How Art Conservators Restore Old Paintings & Revive Their Original Colors

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We tend to imag­ine old paint­ings as hav­ing a mut­ed, yel­low-brown cast, and not with­out rea­son. Many of the exam­ples we’ve seen in life real­ly do look that way, though usu­al­ly not because the artist intend­ed it. As Julian Baum­gart­ner of Chicago’s Baum­gart­ner Fine Art Restora­tion explains in the video…

The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

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Pho­to of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen by Kathin­ka Pasveer via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You may hear the phrase “elec­tron­ic music” and think of super­star dub­step DJs in fun­ny hel­mets at beach­side celebri­ty par­ties. Alter­na­tive­ly, you may think of the mer­cu­r­ial com­po­si­tions of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen, the musique con­crete of Pierre Hen­ry, or the oth­er­world­ly…

When the Dutch Tried to Live in Concrete Spheres: An Introduction to the Bolwoningen in the Netherlands

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In the decades after the Sec­ond World War, many coun­tries faced the chal­lenge of rebuild­ing their hous­ing and infra­struc­ture while also hav­ing to accom­mo­date a fast-arriv­ing baby boom. The gov­ern­ment of the Nether­lands got more cre­ative than most, putting mon­ey toward exper­i­men­tal hous­ing projects start­ing in the late nine­teen-six­ties. Hop­ing to hap­pen upon the next…

Elementary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” & Other Rock Hits: A Cult Classic Recorded in 1976

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In 1976 and 1977 an inspired music teacher in the small school dis­trict of Lan­g­ley Town­ship, British Colum­bia, a sub­urb of Van­cou­ver, record­ed his ele­men­tary school stu­dents singing pop­u­lar songs in a school gym. Two vinyl records were pro­duced over the two years, and fam­i­lies were invit­ed to pay $7 for a copy. The…

Enter an Archive of 10,000+ Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized & Free to Read Online

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We can learn much about how a his­tor­i­cal peri­od viewed the abil­i­ties of its chil­dren by study­ing its chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. Occu­py­ing a space some­where between the pure­ly didac­tic and the non­sen­si­cal, most children’s books pub­lished in the past few hun­dred years have attempt­ed to find a line between the two poles, seek­ing a bal­ance…