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David Bowie singing into a microphone wearing a feather boa and tights.

How Pop Came Out of the Closet

Jon Savage’s “The Secret Public” traces the influence of queer artists on a hostile culture.
Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull’s Life Contained Rock Music’s Secret History

The harrowing and heroic life of Marianne Faithfull, cheater of a thousand deaths and music history’s true avenging angel.
Exhibit title card featuring a mural of Elizabeth Cotten.

Lady Plays the Blues Project

A digital annotated bibliography and multimedia archive about Black women country blues guitarists.
James Baldwin at work on his novel “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone," and smoking.

Refinding James Baldwin

A fascinating new exhibit focuses on Baldwin’s years in Turkey, the country that, in his words, saved his life.
Bob Dylan smoking a cigarette with his arms around Mimi Farina.

Bob Dylan and the Creative Leap that Transformed Modern Music

Bob Dylan decided he wanted to subvert the expectations of his fans – and rebel against industry forces intent on pigeonholing him and his work.
he obverse (right) and reverse (left) of the James H. Hyde Medallion, designed by Paul H. Manship, on the Janvier reduction machine.

Tokens of Culture

On the medallic art of the Gilded Age.
1940s era tattoo shop

How Do You Preserve Tattoo History When Skin And Memory Fail?

Ed Hardy's historic tattoo parlor is closing. A lot more than that stands to be lost.
Still from the documentary "Obsessed with Light", depicting Loie Fuller on stage in a gown.

A Dazzling Light in Dance History

When dancer Loïe Fuller’s spinning garment reflected the stage lights, it took on a life of its own, beguiling those in New York, Berlin, and Paris.
Portrait of Ena and Betty Wertheimer by John Singer Sargent, 1901.

Friend of the Family

Jean Strouse explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.
Photograph of Drag stars: Lady Bunny, Misstress Formika, Sweetie, Anna Conda, Tabboo!

A Nearly Complete Oral History of the Pyramid Club

The Pyramid Club is the stuff of downtown New York legend. In the 1980s, a tiny little dive bar became ground zero for the exploding New York drag scene.
Gustav Mahler; Charles Ives.

Anchoring Shards of Memory

We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both composers mined the past to root themselves in an unstable present.
Bruce Springsteen performing at the New Haven Coliseum in New Haven, Connecticut circa 1977-1978.

Springsteen's U.S.A.

Steven Hyden's new book about Bruce Springsteen's iconic "Born in the U.S.A" album is the product of a lifelong passion for the music of "The Boss."
A photograph of saxophonist Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1964.

Why the Nordic Countries Emerged as a Haven for 20th-Century African American Expatriates

An exhibition in Seattle spotlights the Black artists and performers who called Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden home between the 1930s and the 1980s.
Aaron Douglas, “Still Life,” n.d.

The Harlem Renaissance Was Bigger Than Harlem

How Black artists made modernism their own.
A photograph of Bonnie Erickson posing with the Phillie Phanatic mascot.

Miss Piggy Has a Mother

Everyone’s heard of Jim Henson. It’s time to give Bonnie Erickson — creator of beloved Muppets and mascots including the Phillie Phanatic — her due.
A poster for "The Gay Deceivers" of a naked man holding a pillow, with the tagline "Is he? Or isn't he? Only his draftboard and his girlfriend know for sure."

The Gay Deceivers Was an Early Landmark for Queer Cinema

This 1969 film offers a compelling context for queer cinema and culture prior to the 1970s.
Jack Conroy

Jack Conroy and the Lost Era of Proletarian Literature

In the midst of the Depression, Conroy helped encourage a new generation of working-class writers.
Covers from Lippincott's and Harper's from the 1890s.

Advertising as Art: How Literary Magazines Pioneered a New Kind of Graphic Design

Allison Rudnick on the rise and fall of the 19th century "Literary Poster."
Sinclair Lewis.

How to Study the “Village Virus”

Sinclair Lewis and the small-town science of yearning.
A woman in a dress shows off her drawings.

Pioneering D.C. Artist Inez Demonet Helped WWI Soldiers Put Their Lives Back Together

Meet the Washington artist who pioneered the field of medical illustration — and helped repair the lives of soldiers returning from WWI.
A collage of dance performances.

Dance, Revolution

George Balanchine and Martha Graham trade places.
Harry Smith pointing finger upward

Outsider’s Outsider

At once famous and obscure, marginal and central, Harry Smith anticipated and even invented several important elements of Sixties counterculture.
Ledger drawing of Plains Indians on horseback.

A Shameful US History Told Through Ledger Drawings

In the 19th century ledger drawings became a concentrated point of resistance for Indigenous people, an expression of individual and communal pride.
A colorful drawing of Native Americans on horses.

Pictures From a Genocide

An astonishing new show of Native American ledger drawings brings a historic crime into focus.
Miles Davis.

Not Not Jazz

When Miles Davis went electric in the late 1960s, he overhauled his thinking about songs, genres, and what it meant to lead a band.
Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham performing in Letter to the World.

Thunder in Her Head

A look into the life, art, and "wildness" of influential choreographer Martha Graham.
Untitled (Strike), Dox Thrash, c. 1940.

Hard Times

The radical art of the Depression years.
partner

When Art Fuels Anger, Who Should Prevail?

Controversial artworks are flashpoints when artistic freedom and religious sensitivities collide.
Charlie Chaplin.

A Man Without a Country: On Scott Eyman’s “Charlie Chaplin vs. America”

Our favorite artists may not be our favorite people.
A photograph of Louisa May Alcott.

Nonfiction That Rivals Little Women: The Forgotten Essays of Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott is best known for Little Women, but she earned her first taste of celebrity as an essayist.

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