News
Smithsonian Acquires Video Game So Atrocious It Was Buried in the Desert
One of the most disastrous video games in history is now part of the Smithsonian Institution.
Allison Meier
Allison C. Meier is a former staff writer for Hyperallergic. Originally from Oklahoma, she has been covering visual culture and overlooked history for print and online media since 2006. She moonlights as a cemetery tour guide.
Art
Shredded Sheets and a Mountain of Words
A mountain of typography and a two-story installation of ripped fabric are on view at Pierogi Gallery's the Boiler as part of Terra Infirma, a duo exhibition featuring Linda Herritt and Elana Herzog.
News
Tate Digitizes 52,000 Artifacts from the Lives of British Artists
Around 52,000 letters, sketchbooks, photographs, and other ephemera of 20th-century British artists will be accessible online by next summer. The first 6,000 items were revealed this month as part of the Tate Archive.
Art
Latin American Naturalists Step Out of the Shadows
In Latin American natural history, the achievements of outsiders often eclipse homegrown science and study, but Latino Natural History, a digital exhibition that launched this month, spotlights their contributions.
Art
The Physics of Pollock
The laws of physics were greater collaborators with Jackson Pollock than most painters.
Art
11 Creative Calendars for 2015
The year is counting down its final days, and we'll soon be halfway through the second decade of this century. How will you measure the next 365 days?
Books
A History of Art on the Final Frontier
The first instance of a space discovery affecting art was likely 1608's Somnium, a novel by astronomer Johannes Kepler about a trip to the moon following a pathway revealed by a demon. Ron Miller includes the curious story in The Art of Space, published this October by Zenith Press, which chronicles
Art
A Lost Purple Pigment, Where Quantum Physics and the Terracotta Warriors Collide
The connection between contemporary quantum physics and China's ancient Terracotta Warriors is a lost pigment called Han purple. The vibrant hue appeared in the Zhou dynasty and faded out sometime near 220 AD; art didn't see a purple as vivid until 19th-century manufacturing.
Art
Douglas Gordon Goes Swimming in the Shallow End
In Claude Debussy's 1910 prelude "La cathédrale engloutie" ("The Sunken Cathedral"), shuddering waves of chords grow and then drown out in tribute to a mythical cathedral rising out of the sea and then disappearing again. In Douglas Gordon's new "tears become… streams become…" installation at the Pa
Art
Undoing a 19th-Century Art Restorer's Overzealous Handiwork
The 19th-century art restorer Raffaele Gargiulo was so good at reconstructing Greek vases, one antiquarian called it a "dangerous perfection for knowledge." Filling in broken gaps with his own paintings, mending cracks with brass staples, his work was a potential threat to history.
Books
A Portrait of the 21st-Century Alps, Where Glaciers Retreat and Concrete Advances
The Alps today are different mountains from when the first 19th-century photographers hoisted heavy plate cameras up their craggy sides. Glaciers are in retreat, ski resorts are firmly lodged into slopes, and human infrastructure crawls back and forth steadily up their inclines.
News
Video Games on Smallpox and Thoreau's Walden Get Government Funding
A 19th-century Philadelphia smallpox epidemic and Henry David Thoreau's transcendental retreat into the woods are the subjects of two video games awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) this Monday.