce pride, penetrating wit and perfect ear for language gave Scotland—and the world—an imperishable legacy of poetry and song

A Guide to Cliches

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William Merritt Chase

Praised by critics, admired by colleagues and respected by students, the distinguished 19th-century artist produced paintings and pastels of gentle beauty

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Where Plato Is Your Professor

Graduating from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland—or Santa Fe, New Mexico—guarantees a place in the Republic

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Please Eat the Art

Bananas, mushrooms, yams take on all sorts of delightful forms in the hands of food sculptor Saxton Freymann

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Inside Bollywood!

Bombay’s movie industry is India’s dream machine. Each year it churns out hundreds of wild and gaudy spectacles

Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum

An Oasis of Art

Long Island City’s best-kept secret, the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum offers a rare insight into the sculptor’s work

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Zora Neale Hurston: Out of Obscurity

Both praised and scorned in her day, this flamboyant writer of the Harlem Renaissance is attracting new generations of literary fans

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Portraits of Her People

Historian, photographer and Macarthur “genius,” Deborah Willis documents the black experience

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The Twigman Cometh

If Patrick Dougherty shows up in town, he’s there to make art - with a twist - out of sticks

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Hide the Catalogs

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Farewell, Bright Soul

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What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Hint: It’s Real

Andrew Carroll

Andrew Carroll: Man of Letters

From poetry to war correspondence, this 31-year-old has been spreading words with a missionary’s zeal

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Libba Cotten’s Guitar

Left-handed, she taught herself to play, wrote the folk classic “Freight Train” and sang into her 90s

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything

Book Reviews: Faster

Faster by James Gleick

At the Moulin Rouge (1895), a painting by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec that captures the vibrant and decadent spirit of society during the fin de siècle.

Art Nouveau

The exuberant fin de siècle style is celebrated in a sweeping exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington

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