Meer | English edition

Saturday, July 18, 2026

German soldiers in a trench near Ypres, Belgium, during World War I. The Ypres Salient was the site of a series of major battles between German and Allied forces—including Belgian, French, British, and Canadian troops—from 1914 to 1918. These battles resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties and became emblematic of the brutal trench warfare of the Great War

Kaiser Wilhelm II wearing the uniform of the Russian 39th Narva Dragoon Regiment, later redesignated the 13th Hussars. As a symbol of the close dynastic ties between European monarchies before World War I, Wilhelm II served as the regiment's honorary colonel-in-chief from 1901 until the outbreak of war in 1914

The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 were landmark international agreements established at two peace conferences in the Netherlands, helping to define the laws of war and war crimes. A planned third conference was cancelled after the outbreak of World War I

A regimental aid post in a World War I trench, where wounded soldiers received emergency medical treatment near the front lines. These makeshift medical stations played a vital role in caring for casualties amid the harsh conditions of trench warfare

Portrait of Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire, standing with a hat and walking stick. A dominant figure in 19th-century European politics, Bismarck played a central role in German unification and helped shape the continent's balance of power before World War I

Geo-poetics and the origins of World War I

From Victor Hugo's vision of peace to the geopolitical rivalries that transformed Europe

Rotterdam Centraal station is the main railway hub of Rotterdam, serving an average of 100,000 passengers each day. The current station building, located at Stationsplein, was officially inaugurated on 13 March 2014 by Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands

Architecture & Design

Rotterdam: Europe’s city of the future

Architecture, industry, and innovation in the Netherlands’ most modern metropolis

An older man resting one hand on his chest and the other on his abdomen as he breathes deeply, symbolizing awareness of the body's natural rhythm

Discover the hidden power of breath

How simple breathing patterns can influence stress, focus, and emotional balance

Statue of Saint Stephen standing in Budapest as a tribute to Hungary’s first king, overlooking the historic skyline and the Danube River, Budapest, Hungary

Between Buda and Pest

Along the Danube, a city divided by water reveals how history survives in silence and reconstruction

On the Street

Wooden barrel oak with bottle and glass of wine

The role of oak in winemaking

Understanding the impact of barrels on flavour

Celia Kritharioti. Haute Couture SS19. Photo by Yiannis Vlamos

Couture in Paris

An afternoon with Celia Kritharioti

Futuristic scene featuring advanced robots revolutionizing the construction industry with high-tech automation

Economy & Politics

AI's impact on employment: navigating the future of work

Exploring the dual nature of AI's influence: job displacement and inequality across economies

Issaka Sawadogo as Ousmane from the film Ousmane

Is there a connection between an immigrant and a lady with dementia?

Steve Moseley

Steve Moseley’s Patience Bottles

Arthouse Gallery, Sacramento, California

Examining and prodding the origin of life

Science & Technology

The origin of life examined

A new way to study the origin of life

Architecture & Design

The Grand Theatre of Rabat set within expansive green spaces, reflecting Morocco’s commitment to creativity and sustainability

The vision behind the Grand Theatre of Rabat

How the Grand Theatre of Rabat in Morocco celebrates creativity, national pride, and cultural openness

An open office precinct where lighting and visibility reinforce security, presenting the relationship between design and crime prevention

Designing safer cities with CPTED

How Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) helps architects create safer, more inclusive and connected communities

Art

Installation view from the “Art of Manga” exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, featuring works from Hirohiko Araki’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure series. The exhibition showcases hundreds of original drawings and large-scale installations by major Japanese manga artists from the 1970s to the present, including Eiichiro Oda (One Piece), Junji Ito, and Tite Kubo (Bleach). Araki’s featured artwork includes life-sized characters and their Stands, designed to align with viewers’ eye levels for an immersive experience, highlighting manga as a recognized art form in a museum setting. Photo: © İdil Burkutoğlu

Hirohiko Araki and color without rules

Rethinking identity, composition, and expression in "JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure"

Entangled roots and floating forms, solo exhibition, 2026. Courtesy of the artist

Yilin Rebecca Sun on Vessel

The artist and curator reflects on clay, collaboration, and the connections that shape our shared future

