Arts & culture · 3 min read
Renaissance fashion: clothing, status, and the body
Rich fabrics and striking silhouettes were only part of the story. Renaissance clothing also communicated rank, allegiance, virtue, and economic power.
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Arts & culture
Art, dress, music, and traditions across generations.
10 histories to explore
Arts & culture · 3 min read
A timeline of fashion design: from craft to couture
Fashion has a much longer history than the modern designer label. Tailoring, trade, industrial production, and new ways of selling clothes all shaped the profession.
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The ‘voodoo doll’: how a stereotype acquired a history
Pin-stuck dolls in popular culture are not a reliable guide to Haitian Vodou. Similar-looking ritual objects can belong to very different traditions.
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Tap dance: rhythm, exchange, and the struggle for recognition
Tap developed through African American and European-derived dance traditions, then changed across minstrelsy, vaudeville, jazz, film, and concert stages.
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African American Art: A History of Artists, Institutions, and Self-Representation
African American art encompasses many media and aesthetic positions. Its history includes both extraordinary individual works and the institutions that made artistic careers possible.
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The Renaissance: Classical Learning and a Changing European World
The Renaissance was an uneven set of cultural transformations, beginning in Italian cities and spreading through European networks of scholarship, patronage, trade, and print.
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The History of False Lashes: Patents, Film, and a Viral Myth
False lashes were developed before Hollywood made them famous. Patent records offer firmer evidence than a much-repeated story about an invented nineteenth-century woman.
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The History of ‘Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory’: The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The familiar opening identifies Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic. Its words transformed an existing tune into a powerful Union-era statement about moral purpose and war.
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Jingle Bells: A Popular Song Before It Became a Christmas Standard
James Lord Pierpont’s sleighing song became a holiday favorite, but its earliest documented performance context includes blackface minstrelsy rather than a securely established Thanksgiving church debut.
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Chicago’s Bean: How Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate Took Shape
Cloud Gate became one of Chicago’s most familiar public artworks through a combination of ambitious engineering, reflective form, and the public’s own nickname: the Bean.
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