In Brief
Micro-very-very-soft: Audio Lab Crowned World’s Quietest Place
What do you hear in the quietest place on Earth?
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
A Digital Fossil Finder for a New Crowdsourced Age of Archaeology
High-resolution aerial images captured by kites and drones could reveal hidden fossils in northern Kenya's Turkana Basin, where the high temperatures and uneven terrain makes on-the-ground archaeology difficult.
Art
Sum of the Arts: Mummified Edition
Year that both Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch viewed a Peruvian mummy in Paris, now at the Musée de l'Homme, which may have inspired the howling expression of Munch's "The Scream" = 1889
Art
Avant-Garde 1920s Costumes Reemerge, Revealing Their Makers’ Tragic Story
In 1920s Hamburg, a dancer couple created wild, Expressionist costumes that looked like retro robots and Bauhaus knights.
Art
Play a Tormented Painter in a Video Game of Creeping Terror
In Layers of Fear, a new game by the Poland-based Bloober Team, you are an artist who has gone completely insane.
Books
Worshipping at the Altar of Sweet Saint Death
With a scythe in one hand and a skeleton's face gazing out from a cloak, Santa Muerte appears like a cross between the Grim Reaper and the Virgin Mary.
News
Cooper Hewitt Acquires Historic Textile Designed for UN Security Council
With the world still reeling from World War II, a Norwegian architect was tasked with designing one of the most important places of international peace and negotiation.
News
Library of Congress Acquires Portfolio of 681 Photos of US Public Libraries
There are over 16,000 public libraries in the United States, and although photographer Robert Dawson only visited a fraction — 526 over two decades — his series presents a diverse portrait of this community space.
Books
Antarctic Architecture for Scientists at the Edge of the World
Antarctic exploration no longer involves frigid winters lodged in wooden shacks, or the threat of your ship being smashed to pieces in the ice with no means of communicating home.
Art
The Macabre Practice of Binding Books in Human Skin
Skin from the thigh of an unfortunate Philadelphia woman felled by a parasitic infection delicately lines the spines of three books in the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Art
Rubin Museum Opens Expanded Buddhist Shrine Room
Flickering light and faint sounds of chanting accompany the Rubin Museum of Art's expanded Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room, where visitors to the Chelsea museum can pause in a space of contemplation.
Art
Sum of the Arts
Number of surviving copies of the misprinted 1631 "Sinners' Bible" that demanded "Thou shalt commit adultery" = 10