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Art

Johannes Vermeer, "Woman with a Pearl Necklace," c. 1662-65

Envisioning Vermeer, Master of Genre Painting, at the National Gallery of Art

Exhibition explores the Dutch artist’s connections with his contemporaries

Jitish Kallat's "Circadian Rhyme 1" addresses heightened security measures

What Does Post-9/11 Art Mean? Imperial War Museum Explores the Question in ‘Age of Terror’

Works by Ai Weiwei, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Coco Fusco respond to contemporary violence and conflict

Puerto Rico

Archaeologists Date Pre-Hispanic Puerto Rican Rock Art for the First Time

A new analysis looks at the thousands of images found in caves on Mona Island, a spiritual hub for the Taino culture

Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge" is one of the roughly 1,500 works in Gurlitt's collection

The Public Can Finally See Works From the Infamous Nazi-Looted Art Trove

Two exhibitions are exploring the treasures and context behind the cache of “degenerate” art uncovered in a Munich apartment in 2012

The DuSable Museum was originally located in the main floor parlor of this house.

America’s Oldest Museum of Black Culture Started in a Living Room

The DuSable Museum of African American History was founded by Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, born on this day in 1915

Two millennia after it served as a floor on a Roman emperor's ship and decades after it disappeared mysteriously, this mosaic returns to Italy

Roman Mosaic, Long Used as a Coffee Table, Returned To Italy

The mosaic hails from a “pleasure ship” built by the notorious emperor Caligula

Kathleen Gilje, Linda Nochlin in Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 2006, oil on linen, 37 x 51 inches.

Linda Nochlin, Pioneering Feminist Art Historian, Has Died

Nochlin is best known for a 1971 essay theorizing that social institutions—and not a lack of talent—held women back in the art world

El Greco: Apocalyptic Vision {The Vision of St. John)

Where Do New Ideas Come From?

With close study, the genealogies of even the most original ideas can be traced

A woodcut from a 1720 history of "witches and wizards"

How New Printing Technology Gave Witches Their Familiar Silhouette

Popular media helped give witches their image

"Crack!"

The Comic Artists Who Inspired Roy Lichtenstein Aren’t Too Thrilled About It

Lichtenstein’s use of comic art and styles made him one of America’s most famous pop artists, but some have comic artists have a bad taste in their mouths

This manuscript on astronomy by Issachar Ber Carmoly dates to 1751.

Hidden in a Basement for 70 Years, Newly Discovered Documents Shed Light on Jewish Life and Culture Before WWII

The 170,000 pages found might be “the most important collection of Jewish archives since the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta by Kara Walker, 2005, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)

How Kara Walker Boldly Rewrote Civil War History

The artist gives 150-year-old illustrations a provocative update at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

This Artist Is Crowdsourcing “Singing” Sand From Around the World

Amsterdam-based artist Lotte Geeven is making sand symphonies for a public artwork debuting next spring

Take Five (2006), Tom Lamb

Trending Today

This Gallery Is Dedicated to Coal Miners’ Art

The Mining Art Gallery showcases works created by the thousands of miners who’ve lived and worked in the Great Northern Coalfield

The infrastructure and technological systems were upgraded, the carpeting removed, and the original terrazzo floors restored

Freer|Sackler: Reopens

A Fresh Look for Smithsonian’s Oldest Art Museum

The Freer’s renovation comes with a new thematic presentation of Asian Art—and the Peacock Room is reopened, as well

FIU Blackboards by Joseph Beuys,1977-1979, now on view at the Hirshhorn.

What a Pair of Empty Blackboards Can Teach Us About Art and Social Change

Can art alter the course of history? Should artists even try? Joseph Beuys said yes and yes

Virginia Tech, whose Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) was instrumental in bringing the festival to fruition, exhibited on Day 1 a cutting-edge robotic fabrication system.

These Collegiate Innovators Are at the Vanguard of Technology and Art

A massive three-day festival spotlights the achievements of the Atlantic Coast Conference

The House of Artists is part of Austria's Art Brut Center Gugging.

Austria

How This Vienna Suburb Became the Center of the “Raw Art” Movement

Once a psychiatric clinic, the Art Brut Center Gugging now serves as a museum exhibiting the works of some of the world’s best self-taught artists

Amy Sherald was the first-prize winner of the National Portrait Gallery’s 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Sherald’s painting is currently on view at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, which is hosting the exhibition resulting from the Portrait Gallery’s triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition: “The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today.”

Smithsonian Curator Talks Barack and Michelle Obama’s Official Portrait Selection

Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald will become the first black artists commissioned to paint a presidential couple for the Smithsonian

Three-Room Dwelling (detail) by Frances Glessner Lee, about 1944-46

Home Is Where the Corpse Is—at Least in These Dollhouse Crime Scenes

Frances Glessner Lee’s “Nutshell Studies” exemplify the intersection of forensic science and craft

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