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One teabag, four cups
Inside the National Public Housing Museum How many times do you reuse a tea bag? Zero times? Four times? Once? I grew up "steeped" in a culture of conservation and reuse. My grandmother, who lived in an affordable senior housing community, let nothing go to waste. She wrote
An Object Diary of the Whitney Biennial
Last week I visited a few special art objects on display at the Whitney Biennial, a survey of American art that takes place every other year at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Every piece in the show explored the topic of "relationality" – how our identities form through
To Write and Not Be Forgotten: Julia Newberry's Diary
This is a story about a unique sort of object: a diary. Last month, I visited the Newberry Library in Chicago and read the diary of a 19th-century heiress. The pages still felt alive with the slanted script of a girl who died in 1876 at age 22. Her
The Chimp Who Wouldn't Give Back a Crystal
Crystals hold a special fascination for some people. We collect, wear, and treasure them. Buy why? Is it the shape of a crystal? The sparkle? An unproven belief in a crystal's healing powers? Researchers in Spain, curious about the source of our obsession, wondered if chimpanzees could also