Features

Classical musicians have mined the form of themes and variations to create enduring works of imagination. As a listener, think of Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, …
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A playwright, lyricist and psychologist, James C. Kaufman’s professional and creative work explains why creativity matters — particularly why we should care about it, measure it and nurture it. For …
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The internet is packed with artful pictures superimposed with concise, insightful quotes about creativity from Teresa Amabile, a creativity scholar at Harvard Business School. One of the best — “One …
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Photo: 123rf

In the downtown studios of the Houston Ballet, young dancers spend their days leaping and stretching, bending and spinning. In the ballet’s professional training program, they learn to …
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Photo by Jeff Fitlow

How do you distill and communicate the essence of a person? As a guest lecturer in Anthony Brandt’s Creativity Up Close class, Anne Chao ’05 challenges …
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Alison Weaver, photo by Tommy LaVergne

What makes a painting by 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer distinctly recognizable? The intimate settings? The natural light and shadows? The exquisite details?

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Graph (detail) by Veronica Gomez

“My creative process always starts with research,” said Veronica Gomez ’19, a recent Rice architecture graduate. While designing her master’s thesis, she studied the history, …
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Brain illustration: Getty Images

What do geniuses have in common? Is the mind of an artistic genius the same as a scientific genius? Can you (or I) learn to be …
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Sideways to the Sun (2019) | Through May 18, 2019 | Commissioned by the Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University | Photo by Nash Baker

In the massive …
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Two political veterans shared the stage at the Baker Institute to discuss electoral reform. But the fun really began when they turned their attention to contemporary politics.

It was spring …
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