A classical statute in a strawberry sequined dress

Cottagecore Debuted 2,300 Years Ago

Keeping cozy in a countryside escape, through the ages.
Cat with its hair standing up

Nine Black Cat Stickers

They crossed our path and we lived to tell the tale. Check them out in the Street Arts Graphics Collection!
A poster advertising the IV Review of Polish Short Films, organized by the Zygzakiem Cinema Club in Warsaw, January 11-14, 1976.

Polish Posters in the RISD Library Collection

Posters are part of a tradition of object-based learning at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Harry Gottlieb's Artists' Union membership card, 1935

How the Artists Union Shook Up the New Deal

When artists showed solidarity with one another and the larger labor movement, they won federal patronage.
"Nixon Tearing the Heart out of Indochina" by René Mederos

Anti-Imperialist Propaganda Posters from OSPAAAL

OSPAAAL, the international, pro-communist organization formed in 1966, decried American imperialism with powerful propaganda.
Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.24738828

The Wellcome Collection—Perfect Medicine for the Incurably Curious

Pharmacy genius, Henry Solomon Wellcome amassed a lot of knowledge—and amazing tchotchkes too.
Religious candles placed by religious devotees at a Catholic shrine in San Antonio, Texas.

In Defense of Kitsch

The denigration of kitsch betrays a latent anti-Catholicism, one born from centuries of class and ethnic divisions.
Daguerre's diorama

Diorama, qu’est-ce que c’est?

Before his daguerreotype, the French inventor Louis Daguerre unveiled a new kind of “virtual reality” on a British stage.
The CIA logo over a Jackson Pollock painting

Was Modern Art Really a CIA Psy-Op?

The number of MoMA-CIA crossovers is highly suspicious, to say the least.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schreibzeug_(Nürnberg).jpg

How Renaissance Artisans Turned Live Animals into Silver

Lifecasting was the renaissance art of making sculptures using molds taken from real-life plants and animals.