Kung Fu Panda is the story of a flabby, out-of-shape panda bear named Po who longs to learn the ancient art of kung fu. Amazingly, Po is selected by the village leaders to become the Dragon Warrior—the greatest kung fu master of all time. But in spite of his new status, Po is still a lumbering oaf. This reality is a source of constant consternation to Master Shifu, who has been charged with ...

In his book The Cell's Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator's Artistry, Fanzale Rana gives the following account of the approach used to authenticate a piece of artwork by Picasso, often referred to as The Unknown Masterpiece:

In the early 1970s, a junk dealer came across five ink drawings while clearing out a deceased woman's apartment in London. He hung onto them for several years, [and then] ...

Kung Fu Panda is a movie about a panda named Po who wants desperately to learn kung fu. But from the beginning of the film we learn that several obstacles come between Po and his dream—not the least of which are the dreams of Po's father, which include Po's taking over the family's restaurant business. Though Kung Fu Panda is primarily a children's movie, this scene addresses an issue adults ...

Improvisation is the willingness to live within the bounds of the past and yet search for the future at the same time. Improvisation is the desire to make something new out of something old.… It is experienced in being open to letting the people around you…have impact on what you are creating.

Wynton Marsalis is the artistic director of jazz at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts ...

Twelve years ago, Bryan Coley had season tickets to two Atlanta theater companies. The plays he saw glorified postmodernism and dysfunctional lives by depicting a "bunch of screwed-up people." But, he says, God tapped him on the shoulder and said, "You're just criticizing. You need to create."

A Christian all his life, Bryan started to feel guilty; the nonbelievers around him didn't have truth or hope. ...

When Sumner Spence expressed his desire to attend college, many people scoffed because he suffers from cerebral palsy. Sumner can't read books because his eyes won't focus. He can't hold onto things very well because his hands clench uncontrollably. Taking notes in a classroom would be out of the question. Anyone who knew Sumner would have thought it perfectly understandable if he had never set a ...

Scotland Yard recently conducted a private exhibition of forged paintings for art dealers. The objective was to send a warning to their select audience about the sale of forgeries, which some experts estimate make up 40 percent of the art market. The sale of these fakes can undermine the value of the genuine articles.

The forgeries at the exhibit were created with remarkable proficiency. Reliance on ...

John Lasseter, Pixar Animation Studios genius and director of the hit film Cars, was talking to Michele Norris on National Public Radio. She commented on the amazing photorealism of the film, which was entirely created by computers. "The cars glisten," she said. "It looks like we're seeing photography."

But she had a question for the moviemaker. "With everything you can do with computer-generated animation, ...

Set against Chicago's World's Fair in 1893, Erik Larson's bestselling book The Devil in the White City tells the true story of two men, each serving as an extreme example of what human beings are capable of. The first is Daniel Burnham, considered by many to be the greatest architect of his day.

Burnham was the driving force behind Chicago's World's Fair, transforming it into a phenomenon that forever ...

Since the early 1960s, the artists known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been creating unique art installations for a public that is often skeptical, sometimes welcoming, and usually completely unprepared for what they're about to experience.

The artists call their work "environmental art," because they use large pieces of fabric to highlight and set apart natural environments—urban or rural—for ...