Art
A New Museum Encourages Us to Consider Death
NEW ORLEANS — No matter how strong your stomach for the macabre, there is likely some moment in the Museum of Death that will make it twist.
Death
Art
An Artistic History of Death
Memento Mori — Looking at Death in Art and Illustration at the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery considers death's role in society over the past 500 years.
Books
Photographs Document the Global Traditions of Living with the Dead
Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us, a photography book by Paul Koudounaris out this month from Thames & Hudson, is a visual narrative of how a more visceral relationship to the dead thrives across the globe.
Art
You Can Kickstart an Urban Human Compost Center
At death in the United States we are faced with two options: burial or cremation.
Art
The Funerals of Artists
As a last statement, our funerals are remarkable as much for their uniformity as for their conclusion of highly personal lives.
Art
India's Death Photographers Working Amid the Cremation Flames of the Ganges
Arriving with dance and music, draped in orange and pink flowers, the dead keep constant company in Varanasi, India, where cremations happen by the hundred each day on the Ganges River.
Art
A Digital Museum for New York's Unclaimed Dead
The over one million people buried on New York City's Hart Island are unified by their invisibility. With no tombstones or regular public access, the bodies resting in layers in the ongoing mass grave are mostly forgotten, even though the cemetery is the largest tax-funded burial ground in the world
Art
The Accessories of Death
While death and dying may not be popular topics of conversation today, mourning was a familiar act that developed into a social ritual in the 18th through early 20th century — particularly in the Western world — with high mortality rates and low life expectancies.
Art
Time for Death: Skeleton Alarm Clock Goes on Display in London
Would you like to wake from dreams with a reminder of your inevitable eternal sleep? An alarm clock currently on view at the British Library in London, which is part of the Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination exhibition, is a curious continuation of the memento mori tradition.
Art
Saving the Environment One Death at a Time
In the United States, funerals often seem to be at war with death's decay. Rather than let our bodies decompose into the soil, we embalm and coat them in makeup, seal them in wood and metal caskets, lower them into waterproof vaults.
In Brief
A New Service Promises an Artistic Afterlife
In search of the next Vivian Maier? Comb through garage sales no further.
Art
Designing Spaces for a Better Death
As life spans extend and the window of time in which we experience death widens — hospital visits, hospice care, nursing homes, funeral homes — some architects are considering how we can better design for this final chapter.