Guest Thinkers — December 12, 2010

How Do We See Cities?

Much of the history of the city can be written as a tension between the visible and the invisible. What and who gets seen? By whom? Who interprets the city’s meaning?

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Rulers of cities have always had an interest in visibility, both in representing their power and in controlling people by seeing them. The earliest cities emerged out of the symbiosis of religion and political power, and the temple and the citadel gave early urbanism its most visible elements. In the great Sumerian town of Ur, the kings built a towering ziggurat to display their devotion to the city’s patron god. A ziggurat rose in Babylon, possibly the Babel of scripture, “a tower, whose top may reach to heaven,” as the Book of Genesis relates in a primordial warning to all overzealous civic boosters.

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Culture & Religion

Comebacks: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and the City of Detroit

Few American cultural institutions stared as deep into the yawning, austerity-driven abyss of large-scale deaccessioning as The Detroit Institute of Arts. When the City of Detroit declared bankruptcy in 2013, vulturous creditors circled the DIA’s collection, estimated worth (depending on the estimator) of $400 million to over $800 million. Some experts see signs of a Detroit comeback, however, but one very visible sign is the new DIA exhibition Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit, a showcase of the city’s ties to Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as well as a tribute to Kahlo’s and Rivera’s own artistic comebacks. Few exhibitions truly capture the spirit of a city at a critical moment in its history, but Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit is a show of comebacks that will have you coming back for more.

A person sits on a sidewalk near an escalator entrance, next to an overturned shopping cart on a metal grate.

The Present

Can science solve the poverty problem?

An evidence-based policy movement is arming the fight with tools and programs that are more effective than ever before.

Map showing migration routes across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to the Indian Ocean, with sightings marked by colors and dates.

Strange Maps

Hungry or horny? Whale makes record swim halfway across planet

In 8,000-mile journey, a male humpback ditches Colombia for Tanzania — however, scientists don’t know why he made the trip.

A person with a backpack stands on rocky terrain, contemplating the distant, mist-covered volcanic mountain under a clear blue sky, pondering the longevity of nature's breathtaking beauty.

Business

How to build something that lasts

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

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Starts With A Bang

Devouring “the Kraken” led to the modern Milky Way

Did the Milky Way form by slowly accreting matter or by devouring its neighboring galaxies? At last, we’re uncovering our own history.

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Culture & Religion

The Longevity of Cy Twombly

Twombly, now 82, is the great survivor of the heroic age of American painting, the generation of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Jackson Pollock, who upended contemporary art.