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An early Paramount logo, picturing the iconic ring of stars around a mountain with the words "A Paramount Release."

The Ruthless Rise and Fall of Paramount Pictures During Hollywood’s Golden Age

The venerable movie studio once defined the industry's zeal for consolidation, pioneering vertical integration and serving as the model for its major rivals.
by Thomas Doherty via The Hollywood Reporter on February 29, 2024
Cartoon of California and Colorado talking about suburban housing.

Orange County, Colorado

How a California homebuilder remade the Interior West.
by Caroline Tracey via New York Review Of Architecture on February 19, 2024
Bottom half of a red sheet music cover with the words "Sung by Aida Overton Walker with the Smart Set Co" written on it with a portrait of Aida to the right

Sheet Music Covers for the Gotham-Attucks Company, ca. 1905–1911

Beginning in 1905, one star-studded song-publishing company would push the aesthetic limits of how Black popular music was shown to the public.
by Dorothy Berry via The Public Domain Review on February 1, 2024
Women wearing hot pants.

The Great Leg Show!

Hot pants served as a sartorial riposte to the fashion industry’s relentless campaign for the midi.
by Oline Eaton via Contingent on January 30, 2024
Shadowy photo of a man making scarecrow out of a plastic bag and can.

What Has Been Will Be Again

A new documentary photography project grapples with manifestations of a problematic past resurfacing in present-day Alabama.
by Jared Ragland, Catherine Wilkins via Southern Cultures on January 24, 2024
Niels Vodder display with furniture designed by Finn Juhl, Cabinetmakers Guild Exhibition, 1949.

Freedom Furniture

How did Americans come to love “mid-century modern”?
by Marianela D’Aprile via The Nation on January 23, 2024
Tom Wolfe in profile against the New York City skyline.

The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative

Tom Wolfe was no radical.
by Osita Nwanevu via The New Republic on January 5, 2024
The author’s mother, 1927.

Christina Sharpe and the Art of Everyday Black Life

In "Ordinary Notes," Sharpe considers Black culture “in all of its shade and depth and glow.”
by Omari Weekes via The Nation on December 13, 2023
A turntable and records.

What’s Old is New Again (and Again): On the Cyclical Nature of Nostalgia

Retro was not the antithesis to the sub- and countercultural experiments of the 1960s, it grew directly out of them.
by Tobias Becker via Literary Hub on December 13, 2023
A Historic American Buildings Survey photograph of a house being demolished.

Before the Wrecking Ball Swung

The Historic American Building Survey's mission to photograph important architecture before its demolition.
by Martin Filler via New York Review of Books on November 9, 2023
The Trubek and Wislocki Houses, 1970, Nantucket, Massachusetts, by Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi.

The Historian’s Revenge

The rise and fall of the Shingle Style ideal.
by Witold Rybczynski via The Hedgehog Review on November 1, 2023
A modern paper map of Boston, marked with Sharpie lines.

Boston's Map, Explained

Boston has more "made" land than any other American city.
by Daniel Steiner via YouTube on October 26, 2023
Part of a Xerox poster with the words "punk with copymachine" in front of a face

Xerox and Roll: The Corporate Machine and the Making of Punk

On the 85th anniversary of the first xerographic print, a collection of punk flyers from Cornell University provides an object lesson on anti-art.
by Alex Houston via JSTOR Daily on October 22, 2023
Shelby Foote with a drawing of a Civil War battle superimposed over him.

The South’s Jewish Proust

Shelby Foote, failed novelist and closeted member of the Tribe, turned the Civil War into a masterpiece of American literature.
by Blake Smith via Tablet on September 6, 2023
Collage of people in "preppy" clothing.

We’re All Preppy Now

How a style steeped in American elitism took over the world.
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela via The New Republic on August 14, 2023
American blues singer and guitarist Leadbelly performs for a room full of people, 1940.

Is the History of American Art a History of Failure?

