‣ Five years after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police sparked a global Black Lives Matter movement, one organization in the city has worked to archive the uprising’s protest art. Reporter Deena Zaru has the story for ABC:“I felt this enormous weight to be the one to decide to protect these stories and to make sure that the movement continues through the preservation of this art,” Kelly told ABC News, reflecting on her five-year journey. “I feel an enormous sense of pride having the foresight to do this.”Kelly said that since 2021, Memorialize the Movement has been “activating” the 2020 murals via exhibits to ensure that Floyd’s legacy is not forgotten. Much of that art was displayed at a weekend Justice for George event in Minneapolis.“We call ourselves a living archive,” she said, explaining that at the events, they not only display the art from 2020 but also commission artists to create new murals on blank panels. There are also workshops to encourage new and continuing art and activism.“This is a movement where we are empowering people through art to understand that they have a voice, understand their agency, and learn how to protect and preserve their own stories and histories in real time,” Kelly said.‣ Military museums across the United States are literal echo chambers of nationalistic propaganda, and for Mother Jones, journalist Jasper Craven takes us on a tour through their history:There may be no stronger tool for romanticizing America’s war machine than museums like this one. Museums, after all, are among the nation’s most trusted institutions, research shows, for liberals and conservatives alike. As such, the Department of Defense has created, per its 2009 report to Congress on the topic, a stable of 93 military museums that at the time were costing taxpayers $94 million a year to operate. (Subsequent numbers were unavailable, and a 2014 law explicitly repealed the military’s financial reporting requirements for military museums.) This soft propaganda network frames the military’s work valiantly and helps attract new troops—the 2009 report, for example, noted that the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia is “consistently used as a successful tool” for recruiters.The brass also provides exceptional support—and vintage firepower—to hundreds of private military museums, many of them pet projects of the ultra-wealthy. Major collectors include a Microsoft co-founder, a member of the Walmart dynasty, and the founder of the Jelly Belly company, who tried (and failed) to modify one of his tanks to fire jelly beans. The Collings stockpile was amassed through the largesse of Rob’s father, Bob, who invented and manufactured the first standalone electronic cash register.The various museums purport to provide accurate depictions of war—yet even the most clear-eyed exhibits cannot begin to effectively capture the thrumming violence of conflict. “War museums are like cloud chambers in particle physics,” Yale University history professor Jay Winter, now emeritus, argued in a paper. “They represent the traces and trajectories of collisions that happened a long time ago. They never describe war; they only tell us about its footprints on the map of our lives.” They also tell us how their founders—and funders, including the US government—would have us remember our battles.‣ On Substack, filmmaker Hazel Katz takes a closer look at the problematic ideology at the center of the work of Israeli artist Ruth Patir, who was criticized for pausing her show at the last Venice Biennale in what many saw as a performative gesture:In one video piece, Patir dunks on Moshe Dayan by force-feminizing him and reappropriates the artifacts he stole from Gaza because “being nostalgic about the past is a privilege that’s only relevant for some and not for all.” Patir often appears in press materials and photos wearing a shirt with the slogan: “Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise,” from a 1982 Jenny Holzer billboard series. In recent years, this slogan has been appropriated by imperial white feminists of the #nevertrump and #metoo movements, whose selective outrage extends solely to bourgeois survivors of patriarchal violence. (Holzer, too, has recently come out as a genocidal imperialist.) In 2016, Indecline, an art collective exhibited the Emperor Has No Balls, a series of statues of Donald Trump with a very small penis and no balls. Patir’s 3D renderings of Moshe Dayan depict an emasculated man with a tiny penis, alternatively in drag and naked. Patir explains that she is retaking power from Dayan who represents “the archetype of the Israeli man,” which we are supposed to understand as a violent misogynist.Boyarin explains that the masculine Jewish man is a modern zionist invention, connected to the writings of Theodor Herzl, the founder of zionism. In 1897 Herzl published an essay, Mauschel, in his newspaper Die Welt. The first line reads: “Mauschel is an anti-Zionist.” Mauschel is a derogatory German word that comes from the yiddish diminutive for Moses – moyshele. According to Harry Zohn, the translator of Herzl’s essay, Mauschel came to describe a basic antisemitic stereotype of a Jewish man in 17th century central Europe, connoting an unassimilated working-class Jew who spoke German with a yiddish accent, or “a haggling Jewish trader.” ‣ Apparently, Walt Whitman walked so selfies could run. For the Conversation, scholar Trevin Corsiglia examines the poet’s keen use of commissioned