Back to their roots: a brief history of trees – in pictures

“B.C. is learning more about killer whales in its coastal waters thanks to the collaborative work of hundreds of people. Citizen scientists are taking photos of whales' dorsal fins in the Salish Sea and sending them to researchers.” www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

Tis the season for… #ArtAdventCalendar! Day 8️⃣ Going for gold (and black) for a Christmas card twist #calligraphy #feliznatal

“Two armed men stole more than a dozen works of art, including some by Henri Matisse, on Sunday from a library in São Paulo, Brazil, the latest robbery to rock the art world since the Louvre heist in October.” 🎁 link www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/w...

Water leak in the Louvre damages hundreds of works, museum says www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

"A lack of contact with nature and limited knowledge about nature can reinforce each other in a negative spiral." #Biophobia - people can fear what they don't know or understand. Education in and about nature is vital phys.org/news/2025-12...

Tis the season for… #ArtAdventCalendar! Day 7️⃣ #calligraphy doodles, aka versals

‘Not a simple journey’: a rare Inuvialuit kayak has come home from the Vatican Museums www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/9e1609e...

Tis the season for… #ArtAdventCalendar! Day 6️⃣ In the spirit of the season #calligraphy

See some of the winning entries for this year's Oceania Photo Contest, including Miesa Grobbelaar's shot of a whale, which took the top prize

Frank Gehry: 12 Essential, Stunning Projects www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/a... 🎁 article

This vista alone was worth the trip to Spain: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Architect Frank Gehry passed away today. "In Bilbao, Spain, they wanted to shoot me when they saw the [Guggenheim design] and now they get $500 million a year in revenue to the city.” 💛

Tis the season for… #ArtAdventCalendar! Day 5️⃣ A shimmering paper dahlia I pulled this one from the vault in honour of Frank Gehry’s passing today. I was in 💛 with his sinuous architecture.

Frank O. Gehry, Titan of Architecture, Is Dead at 96 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/a...

Remembering Frank Gehry today with this Architectural Digest 2023 look at some of his spectacular buildings “Discover these amazing buildings devised by the Pritzker Prize–winning architect over the past five decades” www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/best...

Tis the season for… #ArtAdventCalendar! Day 4️⃣ Swimming with the fishes

“A 5,500-mile blob of seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean that has menaced beaches across the Caribbean and Florida in recent years is exploding in size, while a second patch farther north is declining rapidly, driven by rapid changes in the region’s climate.” (🎁 article) www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/c...

This is the future we’re leaving - a plastic rubbish dump in the Pacific Ocean www.earth.com/news/great-p...

Is This Polar Bear Town Canada’s Key to the Arctic? “The tiny town of Churchill has two of Canada’s largest pieces of Arctic infrastructure, but years of neglect have left them in poor shape amid growing superpower rivalry in the region.” (Gifted article) www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/w...

Tis the season for… #ArtAdventCalendar! Day 3️⃣ The colours of fall 🍁

A long-lost painting by Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens, unseen for four centuries, has just sold at auction in Versailles for $2.7 million www.artnews.com/art-news/new...

This study from #RSOS demonstrates that pineapple peel waste, an abundant byproduct of fruit processing, can be upcycled into a sustainable natural dye for cotton fabrics. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... | #GreenChemistry #NaturalDye #EcoTextile

‘Tis the season for… #ArtAdventCalendar! Day 2️⃣ Camping with watercolours 🏕️ 🎨

‘Nature’s original engineers’: scientists explore the amazing potential of fungi www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

‘Tis the season for… #ArtAdventCalendar! Day 1️⃣ A kaleidoscope of paper butterflies boxed with specimen pins 🦋

Math art 🧪🐡🧮

www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

Gustav Klimt portrait sells for $236.4m, making it the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction

“The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of McCrae's closest friends was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves.”

An excerpt from my new piece for @thebulletin.org on Bill Gates' new climate missive:

Flower Piece, 1713, by #JosinaMargaretaWeenix is on view now in the exhibition "Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, nmwa.org/exhibitions/... The museum is open throughout the US govt shutdown & is free for furloughed federal employees.

www.cbc.ca/news/vatican...

Today's theft from the Louvre ( art-crime.blogspot.com/2025/10/jewe...) is making me think about my favorite series of museum heists. Buckle up for a 🧵 on priceless porcelains, the Dead Zoo Gang, a Pekinese named Looty, and the unsolved mystery of who's stealing Chinese art from European museums.

My explainer on why leaves change colors and how we detect it from space www.forbes.com/sites/marsha...

“A new research project suggests that as humans replace rich tropical forests with monochrome, the colour of other creatures is leaching away.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

An Indonesian songbird once nearly extinct in the wild, the Bali starling, is making a comeback through community-led conservation. Villages embraced traditional awig-awig regulations to protect the starling, creating powerful cultural, social and financial deterrents to poaching.

🇨🇳 VIDEO: Hope and hardship along China's 'Great Green Wall' Across the deserts of Inner Mongolia, China has been carrying out a colossal greening project for decades. Over 90 million hectares of the desert have been transformed into forest so far.

First treaty to protect marine life in high seas to take effect in January aje.io/rk0iuu

🦋🙌 www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Wonderful coverage on the synergy between climate science & art. Congrats @jillpelto.bsky.social & @mauri-pelto.bsky.social & the rest of your team. I admire your long & connective work in the North Cascades! www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/cap...

Painters often prime a canvas with a layer of white to make it smoother, stronger and to enhance the colours they will later layer on, but it seems this is a mechanism that birds were using long before humans picked up paintbrushes.

Where Do Untraceable Fishing Fleets Go? www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/c...

New research in #ScienceAdvances shows that some songbirds have such bright-looking feathers by having a backdrop of black or white plumage underneath their bright feathers—an illusionary tactic of color also used by painters. Learn more in #ScienceAdviser: scim.ag/46ZaPeM

In 2010 a fountain pen manufactured by Italian company Tibaldi set a record amount paid for a writing instrument, fetching an astounding $8 million at an auction in Shanghai.

Canada is home to 4,000 species of native flowering plants, and as many as 3,000 could be considered wildflowers.

These beautiful objects are Chinese brush rests, which were often made in the shape of a steep five-peak mountain range. 🖌️⛰️ Brush rest, China, 18th century. EAX.1360 🖌️⛰️ Brush rest, China, 16th century. EAX.1813 🖌️⛰️ Brush rest, China, 17th–18th century. EA2000.85

The Art Gallery of Ontario is celebrating 125 years by sharing insights into six iconic works. www.thestar.com/entertainmen...

Earth’s Largest Camera Takes 3 Billion-Pixel Images of the Night Sky “At the heart of the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is the world’s largest digital camera. About the size of a small car, it will create an unparalleled map of the night sky.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...