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Arts & Culture / Art & Artists

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Have Canine, Will Travel

Our fur-flung correspondents in dogged pursuit

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Austria

Mozart: In Search of the Roots of Genius

On the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, the author scours Salzburg and Vienna for traces of the master’s mischievous spirit

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Time Traveler

Smithsonian gets a new publisher

A Mount Rushmore of stardom: Gable (left) cracks a joke at the photographers expense with friends Heflin, Cooper and Stewart.

Grab a Drink With Hollywood’s Stars

To photographer Slim Aarons, the biggest stars were auld acquaintances

The Overture to Tannhäuser: The Artist's Mother and Sister, 1868, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Cézanne

The man who changed the landscape of art

Most of the flash equipment was custom-built, but Link (left) and his assistant George Thom also used miners' headlamps while they were setting up shots after dark.

The Big Picture

A well-planned single image yells the story of 20th-century transportation

In most Akan states, gold-ornamented sandals identify a ruler. It is taboo for a chief to walk barefoot; to do so, followers believed, would invite disaster.

West African Gold: Out of the Ordinary

The inventive goldwork and royal regalia of Ghana’s Akan people —on display in a new exhibition— are drawn, strikingly, from daily life

A prodigy who played for President Kennedy at age 7, Ma (in 1988) is no snob, performing Bach to pop to tangos.

35 Who Made a Difference: Yo-Yo Ma

Humanitarian, globe-trotting teacher, good sport, ice-dancing fan and heckuva nice guy. Oh, and he plays the cello

35 Who Made a Difference: Andy Goldsworthy

Using nature as his canvas, the artist creates works of transcendent beauty

35 Who Made a Difference: Renée Fleming

The soprano is renowned for her beguiling voice and presence

35 Who Made a Difference: Wendell Berry

A Kentucky poet draws inspiration from the land that sustains him

Author Maya Angelou hosts the 2000 annual conference for the Children's Defense Fund in March 2007.

35 Who Made a Difference: Maya Angelou

By singing of her own hardships, she has given strength to others

35 Who Made a Difference: Frank Gehry

The architect’s daring, outside-the-box buildings have revitalized urban spaces

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35 Who Made a Difference: Maya Lin

The architect melds surface simplicity and underlying intellectual complexity into works of enduring power

A Night at the Opera

Weegee’s wartime snapshot was widely seen as social criticism, but it was, in fact, a farce

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Entangling Alliances

From Alaska to France, kindred spirits find common ground

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Matisse and His Models

The author of a new biography of the artist argues that the women he painted were full partners in the creative enterprise

A sportive thrill c. 1957.

Fashion Faux Paw

Richard Avedon’s photograph of a beauty and the beasts is marred, he believed, by one failing

The Outwin Boochever contest: First of its kind in the U.S.

New Faces

Artists, emerging and renowned alike, will vie to display their works in the National Portrait Gallery when it reopens next July

United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz (C) along with Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI's Boston Field Office Richard Des Lauriers (R) announce investigative developments in the 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum and appeal to the public for information regarding the return of several pieces during a news conference at the FBI offices in Boston, Massachusetts

Ripped from the Walls (and the Headlines)

Fifteen years after the greatest art theft in modern history the mystery may be unraveling

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