Culture

A group of people stands near a blackboard, each focused on their phones instead of the board

Social media didn’t change us, it revealed us

A reflection on the digital age that exposed human nature in its truest form

A woman sits in an academic library in Asia, surrounded by shelves filled with books

Read beyond the lines

Curiosity, language, and reflection in the pursuit of independent thought

Economy & Politics

Surrounded by noise and competing narratives, she pauses to think critically—separating information from assumption in a world that rarely slows down

Thinking clearly in the age of information

Why critical reasoning is the essential skill for navigating noise, bias, and fast-moving opinion

Azerbaijani refugees from Karabakh during the war, 1992

Agent of death: targeting civilians

From Baghdad and Gaza to Ukraine and Iran, how governments and military powers normalize civilian deaths as a strategy of war

Entertainment

Mad Men functions as a self-aware paradox, utilizing high art techniques to critique consumer capitalism while simultaneously perpetuating it

Mad Men and the blurred line between high and low art

Mad Men softens the distinction between high art and mass commerce, simultaneously critiquing consumer capitalism

The interior of Film Museum Pablo Ducrós Hicken in Buenos Aires, Argentina by Roberto Fiadone, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Who is protecting Argentina's film history?

Not the State, not the universities, and not a national archive—just a handful of individuals fighting against oblivion

Fashion

Glenn Martens is a Belgian fashion designer who began his career as a junior designer at Jean Paul Gaultier, working on the women’s pre-collection and the menswear line G2

Diesel and the aesthetics of ruin

How shredded denim, industrial decay, and Glenn Martens redefine success, identity, and beauty in a post industrial fashion landscape

An Allegory of the Tudor Succession: The Family of Henry VIII

Power, spectacle, and the Tudor silhouette

How the theatrical fashion of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I continues to shape modern ideas of authority, excess, and visual dominance

Feature

A solitary figure stands silhouetted by a window in an abandoned house, surrounded by fading light and quiet decay

Broken into a better shape

Poems of suffering, resilience, and the long journey toward becoming

A father and son sit across from each other in silence, their tension shaped by control, performance, and the unseen weight of being watched

Puppets without strings

In a world without scripts, the truth becomes the most dangerous act

Food & Wine

Whey and plant-based protein sources displayed together, highlighting differences in composition, texture, and nutritional origin in a natural, realistic setting

Whey protein versus plant-based protein

A scientific comparison of protein quality, digestibility, and muscle outcomes

An elderly man wearing denim overalls and a hat, examining fresh vegetables

How Italians redefine sustainable food

From organic farming to packaging innovation and waste reduction

Science & Technology

An American astronaut working outside the International Space Station, highlighting the exterior structure and the presence of ISS astronauts in orbit

Samantha Harvey’s "Orbital and the Anthropocene sublime"

A study of cosmic distance, human hubris, and the ethical tensions at the heart of Anthropocene consciousness

A doctor studying an interactive three-dimensional human anatomy display, reflecting the transformation of medicine through data-driven innovation

The Internet of Bodies is already here

How biotechnology could reshape human communication and monitoring

Sport

A clear view of AT&T Stadium, representing the benchmark for fan experience among 2026 FIFA World Cup venues

Top 10 World Cup venues for fan experience

Review-based rankings reveal which stadiums delight supporters and which face criticism

A young footballer silhouetted against the evening sky with a ball at their feet, representing dreams that reach far beyond the horizon

A 12-year-old's road to the World Cup

Your roadmap from wherever you are right now to the Saudi Arabia 2034 Football World Cup

Travel

Towering buildings overlooking Manila Bay at dusk, symbolising a city that remains open to history, hope, and endless becoming

Manila, the open city

Observing the many faces of the Filipinos

A wheelchair user explores the Vatican Museums, highlighting the importance of accessibility at one of the world's most visited cultural landmarks

Andrea Stoler’s guide to an accessible Vatican

Practical advice for wheelchair users visiting the Vatican Museums and Saint Peter’s Basilica

Wellness

A couple hugs beside an orange train, sharing an emotional moment in a long-distance relationship

The dynamics of long-distance relationships

A study of communication, trust, and emotional resilience in modern partnerships

A young entrepreneur reflects on innovation, strategy, and business growth while surrounded by a visual map of ideas and opportunities

