Author: Lance Garrison
“What if museums give back so much art that they have nothing left to display?” As a scholar of the debates about returning cultural objects to the countries from which they were stolen, I have, over the years, heard many variations of that question. “Museums have lots and lots of stuff,” I usually answer, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. “It’s not like they’re just going to shut down.”But in December, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it would return a substantial proportion of its Khmer-era works to Cambodia, which is claiming still more, including nearly all the museum’s…
By Mark Braxton, as told to Kendall MorganIn 1996, I discovered a small white spot on my thumb. It itched. I thought it was a scab or something. I didn’t think too much about it. Then, I started noticing other small white spots. They were spreading.The first dermatologist I went to looked at me and walked right back out of the room. He came back in with a pamphlet and said, “This is what you have: vitiligo.” At that time, there wasn’t a lot of information. The doctor gave me a topical cream for it. I tried it for 6…
Hatred makes people gullible and foolish. That’s a key lesson of the MAGA right’s deeply strange turn against Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, the Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end Travis Kelce. In fact, that’s a key lesson from this entire sorry era in American political and cultural life.There’s nothing new about partisan anger at celebrities. And Swift has dabbled in politics. In 2018, she endorsed the Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, Phil Bredesen, over Republican Marsha Blackburn, and in 2020 she endorsed Joe Biden for president. Kelce, for his part, appeared in ads for the Pfizer Covid vaccine.…
By Erika Page, as told to Hallie LevineI’ve been living with vitiligo since I was 7 years old. It started as small spots on the back of my spine but quickly spread, first to my knees and elbows, then all over my body. By the time I reached my early 20s, I’d lost all of my skin pigment. I put on a brave face because I didn’t want anyone to know how much I was hurting, but I had moments where I’d lie in a crumpled heap, crying on the floor. The worst part was the feeling of lack of…
It’s easy to imagine what’s going through Donald Trump’s head right now. I can hear his interior monologue all the way from Mar-a-Lago. He’s fulminating, working himself up to another epic meltdown, like he had over Nikki Haley the night he won the New Hampshire primary. The thoughts pinballing through Trump’s cortex might be something like this:“I like Taylor Swift. I do. She’s made a career of revenge, which gets my Complete and Total Endorsement. She’s beautiful, just my type, unlike that wack job E. Jean Carroll and her sick lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.“Rachel Maddow is not getting my money for…
Every new year Dan Wang, a technology analyst with an East Asia-based economics research firm and a gifted observer of contemporary China, writes a long, reflective letter about the year just past, mixing analysis with personal experience. In this year’s letter the most memorable element is a single piece of Chinese slang: “rùn.”The term means exactly what it sounds like: “Chinese youths have in recent years appropriated this word in its English meaning to express a desire to flee.” Initially it could just mean escaping the expectations of parents or the big city grind. But after years of Zero Covid…
After nearly four months of war, the situation in Gaza is catastrophic. More than 75 percent of the area’s population of more than two million are displaced. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, many of them children. The United Nations warns that famine is imminent. Infectious diseases are spreading. The lack of health care is critical.The main lifeline for Gazans in this landscape is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, the nearly 75-year-old agency that is almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions. Now, at least 15 countries, including the United States, have announced…
The overarching point of Lincoln’s speech was the threat of social disorder brought on by unregulated passion:I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit,…
To the Editor:Re “Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts,” by David Brooks (column, Jan. 19):I understand why Mr. Brooks is frustrated by regulations, and by the administrators charged with overseeing them. Clearly, not having such administrators involved could both lower costs and make (some) people’s lives easier.What he doesn’t take into account is why those regulations were enacted in the first place, and why administrators are needed to oversee them. Left to their own devices, employers would probably still be hiring people who looked like them. It has taken regulation, and oversight, for women and people of color to have…
I follow a lot of cooking accounts on TikTok and Instagram, which means that I get served ever more cooking content, and over the past few years, I’ve noticed a stylistic change.My feed used to be dominated by a style of video popularized by BuzzFeed’s “Tasty” series in the 2010s: The action was generally shot from above or from the side, featuring close-ups of a creator’s hands chopping ingredients. But lately, more and more of the cooking video creators appear as their full selves, and most of them are blandly attractive. Sometimes, they don’t seem to even be cooking in…