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
At the end of last month, the 2014 Metro Show in Manhattan brought a miscellany of oddities the likes of which are rarely seen at art fairs. From art of the occult to sideshow advertisements to deeply unsettling children's toys, the experience was like tumbling into a cluttered curiosity shop.
Art
For the first time, the dark manifestations of the Spanish drawings held by the Morgan Library and Museum are seeing the gallery lights. Visions and Nightmares: Four Centuries of Spanish Drawings opened last month as the museum's inaugural foray into the overlooked history of drawing in Spanish art.
Books
If you think Soviet architecture was strange — with its retrofuture angles and monolithic forms — you should see what came after the USSR's collapse. German photographer Frank Herfort has spent years traveling all over Russia and the former Soviet territories, from metropolises to remote rural zones
News
Major online archives of accessible images have become regular news out of museums, and part of the reason is stories like this: elementary school kids in the South Bronx have used a photograph from one of those archives to bring about historic recognition for a long-forgotten slave burial ground.
Books
Though the internet may have upended the physical dimension of recorded knowledge, The Borough is My Library zines, created by library workers in the New York City area, harness that accessibility and create a dialogue around the future of such brick-and-mortar institutions amid the swell of digital
Art
The French Revolution Digital Archive, a partnership between Stanford University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, was announced this week with some 14,000 high-resolution images.
News
Car bomb damages Cairo museum, foundry owner pleads guilt in Jasper Johns case, Hiroshi Sugimoto opens a museum, and more from the week in art news.
Opinion
Few cities can rival Chicago for architectural masterpieces, but the past year hasn't been stellar for preservation. Destruction of the Brutalist Prentice Women's Hospital started in October, and last week a demolition permit was granted for the mid-century modern Cuneo Memorial Hospital.
Art
The general goal of camouflage is to be invisible. Back during World War I, however, hundreds of Allied ships went to battle painted in bright geometric designs that were anything but subtle.
Art
The 1964 New York World's Fair was meant to be an idealistic vision of the future propelled by technology and design, but 50 years later the pavilion created to showcase the best of the state of New York is its most visible ruin.
Art
You might know how essential it is to keep your asteroid free from baobab tree infestations and how integral it is to sweep your volcanoes but still have no idea that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince was created in New York City.
Art
The preservation of a natural vista in New Jersey in the face of an intruding development is moving from a local to national concern. The Palisades, that stretch of cliffs and streets viewable from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Cloisters branch of medieval art, have been protected for decades fro