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Art History

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's A Large Group of Punchinelli is expected to fetch more than $200,000 at auction.

Cool Finds

Rare 18th-Century Drawing by Rococo Artist Tiepolo Discovered in English Estate’s Attic

“Wrapped in bubble wrap” and forgotten, the artwork had collected dust in one of Weston Hall’s nine attics for decades

Two of the newly colorized paintings: Jurisprudence (left) and Medicine (right)

Art Meets Science

A.I. Digitally Resurrects Trio of Lost Gustav Klimt Paintings

Viewers can explore the works, newly restored to lush greens, blues, pinks and golds, through a Google Arts and Culture hub

"As an artist and an art lover," says the artist Nicolas Party, his site-specific, 829-foot work, Draw the Curtain, "is a way to pay homage" to the many art museums located in Washington, D.C. The Hirshhorn invited Party to help to disguise construction scaffolding as it undergoes a lengthy renovation.

A Peek Behind the Curtain of Hirshhorn’s Largest Artwork Ever

After wrapping the museum’s historic building in a huge, playful painting, Swiss artist Nicolas Party reveals what he hid in plain sight

Vincent van Gogh, The Potato Eaters, April–May 1885

The Untold Story of van Gogh’s Once-Maligned Masterpiece, ‘The Potato Eaters’

An exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum spotlights the artist’s dynamic depiction of peasant life—a painting that critics hated and he loved

Titled Avant-Garde, the monumental shaped canvas alludes to Liu as a “guard” of a socialist reality she did not condone.

The Revolutionary Portraiture of Hung Liu

For this large-scale retrospective of the Asian American artist, who died this summer, east meets west in an exquisite collision

Researchers studying Edvard Munch's Madonna (left) discovered hidden underdrawings (right) that reveal how the artist tinkered with his composition over time.

Art Meets Science

Hidden Sketch Reveals a More Traditional Version of Edvard Munch’s Sensual ‘Madonna’

A chance discovery suggests the woman’s provocative pose was originally somewhat subdued

Barbara Kruger's rendering of exhibition entryway at the Art Institute of Chicago, 2011/2020

Major Barbara Kruger Exhibition Spills Out Into the Streets of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago’s new show adorns the city’s buses, trains, billboards and more with the feminist artist’s creations

I Go To Prepare A Place For You (detail) by Bisa Butler, 2021

These Stunning Artworks Capture the Resilience—and Defiance—of Black Lives Matter

At NMAAHC’s new show “Reckoning” Bisa Butler’s vivid Harriet Tubman joins works from Amy Sherald, Jean-Michel Basquiat and other prominent visual artists

"Remember Me," now on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, unites more than 100 European Renaissance portraits. Pictured here is Albrecht Dürer's 1508 chalk sketch of an unidentified African man.

Display of 100 Renaissance Portraits Underscores Humans’ Enduring Desire to Be Remembered

An exhibition at the Rijksmuseum unites two early likenesses of African men in Europe, among other 15th- and 16th-century masterpieces

The cache of newly returned items includes 15 handwritten papers and a small collection of looted antiquities.

Colonial-Era Papers Stolen From Mexico’s National Archive Return Home

The documents, many of which are directly linked to conquistador Hernán Cortés, were smuggled out of the country and auctioned in the U.S.

In this 2017 photo, employees set up scaffolding to remove stained-glass windows depicting Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Washington National Cathedral.

National Cathedral to Replace Confederate-Themed Stained Glass With Art Dedicated to Racial Justice

Artist Kerry James Marshall will create two new windows for the historic Washington, D.C. church

Researchers estimate that ancient builders used roughly 226,085,379 square feet of rock, dirt and adobe to construct the three main pyramid complexes in Teotihuacán's city center. Pictured here is the Pyramid of the Sun.

Mexico’s Ancient Inhabitants Moved Land and Bent Rivers to Build Teotihuacán

Architects of the Mesoamerican city transformed the landscape in ways that continue to impact modern development today, a new study finds

The painting is part of a series created by Baroque artist Cesare Dandini around the 1630s.

Cool Finds

Baroque Masterpiece Spent Six Decades Hidden in Plain Sight

Art historian Tom Ruggio was visiting a church in New York when he spotted the long-overlooked religious painting

The newly authenticated sketch (left) and the final drawing, titled Worn Out (right)

Cool Finds

Newly Identified Vincent van Gogh Drawing Goes on View for the First Time

The Dutch Impressionist created the pencil sketch in 1882

Whether the ten hand and footprints constitute art is up for debate, scholars say.

Cool Finds

These 200,000-Year-Old Hand and Footprints Could Be the World’s Earliest Cave Art

Found at a hot spring on the Tibetan Plateau, the impressions were likely left by hominin children

William Trost Richards, Along the Shore, 1903

The Sights and Sounds of the Sea Have Inspired American Artists for Generations

Exhibition spotlights crashing waves, maritime voyages and seafaring vessels painted by Georgia O’Keeffe, Normal Rockwell and Jacob Lawrence

Despite heavy erosion, the camels remain visible some seven millennia after their creation.

Life-Size Camel Sculptures in Saudi Arabia Are Older Than Stonehenge, Pyramids of Giza

New research suggests the animal reliefs date to between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago

Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Omai, circa 1776

The Polynesian ‘Prince’ Who Took 18th-Century England by Storm

A new nonfiction release revisits the life of Mai, the first Pacific Islander to visit Britain

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced plans to remove the sculpture last summer, but a lawsuit filed by locals delayed the process until this week.

History of Now

Richmond Removes Robert E. Lee Statue, Largest Confederate Sculpture in the U.S.

Workers sawed the controversial monument into pieces before transporting it to an undisclosed Virginia storage facility

For the study, researchers analyzed three shoes found in the Renaissance artist's house.

How Tall Was Michelangelo? Surprisingly Short, Study Suggests

New analysis of the artist’s (probable) shoes indicates that he stood 5 feet 2 inches tall

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