A detail from Ophelia by John Everett Millais, c. 1851

JSTOR Daily’s Archives of Art History

Our editors have rounded up a collection of stories about art, artists, museums, and the way (and why) we study them.
Famous Chicken Rice in Singapore

The Singaporean State on a Styrofoam Plate

Hawker centers, a uniquely Singaporean institution, bring a form of street commerce practiced around the world under the authority of state regulators.
An artist's representation of the Earth during Huronian Glaciation

Snowball Earth

How scientists discovered that unique Scottish rocks record when Earth was first encased in ice.
Elvis Presley singing on stage with Bill Block, circa 1950s.

How Pentecostalism Shaped Rock ’n’ Roll

Early rock and roll performers, including Little Richard and Elvis, were influenced by the sounds and tropes of Pentecostal worship services.
Close-up of a raccoon

Raccoons in the Laboratory

The lab rat is now a symbol of science, but psychologists once believed that raccoons presented unique potential in the study of animal intelligence.
Brigadier General Smedley Butler, 1927.

Genesis of the Modern American Right

During the Great Depression, financial elites translated European fascism into an American form that joined high capital with lower middle-class populism.
No. 27 - Kakegawa: Akibayama Fork, from the series The Tôkaidô Road - The Fifty-three Stations, also known as the Reisho Tôkaidô, between 1847 and 1852

How a Rice Economy Toppled the Shogun

The co-existence of economies—one based on rice, the other on money—pushed the Tokugawa government toward financial misery and failure.
A cover for The Power of Non-violence by Richard Gregg

Richard Gregg: An American Pioneer of Nonviolence Remembered 

Gregg was one of the first translators of Gandhi’s methods of nonviolent resistance for the West.
Gift for the grangers

The Gift of the Grange

Originally a secret society, the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry today is an important health and education resource in rural communities.
Portrait of L.M. Montgomery

L. M. Montgomery’s Plain Jane

Though not as well known as Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery's Jane of Lantern Hill also explores domesticity, freedom, and, yes, Prince Edward Island.