Inside Central Park’s 140 Year-old Marionette Theatre

“I spent some time as Peter Pan’s shadow” is the kind of sentence that’d only make sense here, at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park. This 143-year-old wooden chalet was plucked from Swedish soil, and rebuilt smack in the heart of Manhattan in 1877. Since then it’s had many lives, but none as…

I Have This Thing with Topiaries

Maybe it’s because, in truth, they’re completely unnecessary but so utterly gratifying when trimmed with precision. Maybe it’s because they transport us to the fantasies of our childhood, both romantic and slightly eerie (we’ve all seen how things end for Jack Nicholson in The Shining), but whatever the reason, we can’t stop staring at topiaries, so…

The Asylum That Gave Lou Reed Electroshock Therapy Is Also an Unforgettable Art Museum

“Excuse me!” says a man by a snowed-in dumpster. “Excuse me,” he continues, in a teleprompted tone, “Where are you, excuse me, goodnight!” It’s 2pm at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. I tell him I’m lost, and pull out a map of the 300 acres where he is a patient, and where I’m late…

Let’s Take a Tea Break at Beatrix Potter’s Cottage

It’s time for a little breather, don’t you think? So today, we’re popping over to Beatrix Potter’s old village, in the calm of England’s Lake District. We’ll stop by Buckle Yeat for a cup of tea, and stroll through the garden where so many of her children’s book characters — namely, Peter Rabbit — got…

One Artist, 146 Faces

She’s the woman of a 146 faces (our ballpark guess), as well as the stylist, makeup artist, art director, model, and, above all, photographer behind their creation. For today’s art students, Cindy Sherman is a postmodern prophet of the über meta in photography, a woman who toyed with the concept of selfies and identity long before…

America’s Beauty School Dropouts: A Brief Compendium

We miss the days when estheticians waxed eyebrows in a Paul Bunyan-ready cottage, perfected their perming skills in a nondescript clapboard shack, and barbers painted their 1969 Volkswagens to match their salon. More than mere institutions for a cute ‘do, the beauty schools and barber shops of yesteryear were visible extensions of major cultural shifts.…

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The Real Life ‘Indiana Jones’ Was Just as Cool as You Think.

He said he “was born under a lucky star”. Yet, Roy Chapman Andrews, that good ‘ole American chaser of bandits, dinosaur eggs and lost civilisations, was always the kind of man who made his own luck. He charmed a generation of daydreamers with his stories of the Gobi desert — and that hat —and while there’s…

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Here’s What Japanese Art Looked Like in the Aftermath of the Atomic Bombs

The cultural shift between pre and post-WWII world Japan was complicated and often divisive, but if you were photographer Eikoh Hosoe, that tension became fuel for creative expression that turned into a surrealist dreamworld – or nightmare, depending on who you asked. The Japanese artist’s works mirrored the state of a shell-shocked country in the…

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All Aboard the International Express, New York City

You can go to Paris for beauty school, and the Philippines for lunch. You can find your dream Diwali dress and a 200lb Ganesh statue on one block, then put your feet up at one of the best Chinese food emporiums in the world. The glory of New York has always been its diversity, but…

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A Brief Compendium of the Weirdest Stuff Sold Online (Like Your Soul).

The Internet, that “alien life form” as David Bowie decreed in a prophetic 1999 interview, has changed a lot in the past decade. The dial-up shriek is no more, AIM Bots are probably withering away in a black hole next to MySpace, and the glory days of weird eBay auctions are behind us. Or so…

Inside Central Park’s 140 Year-old Marionette Theatre

I Have This Thing with Topiaries

The Asylum That Gave Lou Reed Electroshock Therapy Is Also an Unforgettable Art Museum

Let’s Take a Tea Break at Beatrix Potter’s Cottage

One Artist, 146 Faces

America’s Beauty School Dropouts: A Brief Compendium

The Real Life ‘Indiana Jones’ Was Just as Cool as You Think.

Pssst! You've stumbled across content that is exclusive to Nessy's Keyholders.

Here’s What Japanese Art Looked Like in the Aftermath of the Atomic Bombs

All Aboard the International Express, New York City

Pssst! You've stumbled across content that is exclusive to Nessy's Keyholders.

A Brief Compendium of the Weirdest Stuff Sold Online (Like Your Soul).

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