Culture

Kim Kardashian: Queen of Visibility

In the early 2000s, Kim Kardashian lingered on the edges of the celebrity world, known for her influential friends and low-key ventures. Everything changed in 2007 with the launch of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which transformed family intimacy into a public drama. It was no longer just about appearances; it had become a lifestyle staged as a ...

Lagos Fashion Week Spotlight: Onalaja Puts Nigerian Heritage at the Heart of Fashion

Models strutted down the runway, their beaded and sequined dresses evoking the traditional facial scarring still done in some parts of Nigeria. Others donned outfits paying homage to adire, a traditional Yoruba indigo fabric long prized for its craftsmanship. Kanyinsola Onalaja's show kicked off Lagos Fashion Week in style, in what has been a ...

10 Years of Aïshti Foundation

This is Arts steps into the opening of Flesh Flowers, an exhibition celebrating 10 years of the Aïshti Foundation, co-curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Roberta Tenconi. A powerful show bringing together over seventy female artists from around the world, exploring the dialogue between the body, identity, and painting. Featuring special interviews ...

Richard Linklater Says AI Can’t Capture Human Genius in Film

Can great art be made without human genius and all its flaws? It's a vital question at a time when artificial intelligence threatens to subsume Hollywood. Through new movies Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon, director Richard Linklater offers an answer—delving into the lives of two brilliant, volatile men whose films and plays shaped French New Wave ...

Inside Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum: A Monument to History

Near the ancient Pyramids of Giza just outside Cairo, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is gearing up for a lavish opening on Saturday after two decades of delays. Massive statues and historic artefacts from the country's ancient civilization will be on display across the 24,000 square meters (258,000 square feet) of permanent exhibition space. Here ...

Universal Music and Udio Partner to Launch Licensed AI Music Platform

Recording industry giant Universal Music Group said Thursday it had struck a licensing deal with AI music generation startup Udio, in an industry-first tie-up aiming to launch an AI creation platform next year. Universal and Udio said in a statement that their platform, as yet unnamed, "will be powered by new cutting-edge generative AI technology ...

Behind Bars, On Screen: Inside the San Quentin Film Festival

Held inside a notorious prison among some of California's most dangerous felons, the San Quentin Film Festival is not your typical Hollywood affair. Red-carpet interviews take place just yards (meters) away from a now dormant execution chamber where hundreds of death-row inmates met grisly ends. Convicted murderers sit alongside famous actors ...

Charlotte Gainsbourg Returns Under the Spell of a 'Blurry Moon'

With her new single Blurry Moon, released in September 2025, Charlotte Gainsbourg marks a magnetic and deeply personal return to music. Produced by Saint Laurent and SebastiAn, the track blends elegance, restraint, and emotional clarity. The music is elevated by a video that is both artfully stylized and strikingly simple, a visual mirror of the ...

Benching: Keeping the Other on Hold

In the new digital dictionary, we are learning to decode, “to bench” means keeping someone on the sidelines, like a player who is sent neither off the field nor fully into the game, but kept warmed up, available, and waiting. Benching is not the radical severing of connection seen in ghosting, nor the deliberate freezing of icing. It belongs ...

Swiss Town Returns Sacred Artefacts to South Africa

The Swiss town of Neuchâtel on Tuesday handed over to South Africa three artefacts that had spent more than a century in one of its museums. The set of 30 divining bones in a woven basket, a bull's foot bone used as an amulet, and a walking staff were purchased by Swiss missionary and ethnographer Henri-Alexandre Junod. The items came from the ...

Behind the Blockbusters: Paramount Skydance to Cut 1,000 Jobs After Merger

Paramount Skydance will cut about 1,000 jobs on Wednesday, a source close to the matter told AFP Monday, less than three months after the merger of the two media giants. The company did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the layoffs. Skydance completed its $8 billion acquisition of Paramount in August, and executives warned at the ...

Prunella Scales, Star of Britain’s 'Fawlty Towers', Dies Peacefully at 93

Actress Prunella Scales, best known for her role as the long-suffering Sybil in the British TV comedy classic Fawlty Towers, has died aged 93, her family said Tuesday. The actress died "peacefully at home in London" on Monday, her sons Samuel and Joseph said. "She was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died," they said in a statement on ...