Art
Sending Out an SOS to Save Our Concrete Brutalist Monsters
The monolithic concrete that forms some of our most creative 20th-century architectural heritage is in danger of disappearing.
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.
In Brief
A Digital Re-creation of a Lost 18th-Century Shakespeare Museum
One of the first museums created for the enjoyment of the middle class was the Shakespeare Gallery, opened in 1789 by John Boydell.
Art
Circuses, Rallies, and Soldiers: Photographs of Early-20th-Century American Clans
In over 100 vintage photographs, Hunt’s Three Ring Circus: American Groups Before 1950 explores how individuals in the early 20th century assembled into groups, linked together by experiences as official as military service or loose as a shared appreciation for the accordion.
Art
Inside New York's Most Beautiful Subway Station, Abandoned Since 1945
The most beautiful subway station in New York City is locked, inaccessible since the last passengers stepped off its platform on December 31, 1945.
Art
10 Arty Calendars to Chronicle 2016
A new year is about to dawn. Have you considered the calendar which will guide you through the great unknown that awaits in the next 12 months?
Art
Sacred Bones and the Catacomb Saint of Manhattan
Catholic churches in Europe host as many bones as a graveyard, with bits of saints and intact incorrupt bodies encased in glass and displayed on ornate altars.
News
The World's Oldest Tattoos Are on the Weathered Skin of an Alpine Ice Mummy
When hikers in the Alps stumbled upon the mummy known as Ötzi the Iceman along the Austrian–Italian border in 1991, the body was so well preserved that they feared they'd discovered the corpse of a fellow mountaineer.
Art
The Enveloping Darkness of John Singer Sargent’s Prints and Drawings
Rare examples of John Singer Sargent's printmaking are on temporary view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, demonstrating his interest in the expressive shapes of the human body and lithography's potential to show these figures in darkness and light.
Art
Yoko Ono Asks Gallery Visitors to Repair the Impossibly Broken
Two Chelsea galleries are simultaneously hosting the same audience-activated Yoko Ono pieces, with collaborative mending of shattered ceramic, sketching of an infinite line, and contemplating river rocks.
Art
UK Affirms that Photographs of Public Domain Art Are Fair Use
An ongoing dispute with digital cultural heritage is whether high-resolution images of artworks in the public domain have a copyright when the photograph itself is new or improved.
Art
The Rise of the 20th-Century Yearbook Smile
With their standard formats and widespread availability, high school yearbooks represent a historical data set of 20th-century style. They also capture how our tendency to smile in photographs has intensified over time.
Art
Archeologists Discover 400-Year-Old Hearts in Lead Boxes
Five heart-shaped lead boxes dating to the 16th and 17th centuries were exhumed from the basement of the Convent of the Jacobins in Rennes, France.