NPR: Susan Stamberg

Pop artist Andy Warhol died in 1987, but he's making his presence felt around the nation's capitol these days. He's featured in an art fair, in restaurants, in galleries, and in two major museums. The Hirschhorn Museum is exhibiting silkscreens and paintings Warhol did — of photographs of shadows. And the National Gallery of Art has its first one-man Warhol show, Headline, focused on a series of paintings he made of Page One tabloid headlines.

A friend's son recently got a tattoo — and she was appalled. Forty years ago, she'd given birth to a perfect, pink-skinned cherub. Now, bright blue wings, dark red hearts and some birds were inscribed on his bicep. Comfort, however, came in the words of France's top embroiderer: "It's human nature to want to look different," said Francois Lesage. "Self-adornment goes back to the Lascaux Caves! Think of scarification. That's the ancestor of embroidery."

From the late 1970s until her death in 2006, at the age of 55, playwright Wendy Wasserstein was a force in the New York theatre. She won the Pulitzer, the Tony and many other awards for writing about her generation of educated, successful women struggling to balance their professional and family lives.

Photographer Elliott Erwitt loves babies, bare bottoms and dogs — specifically, jumping dogs. And he'll go to great lengths — however unorthodox — to get the shot. To get a dog to jump? Bark at it, Erwitt says: "You have to speak their language. ... Sometimes they bark back, sometimes they jump." But it's a perilous approach. "Once, one of them peed on my leg as a consequence," he says.

Whether you're on vacation or stay-cation this summer, chances are you're taking pictures. Smartphones make picture-taking easier and more popular than ever. But in earlier years, photography was more of an event. At the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, an exhibition called "Little Pictures, Big Lives" shows snapshots from the 1920s through the '60s. And many of the people in these photos happen to be some of this country's greatest artists.

From 1915 until 1946, some 25,000 pieces of paper were exchanged between two major 20th century artists. Painter Georgia O'Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz wrote each other letters — sometimes two and three a day, some of them 40 pages long. The correspondence tracks their relationship from acquaintances to admirers to lovers to man and wife to exasperated — but still together — long-marrieds.

In June 1936, a blockbuster of a book was published; it gave the world a sense of the Old South, an unforgettable heroine and (in the movie version) the phrase "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind sold one million copies in its first six months, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, and brought an explosion of unexpected, unwished for celebrity to its author.

In Mitchell's hometown of Atlanta, Ga., a lovely old apartment building on South Prado Street bears a big, brass plaque. It reads:

When one of this country's greatest composers died at age 39, novelist John O'Hara said, "George Gershwin died on July 11, 1937. But I don't have to believe it if I don't want to."

As is true for so many top musicians, Gershwin's works — his popular songs, his opera Porgy and Bess, his jazz-informed classical compositions — live on. Now, there's a new version of one of Gershwin's best-loved orchestral pieces, arranged for a brassy big band.

In the 1870s, an Emperor and a Baron undertook the remaking of Paris: Napoleon III and Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann's urban renewal project converted clusters of medieval warrens into the Paris we know today, with its grand boulevards and rows of handsome buildings. Impressionist painters showed that new Paris on their canvases — but one of them had a very different perspective.

Some of the best summers are those filled with journeys, reunions and good food. We hope that all three figure into your summer plans this year. As it happens, those themes also happen to be featured prominently in some of the books that our trusty independent booksellers are recommending for your summer reading pleasure.

When it comes to Dutch painters, Rembrandt and Vermeer are the best known. But have you ever heard of Gabriel Metsu? Vermeer and Metsu were contemporaries, but Metsu was the star in the Golden Age of Dutch painting during the 17th century — and long afterward.

"Metsu was still the top boy in the 19th century," says David Jaffe of the National Gallery in London. "Vermeer is a very early 20th-century discovery."

You'd think the color of the most photographed bridge in the world would have a more exciting name than "international orange." Something like "vermilion" or "terra cotta" or "burnt sienna" might seem more appropriate.

Whatever you call it, it's the vivid, unmistakable color of the Golden Gate Bridge, which turns 75 next year. But back in the 1930s, the now-iconic hue was a radical choice.

'Unique And Unconventional Treatment'