Features
A Brief Art History of Grief
Scholar Roger Luckhurt’s richly illustrated book chronicles the ways we memorialize the dead across the world, tracing burial practices from Ancient Greece to the present day.
Death
Art
Art’s Greatest Gift of Death
Memento moris remind us that death is inevitable, nothing afterward is assured, and what we do in that crack of light between oblivions is our responsibility.
Art
Art, Ritual, and Advocacy at the End of Life
Mining the rich legacy of art as a way to honor the dead, Hyperallergic Fellow Brianna L. Hernández traced the history of funerary arts to contemporary practitioners.
Books
The Tragic, Poetic, and Ironic Ways in Which Artists Die
A new book by former Met Museum archivist Jim Moske assembles a haunting and hilarious revue of artist obituaries from 1906 to 1929.
Art
How Artists Reimagine Our Relationship With Death
As part of Hyperallergic’s Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators, Brianna L. Hernández examines how seven artists reclaim end-of-life traditions in their practice.
Art
The Importance of Art in a “Good Death”
The resurgence of deathcare workers across industries presents an opportunity to creatively reimagine what a good death can look like.
Art
The Living Legacy of Funerary Arts
Funerary arts play a vital role in preserving key cultural values and knowledge keeping while reminding us of our humanity by so devotedly caring for the dead.
Art
An Unlikely Art Show Pops Up in an LA Mausoleum
Dignity Plus, staged in an Altadena funeral home, addressed themes of mortality and memory while making use of improbable spaces for art.
Books
In Lewis Warsh’s Poem Composed Over Many Decades, the Past Is Never Really Past
Mortality and memory are points of inquiry in this posthumous publication.
News
Science Confirms That Life Flashes Before the Eyes Upon Death
It’s been an age-old trope in literature and film but now brain scans suggest it’s true.
Film
Glimpse Heaven and Other Afterlives With Films About Life After Death
Here are some entertaining movies about the afterlife to watch.
Interview
How Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson Killed Her Father Multiple Times (for a Movie)
The documentarian talks to Hyperallergic about Dick Johnson Is Dead, and how "we need new language to allow for the extreme diversity that is life and death."