Art History

Pablo Picasso's Femme nue couchée depicts his mistress as a sea monster.

A Painting of Picasso’s Mistress Muse Just Sold for $67.5 Million

The piece was created in 1932, one of the painter’s most noteworthy years

Olive Trees With Yellow Sky and Sun, oil on canvas, 1889. Van Gogh painted several of his most famous works while at the asylum, including his Iris series and The Starry Night.

When van Gogh Spoke for the Trees

A new exhibition of lesser known works during a pivotal time sheds light on his budding genius

Created in 1979, the wax sculpture was used as the model for different editions of Dalí works in platinum, gold, silver and bronze.

Long-Lost Dalí Sculpture Could Be Worth $20 Million

For four decades, the rare was artwork was thought to be missing

Artle involves guessing who created a work of art using images from collections housed at the National Gallery of Art. 

This New Daily Game Is Like Wordle for Art

The National Gallery invented the guessing game to help users access its vast collections

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin painted The Basket of Wild Strawberries in 1761.

A $26.8 Million Painting of Strawberries Smashed Records, but Now It's Stuck in Legal Limbo in France

The Louvre wants to claim the 18th-century French still life as a national treasure

Museum visitors admire a Pablo Picasso portrait of Dora Maar.

Meet the Muses Who Inspired Some of the World's Most Iconic Artworks

A new book examines the lives of muses across history and the role they played in shaping treasured works like "The Kiss" and "Ophelia"

Fox Grass Below Adam's and 7,000 other works by Andrew Wyeth are now available to museums, researchers and members of the public.

Thousands of Andrew Wyeth Paintings Have Never Been Seen by the Public—Until Now

A new arrangement will make 7,000 of the American realist's works available to museums and researchers

Native American artists created the cave drawings sometime between 660 and 949 C.E.

3-D Scans Reveal Gigantic Native American Cave Art in Alabama

A new analysis identifies four life-size human figures and an 11-foot rattlesnake drawn on the ceiling of an unnamed cavern

A gold Achaemenid plaque featuring a winged lion-griffin, dated to between 500 and 330 B.C.E.

In the Classical World, Persia's Powers Rivaled Greece and Rome

An exhibition at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles shows how ancient Iran held its own against its better-known contemporaries

Hieronymus Bosch, The Last Judgment, circa 1515

Inside Hieronymus Bosch's Surreal Visions of Heaven and Hell

A new exhibition in Budapest features almost 90 works by the Dutch artist and his peers

Pop artist Marisol is the subject of a new exhibition at Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Overshadowed by a Famous Friend, Pop Artist Marisol Finally Receives Overdue Recognition

A new exhibition examines the sculptor’s friendship with Andy Warhol—and puts her back in the artistic canon of the 1960s

Painted to inspire a sense of patriotism among 19th-century Americans, Washington Crossing the Delaware still has cultural sticking power today. 

'Washington Crossing the Delaware' Sails Toward the Auction Block—and Could Fetch $15 Million

The smaller version of the iconic painting was displayed at the White House for decades

This watercolor from a devotional poem shows the richness of South Asian art—a long art history overlooked by some in the Western world.

You Can Now Explore an Open-Source Encyclopedia of 10,000 Years of South Asian Art

The online reference aims to make the region's masterpieces more accessible than ever

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture acquired three works by Elizabeth Catlett, representing the artist's impassioned devotion to the dignity, struggle and uplift. 

A Trio of Elizabeth Catlett Sculptures Convey the Power of Service to Humanity

Regarded as “guardians of the Black narrative,” the artworks greet visitors to NMAAHC’s Heritage Hall

Dance of the Heyoka by Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Dakota), 1954

Who Gets to Define Native American Art?

A pivotal letter from Oscar Howe, whose work is the focus of a new exhibition, demanded the right to free expression and the art world began to listen

Francis Hines, Untitled, 1983, hardpoint pastel on Arches paper mounted on wood with synthetic fabric wraps

A Connecticut Mechanic Found Artwork Worth Millions in a Dumpster

Jared Whipple discovered the life's work of Francis Hines, a largely forgotten Abstract Expressionist artist

Pablo Picasso, The Blue Room, 1901, oil on canvas

What Secrets Lie Beneath the Surface of Picasso's Blue Period Paintings?

An exhibition at the Phillips Collection reveals hidden compositions beneath three of the Cubist's canvases

The four-day Smithsonian Craft Show opens April 20 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., offering the works of 120 artists (above: an array of offerings).

Nine Artists on What It Means to Create

Forty years of bringing critical attention to the nation's best-known makers in the arts is celebrated at this year's Smithsonian Craft Show

Many superheroes are orphans. A new exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London explores how parental loss shapes their heroic trajectories. 

Why So Many Superheroes Are Orphans

A new exhibition at London's Foundling Museum explores how growing up without birth parents shapes comic book characters

The owners of Yves Klein's invisible art were encouraged to burn their receipts. The artist, meanwhile, threw half of the profits from the sale—paid in solid gold—into the Seine.

Anonymous Buyer Pays Over $1 Million for a Piece of Invisible Art

The receipt for one of Yves Klein's "Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility" was described by Sotheby's as an early NFT

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