Death

Art

A Lost 15th-Century Mural that Depicted Death's Indiscriminate Dance

In 1942, an Allied bombing in Lübeck, Germany, destroyed a famous 15th-century dance of death mural by artist Bernt Notke.

Art

A History of Photographing Ghosts

In 1860, William H. Mumler set up the first photography studio that claimed to capture the dead, and his success started a movement of spirit images.

Art

When a Drowned Woman's Face Became the Muse of Paris

The face of "L'Inconnue de la Seine" was a fashionable fixture of salons and studios, her enigmatic expression of a slight smile and closed eyes haunted by stories of her suicide.

Art

The Real Corpses That Served as Models for the Doomed Crew of the "Raft of the Medusa"

For his most monumental painting, Théodore Géricault borrowed corpses from morgues and asylums to capture the ghastly horror of the 1816 Medusa shipwreck.

Art

London’s Most Eccentric Museum Restores the Catacombs Beneath It

The public can now visit the Catacombs of the Sir John Soane's Museum as he intended them to be experienced.

Art

A Burial Suit of Mushrooms that Consume Your Remains

Despite embalming and sealed caskets being a relatively new tradition in American burial, brought about by the high mortality of the Civil War, we've quickly become uncomfortable with our mortal decay.

Art

Mourners from Around the Globe Gather to Share Our Traditions of Grief

As a New York gravedigger once succinctly put it to me: “We all have dead.” No person is isolated from loss.

Books

Shopping for the Afterlife in China

Chanel shoes, McDonald's french fries, iPhones, cognac, lacy lingerie, and machine guns are just a few of the consumer goods you can purchase for the dead in China.

Art

Marking an Artist's Forgotten Grave with His Own Sculpture of Death

The unmarked grave of 19th-century artist Thomas Crawford will soon be commemorated with the installation of one of his own sculptures at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Art

A Future Where the Decomposing Dead Could Power Cemetery Lights

The dead are often visually absent from our cemeteries, buried below the ground with tombstones representing the invisible remains.

In Brief

Cheery Skeleton Mosaic Found in Turkey Says, "Enjoy Your Life" [UPDATED]

Reclining by a wine jug and a portion of bread, a cup in one bony hand, the skeleton on a 3rd-century BCE mosaic discovered in Turkey has a simple message for its viewers: "Be cheerful, enjoy your life."

Art

Climbing into a Mortuary Drawer to Smell the Scents of JFK’s Last Moments

In Famous Deaths, you experience the smells and sounds of the last four minutes of someone's life, all while closed inside a metal mortuary drawer.