After the Vernissage

Greg Jackson

The principal experience of the art I encountered, I found, was not the art itself, but the uncertainty and complexity of my own subjective response.

On the Trail—to Freedom?

Charlie Riggs

Cities are palimpsests, their contemporary surfaces concealing, though not entirely effacing, their more remote past.

Preserving the Wilderness Idea

Brian Treanor

Calling the idea of wilderness into question makes as much sense as asking whether the United States is a democracy.

On Pilgrimage and Package Tours

Tara Isabella Burton

All “authentic” travel becomes a kind of secular pilgrimage.

A Cosmopolitan Revelation

Anne Taylor

Rick Steves teaches travel as a kind of road to civic transformation.

Over There

Jonathan Clarke

In glamorizing foreign travel, we sometimes neglect the near at hand.

Adventures Close to Home

Phil Christman

The cases for travel are often sillier than the cases against, and I think it’s important to question them.

A (Partial) Defense of Travel Writing

Clare Coffey

Travel is a way of acquiring lifetimes; travel writing, doubly so.

All Aboard for Virtual Utopia?

William Hasselberger

Augmented Reality doesn’t just add things to our perceptual experience; it redirects our attention.

Space Travel and the Cold War Fantastic

Isaac Ariail Reed

Robert Sheckley absorbed Freud and worried about modernity as the unleashing of fantasies old and new.

California Road Trip

Matthew B. Crawford

A trip down the California coast has an aspect of memory and return to it.

Encountering the High Arctic

James Conaway

Nature reveals itself when you are helpless.

In a Hotel

Cameron Carr

There is a familiar feeling here: existential dread, impending doom, a light dose of despair.

Art and the Smartphone

Stephen K. White

Could we ban cell phone photography in museums and at performances?