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
Between 1975 and 1983, tens of thousands of people went missing in Argentina's "Dirty War." The exact number of the tortured and murdered in state-sponsored detentions is impossible to determine due to the discreetness of the disappearances and disposal of the bodies. Free speech was nonexistent; th
Art
In documenting the rough corners of 1970s New York, Jill Freedman brought out with her photography something old-school lurid, like the flashbulb exposures of Weegee and Brassaï in the decades before, always offering a startlingly and very human view on her street subjects. When in 1971 the photogra
Art
While he achieved the construction of unusual designs for the spiraling nautilus shape of the Guggenheim Museum and the waterfall-spitting Falling Water, Frank Lloyd Wright never really got to build the towering spires of his dreams. One of his skyscraper designs would have dominated the lowlands of
News
As the first Catholic Pope to resign from his position since Gregory XII in the 15th century, Pope Benedict XVI has startled the world with his announcement that he will step down by the end of this month. While controversially conservative (and much less benevolent-appearing than his predecessor th
Art
Celebrating what would be (if he was not in fact a mortal and evolved human) Charle's Darwin's 204th birthday, today's Darwin Day is an international extravaganza with events around the world. If you're not lucky enough to be near a party serving primordial soup (a recipe with open interpretation ba
News
On Valentine's Eve (is that a thing?), Tracey Emin will watch her video piece "I Promise to Love You," along with the thousands of people that constantly circulate Times Square, as its neon pledges of love scrawl in wavering neon over 15 of Times Square's giant screens.
Art
Most artists wouldn't take on the staggering task of illustrating the end of the universe for their first major work, but then, most artists aren't as driven in capturing the cosmic as Paul Laffoley. It was back in 1965 when he embarked on his artistic journey of diagramming the mystical and transce
Interview
"I'm mostly a visual artist, I think," Wayne Coyne told me in a recent phone conversation. That the frontman of The Flaming Lips, one of the biggest experimental rock groups out there, sees himself as a visual creator more than a musician is not too surprising. This is after all the band that's land
Art
After sustaining significant damage from Hurricane Sandy, Smack Mellon has reopened with two installations that seem frozen in time. Quebec artist Aude Moreau coated the floor of the front gallery in a blanket of sugar laced with charcoal designs, and Brooklyn-based Janet Biggs' two-channel video in
Art
Like ghosts of a future that never arrived, the United States is littered with space age relics that landed in the 1940s to 1960s in the form of diners, banks, motels, and other commercial architecture. While the futuristic style definitely made its mark on the big coastal cities, like with Eero Saa
Art
Sure, humans tend to be the most dexterous of the animals, with their fancy thumbs and articulated motor skills, but can any people artists be as adorable as Speedy the three-banded armadillo? Unlikely. The South American mammal, whose defining skill is curling into a ball, is one of the many creatu
Art
Woody Crumbo spent six decades of the mid-20th century promoting Native American art to the mainstream, where often it was seen as a novelty or niche by wealthy collectors. Through printmaking, he mass produced his depictions of animals, dancers, and other vibrant images so that anyone could afford