Frida Kahlo’s legacy is definitely informed by her careful husbandry of own image. She understood its currency, and how to leverage it. Even when caught out of uniform or having a seemingly unaware laugh, she stayed true to what in modern parlance would be called her brand.

Ecce panis—try your hand at the kind of loaf that Mel Brooks’ 2000-year-old man might have sunk his teeth into. Literally.
In 1930 a loaf of bread dating to AD 79 (the year Vesuvius claimed two prosperous Roman towns) was excavated from the site of a bakery in Herculaneum.

Looking to expand your capacity for art appreciation, without spending much in the way of time or money?
You could play Masterpiece, or check some Sister Wendy out of the library…
Or you could watch conservator Michael Gallagher tenderly ministering to 17th-century painter Charles Le Brun‘s Everhard Jabach and His Family, above.

Close your eyes for a moment and picture the artist Vincent Van Gogh. What do you see?
Probably one of the prolific post-Impressionist’s self-portraits.

Has there ever been a more entertaining song containing–as critic Robert Christgau enumerated— “slavery, interracial sex, cunnilingus, and less distinctly, sadomasochism, lost virginity, rape and heroin” as the Rolling Stones’ 1971 “Brown Sugar”? The song’s lyrics lay in wait for those who hear it in passing on classic roc

Imagine the dress up fun we could have in Grandma’s attic, if Grandma were Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) and the attic was a sealed off Mexico City bathroom where Grandpa – artist Diego Rivera, natch – had stashed all her stuff.

Image by Fred Palumbo, made available by the Library of Congress.
Put THIS in your pocket. The Library of Congress is celebrating National Poetry Month by launching its new Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. It debuts with 50 choice poetry recordings, spanning 75 years of time.

We all know that saying about walking in another’s shoes, but what about seeing through another’s eyeballs? I’m not talking about perspective. I’m talking about color. As in I see it, and my husband doesn’t. At least not the way I do.
His coping mechanism is to challenge me whenever I refer to something as “blue.

Circling Birdies by Cheko, Granada Spain
Since last we wrote, Google Street Art has doubled its online archive by adding some 5,000 images, bringing the tally to 10,000, with coordinates pinpointing exact locations on all five continents (though as of this writing, things are a bit thin on the ground in Africa).

Image courtesy of The Prado
Are you one of the millions of sighted visitors who’ll visit a world class institution this year only to find yourself suffering from museum fatigue a couple of hours in? You know, that moment when all the paintings start to look alike, still lifes, crucifixions, and teenage noblewomen swimming before your eyes?
If so