Arts & Culture
![Woody Guthrie](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/34/177834-050-AB20B2FC/Woody-Guthrie-guitar-this-machine-kills-fascists-1943.jpg?w=768&h=432&c=crop)
The Story of 'This Land Is Your Land'
It has been embraced as a protest song and as an alternative patriotic anthem for the United States because of its themes of inclusion and equality.
Al Aumuller— NYWTS/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. LC-USZ62-113276
![An unparalleled gymnast](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/20/250620-050-137E5E75/Simone-Biles-competes-on-uneven-bars-2023-FIG-Artistic-Gymnastics-World-Championships.jpg?w=768&h=432&c=crop)
Matthias Hangst/Getty Images Sport
2024 Paris Olympics: Athletes to Watch
On July 26, 2024, the Paris Olympics will officially begin. Over the course of the next two weeks, some 10,500 athletes will compete in 329 events.
Matthias Hangst/Getty Images Sport
Editor's Picks
![The Fortune-Teller, oil on canvas by Georges de La Tour, probably the 1630s; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. (101.9 x 123.5 cm.) (The Fortune Teller)](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/57/115457-131-04952687/Fortune-Teller-canvas-Georges-de-La-Tour.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
10 Paintings You Should See at the Met in New York City
Learn before you look.
![Aladdin](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/93/126393-004-B4D3A1B7/Aladdin-illustration-Joy-Arabian-Nights-Virginia-Frances.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
The Thousand and One Nights
The Thousand and One Nights, collection of largely Middle Eastern and Indian stories of uncertain date and authorship. Its tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor have almost become part of Western folklore, though these were added to the collection only in the 18th century in European
![We'wha demonstrates blanket loom weaving on the grounds of the United States National Museum while on a visit to Washington, DC. Zuni hand weaving technique loom](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/90/234490-131-ADBFA4A6/We-wha-demonstrates-blanket-loom-weaving-techniques.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
5 Incredible Native American Artists
Native American artists to know.
![Maya Lin](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/90/198490-050-116993E3/Maya-Lin-Asian-American-artist-works-some.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
Maya Lin
Maya Lin is an American architect and sculptor concerned with environmental themes who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The daughter of intellectuals who had fled China in 1948, Lin received a bachelor’s degree in 1981 from Yale University in New
![Public Enemy](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/74/23574-050-0C21E8F5/Public-Enemy.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
hip-hop
Hip-hop, cultural movement that attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and ’90s and also the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and/or rhyming speech that became the movement’s most lasting and influential art form. Although widely considered a synonym for rap
!["Howl and Other Poems" by Allen Ginsberg published by City Lights books in 1956](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/93/191593-131-60AD1DC1/Howl-and-Other-Poems-books-Allen-Ginsberg-1956.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
The “Howl” Heard Round the World
In 1956, Allen Ginsberg’s groundbreaking Beat poem “Howl” was published in the collection Howl and Other Poems.
![Yayoi Kusama](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/19/163319-050-49ACBF14/Yayoi-Kusama-Tate-Modern-penchant-front-works-2012.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is a self-described “obsessional artist,” known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. She employed painting, sculpture, performance art, and installations in a variety of styles, including Pop art and Minimalism. By her own
![vintage Leica photo camera at KPI Museum, July 24, 2015, in Kiev, Ukraine](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/01/191601-131-A5D0EB18/Leica-photo-camera-KPI-Museum-Kiev-Ukraine-July-24-2015.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
Street Photography: How a Single Camera Brought About a Genre
The invention of the Leica camera allowed photographers to move through the streets and capture moments that come and go in the blink of an eye.
Spotlight: Impressionism
Impressionism comprises the work produced between about 1867 and 1886 by a group of artists, headlined by Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir, who shared a set of related approaches and techniques. The most conspicuous characteristic was an attempt to accurately and objectively record visual reality in terms of transient effects of light and color.
Quizzes
![A mens hat resting on fabric. trilby](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/71/237471-131-78406586/A-mens-hat-resting-on-fabric.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
Name That Hat! Quiz
Time to put on your thinking cap.
