Art History

A popular 19th-century slide depicts rats jumping into the throat of a sleeping man

Before There Was Streaming, the Victorians Had "Magic Lanterns"

New research finds these early image projectors, which brought world landmarks, fairytale favorites to life, were a regular part of middle-class life

Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen, Preparatory sketch with a drawn frame for an illustration of the "Comedy Les Moissonneurs," 1768

Cornelius Wasn’t the Only Gurlitt Sibling to Inherit Nazi-Looted Art

Nicoline Benita Renate Gurlitt received 18 works from her father’s trove of stolen art, and four of these works were just returned to their rightful owners

The toppled head of Augustus spent centuries buried underneath the door to an invading force's victory shrine

British Museum Traces History of Dissent From Ancient Egypt to Today

'I Object: Ian Hislop’s Search for Dissent' span centuries, continents

Still the enigma

Was Mona Lisa's Enigmatic Smile Caused by a Thyroid Condition?

Doctor theorizes that the sitter's lank hair, weak smile and yellowing skin point to post-pregnancy hypothyroidism

Sofonisba Anguissola, "Self-Portrait at the Easel Painting a Devotional Panel," 1556

Madrid’s Prado Museum Will Spotlight Pioneering Duo of Female Renaissance Artists

Lavinia Fontana is widely considered the first professional female artist, while Sofonisba Anguissola served as Philip II of Spain’s court painter

The winning design features an 180-foot, 200-ton steel column jutting out of the Northumberland hillside at a roughly 30-degree angle.

British Aristocrat Commissions 180-Foot Monument Celebrating Elizabeth II’s Reign

The Third Viscount Devonport has chosen sculptor Simon Hitchens to bring the Elizabeth Landmark to life

A few pages from the recently digitized codex.

See Leonardo da Vinci's Genius Yourself in These Newly Digitized Sketches

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has made ultra high-resolution scans of two codices available online

Domed skylights offer tantalizing glimpses into the Amos Rex museum's sprawling underground galleries.

Helsinki's New Subterranean Art Museum Opens Its Doors

The Amos Rex Museum is located beneath Lasipalatsi, a 1930s shopping center known as the ‘Glass Palace’

Egon Schiele, "Woman Hiding Her Face," 1912

63 Works By Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele Are at the Center of the Latest Nazi-Looted Art Dispute

The German Lost Art Foundation removed the artworks from its database, suggesting they were saved by a collector's relatives rather than seized by Nazis

Obvious' "Portrait of Edmond Belamy" exceeded expectations at Thursday's sale

Christie's Will Be the First Auction House to Sell Art Made by Artificial Intelligence

Christie's will sell the work from Paris-based art collective Obvious, which created ‘Portrait of Edmond Belamy’ with the machine-learning algorithm GAN

The restored horse head is on view for the first time since its discovery in 2009

A 2,000-Year-Old Golden Horse Head Suggests Romans Actually Got Along Wth German 'Barbarians'

The sculpture fragment suggests Romans lived peacefully alongside Germans until a decisive defeat at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest

Michaelina Wautier, "The Triumph of Bacchus," ca. 1643-59

'Baroque's Leading Lady' Artist Michaelina Wautier Finally Gets Retrospective

The 17th-century painter mastered an array of genres at a time when most female artists were consigned to painting flowers

It’s often difficult to tell “where the art ends and the building begins”

Swiss Institute Reimagines Duchamp’s Readymades for the Modern World

The exhibition asks visitors to revisit the objects in their daily life that are often taken for granted

Vuë de la Ruë grande vers l'Eglise du Sud des Presbiteriennes a Boston. Augsbourg, 1778

European Printmakers Had No Idea What Colonial American Cities Looked Like, So They Just Made Stuff Up

To satisfy customers hungry for visions of the British colonies, these artists created wildly imaginative and inaccurate scenes

Circumstantial evidence links Rita and Jerry Alter to the 1985 heist.

Did This Couple Steal a $160 Million de Kooning?

The Thanksgiving snapshot places Jerry and Rita Alter in Tucson, Arizona, just a day before the 1985 heist

Last November, "Salvator Mundi" sold for $450 million, becoming the most expensive work of art ever sold privately or at auction

Historian Asserts That Leonardo’s Assistant Painted Majority of 'Salvator Mundi'

The Oxford research fellow names Bernardino Luini as main artist, believes da Vinci only painted between five to 20 percent of the painting

Nancy by Olivia Jaimes for May 4, 2018

The Revamped "Nancy" Is the Perfect Comic Strip for 2018

The comic's first woman artist mines her own girlhood experience to make the eternally 8-year-old, cookie-loving grouch even funnier

“Today, they started to demolish my studio ‘zuo you’ in Beijing with no precaution,” the long-time dissident wrote on Instagram

Authorities Raze Ai Weiwei’s Beijing Studio

The contemporary art giant is known for his caustic criticism of the Chinese government

Researchers at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, have attributed the painting to British portraitist and illustrator John Vanderbank

Have Researchers Unraveled the Six-Decade Mystery of a Kansas Museum Portrait?

The team believes it has identified the rightful artist behind ‘Mrs. Thomas Pelham,’ a nearly life-size portrait depicting an 18th-century aristocrat

Envelope decoration was always a staple of the mail art experience. This colorful letter was sent from performance artist Anna Banana (Anna Lee Long) to collagist John Evans in 2010.

Collaborative “Mail Art” Puts the Post in Postmodernism

Letters, envelopes and enclosures take center stage in an intimate new art show

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