photos to shape his public image:As Whitman biographer Justin Kaplan notes, no other writer at the time “was so systematically recorded or so concerned with the strategic uses of his pictures and their projective meanings for himself and the public.”The poet jumped at the opportunity to have his photo taken. There is, for instance, the famous portrait of the young, carefree poet that was used as the frontispiece for the first edition of “Leaves of Grass.” Or the 1854 photograph of a bearded and unkempt Whitman likely captured by Gabriel Harrison. Or the 1869 image of Whitman smiling lovingly at Peter Doyle, the poet’s intimate friend and probable lover.Some social scientists have argued that today’s selfies can aid in the search for one’s “authentic self” – figuring out who you are and understanding what makes you tick.Other researchers have taken a less rosy view of the selfie, warning that snapping too many can be a sign of low self-esteem and can, paradoxically, lead to identity confusion, particularly if they’re taken to seek external validation.Whitman spent his life searching for what he termed the “Me myself” or the “real Me.” Photography provided him another medium, besides poetry, to carry on this search. But it seems to have ultimately failed him.‣ French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu spoke with Le Monde‘s editorial team about his visits to Gaza over the last year, identifying the jarring disconnect between the ongoing genocide and the rest of the world’s perception:Menton: What event shocked you the most during your time in Gaza?I was in Gaza from December 19, 2024, to February 21, 2025 – a full month of open hostilities, plus two days of truce. The paradox is that the most violent days were those preceding the truce coming into effect, on January 19. The Israelis intensified the bombings, sometimes very close to where I was staying, while the outside world had been celebrating the announcement of a ceasefire since January 15. The most shocking thing I experienced is the gap between the ordeals experienced in Gaza and the outside world’s perception.Empathie: How are orphans being cared for in Gaza at the moment? Is there any estimate of their numbers?The tragedy of Gaza’s orphans is one of the worst disasters unfolding within the broader tragedy of the besieged enclave. The number of orphans is the subject of much debate due to the collapse of the health system and the disappearance of entire families, sometimes with only one surviving child. The society, which I once knew to be so protective within its family structures, has itself collapsed under the weight of widespread slaughter and repeated displacements. Wounded orphans are left abandoned in hospitals with no relatives, not even distant ones, coming to claim them. Bands of street children haunt public dumps, scavenging nylon and wood to resell as fuel.‣ Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, anticolonial Kenyan novelist and author, has died at age 87. Wedaeli Chibelushi writes about his complex legacy and work for BBC:During a writers’ conference at Makerere, Ngũgĩ shared the manuscript for his debut novel with revered Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.Achebe forwarded the manuscript to his publisher in the UK and the book, named Weep Not, Child, was released to critical acclaim in 1964. It was the first major English-language novel to be written by an East African.Ngũgĩ swiftly followed up with two more popular novels, A Grain of Wheat and The River Between. In 1972, the UK’s Times newspaper said Ngũgĩ, then aged 33, was “accepted as one of Africa’s outstanding contemporary writers”.Then came 1977 – a period that marked a huge change in Ngũgĩ’s life and career. For starters, this was the year he became Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and shed his birth name, James. Ngũgĩ made the change as he wanted a name free of colonial influence.He also dropped English as the primary language for his literature and vowed to only write in his mother tongue, Kikuyu.He published his last English language novel, Petals of Blood, in 1977.‣ A new study found that some types of hummingbirds have been rapidly evolving to live alongside humans, Jorge Garay explains for Wired:Populations of these hummingbirds expanded northward in California at the same time as the establishment of urban centers where feeding could take place. The researchers discovered that the population density of Calypte anna has also increased over time, and found that this appears to be linked to the proliferation of feeding fountains and nectar-producing eucalyptus trees, both of which were introduced to the region by humans.These morphological changes to the hummingbirds have occurred rapidly. According to the study, Calypte anna populations in 1930 were very different from those in 1950, when the birds’ bills had already begun to grow. In just 20 years, equivalent to about 10 generations of these birds, evolution left its mark, the authors note.‣ More Perfect Union reports on the company developing “AI drivers” for semitrucks and testing them on a highway in Texas (new fear unlocked):‣ PWI art school crits: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ashley Abaco | Brand Designer + Creative Director (@ashleyabaco)‣ Ah, to have a budding artist in the family — it’s both a blessing and a curse: @nhmama781 #kidsbelike #humor #momlife #fyp ♬ spring into summer – lizzy Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.