![Young woman with glasses reading a book, student](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/63/238563-131-4099EC55/Young-woman-with-glasses-reading-a-book-student.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
Famous Novels, Last Lines Quiz
Needless to say, spoiler alert.
![Backgammon set with dice. game, board](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/52/237452-131-1B4601D0/Backgammon-set-with-dice.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
Guess the Game Quiz
Roll the dice and go all in.
![Publicity still of the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) and one of the Flying Monkeys (Winged Monkeys) from the motion picture film "The Wizard of Oz" (1939); directed by Victor Fleming (there were a number of uncredited directors). (cinema, movies)](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/45/236445-131-6FDE8D3B/Wicked-Witch-of-the-West-The-Wizard-of-Oz-1939.jpg?w=400&h=225&c=crop)
Iconic Pop Culture Villains Quiz
Do you know what famous villain’s costume was inspired by samurai? What bad guy’s middle name is Marvolo? Test your knowledge about pop culture’s dark side with this quiz about iconic villains!
Videos
![How did opera's greatest soprano lose her voice?](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/56/251256-138-6460D6D0/maria-callas-la-divina-opera-singer-coloratura.jpg)
How did opera's greatest soprano lose her voice?
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Galleries
![Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Wheatfield with Crows, (July) 1890. Oil on canvas, 50.5 cm x 103.0 cm (19.9 in x 40.6 in). In the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/33/130833-131-15CCC1BD/Wheatfield-Crows-oil-canvas-Vincent-van-Gogh-1890.jpg)
Vincent van Gogh
![Musee du Louvre (Louvre museum)with the glass Pyramid designed by architect I.M. Pei; Paris, France. Photo dated 2008.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/01/150801-131-8C186ACE/Louvre-Museum-pyramid-Paris-Pei-IM.jpg)
Paris
![Self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci in red chalk circa 1512-1515 in the Royal Library, Turin.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/cdn.britannica.com/75/115475-131-7B226BC3/Self-portrait-drawing-Leonardo-da-Vinci-Royal-Library.jpg)
Leonardo da Vinci
Featured Categories
Art
5 Revealing Paintings by Caravaggio
Learn before you look.
The Group of Seven Remembered
In the 1910s and ’20s, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven created Canada’s first important national art movement with their landscape paintings.
5 Incredible Native American Artists
Native American artists to know.
10 Modernist Art Movements
Is this high art, or could your kid do that?
Dance
Katherine Dunham
Katherine Dunham was an American dancer and choreographer who was a pioneer in the field of dance anthropology. Her fieldwork inspired her innovative interpretations of dance in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. Dunham early became interested in dance. While a student at the University of
Savion Glover
Savion Glover is an American dancer and choreographer who became known for his unique pounding style of tap dancing, called “hitting.” He brought renewed interest in dance, particularly among youths and minorities. As a young child, Glover displayed an affinity for rhythms, and at age four he began
Agnes de Mille
Agnes de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer who further developed the narrative aspect of dance and made innovative use of American themes, folk dances, and physical idioms in her choreography of musical plays and ballets. Her father was the playwright William Churchill DeMille, her
Mallika Sarabhai
Mallika Sarabhai is an Indian classical dancer and choreographer, actress, writer, and social activist known for her promotion of the arts as a vehicle for social change. The daughter of renowned physicist Vikram Sarabhai and dancer and choreographer Mrinalini Sarabhai, she was brought up in a
Film
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini was an Italian film director who was one of the most celebrated and singular filmmakers of the period after World War II. Influenced early in his career by the Neorealist movement, he developed his own distinctive methods that superimposed dreamlike or hallucinatory imagery upon
Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay is an American director, producer, and writer whose film and television projects explore the African American experience. Among her best-known works are the film Selma (2014), the documentary 13th (2016), and the miniseries When They See Us (2019). DuVernay was the first African
David Lynch
David Lynch is an American filmmaker and screenwriter who is known for his uniquely disturbing and mind-bending visual work. His films juxtapose the cheerfully mundane with the shockingly macabre and often defy explanation. Lynch’s father was a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and fashion designer known best for her films The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Lost in Translation (2003). In 2004, she was the first American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best director. Coppola is