Today in 1475 Michelangelo was born. One of his masterworks was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, though if a poem he wrote about the job is to be believed, making all that great art was pretty painful. Plus: a series of portraits of every US president with a mullet.
Today in 2019, the sale of a portrait by 19th Century English miniaturist Sarah Biffin, a renowned artist who was born without full arms or legs and whose life and work are the subject of an exhibition now running in London.
There's a phenomenon in art history where some paintings feature dogs with lit flares in their mouths. They're not committing arson or leading Indiana Jones through a dark cave... but what are they doing?
In the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum, there’s a mirror from 16th Century China that has been keeping a secret for centuries. And, at long last, that secret is out.
Today in 1923, King Tut's tomb was opened and entered. That may not have been the afterlife the young pharaoh had hoped for, but it could have been worse: for centuries artists used a paint called Mummy Brown, which was made with actual mummy parts.
The new book "The First Ghosts" looks at how humans have been describing and depicting ghosts for thousands of years, including a Babylonian tablet showing a lonely, bearded ghost dude from 1500 B.C.E. Plus: today in 2013, a merchant naval officer said a great way to deter pirates off the Somali coast was to blast Britney Spears tunes.
On Indigenous Peoples Day, here's the story of sculptor Edmonia Lewis. She was born in the 1840s to a Black father and a Chippewa mother, and became the first Native American and Black woman to become an acclaimed sculptor. Plus: Happy Thanksgiving to our listeners in Canada. It’s a big country, except for the exhibit known as Little Canada, which features miniature versions of some of the country’s most famous cities, landmarks and attractions.
Sagarmatha, aka Mount Everest, is the world's highest mountain, and the site of a growing environmental problem. A new initiative wants to remove trash and recyclables from the peak and turn some of them into art. Plus: a year after its founding, the Black Art Library is bringing new attention to great Black visual artists and is itself an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
Today is the birthday of Ruth Faison Shaw, an art teacher who spotted a kid smearing iodine on the school walls and saw a way kids could express themselves. Plus: art is alive and well in cats, or at least in a photographer taking portraits of cats going wild for - and sometimes on - catnip.
When World War II put many pro athletes into military service, pro sports leagues had to get creative. That's how on this day in 1943, two pro football teams that normally competed against each other joined forces. Plus: for World Smile Day, we check in on the story of the guy who first designed the smiley face.