The future belongs to the curious

How curiosity fuels learning, innovation, resilience, and human progress in the age of artificial intelligence

Explore the Calendar

Worldwide Dresden Thessaloniki Stockholm Luxembourg Montreal Pittsburgh Oshkosh Santiago Lisbon Seville Madrid Paris Houston Hamburg Brussels Seoul Warsaw Basel Kobarid Krakow Sofia Frankfurt am Main

Lambda members and allies perform a skit based on
the popular TV quiz show, Hollywood Squares, at the
2002 Lambda Network at Kodak's Annual Education
Event with Management (detail). Courtesy of George Eastman Museum

Picturing equality: the Lambda Network at Kodak

27 Jul — 8 Nov 2026 at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, United States

Farah Billah, The table, with friends (detail), 2026. Courtesy of Ogden Museum of Southern Art

Louisiana contemporary

1 Aug 2026 — 14 Feb 2027 at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, United States

Gwen John, Girl with a blue scarf (detail), c.1923. Courtesy of National Galleries Scotland

Gwen John: strange beauties

1 Aug 2026 — 4 Jan 2027 at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

W. Max Thomason, Do you ever feel everything you have could disappear in an instant (detail), 2026. Courtesy of Pulse Visual Arts

Falling away from prime

7 Aug — 27 Sep 2026 at Pulse Visual Art in Denver, United States

Catherine Opie, Flipper, Tanya, Chloe & Harriet, San Francisco, 1995 © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul, and Thomas Dane Ga

8 Aug — 1 Nov 2026 at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Billy Schenck, Gratuitous violence (detail). Courtesy of JoAnne Artman Gallery

Technicolor west

1 Sep — 31 Oct 2026 at the JoAnne Artman Gallery in Laguna Beach, United States

Ali Cherri, still from The sentinel (detail), 2026. Courtesy the artist and
Almine Rech Gallery

5 Sep 2026 — 4 Jan 2027 at WIELS in Brussels, Belgium

Ellen Bradshaw, Spring fever, 10th Ave and 25th Sta (detail). Courtesy of Pleiades Gallery

Every street has a story

8 Sep — 3 Oct 2026 at the Pleiades Gallery in New York, United States

Various artists, Celebrating the icons of art, exhibition view. Courtesy of Voorlinden Museum

Celebrating the icons of art

12 Sep 2026 — 7 Mar 2027 at the Voorlinden Museum in Wassenaar, Netherlands

Life in color and form. Courtesy of Millesgården Museum

Life in color and form

12 Sep 2026 — 29 Mar 2027 at the Millesgården Museum in Lidingö, Sweden

Trompe-l’oeil knowledge, Korea (18th-20th century), exhibition view. Courtesy of Musée Guimet

Trompe-l’oeil knowledge, Korea (18th-20th century)

16 Sep 2026 — 4 Jan 2027 at the Musée Guimet in Paris, France

Keerthana Kunnath, Not what you saw. Courtesy of Foam

Not what you saw

18 Sep — 27 Nov 2026 at the Foam in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Relic of the so-called staff of Moses, mediterranean region. Courtesy of the Jewish Museum

Sacred splendor

18 Sep 2026 — 7 Feb 2027 at The Jewish Museum in New York, United States

Franz Gertsch, Patti Smith I (detail), 1978. Courtesy of Museum Franz Gertsch

Franz Gertsch. Blow-up (Part II)

19 Sep 2026 — 28 Feb 2027 at the Museum Franz Gertsch in Burgdorf, Switzerland

Sun, moon and five peaks. Courtesy of British Museum

1 Oct 2026 — 31 Jan 2027 at the British Museum in London, United Kingdom

Lucas Blalock, Film-object (Mouth) (detail), 2025, from
Tête-à-tête-à-tête-à-tête-à-tête. Courtesy of the artist and George Eastman Museum

2 Oct 2026 — 11 Apr 2027 at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, United States

Swab’s 2025 edition, exhibition view. Courtesy of Swab

Swab’s 19th edition

8 — 11 Oct 2026 at Swab in Barcelona, Spain

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