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This is Defector, a new sports blog and media company. We made this place together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without favor, without discretion, and without interference.

Defector

Sarah Borus

France Europe French Paris 7th arrondissement Muse Rodin Museum art sculpture hands

Arts And Culture

You’ve Got To Hand It To Rodin

Kelsey McKinney

two van gogh paintings on a dark background

Misery And Memory In Two Van Goghs

Observing And Breathing At Calder Gardens

Rachelle Hampton

A yellow path curves through sprays of purple irises.

Monet, Through The Iris

Barry Petchesky

Music

‘The Disintegration Loops’ Are Music’s Loveliest Death

The Eyes Have It

An orange cat sits in front of two framed Henri Rousseau prints.

Finding Henri Rousseau

<p>Annie Howard is a journalist and historian based in Chicago. She is currently at work on her debut manuscript, <em>The City Made Me Trans</em><i>.</i></p>


Annie Howard

Chloe Dzubilo And The Perilous Path Forward For Trans Life

Lauren Theisen

Helen Frankenthaler Is A Reason To Go To Rochester

Soraya Roberts

What The Beads Can Tell You

You Don’t Have To See Everything In The Museum

screenshot with the terrible score bug in the corner

The Scorebug Snuggery: The Phillies Abandon “P00P”

Warhol's 'Ladies And Gentlemen' portraits in the Warhol Museum gallery

Lost At The Warhol


<p>Dan McQuade was a founding member of Defector. He died in January 2026.</p>


Dan McQuade

Two manet paintings with a Pop Art painting crashing over them

Eagles Win Loan Of Manet Painting In Super Bowl Bet, Which Is What This Thing Was About All Along

<p>Megan Greenwell is the author of <em>Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream</em>, which will be published in June 2025 and is <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/bad-company-megan-greenwell?variant=43151012757538">available for preorder now</a>.</p>


Megan Greenwell

photo of a corner of the Clevelant Museum of Art

The Wonder Of The Regional Art Museum

I Demand The National Agricultural Library Publish This Book Right Now

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<div>Casey Taylor is a writer living and working in Pittsburgh. He is currently writing a book for St. Martin&#8217;s Press about cannabis religions, Haile Selassie I, and the Cold War in the Caribbean. He also writes a free newsletter called <a href="https://weedchurch.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://weedchurch.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1709306863919000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1mVH2xiID6S0zvlyj6yHco">Weed Church</a> covering foolish spiritual things that occur to him. His work has appeared in The New Republic, WIRED, New York Magazine, and a sports blog he can’t currently recall the name of. You can <a href="mailto:caseyt7@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">email</a> him if you’d like.</div>
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Casey Taylor

The crowded work bench of New York tattooist Charlie Wagner in the 1940's. (Photo by FPG/Getty Images)

How Do You Preserve Tattoo History When Skin And Memory Fail?

Felix Kent

Simple Hotel Room, Iceland. (Photo by: GHI/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Why Does Hotel Art Look Like That?

A 16 foot sculpture of a pigeon named dinosaur at the Highline in New York City on November 4, 2024. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/AFP)

The Big Pigeon Isn’t Scary Enough

Risk Week

What Do You Risk In Revisiting A Piece Of Culture You Once Loved?

Alex Sujong Laughlin

A woman stands in front of a Sol LeWitt wall drawing at the Venice Biennale in 1976.

Who Owns An Idea?

Argentina, Patagonia, Rio Pinturas, Cueva de las Manos

The Machines

Whatever AI Looks Like, It’s Not

Visitors examine the exhibition as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presents the groundbreaking exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and Transtlantic Modernism which includes some 160 works of painting, sculpture, photography, film, and ephemera in New York, United States on February 20, 2024.The exhibition opens in Black History Month, is honoring the triumphs and struggles of African Americans throughout U.S. history.

Girl, Uninterrupted

A man looks at the oil painting "Beer Garden with A.K." (2009) by Nicole Eisenman

The Beauty Of The Ordinary Is There For The Painting

Mary Cassatt's "In The Loge" - a woman in the late 1800s uses opera glasses to look at something from a theater box, while a man looks at her from a distance