When a nine-year-old girl in Georgia won a national ‘Evolution and Art’ contest, she was elated—until an administrator in her school tried to erase the word ‘evolution’ from her accomplishment.
Art
Exploring the visual arts from a secular perspective.
Posted inFree Expression
That which must not be seen
Reading Time: 6 minutes Religious people all over the world insist that their beliefs should control what everyone else can say, look at, or know about. The bargain of civilization means that these taboos can’t be enforceable.
Posted inArt
Secular freedom, compassion, and controversial spiritual symbols
Reading Time: 4 minutes A recent controversy over Islamic art raises the question of how we ought to deal with art and images in a world of deep diversity. At Hamline University in Minnesota, Erika López Prater lost her job teaching art history because she showed students artistic representations of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. A Muslim student took offense. The University’s […]
Posted inArt
A ‘City’ in the Nevada desert shows the glorious human-ness of art for its own sake
Reading Time: 6 minutes A colossal work of art called City recently opened for viewing in Nevada. Over a mile long and a quarter-mile wide, taking 50 years to complete, this installation makes a huge splash even when seen from high overhead. It’s a statement that speaks to one of the most human things about us: our desire to […]
Posted inArt
Art History professor fired for using ancient paintings of Muhammad in class
Reading Time: 5 minutes An art history professor in Minnesota was fired after showing students an ancient depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in class. The dismissal came after a Muslim student complained to administrators that the act was offensive and disrespectful; those school officials eventually agreed. The whole controversy has raised important questions about whether potentially offensive content should be censored […]
Posted inArts
Can a multi-sensory ‘extended reality’ story change our planet?
Reading Time: 4 minutes When I got a press release inviting me to fully immerse myself into a multi-sensory extended reality (XR) story, I almost circularly filed it. Yes, the title “U.S. Premiere of a Multisensory XR Story Symbiosis at PAM CUT // Center for an Untold Tomorrow” sounded intriguing. But after experiencing an overabundance of screen time for […]
Posted inEducation
Conservatives lash out at ‘satanic’ middle school mural drawn by teen
Reading Time: 3 minutes A harmless mural painted over the summer at the Child and Adolescent Health Center at Grant Middle School in Michigan is under attack by Christian parents who claim it’s “Satanic.” It was painted by Evelyn Gonzales, a sophomore at the local high school, who won a contest aimed to “brighten up” the health center with […]
Posted inArt
‘…with hope that this assemblage of rubble would become a shrine…’
Reading Time: 9 minutes What began as a practical solution to a problem in my Chicago neighborhood became a public act of meaning-making and a secular memorial.
Posted inSexuality
We all have butts: Uncoupling nudity and sex from shame
Reading Time: 4 minutes By the time I hit puberty, my mother had left her Catholic body-shaming god behind. Her message to me was simple: Everybody’s got one.
Posted inArt
Why did the color violet go viral after 1863?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Allen Tager has spent the new millennium thus far trying to find out why the color violet—a combinative color of red and blue—is so maddeningly difficult to find through thousands of years of human history. But in the late 19th century that color’s fortunes seemed to suddenly enhance. Tager, a Russian-American artist and cognitive scientist, […]