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Art

Royal swan uppers now wear scarlet jackets, but they still pilot traditional rowing skiffs. The 2018 swan upping will begin July 16.

An Artistic Reimagining of London’s Past in ‘Old River Thames’

Tally ho! Photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten English looks at when swan lovers come to their census

The sculpture of St. George before and after

Trending Today

Restorationist Botches 16th-Century Spanish Statue of Saint

Reports indicate a local priest hired an art teacher to restore the polychromatic wooden statue, with cartoonish results

Porquerolles Island

You’ll Have to Take a Boat Ride and a Hike Through the Forest to Get to France’s Newest Art Museum

A new French museum puts an out-of-the-box spin on the usual gallery experience

Maya Freelon's Reciprocity Respite & Repass at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building

Future of Art

Maya Freelon’s Immersive and Interactive Sculptures Bring Tissue Paper to Life

Her artwork will be a part of this weekend’s By the People Festival at the Arts and Industries building

Wealthy Bostonian John Freake who, a new caption reveals, owned a slave.

Cool Finds

Museum Ties Portraits of the Wealthy to Their Slaveholding Pasts

New signs at the Worcester Art Museum illuminate how wealthy New Englanders benefitted from the slave trade

Dr. Tedi Asher

Future of Art

The Neuroscientist in the Art Museum

At Massachusetts’s Peabody Essex Museum, Tedi Asher is using neuroscience research to create impactful art experiences

Artist Evan Keeling will be meeting visitors at the four-day "By the People Festival," a new gathering for arts and dialogue that the DC incubator Halcyon presents June 21 to 24.

How This Comic Maker Plans to Make Everyone an Artist

The first annual “By the People Festival” kicks off in the Washington, D.C. area with interactive art, gospel, Jazz, opera and other performances

The goal, Ruth Jarman says, is to “transcend the data so that it becomes something else"

Art Meets Science

‘HALO’ Makes Art Out of Subatomic Particle Collisions at Art Basel

The site-specific installation by British artist duo Semiconductor revisits the universe’s first moments

Researchers examined 400 photographs and 100 paintings dating between 1500 and 2015

Art Meets Science

Why Artists Have so Much Trouble Painting Lightning

A new study compares painted versus photographed depictions of lightning bolts’ offshooting branches

Works by artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde and Ernest Kirchner were featured in both the 1937 "Degenerate Art" exhibition and the 1938 British show

How the Brits Refuted Nazi Germany’s ‘Degenerate Art’ Exhibition

The 1938 show celebrated works by German Expressionists, defended artists on world stage

Top contenders include King Ahab of Israel, King Hazael of Aram-Damascus and King Ethbaal of Tyre

Could This Sculpted Head Depict a Little-Known Biblical King?

Archaeologists uncovered the enigmatic two-inch head at Abel Beth Maacah, site of an ancient crossroads

Future of Art

High-Tech Scanning Shows Picasso’s Blue Period Evolution

A new study of “La Soupe” reveals it underwent as many as 13 layers of revision

Inmates at Downview Prison co-created six banners for the upcoming Processions march

Europe

What to Know About This Weekend’s Centennial British Suffrage March

About 45,000 women are expected to participate in four-city procession—projected to be one of the largest collective art events in British history

Jacob Epstein, Torso in Metal from "The Rock Drill," 1913-14

Europe

Tate Britain Confronts the Aftershocks of World War I

The museum’s newest exhibition explores how British, German and French artists struggle to comprehend bloody conflict

Theories on the painting's fate include destruction by fire, earthquake, and gnawing rats in an abandoned barn

New Clues Emerge in Search for Stolen Caravaggio

The nativity scene taken from Sicilian chapel in 1969 may have ended up in Switzerland

Frida Kahlo, by Guillermo Kahlo, 1932

Expert Says He’s Found New Clues Into Location of Long-Lost Frida Kahlo Painting

‘La Mesa Herida’ was last seen in Poland in 1955

Some of Van Gogh's most iconic floral artworks, painted in 1888 and 1889, are facing the test of time.

New Research

X-Rays Show That Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Will One Day Wilt

A new analysis shows that half of the canvas held in Amsterdam is painted with pigments that darken with exposure to UV light

Alfred Stieglitz, Ida O'Keeffe, 1924, gelatin silver print, Collection of Michael Stipe

Ida O’Keeffe Is Finally Getting Her First Solo Museum Exhibition

Georgia O’Keeffe’s younger sister was also an artist, and this fall the Dallas Museum of Art is bringing her work into the spotlight

Thornton Dial, “History Refused to Die” (2004)

Future of Art

For the First Time, See Historically Excluded Black Folk Artists at the Met

‘History Refused to Die’ shows off the masterful works made by self-taught artists from the American South

Robert Indiana's Love (1967). The design has become a ubiquitous staple of contemporary Americana.

Archives Reveal Touching Stories on the Life of Robert Indiana, the Man Who Invented “LOVE”

Smithsonian curators reflect on the legacy of the iconic artist, following his death at age 89

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