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
Raymond Loewy earned the nickname "father of streamlining" for his influential career in industrial design, shaping sleek icons of 20th-century America such as the Lucky Strike cigarette packet and the Art Deco shell of the PRR S1 steam locomotive.
Art
Playing cards arrived in Europe from Asia sometime in the 14th century, and by 1367 they had their first citywide ban in Bern, Switzerland.
News
An over-5,000-year-old linen dress was recently confirmed as the world's oldest woven garment.
Books
When the TWA Flight Center opened in 1962 at New York's JFK Airport, its swooping form seemed to embody flight itself, with its two white wings rising from the tarmac.
News
With some exceptions, courtrooms remain one of the few places where photography is forbidden, so sketching is a vital way of capturing the moods, emotions, and actions of what's going on.
Art
Some of the best-known 19th-century ledger art was created by Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Caddo prisoners of war at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, following the Red River Wars.
Art
Over 50 examples of textile garments and furnishings are on view in Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
News
Aerial photography dates to the early years of the 20th century, when pioneers like George R. Lawrence launched cameras into the skies with kites.
News
"Globes have a very low survival rate," explained Ian Fowler, director of the Osher Map Library (OML) at the University of Southern Maine.
Art
The ancient Inca had no known written language, but they may have used an intricate language of knots.
Art
In the 19th century, a seaside resort vacation wasn't complete until you visited the local camera obscura and marveled at the surrounding beach and ocean projected through a pinhole.
News
This September, NASA is launching its Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer spacecraft on a return journey to the Bennu asteroid, and is inviting the public to send space-inspired art along for the galactic ride.