PARIS – The Paris Public Library’s Slate-Painting Auction for 2003 has begun ... The paintings are joined this year by a special hand-woven wool rug crafted by Methyl Belanger.

But for many years she has pursued a side passion: hand-painting vibrant, sprawling, unapologetically subjective maps of the world that offer a painterly twist on the visualization of data.

The Vault is Slate’s history blog ... of a hippopotamus comes from the hand of the celebrated Baroque painter Pieter Paul Rubens. Until 1800, this 1616 painting remained the only realistic ...