Puzzle constructors like Anna Shechtman are pushing to make crosswords more socially and linguistically inclusive. She writes about gender and puzzles in her memoir “The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle.”
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Art
When painter Sougwen Chung paints something in collaboration with an AI she trained — say, a black oil-paint brush stroke — a robot mimics Chung. But at some point, the robot continues without Chung and paints something new. So how creative is AI?
Annabel Abbs-Streets found a way to creatively and spiritually embrace her sleepless hours. She writes about what she discovered in a book called “Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self.”
Dreams are funny, confusing and surprising in the world of cartoonist Roz Chast. And they are occasionally disturbing and maybe necessary to process both our everyday and most bizarre thoughts, she tells Shannon Henry Kleiber.
The Frans Hals Museum in the Netherlands holds an exquisite collection of 16th and 17th century Dutch art — and the largest collection of paintings by artist Frans Hals himself. Steve Paulson takes us along on a tour of Hals’ work, and talks with Steven Nadler, a philosopher who has written a new book about Hals.
In her latest novel, Irish novelist Maggie O’Farrell takes us into the world of Renaissance Italy, where she unravels the tale of a young woman, Lucrezia de’ Medici. Shannon Henry Kleiber talked with O’Farrell about what we can learn about history and ourselves through the many layers of portraits.
Peter Brathwaite has now researched and re-imagined more than a hundred paintings of Black subjects. What began as a game is now a book and a museum exhibition called “Rediscovering Black Portraiture.”
Before family photos, or school pictures or Instagram, there were hand-drawn and painted portraits. We consider how we see ourselves — and others — through these deeply personal images.
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