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Art

Peonies and Butterflies, Steven Young Lee, 2013, porcelain, cobalt inlay, gold luster decals. Collection of Lee and Mel Eagle

Steven Young Lee Crafts Perfectly Imperfect Pottery

Rigorously trained, this artist makes works that look woefully broken

Chalk portrait of Caravaggio Ottavio Leoni, circa 1621

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Happy 445th Birthday, Caravaggio

The artist’s gory paintings have captivated art lovers for centuries

Installation view of "Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden," 2016. Nude with Leg Up (Leigh Bowery) by Lucian Freud, 1992; Untitled (Big Man) by Ron Mueck, 2000.

The Hyperreal Magnetism of Ron Mueck’s Truly Huge “Big Man”

The sculptor’s showstopper is naked, overweight and grumpy

The gallery's uncluttered walls make way for splashy art that has space to breathe and have an impact.

Breaking Ground

History Grabs the Headlines, But the Quiet Authority of the Art Gallery in the New Smithsonian Museum Speaks Volumes

In the visual arts exhibition the tone and the ambience suddenly shift

Leutwyler spent three weeks in the archives of the Elvis Presley Estate photographing objects, such as this gold-plated microphone (c. 1960).

A New Photo Book Reveals the Objects That Tell the Stories of the Rich and Famous

Photographer Henry Leutwyler usually shoots his camera at celebrities. For this book, he looked at their stuff

Dissident artist Pyotr Pavlensky appears at Moscow's Tagansky District Court on suspicion of vandalism.

Cool Finds

Russian Burger King Campaign Isn’t the First to Mix Art and Advertising

There’s a lot of back-and-forth between these worlds

The statue of Lenin where it formerly stood on the roof of the Red Square building on E Houston Street.

Cool Finds

A Statue of Lenin Has Finally Come Down from Red Square…in New York City

One of Manhattan’s strangest buildings has lost its mascot

Cool Finds

Colombian Statue Heads Home After 80 Years

The slab figure disappeared from Colombia’s National Musuem in 1939

A Hindu temple painted yellow.

Cool Finds

This Group Celebrates Kenya’s Religious Diversity by Painting Religious Centers Yellow

Painting for pluralism

Will Knight of Knight's Spider Web Farm in Vermont

This Farm Harvests Spider Webs for Art

Knight’s Spider Web Farm is Vermont’s original “web site”

Oscar Wilde spent two years in what was then called Reading Gaol.

Cool Finds

A British Jail Is Paying Artistic Tribute to Oscar Wilde, its Most Famous Inmate

Patti Smith, Ai Weiwei and others envision what it’s like to be Inside

Cool Finds

Amateur Archaeologist Discovers Significant Amount of Scotland’s Ancient Rock Art

Musician and avid walker George Currie has catalogued 670 pieces of prehistoric rock art in the Highlands

These flowers may look beautiful, but in the imagination of Tamiko Thiel, they've turned hostile due to climate change.

Cool Finds

Augmented Reality Art Imagines What Could Be Seattle’s Weird, Bleak Future

Artist envisions mutant flowers and drone-like seaweed that may one day take over a post-climate change Seattle

America, Maurizio Cattelan, gold, 2016

You’ll Want to Sit on Guggenheim’s Latest Piece, an 18-Karat Golden Toilet

Maurizio Cattelan returns from retirement with this pretentious potty

The Mechelse Wyandotte, the latest iteration of Koen Vanmechelen's Cosmopolitan Chicken Project

Art Meets Science

Breeding a Better Chicken in the Name of Art (and Science)

For 20 years, Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen has been selectively breeding chickens for his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project

A rendering of the 10-ton block of ice.

Cool Finds

Watch a 10-Ton Ice Cube Melt on a Seattle Square

It’s a different kind of block party

Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic tackles a range of popular science topics with an enlightening and humorous approach.

Age of Humans

New xkcd Comic Masterfully Shows How Climate Has Changed Through Time

Scroll through 20,000 years of humorously illustrated climate data

Cool Finds

Four Finds from University of Kansas’ Collection of Radical Zines

The university’s Solidarity! Radical Library boasts a collection of almost 1,000 alternative papers

"Shotgun Seamstress"

Cool Finds

The New York Public Library’s Radical Zine Collection Is Now on Display

Check out pamphlets from people like Noam Chomsky and Mumia Abu-Jamal

Magritte apparently recycled a lost painting to create The Human Condition.

Cool Finds

Curators Are One Piece Closer to Solving the Mystery of Magritte’s Missing Painting

The Enchanted Pose is coming back from the dead—one painted-over quarter at a time

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