Arts & Culture

A 10-minute drive from the White House — where immigration has a top spot on the President's "to-do" list — a museum has filled three of its floors with artists' reactions to displacement, relocation and flight.

When you stand in the center of Plaza del Congreso in downtown Buenos Aires, looking at the dome of Argentina's Capitol building, there's an imposing grey ghost of a building just to the right. It's a deteriorating art nouveau masterpiece: the Edificio del Molino, closed for decades, and now in the middle of a multi-year restoration.

The restorers opened it to the public for just a few hours recently, and a crowd started lining up on the sidewalk hours early, two and three abreast. When the doors finally opened, the line stretched almost three blocks.

Looking back on the past year of sessions this week, World Cafe is digging into the archives for some performances and interviews since last January. You'll hear sessions with artists including young producer, singer, multi-instrumentalist King Princess, the young rockers of Cage The Elephant, folk musician Rhiannon Giddens and more.

Listen to all the sessions below.

Diver and photographer Jill Heinerth has explored unmapped, underwater caves deep in the earth, as well as the submerged crevices of an iceberg. She has seen hidden creatures and life forms that have never been exposed to the light of day.

"Since I was the smallest child, I always wanted to be an explorer — to have an opportunity to go someplace where nobody has ever been before," she says. "As an artist with my camera, it's an incredible opportunity to document these places and bring back images to share with others."

President Donald Trump has called himself “the least racist person” in the world, while a 2018 poll found a majority of Americans consider him to be a racist.

During a visit to London last month, I was pretty excited to try the slow-cooked curries at Masala Zone. Almost as soon as I sat down, however, the manager told me he didn't want my business.

Writers draw on memories to create some of their best work.

Morning Edition wants to hear your memories of home and where you come from — through poetry.

Draw on all five senses. Share with us the people or places or smells that define your home. Be original!

Here's an example from NPR's resident poet Kwame Alexander.

"I am from words and art and books
"I am from discipline and hard work; the sound of coins in a jar"

The music of Taylor McFerrin can sound like something out of science fiction, yet with a soulful quality. The hip-hop beats he grew up with in the '90s form the backbone of his sound, but what gives it that otherworldly feel are synthesizers used by jazz musicians from the 1970s.

"Something about those sounds spoke to me so much," Taylor says. "And if I think about all the hip hop that I was getting into, it was always people that were sampling that era of music.

There are comedy creators whose sensibilities are darker than Danny McBride's. There are some whose satire is sharper, some whose characterizations are weaker, some whose sense of the moment is more or less developed. But there is no one more convinced than Danny McBride of the raw, unstoppable comedic power of male nudity — both frontal and rear.

Ally Schmaling wants a "complete annihilation of gender."

The Boston-based queer and gender nonbinary photographer created a portrait series exploring queer and nonbinary identities — people living without limits and refusing to identify with traditional male and female gender labels.

"It's our job to push institutions forward and create art that reflects the world we want to see," Schmaling says.