Art
As a way to guide public opinion to a collective obedience, governments around the world have employed art. These visual modes of propaganda can be powerful and moving, and they haven't disappeared, as proved by the playing cards showing members of Saddam Hussein's regime distributed by the US durin
Art
While staggering auction record peaks were summited this week by some talented human artists, a more amateur representative of an underrepresented artist species is expected to gain some auction attention of his own. Photographs by Mikki the chimpanzee are estimated to fetch between $75,000–100,000
Art
The shadows of memory and haunting of the afterlife are entwined through three shows currently open on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. While perhaps odd choices for the warming weather that generally restores life to the streets, these exhibitions dwell more on death, offering some intelligen
News
The city of Lhasa, up on the Tibetan Plateau, is the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in China, as well as a spiritual center as the home of the Jokhang Temple, the most sacred of Tibet's temples. As such it is an often clamorous place of both protest and prayer. Yet much of that may be silenc
Art
As design and art is shaped and formed from a broader toolkit of technology, the perception of what is handmade is altering. Yet what is still handmade is also a reaction to these new technologies. A pop-up exhibition in Brooklyn is showcasing a broad group of these creators whose work ranges from t
Art
19th century whalers could be at sea for years, and for those months surrounded by the perilous currents of the oceans, boredom was often the biggest danger. One of the art forms that emerged from this sanity-threatening tedium was scrimshaw, a time-enveloping practice of tattooing art onto bones.
Art
In China, you can now visit the Eiffel Tower, grab fish and chips in an old English town, and even see the Manhattan skyline, all in replica form. The Chinese appetite for "copy towns" — developments that duplicate in detail buildings and sometimes whole towns from the West — is the focus of an ongo
Art
The United States Postal Service was just expanding into widespread delivery to the remote corners of the country when panoramic postcards appeared to advertise in wide frame the beauty of these far-flung locales. Usually folding for more compact delivery, these broad little views offered expansive
Art
New York bristles with energy, and what makes it continually captivating for me is that this spirit comes so much from the people and acts of creation that can be just stumbled upon in the street. Last week in the East Village, at the corner of First Avenue and 7th Street, I saw an enthusiastic crow
News
A proposed declassifying of crafting as a creative industry in the UK has the the country's cavalcade of craft makers bristling. The broadly and ridiculously named Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) released a paper in late April directed at evaluating the creative industries, including
Art
The after-sundown events for this past weekend's Ideas City from the New Museum may have had the least to do with biennial festival's focus on the future of our urban metropolises, but the NightFest definitely had the greatest visual impact.
Art
Pulse New York is continuing its role as one of the more user-friendly offerings this fair week, with a flair for the international and an undercurrent of the offbeat in its location at Chelsea's Metropolitan Pavilion. Last year was the first of its eight editions to run alongside Frieze, and despit