Books
Typography in the Wild
In the same tradition as birdwatching manuals, a recently published book is targeted at turning even the most oblivious of urban wanderers into typography spotters.
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
Artists Probe Urban Agriculture
While food culture has shifted to local production and sustainable farming, there's also a vein of art taking these issues into projects that mix agriculture with activism.
Art
Artists Probe Urban Agriculture
While food culture has shifted to local production and sustainable farming, there's also a vein of art taking these issues into projects that mix agriculture with activism.
News
Good Mourning: Metropolitan Museum Announces Fall Funerary Costume Show
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute is hosting a fall exhibition for the first time in seven years, and it will be a decidedly somber affair. Announced today, the show focuses on Victorian and Edwardian mourning fashions.
News
Good Mourning: Metropolitan Museum Announces Fall Funerary Costume Show
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute is hosting a fall exhibition for the first time in seven years, and it will be a decidedly somber affair. Announced today, the show focuses on Victorian and Edwardian mourning fashions.
Books
How Soon Is Now? A Precarious Environment Roots in Art
News of the dramatic remapping of the Arctic ice in the upcoming 10th edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World is only one of the many alarm bells clanging out the message that we live on a changing planet. With that urgency has come an upsurge in environmentally minded art, and a new b
Art
Art Deco Behemoths Communicate from NYC to the World
Far from being obsolete, New York City's early 20th century communication infrastructure has been transformed into internet data centers. Two of its most gargantuan structures are the Western Union and AT&T Long Lines buildings in Lower Manhattan, constructed between 1928 and 1932 under the design o
Books
The Lost Beauty of Book Endpapers
Bookbinding developed gradually, with the availability of materials and prevailing tastes dictating the details. One of the more overlooked aspects of book design was the creation of endpapers, when what was long a blank space or slice of vellum was replaced by exuberant patterns.
News
Art Movements
Detroit "grand bargain" signed into law, UNESCO names 26 new World Heritage sites, Chicago gets architecture biennial, Brooklyn Museum appoints first female board chair, and more from the week in art news.
Art
From Gemstones to Arsenic: How the Development of Pigment Colored Art
Monet and Renoir drenched their canvases in colors that until that point had been prohibitively expensive for most artists, yet during their lifetimes became available synthetically in mass production.
News
Museums, Musicians, and Antiques Dealers Resist Harsh New Ivory Restrictions
This spring has seen greater restrictions on the ivory trade in the United States, and while conservation groups and those concerned with the shocking depletion of the elephant and rhinoceros population are enthusiastic about the US Fish and Wildlife Service's stricter ivory rules, others see the se
Art
Trying to Save a Doomed Architectural Babel
Perhaps modeling what would be the architectural icon of your country's capital off the infamous Tower of Babel isn't the best idea. But it wasn't superstition that brought down the gargantuan spiral of El Helicoide — or the Helix — in Caracas, Venezuela. It was economics, politics, and the continui