Arts & Culture

A love of collecting photography led Frank Konhaus and Ellen Cassilly to include an art gallery in their dream home. Then the couple decided that they wanted to do more than just display art. They wanted to build an in-home studio space for artists to create in. Cassilhaus, the name of Frank and Ellen's dwelling, fulfilled their dream. Now, invited artists from all over the world come to their home to write, paint, sculpt, dance or just generate ideas for upcoming projects.

A lot of what we cook defines us. Say "barbecue and sweet tea" and people hear, "the South." The same is true for immigrants. As hyphenated Americans we are what we eat. This will be the subject of an upcoming lecture by Nora Rubel, an assistant professor of religion and classics at the University of Rochester in New York. Rubel earned her graduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill and returns next week talk about "The Settlement Cookbook and the Transformation of Jewish-American Identity." But first she joins guest host Laura Leslie with a preview.

Most traditions have plenty of people, history and folklore to back them up. Carolina barbecue is no different. A new book called, "Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue" explores the Tar Heel tradition - past and present.

On this day - June 23, 40 years ago, the first interracial couple in Orange County was married. Alvin and Omelia Garner got their marriage license a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws forbidding such unions. To mark this year’s anniversary, the Garners decided to celebrate in style and have the wedding they never had.

John Rosenthal is renowned for his black and white photographs of New York City in the 1970s. The photos archived parts of the city that were vanishing and eventually disappeared: a dusty model of a ship in a bottle in the window of a social club in Little Italy, for example, or seltzer bottles stacked in wood crates.