The Sharpest Photographs Ever Taken of the Night Sky
A new technology is allowing astronomers to take sharper than ever photographs of the night sky, revealing secrets of the solar system and the universe beyond.
View ArticleOn the Origin of Selfies
Taking today’s internet selfie temperature through a Google Image search for “selfies” CHICAGO — A selfie is a certain type of self-portrait photography shot with a digital camera or smartphone....
View ArticleOstrich Egg Globe Might Be Earliest Depiction of the Americas
Ostrich egg globe with other ostrich eggs (image courtesy Washington Map Society) The New York Public Library’s 1510 Hunt-Lenox Globe better watch its bronze throne because a new globe portends to be...
View ArticleRadically Rethinking the Architecture of Death
What happens when you die? Well, in a literal way, what happens to everyone else. You’re likely to have a traditional, costly, funeral, and then a small slot of land in a quiet sprawl of cemetery will...
View ArticleBanksy’s New Work Reflects on Banality of Evil, Benefits Charity
News Banksy’s New Work Reflects on Banality of Evil, Benefits Charity by Hrag Vartanian on October 29, 2013 There are three Bankys left this month, and today’s work (now there are two left) is in the...
View ArticleThe Man Who Tried to Photograph Thoughts
n the 1960s, a Denver-based psychiatrist and a man who believed he could take photographs with his thoughts staged a series of experiments with Polaroid instant film.
View ArticleWhen Outsider Art and Christmas Collide
Kenny Irwin Jr.’s “Robotmas” installation at AVAM (photograph by Dan Meyers/courtesy AVAM) It’s easy to get obsessive around the holidays, what with the frantic shopping and cheerful imbibing and...
View ArticleScientists to Image Black Hole by Turning Earth into Giant Camera
The problem with trying to take a picture of a black hole is that it consumes everything, even the light around it. Now, a team of scientists is working to make the first image of a black hole by using...
View ArticleThe Vilification of Banksy’s Success
During my art history studies, a running joke was to answer “Banksy” when asked the subject of your dissertation.
View ArticleThe Art World’s Casual Racism
Does a work that’s intended to be a “statement” on something have an obligation to do more than just replicate the awful tropes and stereotypes it claims to comment on?
View ArticleA Visual History of Federal Art Spending in the United States
Hugh Mesibov, “Homeless” (1938), Carborundum print on ivory wove paper, 5 3/8 x 10 3/8 in., John S. Phillips Fund, 1987.11.1, , Courtesy Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. PHILADELPHIA — Art for...
View ArticleThe Nomadic Arctic Landmass that Became a New Nation
Approaching Nowhereisland (all images courtesy the artist) Back in 2012, a curious landmass journeyed around the coast of England, broken free from the Arctic, where it had long been invisible under a...
View ArticleGetting to Know Milton Glaser, the Godfather of Modern Design
Glaser’s motto, “art is work,” is what he lives by, a way of existing in the world that he’s damn near close to perfecting.
View ArticleIs iPhone Photography Getting Better?
When most people think of iPhone photography, they think of Instagram. But not everybody is so enamored: namely, some professional photographers.
View ArticlePortraits of America’s New Nomads
There is a loose tribe living at nature’s margins in the United States, slaughtering goats raised by hand at Idaho’s Lost River and picking cherries growing wild in California’s Marble Mountain...
View ArticleMarketing the Great War
When the United States joined the Allied forces in 1917, the mind of the American citizen was almost as much a battlefield as Europe was. Despite the government’s justification of the war many citizens...
View ArticleOlafur Eliasson Creates a Riverbed in a Museum
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has brought elements of the natural world into the walls of museums several times. Today, Riverbed, his first solo exhibition at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of...
View ArticleHow Food Stole the Avant-Garde: Letter From Copenhagen
I went to MAD4 in Copenhagen to spy for you, my art friends. I was trying to figure out if the food world had in fact become the new black; if the food world had stolen the role of cultural avant-garde...
View ArticleA Town Is Not a Museum, Appeals Court Rules
Jim Thorpe pole vaulting in the decathlon at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm (via IOC) In settling the dispute of where one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century is buried, a ruling last...
View ArticleThe Graphics of the Great War in France
“Le kaiser et la mort,” illustration from “La baïonnette,” November 4, 1915 (all images courtesy University of Chicago Library/University of Chicago Press) More than any conflict before it, World War I...
View Article
