In Brief
UK Unveils Its First Public Statue of a Historic Black Woman
Last Thursday, a monumental statue of Mary Seacole was unveiled in London.
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
The Curious Fates of Famous Artists’ Pets
There’s a whole history of woe for the pets of famous artists, especially when the creative types decided no ordinary cat or dog would do.
Art
Wind Turbines Sustain an Aquatic Garden on a Whitney Museum Terrace
Three circular pools are flourishing with aquatic plants on the fifth-floor terrace of the Whitney Museum of American Art, part of Virginia Overton's exhibition Sculpture Gardens.
Art
A Roving Typewriter Records the Subconscious of New York City
Inside a wooden shack installed at North 12th Street and Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg's McCarren Park, anyone can sit down at a typewriter and contribute to a collaborative poem unfolding over a 100-foot paper scroll.
Books
The Art Deco Lighter, from Smoking's Era of Toxic Glamor
The Art Deco style of the 1920s and '30s pervaded design, from the Chrysler Building in Manhattan to the Grand Rex in Paris, but it wasn't always on such a large scale.
Art
W. E. B. Du Bois's Modernist Data Visualizations of Black Life
For the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, African American activist and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois led the creation of over 60 charts, graphs, and maps that visualized data on the state of black life.
Art
Paint Flows Over a Rockaway Ruin Like Hurricane Waves
One of the most remarkable places accessible to the public in New York City is the ruins of the Fort Tilden military base on the Rockaway Peninsula, where huge batteries with now-empty heavy gun turrets open to the beach.
Art
Navigating the Recent Wave of Renegade Seafaring in Art
WATER MILL, NY — On the same day the Apollo 11 Lunar Module touched down on the Moon, an art collective in Japan was rowing on a giant white arrow down the rivers between Kyoto and Osaka.
Art
Navigating the Recent Wave of Renegade Seafaring in Art
WATER MILL, NY — On the same day the Apollo 11 Lunar Module touched down on the Moon, an art collective in Japan was rowing on a giant white arrow down the rivers between Kyoto and Osaka.
Books
Vladimir Nabokov's Scientific Butterfly Illustrations
At the end of Vladimir Nabokov's poem "Pale Fire," he describes how "White butterflies turn lavender as they / Pass through its shade where gently seems to sway / The phantom of my little daughter's swing."
Art
Marking an Artist's Forgotten Grave with His Own Sculpture of Death
The unmarked grave of 19th-century artist Thomas Crawford will soon be commemorated with the installation of one of his own sculptures at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
In Brief
President Obama Declares Stonewall Inn First National Monument to LGBTQ History
Today the beige Stetson hats of the National Parks Service (NPS) will start appearing at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, as the site was declared a national monument on Friday.