This week we meet with English artist Oliver Blank who explores our sense of time and place through public installations. And this time we make an artwork together.

Order our book YOU ARE AN ARTIST (which includes this + new assignments!) Alec Soth is a photographer who works on large-scale projects that play with the boundaries...

You probably made rubbings in elementary school, but Kim Beck views rubbings as field recordings. She wants you to take a snapshot of a particular place by making a rubbing of the ground you're standing on.

This week we meet with Jon Rubin, a Pittsburgh based artist whose practice often focuses on cultural exchange, pushing us to imagine other people and their lives more complexly. For his assignment, he asks you to do the same by bridging...

We went to ArtPrize and met up with Minneapolis based artists Carolina Borja and Amy Toscani. Their exhibit this year invited the audience to destroy the large-scale handmade piñatas that they had spent hours constructing. And now it’s...

We interview the remarkable Vanessa Hill, creator of BrainCraft, a production of PBS Digital Studios, which explores psychology, neuroscience & why we act the way we do.

There are apparently no shadows in these images. But they were taken during the brightest part of the day. There are only certain parts of the year and certain times of day when you can experience the subsolar point or Lahaina noon....

Sampling, appropriating, borrowing, stealing. Whatever you want to call it, artists have been copying since time immemorial. We look into the history of the practice, and share our theories of why it is done, and what it can offer us.

The planet is Arrakis. Also known as Dune. And y’all, it’s a mess. December of this year, we were supposed to see the arrival of director Denis Villeneuve’s interpretation of the 1965 novel Dune, which had been previously (and rather...

Here’s the problem with tackling Ernest Hemingway—Ernest Hemingway himself. While the iconic author is mostly known for his feats of literary prowess, from The Sun Also Rises to For Whom the Bell Tolls, to countless short stories—perhaps...

A total solar eclipse passed across North America on August 21, 2017. Are there other total solar eclipses in the solar system?

“Young Adult” fiction is a term whose meaning has varied wildly over the years. It can apply to coming of age tragedies or Serialized adventures of babysitters, or insert really dated twilight joke here. But where did this “young adult”...

We explore the recipes of artist Frida Kahlo, whose work celebrated Mexico's history, vivid colors, and it's FOOD. On the menu: 1) Chiles Stuffed with Cheese aka Chiles Rellenos 2) White Rice with Plantains 3) Nopales Salad 4) Tequila.

Before women were asking “Am I a Carrie or a Samantha?”, they were asking “Am I a Jo or an Amy?” Before there was Edward vs Jacob, there was Laurie vs Professor Bhaer. And over the more than 150 years since Little Women was originally...

Join Physics Girl and PBS Digital Studios' new show SoundField as they experiment with giant $100,000 speakers and aim them at your body parts looking for resonance, at oobleck, at googly eyes, and at candles to explore the physics of...

Artists have been taking selfies since the dawn of photography. Cameras allowed people to capture their own image in a way that had never been possible in all of human history, and today most of us carry these magical devices in our...

We spent a week in Grand Rapids absorbing everything that was ArtPrize 2015, the world’s largest art competition. Here’s a taste of what we found. Many thanks to Kevin Buist for talking to us about the event!

This week we try our hand at one of those top 10 lists we keep seeing on the Interwebs these days. Specifically, we're going to talk about ten ideas that led to the idea of this very show! We'll look at how ideas are cyclical - informed...

The Art Assignment furthers their exploration of New Orleans to visit artist Bob Snead. He's the Executive Director of Press Street, an organization that promotes art and literature in the community through events, publications and arts...

Michelle Grabner is curator, critic, professor, and artist who works in multiple mediums, but much of her work centers around pattern and color. Her assignment asks you to recall an activity you may have done in kindergarten and explore...

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is one of history’s most famous novels and one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history. On this special episode of It’s Lit! we explore how Les Miserable became both a national and...

Novels like Passing by Nella Larsen, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and the poetry of Langston Hughes were all written during this period and have become important pieces of the American literary canon. Still, when...

This week we meet with Tschabalala Self, whose work explores ideas surrounding the black female body; and her assignment asks you to consider your own body as a symbol too.

It's the worst bout of inflation in decades... What's going on? And what can you do about it?