Art

Shirey mixes dry vocals with multi-instrumentalist stylings on his new album. Critic Milo Miles says A Bottle of Whiskey and a Handful of Bees is an original and engaging work.

National Geographic contributing photographer Joel Sartore is 11 years into a 25-year endeavor to document every captive animal species in the world using studio lighting and black-and-white backgrounds. So far, he's photographed 6,500 different species, which leaves approximately 6,000 to go.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz turns art critic to talk about the work of the Dutch painter Vermeer. Theres a major show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Olivia Laing surveys the landscape of urban alienation in her new book, a work that is part-memoir and part-criticism. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Lonely City is "absolutely one of a kind."

Mann has published pictures that show her young children naked, her husband's muscular dystrophy and dead bodies decomposing. She reflects on her life and work in a new memoir called Hold Still.

Lynsey Addario was taken captive in 2011 while covering Libya's civil war. With a gun to her head, she says, she was thinking, "Will I ever get my cameras back?"

The biopic of landscape painter J. M. W. Turner depicts a man whose mind is barely engaged by anything other than his work. He's a mystery, and his art is magically indefinite — just like the movie.

The 19th century painter wasn't always "very pleasant" and he was a "man of massive contradictions," Spall says. So Spall says he had to "dig deep" to play the title role in Mr. Turner.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has assembled one of the largest exhibits of Goya's artwork ever seen in the U.S. His paintings, prints and drawings range in technique from exquisitely refined to raw.

Various rights issues kept the original Batman from home-video release until now. young viewers may be surprised by its pop-at sensibility, vibrant colors -- and that it was played for laughs.

In 1937, two Nazi art shows aimed to teach the public to despise modernist art and show them what art should be. An exhibit at New York's Neue Galerie reunites works from both landmark shows.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg says he feels a little defensive about choosing "selfie" -- a word that wears its ephemerality on its outstretched sleeve -- as the word of 2013. But not only was this a year when we couldn't stop posting photos of ourselves online; we couldn't stop talking about it either.

New York City is home to more paintings by Johannes Vermeer -- eight -- than any other city. And until mid-January, it's playing host to one more: the world-renowned Girl with a Pearl Earring. Critic Lloyd Schwartz says, since the painting's 1994 restoration, "It's even more breathtaking than I remembered."

Smartphones and the Internet have made it easier than ever to share photos of their friends, family, pets and children. But sharing personal photos raises technological and ethical questions.

Claes Oldenburg is one of the best-known American pop artists. Critic Lloyd Schwartz found himself not alone in enjoying the current Oldenburg exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, which continues through Aug. 5.

Marisa Silver's new novel imagines the meeting of a Depression-era photographer and her now-iconic subject. Giving the characters different names but similar stories to their real-life counterparts, Silver tackles big questions about the morality of art.

Stew's new album Making It is, in part, about his relationship with his ex-girlfriend and songwriting partner, Heidi Rodewald. The two musicians, who continue to work together professionally, also collaborated on the 2008 Tony-winning musical Passing Strange.

You might not recognize actor Andy Serkis, but you've probably seen his characters on-screen. Searches is Hollywood's go-to actor for computer-generated roles. His movies include Lord of the Rings, King Kong and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. In 2011, Terry Gross spoke to the creators of South Park about their Broadway hit.