1. Here Are the 10 Best Surf Movies of All Time by Olivia Silva
It’s no secret that surfing is unpredictable, relying on the vagaries of nature as much as it does any individual’s skill. But you know what you’ll get from a surf movie. They’re packed with learning curves, solid friendships and star-crossed lovers, pro surfer cameos, and rollicking soundtracks. The formula works, having built cult followings that pine for its for its signature mix of nostalgic comfort and adrenaline rush. To celebrate the 35th anniversary of one such heralded project, Point Break, we took a look back through the canon to identify the best surf flicks ever to catch a wave…
Read our full guide to the surf canon here.
2. Thom Browne, Norma Kamali, and More Designers Reimagine State Flags For America’s 250th by Sam Falb
Leave it to fashion designers to look at a flag and think: This could use a makeover. In honor of America’s 250th, CFDA designers swapped stars and stripes for florals, patchwork, and Texas bluebonnets across more than 120 flags representing the 50 states, five territories, and Washington, DC. For Diotima and Proenza Schouler designer Rachel Scott, the U.S. Virgin Islands called for “the Caribbean visual tradition, rather than the colonial administrative one,” while Zac Posen looked to denim as “a symbol of American style and individuality” for California…
Discover the inspiration behind 16 of the “United Flags of Fashion” here.
3. He May Be Mark Ruffalo’s Son, But It Still Took 100 Auditions to Get His Big Break by Sophie Lee
When Keen Ruffalo signed onto our Zoom call, he was the picture of Gen Z nonchalance. The 25-year-old had his Airpods in, black hoodie on, and was sporting that ruffled, floppy haircut teenagers regularly screenshot and bring to the salon. But make no mistake: Keen is still getting comfortable on camera. His last name does indeed come from Mark Ruffalo, his father, who landed the young actor his first film spot at the age of 12 (as an extra in Begin Again). Keen’s latest roles—a part in the uber-indie Green Day romp Nimrods and inevitably high-profile turn in Amazon’s teen drama Sterling Point—seem a natural evolution for a child of Hollywood. But “contrary to popular belief, I was actually raised on a farm and kept very far away from all of that,” he said of the entertainment industry…
Read the full interview here.
4. The 15 Must-See U.S. Museum Shows in Fall 2026 by Karly Quadros
Although Georgia O’Keeffe may be best known for her depictions of nature, the painter was quite taken with architecture and returned to it throughout her career, which the Detroit Institute of Art is highlighting with a show opening this September. This fall hosts a myriad of surprises at museums around the country, from multimedia art by Taryn Simon telling the story of an unnamed federal agent moving through history at the Guggenheim to the first exhibition of BTS star RM’s collection stateside…
Read our full list of can’t-miss shows here.
5. ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ Can’t Get Out of Its Own Head by Karly Quadros
With a title like Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Jane Schoenbrun’s third film is designed to get your blood pumping. But the word “frigid”—in all its complicated connotations—might be a more apt description of Schoenbrun’s third feature film. We meet Kris (Hannah Einbinder), a “Sundance wunderkind” tasked with remaking the titular fictional ’80s slasher franchise, a problematic cult classic that Hollywood wants to reboot for younger, queerer audiences. Kris journeys to the movie’s iced-over summer camp to track down its original final girl, Billy (Gillian Anderson), and convince her to star in the remake. But, the movie feels more like a long film essay than a feature, enunciated rather than performed…
Read the full film review here.
6. Peek Inside Joe Jonas’s Art-Filled New York Apartment, Now on the Market for $6.75 Million by Isabella Bernstein
Long gone are the days of rockstars flinging television sets out hotel windows. In 2026, a famous musician’s home is more likely to resemble a well-kempt, hi-fi listening lounge. Look no further than the Dumbo condo of Joe Jonas, complete with an extensive art collection and a trove of vinyl rare enough to make any crate digger green with envy. Just over two years after purchasing his Brooklyn home, the 36-year-old singer and actor is putting his lofty corner back unit on the market. He’s asking $6.75 million for the three-bedroom, four-bathroom property, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and 26-story-high views of the Manhattan Bridge.
Discover Jonas’s enviable apartment here.
7. Where Do Dealers Go on Vacation? by Ella Martin-Gachot and Julia Halperin
This month marked gallery hiatus season, when dealers from New York to Hong Kong to Miami take a break from a relentless stream of fairs, exhibition openings, and studio visits. For one month, gallerists—who, despite the glamorous trappings of the job, are also day-to-day shopkeepers—temporarily close their brick-and-mortar spaces and take time to recharge before the fall season descends. So, where do people with professionally good taste spend the month of August?
Read where gallerists summer here.
8. How Bella Freud, Sigmund Freud’s Great-Granddaughter, Reinvented Psychoanalysis by Jamieson Webster
Bella Freud’s popular podcast Fashion Neurosis puts cultural figures on a proverbial couch and begins, naturally enough, with what they are wearing. Freud, a fashion designer, is part of a lineage that includes not only Sigmund but the other great Freud, her father Lucian: one Freud preoccupied with what clothes conceal, another with the naked body, and Bella with what happens when we dress it. Bella brings her experience as an analysand to her interviews, alongside her long history of careful, whimsical clothing design and her sense of what clothing can mean for us—about us—as a conduit for intimacy throughout our lives…
Read the conversation Freud in conversation with Webster here.
9. We Took a Bushwick Line Cook to See ‘Tony.’ He Had Notes. by Paloma Baygual Nespatti
Anthony Bourdain has been mythologized plenty of times since his death in 2018. But Tony takes us to the kitchens where the myth began. Starring Dominic Sessa as an aimless 19-year-old Bourdain, the coming-of-age film follows the then-unknown cook through a formative summer in 1970s Provincetown, Massachusetts, loosely drawing from the stories Bourdain shared in his bestseller, Kitchen Confidential. Giovanni Luciano (who’s been dubbed “New York’s hottest line cook”) joined CULTURED for a screening of Tony and emerged with a verdict: The film was well-done (pun intended)…
Read Luciano’s full list of notes on the film here.
10. A Rare Leonardo da Vinci Painting Goes on View at the Met—With Remarkably Little Fanfare by Sophie Lee
Until recently, there was only one work by Leonardo da Vinci publicly on view in the United States: Ginevra de’ Benci at the National Gallery of Art, hung behind glass on a plinth denoting its significance as of one of the country’s great masterworks. Now, a second Leonardo has appeared, with surprisingly little fanfare, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The painting has been quietly on view since the spring without so much as a press release. Madonna of the Yarnwinder, also known as The Lansdowne Madonna, ca. 1501, is on long-term loan from the collection of hedge fund titan Kenneth C. Griffin. “It is a very important image,” the art historian Martin Kemp, a leading authority on Leonardo, told CULTURED…
Learn more about the newest addition to the Met’s walls here.
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Rosa Elena Curruchich Made Paintings Small Enough to Smuggle. Now, They’re Seeing the Light.
Does Gen Z Have the Patience for Fine Dining?
WAG-onomics: How Women Took Over the Business of Men’s Sports From the Sidelines
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