Valuing World Cultures

Can painted wooden fish on a schoolyard fence change human behavior and help clean up the ocean for the real salmon? Stream of Dreams in British Columbia thinks so, and a lot of wooden fish and some 100,000 school kids later, they have some intriguing results to show for their effort.

ARTLAB+ and the National Museum of African Art partnered to create short videos on the African Cosmos: Stellar Arts exhibition. Teens interviewed Deputy Director and Chief Curator Christine Kreamer; physicists Marie Machacek and Katrien Kolenberg; and artist Willem Boshoff.

Mentioned in the Bible and in the 8000-year-old epic Gilgamesh, Lebanon’s iconic cedars have been reduced to a fraction of their former range by centuries of logging. Ari Daniel Shapiro walks the Shouf Cedar Reserve to learn how scientists are working to save the last remaining trees from a more insidious threat—climate change. The answer may surprise you. Another version of this podcast is available on Public Radio International's The World.

ARTLAB+ and the National Museum of African Art partnered to create short videos on the African Cosmos: Stellar Arts exhibition. Teens interviewed Deputy Director and Chief Curator Christine Kreamer; physicists Marie Machacek and Katrien Kolenberg; and artist Willem Boshoff.

In celebration of Jazz Appreciation Month and the opening of the Conference Música, Identidad y Cultura en el Caribe (MIC-IV) in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. Filosofía Caribeña is a project that aims to illuminate Afro-Latino presence, identity, and the marvelous, undeniable, and unheralded historical connections between Black and Latino communities.

On July 5, 1997, Asanteman Kuo, a Ghanaian immigrant organization in the Washington, D.C., region, held a durbar (inaugural celebration) to install and honor their newly elected leaders. This is a reenactment of a traditional ceremony.

Students will experience traditional Indian music and internalize it by moving to it. There will be an opportunity to listen to, play and dance to sitar music and ragas.

Throat-singing, a guttural style of singing or chanting, is one of the world's oldest forms of music. Throat-singers often imitate sounds of the natural surroundings.

Join us for an extended conversation with four of the artists from "The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas": Mark Handforth, Rachel Harrison, Charles Long, and Franz West. Moderated by exhibition curator Anne Ellegood.

If all figurative art approaches taxidermy in its crafty fixing of vitality, British contemporary artists have taken on board the conceit with striking compulsiveness. From Damien Hirst's sharks and sheep to Mark Wallinger's pedigree racehorses, sleekness and slaughter seem to be their thing. So what are they getting at and why should we care? Simon Schama, professor of art history and history at Columbia University, offers some clues.