A painting. Four children and two dolls, one white, the other black. The “Portrait of Emile Gaillard's Four Children” was painted in 1868 by French artist James Tissot. What is this black doll doing in a 19th-century painting? This doll does not appear in the title of the work,...

She used to devour children in fairy tales, but now she saves the world in TV series. A stigma, an icon, the witch hovers everywhere in our imagination, and her representations paint a unique history of women. A murderous fantasy of witch hunts, a banner for feminists, the ideal of a new online lifestyle,...

In a remote cave in southern Morocco, a team of scientists has unearthed what could be the oldest known piece of jewelry in human history. These tiny perforated shells, decorated and worn as adornments 150,000 years ago, are revolutionizing our understanding of the emergence of symbols, art...

Every night Aminata patrols the streets of Freetown searching for girls being exploited by pimps. She takes them surfing to Sierra Leone’s only Surf Club, to heal their self-esteem on the deep metallic-blue ocean...