By Jeff Turrentine I met Jim Brainard recently on a sunny summer afternoon in Bryant Park, a grassy oasis roughly the size of one square block nestled among the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan. The stately New York Public Library — one of the city’s most famous cultural institutions — defines the park’s perimeter on one […]
By Patrick Rogers The fact that nature and nation share a common root—the Latin verb nasci, “to be born”—might rate as trivia to most people. But in the context of early American art, at least, the connection has profound cultural meaning. Paintings of natural vistas, from New York’s Hudson Valley to the purple mountains and […]
By Jeff Turrentine What do we mean when we say that a city is “healthy”? Do we mean that it’s cleaner, safer and less polluted than others? That its economy is booming? That it spends its taxpayers’ money wisely, on projects that benefit the many over the few? That it prioritizes the building of community—not […]
By Jason Bittel Somehow the striking blue-throated hillstar, a hummingbird with an emerald-feathered head and sapphire splash across its neck, managed to elude us for a very long time. Scientists just recently discovered Oreotrochilus cyanolaemus, describing the species for the first time in The Auk: Ornithological Advances. Perhaps we humans didn’t notice the bird before […]
By Jeff Turrentine Sometimes enlightenment arrives as a flash of epiphany: a gravity-obeying apple that falls from a tree, for instance, or a blinding light that freezes you in your tracks on the road to Damascus. Other times, though, it’s more of a process. That’s how Gabe Brown came to regenerative agriculture. About 20 years […]
By Clara Chaisson What do you call a sculpture that weighs nearly nothing, never looks the same twice, and vanishes into thin air? Artist Fujiko Nakaya has built a storied five-decade career out of the answer to this seeming riddle: a fog sculpture. The Japanese artist has presented her atmospheric works more than 80 times […]
By Patrick Rogers After South Beach, Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood is the city’s epicenter of color and creativity. The low-slung postindustrial landscape just north of Miami’s downtown is an Instagrammer’s paradise—block after block of warehouses covered with vivid murals by some of the world’s greatest street artists, among them Kenny Scharf, Shepard Fairey and Maya Hayuk. […]
By Jason Bittel Since Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano began erupting in early May, we’ve been mesmerized, month after month, by videos depicting what can happen when molten rock dances through the air, forms gigantic rivers or crashes into a Ford Mustang. But some videos are much harder to watch—like those depicting the many homes destroyed or […]
By Jeff Turrentine Science fiction doesn’t always stay fictional. Space exploration, robots and self-driving cars are just a few of the modern-day wonders that once existed only as plot devices or fantastical theories. Our capacity for turning science-fictional notions into the stuff of everyday life has grown with each new generation of scientists and microchips, […]
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