I love pretty much everything about io9, Gawker Media's science fiction blog. I love that it has a lot of women on the masthead, I love its mix of actual and speculative science. But I think that most of all, I love and appreciate how much art they provide to their readers. Ta-Nehisi's right, of course, that you can't reproduce everything online and capture what the artist put into the paint or the stone. But some things, like photography, do reproduce well on-screen. Take these pictures of Chernobyl: they're utterly stunning. The clouds in the second image, the rictus of the abandoned doll in the 8th, there aren't a lot of words. Go look. Or check out the gentle dragons and ancient cars in this gallery of Kiriko Moth's work. io9 feels like a full museum to me, and I think that's what makes it so successful for me. I can go there and watch video, I find art there, curated and commented on, that I might just read about somewhere else. Their book recommendations are increasingly the stock on the shelves in my imaginary museum gift shop. The bloggers are the docents. The place just feels...whole.
All of which is a really roundabout way of saying that I wish more blogs presented more art instead of just representative samples. I'm spoiled for choice here in DC, given the sheer number of museums, and particularly because most of them are free. But while that's great for the big stuff, it isn't always conducive to discovering new artists, particularly those who are just starting out. If you've got recommendations, please send them my way, and I'll post them.