Judged by current standards, Ernest Normand’s 1895 painting Bondage must rank as one of the least politically correct canvases ever to decorate the walls of a major gallery. This massive (six feet by ten feet) depiction of the sale of slave girls in an imagined Ancient Egypt manages to combine ethnic, sexual, and cultural insensitivity in a way that leaves Howard Stern looking like Maya Angelou. The villain of the picture is a sinister Eastern potentate of the pre-Islamic fanatic variety. This richly clad monster of decadence is reclining (these people never sit up straight) on a sofa as he contemplates the [...]

The desert south of Tucson, Arizona, bone dry, rocky, and mountainous, looks a bit, some say, like the end of the world. And that is just what it could have been. Take I-19 towards the Mexican border and, not far from a town with the optimistic name of Green Valley, the visitor can turn off the Interstate and take a narrow approach road to a place that could once have triggered the Apocalypse. It is quiet around there now, the only visible excitement seems to be Monday-night bingo at the American Legion, but it was probably quiet there then too, [...]