August 27, 2012  |   Photo of Treasure Island, Fla., by Tom Pennington/Getty Images.

August 24, 2012  |   "Sleepwalk With Me" began life in, well, the real-life, sleep-walking episodes of comedian Mike Birbiglia, then a one-man theater production, a radio story on "This American Life," a book, an album and now a movie.

August 24, 2012  |   Visitors of the dOCUMENTA (13) contemporary art festival in Kassel, Germany, pose with portraits of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in front of "The Importance of Telepathy," a sculpture by Thai artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Friday's demonstration was part of "All for Ai Weiwei," a project which aims to draw attention to the dissident artist.

August 23, 2012  |   Mike Ford is broke, facing a mountain of debt from hospitals bills after his mother's death, has a father in jail and is unable to pay his tuition to Harvard Law School when he's offered what seems like a dream job in Washington, D.C. That's how the new thriller, "The 500," a debut novel from Matthew Quirk begins.

August 23, 2012  |   Work by controversial Los Angeles-based French pop artist Thierry Guetta, aka Mr Brainwash, is displayed at the Old Sorting Office in London during his first solo European art show. Mr Brainwash was the subject of the 2010 film "Exit Through the Gift Shop," which was directed by British street artist Banksy.

August 22, 2012  |   More of Jeffrey Brown's conversation with Richard Ford. Ford reads an excerpt from his novel "Canada."

August 22, 2012  |   A sculpture by Carl F. Reutersward is part of the Brazilian Global Campaign for Peace in Sao Paulo.

August 21, 2012  |   The trigger for this post is the publication of a new book on Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, "Bernini's Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini." The author, Emory University art historian Sarah McPhee, is the daughter of New Yorker writer John McPhee and has written on Bernini before. But no one has written more about the 17th century Italian master of marble than Irving Lavin, for decades the resident art historian at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. Indeed, when I sat in on Simon Schama's "Power and Authority in the Baroque" course at Harvard in the early '90s, Lavin was the key Bernini reading.

August 21, 2012  |   Phyllis Diller is remembered Monday on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The trailblazing comic and actress died earlier in the day at the age of 95.

August 20, 2012  |   Joseph Campana a poet, critic and scholar of Renaissance literature. He is the author of two collections of poetry, "The Book of Faces" (Graywolf, 2005) and "Natural Selections," which won the 2011 Iowa Poetry Prize. He teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Rice University.

August 20, 2012  |   Omowale Cultural Society dancers perform Saturday at the 2012 African World Festival at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

August 17, 2012  |   Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis" won international acclaim as an autobiographical tale, told first in the form of a graphic novel, later turned into a film, of a young girl coming of age amid the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Now comes the film version of "Chicken With Plums," another story based on her family's history.

August 17, 2012  |   An artist continues work on part of the "See No Evil" street art project on Nelson Street in Bristol, England. The project, now in its second year, is Europe's biggest street art festival and has attracted top graffiti artists from all over the world.

August 16, 2012  |   Kaoru Ishibashi is no newcomer to the music scene. A native of Norfolk, Va., in 2003 he formed New York City indie rock outfit Jupiter One, and as a violinist he's toured the globe with alt-folk act Regina Spektor and experimental rock group of Montreal. But despite finding plenty of steady work as a professional musician, Ishibashi felt he'd landed in an artistic rut.

August 16, 2012  |   Goldfish swim in a tank as part of Hidetomo Kimura's "Art Aquarium." An exhibition of the designer's work -- more than 1,000 goldfish in unconventional aquariums -- is on display in Tokyo through Sept. 24.

August 15, 2012  |   Wednesday would have been Julia Child's 100th birthday (she died in 2004 at age 91), and remembrances for the cooking icon saturate the Internet this week like one of her rum-soaked desserts.

August 15, 2012  |   The Canadian circus troupe Tete d'Enfant performs in Queretaro, Mexico, on Monday.

August 14, 2012  |   Today's post is a departure for Art Beat: a cross-post with the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions.

