Nanase Shirokawa is a writer and arts worker based in Cambridge, MA. Her research interests span memorials, public art, legacies of imperialism in the Pacific, and the intersections between design and print media.

Photo of a wooden stool made from bent plywood The seat of the stool curves up on the edges.

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Molded Under Pressure: Plywood Furniture and the Continuity of Modernism

Annie Faye Cheng is a cook and writer based in Queens, New York City. She writes at the intersection of food, race, and power. More about her at [anniefayecheng.com](http://anniefayecheng.com). 

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Seaweed Through Time: Living Culture and Hidden Ubiquities 

Camila Nader is a researcher dedicated to exploring new narratives within art history. Her work focuses on uncovering overlooked connections between artists, politics, and cultural geographies, seeking to challenge canonical perspectives and expand the ways we understand visual culture.

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An Ecology of Satirical Art

J. Cabelle Ahn is an art historian and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her PhD in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University in 2024. A specialist in early modern French and Dutch art, she also writes on the history of the art market and on contemporary artists who challenge, revise, or reframe the Old Masters. In addition to exhibition catalogues and academic volumes, her writing has appeared in _Master Drawings_, _The Art Newspaper_, _Artnet News_, _Observer_, and _Elephant_.

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Porcelain to Peonies: Chinoiserie and the Fantasy of Nature

Reina Gattuso is a content writer on the Curationist team, and an independent journalist covering gender and sexuality, arts and culture, and food. Her journalism connects analysis of structural inequality to everyday stories of community, creativity, and care. Her work has appeared at _Atlas Obscura_, _The Washington Post_, _Teen Vogue_, _The Lily_, _POPSUGAR_, and more. Reina has an MA in Arts and Aesthetics (cinema, performance, and visual studies) from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, where her research focused on sexuality in Hindi film. She writes and teaches writing to high school students in New York City.

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A gold bangle with a glass gem in the shape of an evil eye.

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Protection from the Evil Eye 

Colony Little (she/her/hers) is a Raleigh-based freelance arts writer and the creator of _Culture Shock Art_, a site dedicated to the synergies among art, music, and design. As a Black woman with familial ties to the South, Little presently writes with a focus on amplifying the artistic voices of Black creators who are influenced by and create work in the American South. Freelance writing credits include _ARTnews_, _ARTS.BLACK_, _Burnaway_, _CARLA_, _INDY Week_, _Oxford America_, _Southern Cultures_, _W Magazine_, and _Walter Magazine_. Little was a 2020 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

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Sculptural Symbols of Power in the Kingdoms of Benin and Dahomey 

On the Sexing of Plants

The Night Otherwise: Nocturnal Space in Japanese Edo Prints and Rājput Court Paintings

Resonant Technologies: The Banjo and Black Sonic Memory

The Phoenix: A Universal Mythical Bird?

In Good Taste: Food and Class in Early Modern Europe

Women Artists and 20th Century Movements

Free Black Women’s Private Pleasures and Rest

Panorama of Possessions: Film, Photography, and the War of 1898

Reconstructing Black Girlhood: Reading Photos Alongside Journal Entries

Bathing Women: Desire, Wonder, and Water in Versions of a Persian Tale

Illustrating Taiwan: Travelogues and Their Visual Narratives

Bearing Witness: James Presley Ball, Black Image Making, and the Promise of Freedom in the American West

Black Power in Print: Iconography of the Black Panther Party 

Women Artists and the Museum

Women Artists and the Divine

Women Artists and Powerful Patrons

Women Artists: Sovereignty, Kinship, and Care

Women Artists, the Enlightenment, and Extraction

Women Artists, Modernity, and Modernism

Gender Variations in Edo Japan

Metadata Learning and Unlearning Summit 2023

In the Shape of an African

The Power of Icons: Shaping Orthodox Christian Identities

Miniature Portraits Unveiled: Ivory's Legacy and Artistic Agency

Sonic Struggles: Plunderphonics and A Case for Immaterial Repatriation

Stories and Style in Early Modern Anatomical Illustration

How Bazaars Shaped Trade in Islamic Cities Before 1900

Dust Deferred: The Invisible Care and Humility in Maintaining Our Spaces

Art of the Atomic Bomb

Martial Goddesses and Warrior Queens

Histories of the Public Bathhouse

The Beauty Remains: Decoding “The Wilde Woman of Aiken”

Aztec Death Practices

How Chocolate Reached the Eastern Hemisphere

Iron Women: Ancient to Early Modern Women in Armor 

Honoring the Dead: Funerary Ornamentation and Ritual in Islam  

On Refusing to Be a Monument

Women’s Reflections in Renaissance and Modern European Painting 

Hair and Makeup in Ancient Egypt

Female Fertility Figurines in the Ancient Mediterranean

The Birth of a Metropolis: Kabul's Urban Landscape in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Swords that Tell Stories: Plunder and Trade from India to Europe

The Learned Courtesan in Edo Japan

Ritual Correlations in Subaltern Dance

Murals on Blast Walls: Legacies of an Occupation Built on Shifting Truths

Industrial Optics: How We See Labor and Why It Matters

Ida B. Wells: Pioneering Journalist, Anti-lynching Leader

Maya Deities and Nobles in Living Jade

The Making of American Dance History

Anna Atkins: Pioneering Botanist and Creator of the First Photo Book

The Dutch East India Company’s Colonial Trade and Plunder

The Scimitar-Horned Oryx: To Extinction and Back

A Tale of Two Harlems: The Legacy of Jazz and Racism at the Cotton Club

Chinese Landscape Painting: At the Orchid Pavilion

Race and the Pop Culture Cowboy

Memento Mori: The Importance of Death for a Virtuous Life

Monasteries and Brothels: Architectures of Control

The Price of Freedom: Nancy E. Prophet and Black Artists in Paris 

Firearms Enter the Picture: Guns and Their Representation Before 1600

Katsushika Ōi: Shadows of Edo

Goddess Hariti: The Joy and Terror of Childbirth

Codex Mendoza and Mexican History

Islamic Calligraphy: Reverential Roots and Decorative Uses

Fayum Portraits

Painting with Jade in Qing-Dynasty China

Creating Multilingual Digital Infrastructures

Dynamic Metadata Deepens Cultural Knowledge

Sara Greenberger Rafferty Finds a Pantry and Some Pantyhose in the Smithsonian Collection.

Here, But Not Here: Virtual Reality Programming for Teens in Libraries

Invisible Labor and Inclusive Metadata

Metadata Beyond the Eurocentric: Recovering Digital Cultural Memory

Words Matter: Reconciling Museum Metadata with Wikidata

Why So Many Heads of Buddha?

Cameron Keith Gainer Goes on a Journey into Sound and Space in the Smithsonian’s Digital Archive and Finds Magic

The Here and Now is the There and Then: Helping Youth Understand Today’s Media

María Teresa Rodríguez on the Living Traditions of the Nahuas of the Zongolica Mountains

Ken Gonzales-Day Searches the Smithsonian Archives and Finds Incomplete Histories

Exclusion: How Immigration Policy Racialized the U.S.

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way—how a monument to Manifest Destiny became enshrined in the US Capitol Building

Kim Schoenstadt Wanders the Smithsonian’s Digital Archive and Finds Unexpected Meaning in Simple Machines

Play is Where Art Meets Technology

Metadata Isn’t Neutral: Addressing Orientalism and Patriarchy in OpenGLAM Art

Indigenizing the Archive with Yazan Kopty: Palestine in National Geographic Magazine

For artists without borders, a place to call home

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