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Artists

Tagliavini is attracted to the time of Filippo Lippi, famously said by Robert Browning to “paint the soul.”

An Extravagant New Tribute to the Rise of Portraiture 600 Years Ago

The artist takes 21st century technology and culture to a 15th century aesthetic

Lubaina Himid

Trending Today

Why Lubaina Himid’s Turner Prize Win Is One for the History Books

The 63-year-old, Zanzibar-born contemporary artist becomes the oldest person and first woman of color to win the prestigious award

Christopher Columbus statue in Columbus Circle in New York City

More than 120 Academics and Artists Call for Removal of Controversial Monuments in New York

The letter singles out three statues and two commemorative markers honoring contentious historical figures

Thomas Wilfred Sitting at the Clavilux “Model E,” about 1924

This Artist Painted With Light. An Admiring Astronomer Helped Make Him a Star

The works and machinations of Thomas Wilfred, a lone performer, inventor and visionary, are now on view

Memorial to a Marriage, by Patricia Cronin

Check Out These Thought-Provoking Additions to the National Portrait Gallery

The museum is showcasing 25 new artworks through next autumn

“For 20 years, everyone referred to The Dinner Party as ... ‘vaginas on plates,’” Chicago says. “Nobody called it the history of women in western civilization, which of course, is what it is.”

These Fall Exhibitions Explore the Origins of Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party”

Brooklyn Museum and National Museum of Women in the Arts revisit the artist’s celebration of unrecognized women, female body

American Girl by Emma Amos, from the portfolio "Impressions: Our World, Volume I," 1974

Women Who Shaped History

Why Making a Portrait of a Black Woman Was a Form of Protest

For Emma Amos, an African-American artist working in the 1970s, the personal was often political

The Kremer Museum features more than 70 works by Dutch and Flemish Old Masters

Pop-Up VR Museum to Bring Dutch and Flemish Masterpieces to the Masses

The Kremer Museum was imagined up after its creators grew disillusioned with constraints associated with showcasing a collection in a physical building

A detail from the controversial panel of Benton’s mural

History of Now

In Defense of Keeping the Indiana University Mural That Depicts (But Doesn’t Glorify) the KKK

American artist Thomas Hart Benton thought it crucial to highlight the dark spots in the state’s history

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

African Lionesses by Lakshitha Karunarathna, 2017 Grand Prize

These Breathtaking Images Are the Cat’s Meow in Nature Photography

Sixty incredible outdoor scenes are now on view at the National Museum of Natural History

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

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

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

Tom Keating's forgery.

Austria

Everything in This Museum Is Fake

This Vienna art museum pays homage to the art of forgery

Using "visual fingerprints" in works of art, Smartify can quickly ID that painting you want to know more about

App Aims to be the “Shazam” of the Art Museum

With a database of 30 museums worldwide and growing, Smartify can use your phone camera to identify and explain works of art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's famed painting "Luncheon of the Boating Party" is the focus of a new exhibit in Washington, D.C.

Exhibit Sheds New Light on Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party”

More than 130 years after it was completed, “Renoir and Friends” returns to the famed painting

The Dance Class, c. 1873. Oil on canvas.

One Hundred Years Later, the Tense Realism of Edgar Degas Still Captivates

For this groundbreaking artist, greatness was always one more horizon away

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