News
Smithsonian Doubles Its Bill Traylor Holdings Ahead of 2018 Retrospective
Bill Traylor's drawings and paintings were not recognized by the art world until decades after his death in 1949.
Acquisitions
News
A Gift to Cooper Hewitt Fills Gaps in the Collection
Thanks to the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum's 19th-century roots and the Hewitt sisters' collection, the institution has strong holdings in that era's decorative arts. This month, the New York museum announced that its 20th-century collections were strengthened with a considerable gift fr
News
The Frick Scores a Trove of 450 Historical Medals
The Frick Collection is adding an impressive cache of metal portraits to its collections.
Art
The Father of Streamlining Gets Some Long Overdue Love from MoMA
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.
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.
Art
Carnegie Museum of Art Makes its Provenance Accessible and Interactive
Label text rarely describes the life of a painting before it arrived at a museum, yet there's a whole narrative of ownership in a painting's journey from an artist's studio to a static place on the wall.
Art
The Exuberant Postcard Art of the First Bauhaus Exhibition
In 1923, a flurry of colorful postcards heralded the first major Bauhaus school exhibition.
News
Tania Bruguera Will Help NYC Provide Services to Undocumented Workers
In the past few days, Tania Bruguera has made numerous headlines once more, following the lifting of her travel ban and return of her passport in Havana, as well as major announcements supporting her work in New York.
In Brief
Museum of Modern Art Acquires Iconic Rainbow Flag
The Rainbow Flag that artist Gilbert Baker created in San Francisco in 1978, and which has since become the icon of the Gay and LGBT Pride movements, has just been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for its design collection.
News
Toronto University Acquires Berenice Abbott Archive
Berenice Abbott was best known for being New York City's official photographer during the Great Depression, though she actually explored a panoply of subjects during her six-decade-long career.
In Brief
Philadelphia Scores a Standout Early Duchamp
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is already home to the world's richest collection of Marcel Duchamp's work, but it just added two very uncharacteristic pieces to its holdings.
Opinion
Why Are So Many Museums Buying Christian Marclay's “The Clock”?
The Boston MFA is purchasing Christian Marclay's epic movie mash-up “The Clock” (2010) (recently on view in NYC) for $250,000. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art bought the piece in April, and there are rumors that MoMA plans to do the same. What's up with this collecting fad?