Sara Marcus’s recent book argues that from the Reconstruction to the AIDS era, a distinct aesthetic formed around defeat in the realm of politics.
by Lynne Feeley via The Nation on July 31, 2023
Front entrance of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Mütter and More

Why we need to be critical of medical museums as spaces for disability histories.
by Aparna Nair via Disability Visibility Project on July 29, 2023
Miles Davis, Howard McGhee, and unknown pianist. NYC, September 1947.

On Menand’s "The Free World" and Dinerstein’s "The Origins of Cool in Postwar America"

Two differing explorations of post-WWII culture, politics, and ideals.
by Michael J. Kramer via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on May 21, 2023
Good Housekeeping cover with girl looking at wedding cake topper

Wedding Cake Toppers: Miniatures, Excess, and Fantasy

Tying frilly white doves and normative bride-and-groom couples to feminist art and DIY craft practices that offer opportunities for creativity and fantasy.
by Kendall DeBoer via Dilettante Army on May 1, 2023
Painting called "Hudibras’ Discomfiture at the Hands of the Skimmington," by Francis Le Piper, seventeenth century.

American Charivari

The history and context of the made-up aesthetics of the early Ku Klux Klan.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 24, 2023
Albert Ayler (right) and his brother Donald Ayler, Harlem, 1966.

Escaping from Notes to Sounds

The saxophonist Albert Ayler revolutionized the avant-garde jazz scene, drastically altering notions of what noises qualified as music.
by Andrew Katzenstein via New York Review of Books on April 20, 2023
Illustrated J. Crew cover, showing a blonde white couple wearing "preppy' clothing sitting by a river; a young man's khaki shorts, boat shoes, and school books on a campus; a crew team on the water. Illustration by Nada Hayek.

J. Crew and the Paradoxes of Prep

By mass-marketing social aspiration, the brand toed the line between exclusivity and accessibility—and established prep as America’s visual vernacular.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on March 20, 2023
Roland Rhythm Composer

What Drum Machines Can Teach Us About Artificial Intelligence

As AI drum machines embrace humanising imperfections, what does this mean for ‘real’ drummers and the soul of music?
by Jack Stilgoe via Aeon on February 28, 2023
Black writers Askia Toure, Lorenzo Thomas, and Ismael Reed seated at an Umbra meeting.

A New Flame for Black Fire

What will be the legacy of the Black Arts Movement? Ishmael Reed reflects on the transformation and growth of Black arts since the 1960s.
by Ishmael Reed via New York Review of Books on January 14, 2023
Drawing by Thomas Rowlandson, of the "Inside View of the Public Library," Cambridge, 1809.

A Library by the Book

For its ubiquity and richness, the American library building stands as a reflection of the country’s enlightened calling.
by James Panero via The New Criterion on November 11, 2022
Black and white photo of Woody Guthrie holding a guitar labeled "this machine kills fascists"

I've Got Those Old Talking-Blues Blues Again

The Folkies and WWII, Part Two.
by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on October 13, 2022
Mark Wallinger's "Self-Portrait," a painting showing black dripping paint in the silhouette of an unfurled scroll on a grey background

The Illusion of the First Person

The personal essay is the purest expression of the lie that individual subjectivity exists prior to the social formations that gave rise to it.
by Merve Emre via New York Review of Books on October 11, 2022
Illustration of a coal stove with the roof of a house, as if the whole house is a furnace.

When Coal First Arrived, Americans Said 'No Thanks'

Back in the 19th century, coal was the nation's newfangled fuel source—and it faced the same resistance as wind and solar today.
by Clive Thompson via Smithsonian on July 5, 2022
In 1972, Ray Womack, wearing an “Explo 72" shirt, begins a 900-mile run to Dallas, for an evangelical rally.
partner

An Evangelical Youth Event Could Offer Clues About the Movement’s Future

TOGETHER ’22 aims to mimic EXPLO ’72 — which provided hints about the rising conservative evangelical tide.
by Benjamin J. Young via Made By History on June 24, 2022
“Dressing for the Carnival” painting, featuring colorfully dressed character Jonkonnu surrounded by Black women and children.

Race, War, and Winslow Homer

The artist’s experiences in the Civil War and after helped him transcend stereotypes in portraying Black experience.
by Claudia Roth Pierpont via The New Yorker on April 7, 2022
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