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Painter Matthew Mitchell's project is deceptively simple: He's painting 100 portraits of people who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The process has taken on a much more powerful reality than he realized it would.

The controversial Smithsonian exhibition Hide/Seek has sparked national debate — not for what's in it, mostly, but for what's been taken out. As the exhibit comes to a close, its curators look back and examine its role in the history of American culture wars.

Some people fight invasive plants with chemicals and scorched-earth tactics. In Washington, D.C., graphic designer Patterson Clark turns them into art.

Stephen Mancusi worked for the New York Police Department for 27 years as a forensic artist. He specializes in composite sketching -- the process of interviewing victims and witnesses to create a drawing of a perpetrator that is released to help police find suspects.

Actress, playwright and performer Anna Deaveare Smith talks about her new work, centering on health care, and her new position as artist in residence at the Center for American Progress. She says she will use that perch for her next work about change in Washington.

Two documentaries — one about big-budget Broadway musicals and one about a Brooklyn program aimed at high-school rappers — make it clear that art isn't easy.

She's been acting for nearly 40 years; now she's taking a stab at directing, producing and writing. And she's doing all that — as well as acting — in one film: Then She Found Me. She tells NPR why.

Toy designers Steve Ross and Jason Geyers uncovered a treasure trove of never released Star Wars accessories, from the Jabba the Hutt bean bag chair to the Death Star grill.

Forty years ago, another presidential race was focused on an unpopular war. The 1968 Chicago convention riots — and the "Chicago Seven" tried in their wake — are the subject of an unorthodox documentary.

Sculptor John Bisbee has made almost all of his art with an object most people use to hang art with — nails. Recently, after decades of oxidizing, welding, bending and cutting, he realized that he was overlooking the most obvious thing he could do with nails: hammer them.

Artist & Activist Rhodessa Jones talks about The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women. The Project has earned attention and praise for helping to lift imprisoned women's lives and voices. The actress, teacher and a playwright discusses her portrayals of women as they persevere through major life changes have won acclaim.

Director Marina Zenovich delved into the director's psyche while making the film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. She looks back at his legal troubles and his unusual "blueprint."

Myanmar's ousted leader, once an icon of freedom, faces the prospect of another prolonged detention. But her handling of atrocities against the Rohingya has left her reputation abroad in tatters.

Our own Day to Day television critic reviews the new FX network series 30 Days. The show, hosted by documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, plays with the idea of what it's really like to live in someone else's shoes for 30 days. Spurlock was the subject of the film Super Size Me, where he charted his weight gain while eating exclusively at McDonald's for 30 days.

A senior curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has been indicted in Italy on criminal charges related to the acquisition of several items in the museum's collection. Marion True, curator for antiquities, denies the charges. Michele Norris talks to Suzanne Muchnic of the Los Angeles Times about the case.

An exhibit in Rome sheds new light on Leonardo da Vinci's versatility as architect, engineer and a visionary, many of whose inventions were precursors of today's technological achievements.

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns returns to PBS with Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a profile of the world's first African-American heavyweight boxing champ.

NPR's Alex Chadwick interviews Sean Fine, the producer and cinematographer of True Dads, a documentary that looks at six different fathers and how they've overcome adversity to raise their families. Fine also talks about how the process of making the film affected relationships in his own family.

Cities (and school districts) across Florida have committed to getting 100% of their power from renewable energy sources in recent years but found themselves stymied by the monopoly utilities that provide all of their energy.

Perhaps the most controversial part of the proposal, which was approved by the House Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee, centers on how dental services would be provided to Medicaid beneficiaries.

USF Interim President Rhea Law announced in a university-wide email Tuesday that none of the development ideas submitted last year for the USF Forest Preserve and Claw golf course will be considered.

The TV Set, starring David Duchovny and Sigourney Weaver, satirizes the punishing process of producing a TV pilot. Writer and director Jake Kasdan knows his material: He directed and co-produced the pilot for the acclaimed but short-lived TV series Freaks and Geeks.

Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor has played everything from a Brooklyn cop to a British transvestite. His new HBO miniseries takes him to the center of the tragic 2004 tsunami. Farai Chideya talks with Ejiofor about his new movie, his craft, and his career.

Rhythm comes in different forms from music and poetry to those inside our bodies. There's art based on the most primal rhythm of all: the beating of the human heart.

Chocoholics, take note: Fashion designers are crafting dresses — and purses, hats, even bikinis — to drool for. But don't expect to find these edible outfits on a ready-to-wear rack: They're really just high-concept eye candy for now, part of the world's largest chocolate fair open to the public.