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Art

The Mona Lisa's sparse setting may help visitors better appreciate its beauty, according to a new psychology study.

New Research

Distraction May Make Us Less Able to Appreciate Beauty

Truly experiencing the beauty of an object could require conscious thought, vindicating the ideas of Immanuel Kant

Fanny Cornforth posted for "Lady Lilith" and other influential Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Cool Finds

Newly Digitized Archives Reveal the Inner Lives of Artists

The Delaware Art Museum just put 500 rare documents online

Five Can’t-Miss Summer Light Festivals

From Sydney to Providence, the world will be set aglow with millions of lights this season

Aquarell 6 by Wassily Kandinsky

Download 200 Free Art Books, Courtesy of the Guggenheim

Titles devoted to Picasso, Rothko, Lichtenstein, Klimt and more are now available for your reading pleasure

Jessica Dawson regularly takes her pup Rocky along to explore New York Art galleries, as shown here at Lost Objects by Allan McCollum at the Mary Boone Gallery.

Cool Finds

An Upcoming Art Exhibition Caters to Canine Critics

Touching (and licking and sniffing) the art is allowed

The statue carved by Adelaide Johnson portrays Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony (left to right), all women who fought for suffrage.

The Suffragist Statue Trapped in a Broom Closet for 75 Years

The Portrait Monument was a testament to women’s struggle for the vote that remained hidden till 1997

Any faithful recreation of elephant ivory must be hard, strong and tough—three qualities that are difficult to engineer in any one material.

Future of Conservation

Appalled by the Illegal Trade in Elephant Ivory, a Biologist Decided to Make His Own

Faking the stuff of elephant tusks could benefit wildlife conservation and engineering—yet many technical hurdles remain

Photograph of YInMn Blue as synthesized in the laboratory.

Crayola to Debut Crayon Inspired by New Shade of Blue

The YInMn pigment was accidentally discovered by a chemist in 2009

Soon, Lucy Sparrow will open a full NYC bodega filled with only felt food.

Cool Finds

These Groceries Are Made of Felt

And artist Lucy Sparrow is opening an entire bodega full of them

Trending Today

Asian-American Superhero The Green Turtle Returns!

The character, created in the 1940s and revived in a 2014 graphic novel, stars in a new comic book to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Handprint from Maltravieso Cave in Caceres, Spain.

Cool Finds

Project Is Making 3D Scans of Ancient Handprints

The Handpas Project is looking to unlock who made the prehistoric art and why

UK Appoints First Woman as Official Artist of General Election

Cornelia Parker will create a piece for the Parliamentary Art Collection

Hermann Nitsch pictured in front of one of his works at a 2006 retrospective.

Tasmanian Art Festival to Host Controversial Hermann Nitsch Performance

The festival has decided to proceed with the avant-garde artist’s work, despite public outrage

Trending Today

Latest National Report Card Shows Little Student Improvement in Music and Art

This is the third time that the National Center for Educational Statistics has assessed eight-graders in music and visual arts

Field. Oil on panel by PIX18 / Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University

Cool Finds

Check Out This Year’s Entries to the RobotArt Competition

Thirty-eight teams have submitted almost 200 artworks painted by robots, many guided by artsy artificial intelligence

By 1948, when this photo montage was made, Times Square was a riot of lights and special effects. Many of these lighted signs were the work of Douglas Leigh.

Times Square’s Glitzy Look was One Man’s Bright Idea

Douglas Leigh’s ability to imagine new kinds of advertising shaped the signs of the city

Munch's artistic freakout may have been inspired by mother-of-pearl clouds.

Art Meets Science

“The Scream” Might Have Been Inspired By a Rare Type of Cloud

Did mother-of-pearl clouds stoke a painter’s angst?

Stragglers—French Wounded in the Retreat of Chateau-Thierry by Claggett Wilson, ca. 1919

World War I: 100 Years Later

After Nearly a Century in Storage, These World War I Artworks Still Deliver the Vivid Shock of War

Pulled from the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Claggett Wilson’s watercolors are in a traveling show

On the Wire, by Harvey Thomas Dunn (oil on canvas, 1918)

When Artists Became Soldiers and Soldiers Became Artists

A rare opportunity to see works by the American Expeditionary Force’s World War I illustration corps, and newly found underground soldier carvings

This painting by Adriaen Coorte was among art stolen from an East German art collector by the Stasi in the 1980s.

Trending Today

Germany Will Research Stasi Art Seizures

The Nazis weren’t the only group that looted German treasures

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