Arthur Danto’s best-known essay, “The End of Art,” continues to be cited more than it is understood. What was Danto’s argument? Is art really over? And if so, what are the implications for art history and art-making?
Art History
Panther-Riding Drunks May Be Michelangelo’s Only Surviving Metal Sculptures
A pair of bronze statues of nude revelers riding panthers are the only surviving works in metal by Michelangelo, a new study claims.
Telling the History of Photographic Processes, from Daguerreotypes to Digital
The George Eastman House released a 12-part video series last month that starts with the silhouette and traces photography’s development through daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, Kodachrome, and right up to digital.
French Sculptures in the US Stand Up to Be Counted
On the hunt for one of Emmanuel Fremiet’s cat bronzes? Want to play a game on Man Ray’s chess set? Curious to know which state has the most Louise Bourgeois sculptures? All these pressing queries and more will be answered thanks to the new French Sculpture Census.
Fooling Around With Art History, on Lunch Break
When most people are bored at work, they surf Facebook. Not so with Francesco Fragomeni and Chris Limbrick, two employees at the website creation startup Squarespace who funneled their creative energy into photographic homages to the art historical canon.
A Lost Purple Pigment, Where Quantum Physics and the Terracotta Warriors Collide
The connection between contemporary quantum physics and China’s ancient Terracotta Warriors is a lost pigment called Han purple. The vibrant hue appeared in the Zhou dynasty and faded out sometime near 220 AD; art didn’t see a purple as vivid until 19th-century manufacturing.
For the Harvard Art Museums, a Top-to-Bottom Renovation and Rethinking
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — On a warm day in June six years ago, the front doors of the Fogg Museum closed quietly. There was no banner reading “Closing Day” on Quincy Street at the edge of Harvard Yard, no ceremony, no press, no speech. At five o’clock, museum visitors shuffled out the exit in droves, toting travel books and the last discounted souvenirs.
The World’s Oldest Art May Be This 430,000-Year-Old Zigzag on a Shell
The history of artistic expression got stretched back a few hundred thousand years this week with the identification of an engraved shell believed to have been carved by Homo erectus. That early human ancestor could rattle the long-held belief that the use of deliberate visual expression is specific to Homo sapiens.
Let Them Eat Art: Queens Through the Ages
In her infamous speech at the British Museum last year, writer Hilary Mantel described Kate Middleton, future queen of England, as a “shop-window mannequin” whose sole purpose was to look pretty and give birth.
A Pigment Library That Launched American Art Conservation
When the Harvard Art Museums reopen this Sunday after a six-year expansion project, historic pigments foundational to the field of art conservation in the United States will be on public view.
Decoding Rome’s Old Master Graffiti
Most accounts of the history of graffiti have the art form really taking off in the 1970s, but art historian Charlotte Guichard dates its emergence to slightly earlier — the 16th century.
A Child’s Drawings Preserved over the Centuries by “Magical Mud”
In one region of Russia, the consistency of the earth is just right that manuscripts dating back centuries emerge almost perfectly preserved. Over the past year, more than 1,000 of these birch bark artifacts from the 11th to 14th centuries have been exhumed from the soil of Novgorod, adding to a growing archive of written history.