Behold 900+ Magnificent Botanical Collages Created by a 72-Year-Old Widow, Starting in 1772

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“I have invented a new way of imitating flowers,” Mary Delany, a 72-year-old widow wrote to her niece in 1772 from the grand home where she was a frequent guest, having just captured her hostess' geranium's likeness, by collaging cut paper in a nearly identical shade.

Novelty rekindled the creative fire her husband’s…

A New Dutch Reality TV Show Challenges Contestants to Paint Like Vermeer–and It’s a Hit!

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Jokes about "reality television" being a contradiction in terms go as far back in pop-culture history as the format itself. But the fact remains that, deliberately or otherwise, its programs do reflect certain characteristics of the societies that produce them. Before turning into one of the most globally successful franchises of this century's reality-TV boom,…

The Map of Mathematics: An Animated Video Shows How All the Different Fields in Math Fit Together

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If you're a regular Open Culture reader, you have hopefully thoroughly immersed yourself in The Map of Physics, an animated video--a visual aid for the modern age--that mapped out the field of physics, explaining all the connections between classical physics, quantum physics, and relativity.

You can't do physics without math. Hence we now have…

Bored at Work? Here’s What Your Brain Is Trying to Tell You

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That we spend much, if not most, of our lives working is, in itself, not necessarily a bad thing — unless, that is, we're bored doing it. In the Big Think video above, London Business School Professor of Organizational Behavior Dan Cable cites Gallup polls showing that "about 70 percent of people are…

Essential Japanese Cinema: A Journey Through 50 of Japan’s Beautiful, Often Bizarre Films

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In 2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. The award itself came as less of a surprise than did the fact that Shoplifters was the first of Kore-eda's films to win it, given how long he'd been the most widely acclaimed Japanese filmmaker alive. And though it had been more than twenty…