News
Art Movements
Shooting at the Brussels Jewish Museum, death of Massimo Vignelli, 90% of Glasgow School saved, and more from the week in art news.
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.
Books
What It Is to Be Cool in America
What is cool and why do Americans care so much? That's the hinge on which the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has fixed American Cool — an exhibition of portraiture that opened in February — and its accompanying catalogue.
Art
Finding Inspiration in the End of the World
PARIS — Maybe someday a meteor will hit our fair planet, the solar system will enter an electromagnetic field, or the art market for Andy Warhols will collapse and trigger a domino line of economic downfall. However it goes, the world as we know it will someday end, and for Hiroshi Sugimoto there is
News
A Forgotten History of Angkor Wat Revealed in its Vandalism
A history of vandalism in one of the world's most famous monuments has been analyzed, revealing long-lost art. In a paper published this week in the quarterly review Antiquity, researchers used imaging technology to uncover the hidden paintings of Angkor Wat.
Art
A World History in Skin, Needles, and Ink
PARIS — As the world map that leads the new tattooing exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris plots out, the art of skin alteration has roots in every continent, from the Iroquois in North America to the Samoans in the South Pacific.
Art
Black-and-White Photographs of Fireflies Lighting Up Summer Nights
A decade passed between the summer of 1996, which photographer Gregory Crewdson spent meditating on the sprinkle of fireflies in the dusk of Becket, Massachusetts, and when he finally developed the film. After nearly another decade, the Fireflies series is being exhibited as a whole for the first ti
Art
New Algorithm Turns the Emotion of Language into Music
The future of e-books, or any electronic text, may be soundtracked. A new experiment in automation is generating music in response to the emotion of words in literature.
Art
Cosmic Ceramics and Hunting Trophies Collide in Paris
PARIS — The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris is continuing its exhibitions among its hunting trophies and old world décor with Lin Utzon's Cosmic Dance.
News
Art Movements
FBI confirms Gardner heist sightings, China museum full of fakes, Bill Viola goes on permanent display at St. Paul's, and more from the week in art news.
Art
Nostalgia for the Disappearing Danger of Mid-Century Playgrounds
There's a lot of nostalgia around old playgrounds, for the burns in summer on the overheated metal slides or the nauseating spinning play on the whirl. Those brushes or hits with danger are why most of them are gone, replaced with safer, less rusty, contraptions.
Art
Biodiversity Traced in Over 2 Million Natural History Museum Images
From rows of tiny pinned insects to drawers of stuffed birds of prey, the holdings of natural history museums are as varied as the biodiversity they collect. However, accessibility is often a problem, as is the connection of data across institutions.
Art
Striving for Utopia on a Grand Scale in the Kabakovs' Strange City
PARIS — Beneath the bombastic Beaux-Arts dome of the Grand Palais in Paris, artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov have installed an explorable city of white arches and curious pavilions dedicated to attempts and failures to reach a mystical plane.