Ken Smith

Somebody was celebrating the beauty of Van Gogh’s paintings in a Tweet today, sharing four images there in a single message. But I could see that one of the images was stitched together from a few Van Gogh paintings, including one I knew well from my hometown museum. Another was too bright, I thought, and two others looked like they were AI-generated from other paintings, one I think I recall. This discovery was sad – the real paintings are readily available and are so interesting – why fake it?

You can enjoy the history museum in Springfield, Missouri, on many levels. Arrowheads, old Route 66 highway signs, bios of movie stars who grew up or went to college there. Trail of Tears death statistics, the relentlessness of white racism against the city’s black population. And on the fifth floor, the 1950s juke box works.