Art
The First Photographs of Lightning Crackle with Electric Chaos
In the 1880s, William Nicholson Jennings set out to prove the diversity and unpredictability of lightning's path, capturing the electric light with his plate camera.
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.
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News
Smithsonian Hosts Emergency Meeting About Paris Auction of Indigenous Remains and Objects [UPDATED]
This afternoon, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, hosted an emergency meeting of tribal leaders, government representatives, and NGO officials to call for a halt to a Monday auction in Paris that involves human remains and sacred indigenous objects.
Books
The Relics of Victorian Natural History in Eye-Popping Stereoscope
Natural history storerooms are a bit like drowned Noah's Arks, with specimens from every realm of the animal world posthumously preserved.
Art
Listening to Archived Sounds Amid the Stacks at the New York Public Library
Up on the second floor of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, you might hear the rising notes of opera faintly ringing from a card catalogue, or see people wearing headphones at the ends of the sheet music aisles.
Art
The Photographers of 1870s London Who Documented Their Disappearing City
The idea of capturing something in photography before it disappears dates back almost to the dawn of the medium.
Art
Revisiting the First American Folk Art Museum, Founded by a Modernist Sculptor
The rough finishes and loose poses of Elie Nadelman's sculptures of circus performers, pianists, and dancers were influenced by his incredible collection of folk art.
Art
A Hidden Times Square Sound Installation Returns to Full Hum
Max Neuhaus's "Times Square" sound installation is meant to be stumbled upon by visitors to the chaotic crossroads in Manhattan.
Art
A Future Where the Decomposing Dead Could Power Cemetery Lights
The dead are often visually absent from our cemeteries, buried below the ground with tombstones representing the invisible remains.
Art
Yale's Center for British Art Reopens Its Historic Louis Kahn Building
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — At last week's reopening of the Yale Center for British Art, Matthew Hargraves, chief curator of art collections, called its Long Gallery "one of the great undiscovered spaces of the 20th century."
News
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's Restored Studio Opens for Public Tours
When Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney set up her sculpture studio in Greenwich Village's MacDougal Alley, one 1907 newspaper headline blared: "Daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt Will Live in Dingy New York Alley."
Art
Mel Chin Crowdfunds a Film About Climate Change, Featuring an Inuit Hunter and Poodles
Artist Mel Chin's plan was to film an Inuit hunter racing through the streets of Paris on a sled pulled by seven fluffy white poodles, timing this vision of the Arctic in the French capital with the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in December of last year.
Books
The Life of One of the 20th Century’s Most Influential Nude Models
"That which is the immodesty of other women has been my virtue — my willingness that the world should gaze upon my figure unadorned," Audrey Munson, the favorite nude model of the Beaux Arts movement in the United States, once proclaimed.