August 14, 2012  |   A man walks past graffiti in support of jailed punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow on Sunday. Prosecutors want the three band members to be sentenced to three years on charges of hooliganism after they performed in a protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's largest church. A judge will deliver a verdict on Friday.

August 13, 2012  |   Leigh Stein is the author of the book of poems "Dispatch from the Future," one of Publishers Weekly's "Best Summer Books of 2012," and the novel "The Fallback Plan."

August 13, 2012  |   Hundreds of traditional Mexican music dancers perform during a festival in Guadalajara on Saturday.

August 10, 2012  |   Everyone has their favorite sad song, but have you ever thought about the sad song as a whole category of music? Well, Adam Brent Houghtaling has, and he set down theories, profiles and a catalog of songs in the new book, "This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music."

August 10, 2012  |   Jerry Van der Rest, left, and Paul Hollanders, both of Belgium, lean a against a sculpture titled "Graft" by American artist Roxy Paine in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

August 9, 2012  |   Here are four arts and culture videos from public broadcasting partners around the nation.

August 9, 2012  |   Runners and walkers dressed in light emitting suits and holding light sticks make their way up Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Scotland, as part of Wednesday's dress rehearsal of a public art piece called "Speed of Light."

August 8, 2012  |   Poet Priscila Uppal of Canadian Athletes Now reads "Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder."

August 8, 2012  |   The life of a rock star is not always easy and there are bumps to life on the road, but Jeff Tweedy of Wilco wears them well these days. He appeared relaxed in a T-shirt and jeans when we sat down with him in the band's tour bus before a packed concert at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va.

August 8, 2012  |   An Indian artist paints an idol of Lord Krishna at a roadside stall on the outskirts of Amritsar, India, on Wednesday. The idols are in heavy demand ahead of the upcoming Hindu festival of Janmashtami, which marks the birth of Lord Krishna.

August 7, 2012  |   It's hard to categorize Battles' sound -- so hard that even they don't like to.

August 7, 2012  |   Click to enlarge. People wait to see the coffin of the late Costa Rican-born Mexican singer Chavela Vargas during a ceremony in her honor at Garibaldi Square in Mexico City on Monday. The iconic singer, who was known for...

August 6, 2012  |   Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a writer and teacher. His first collection of poems, "Death of a Ventriloquist," won the Vassar Miller Prize and was published by the University of North Texas Press in 2012. He lives in Portland, Maine, with his family and is working on a novel.

August 6, 2012  |   Dancers with the English National Ballet perform during a dress rehearsal of "Swan Lake" at the London Coliseum on Friday.

August 3, 2012  |   Ray Suarez talks to celebrity chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson, whose new memoir, the New York Times bestseller "Yes, Chef," traces his life and career, beginning with his birth in Ethiopia and adoption to a Swedish family, a move that eventually led him to cooking.

August 3, 2012  |   Nepalese children dressed in traditional cow costumes take part in a procession for the Gai Jatra in Kathmandu on Friday. Families who have lost a relative during the year parade a cow, a sacred animal which some believe helps the departed soul to enter the afterlife.

August 2, 2012  |   Here are four arts and culture videos from public broadcasting partners around the nation.

August 2, 2012  |   A woman paints a map of Berlin on the German capital's Schlossplatz ("Palace Square") on Thursday. The giant map is part of a program to celebrate Berlin's 775th anniversary. A team of artists will use 274 templates to draw the map, which will have the scale of 1:775.

August 1, 2012  |   Gore Vidal, the American author, playwright and commentator who became a celebrity for his written works as much as for his outspokenness on the issues of the day, died Tuesday at the age of 86 in Los Angeles.

August 1, 2012  |   Sri Lankan mahouts wash an elephant Wednesday near a fountain ahead of the Esala Perahera festival in the ancient hill capital of Kandy. The Buddhist festival, which features a nightly procession of dancers, fire twirlers, traditional musicians, acrobatic fire performers and elephants, draws thousands of tourists and spectators from around the island.