Vermeer's famous Girl With a Pearl Earring has returned to the United States for the first time since 1995. Very little is known about the painting, so in honor of the visit, The Guardian newspaper asked its readers to come up with a backstory for the mysterious girl.

Meet the new Dutch master: Tjaalf Sparnaay's food paintings are so gobsmacking in their level of detail, it's hard to resist the temptation to pick one up and take a bite.

What do salt, ancient Jewish pickle carts, the sometimes brutal Indonesian spice trade and Vincent Van Gogh have in common? They brought life to Dutch cuisine, specifically, the Dutch pickle.

For fashion designers, catching the eye of a first lady can be the opportunity of a lifetime. But sometimes the attention isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Host Michel Martin speaks with fashion critic Robin Givhan about the agony and ecstasy of creating inaugural gowns.

The belle epoque was not particularly belle if you were poor and female — like the young girl who modeled for Edgar Degas' famous sculpture, The Little Dancer, Aged 14. A new novel by Cathy Marie Buchanan tells the story of that girl, ballet student Marie van Goethem.

David Esterly's life was changed in the 1970s when he came across wood carvings done by Grinling Gibbons more than 300 years earlier. Esterly became a wood carver, and even re-created one of Gibbons' pieces that was destroyed in a fire.

The "ghost gum" trees painted by Albert Namatjira became symbols of Australian identity and were soon to be put on the nation's historic register.