Interesting

Elvis Presley - One Night In Vegas August 10 1970

Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Narayan Khandekar explains that the rich kermes red pigment was created by grinding up the dried bodies of insects that lived on the kermes oak tree.

Kermes is for crimson

Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Narayan Khandekar discusses the use of cadmium yellow by the Impressionists.

Cadmium yellow

Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Narayan Khandekar explains how artists often took risks to create their works, using poisonous pigments like emerald green to get the color just right.

Green poison

Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Narayan Khandekar explains how the creation of a synthetic substance, which was chemically identical to the pigment produced from the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli, opened up a new world of blue hues to artists.

Synthetic blue

Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies Narayan Khandekar explains the aquatic origins of Tyrian purple.

A priceless purple

We will all get old one day. Mike Sager’s astonishingly intimate portrait of Glenn Sandberg, age ninety-two, is about what it actually feels like to be close to the end. It’s a story about mortality and love and companionship and the things in life that are most important—and how those things we once held as so important fall away. Longtime Esquire writer at large Mike Sager joins host David Brancaccio to discuss how and why he wrote “Old,” which was published in 1998, and how the story continues to ripple and shape his own views on work, death, and what matters most.

Old, By Mike Sager

Esquire Classic

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