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Artists

Global Cities by Norwood Vivian, 2015

Mapping the World’s Great Cities in a Most Unusual, Yet Visually Arresting, Fashion

Part urban planner, part cartographer, sculptor Norwood Viviano uses state-of-the-art mapping tools to make powerful works of art

Each crossing incorporates the existing zebra-style design.

Cool Finds

Colorful Crosswalks Paint the Streets of Madrid

This art was made to be stepped all over

The room has plenty of "Hudson River light" to spark the artist in a lucky bidder and their guest.

Cool Finds

Channel Edward Hopper With a Night in His Bedroom

Stay in the childhood home of one of history’s greatest painters

These seemingly inhabited buildings are actually vacant properties illuminated by the new Breathing Lights project in three New York cities.

Cool Finds

This Art Project Breathes New Life Into Blighted Buildings

Breathing Lights will illuminate hundreds of abandoned structures throughout New York

Monopoly, 2007 by Kristen Morgin

This Game of Monopoly Is Made Entirely of Clay

Kristen Morgin’s playful illusions explore ideas of abandonment and the American dream

Marion’s Morifolium Neckpiece by Jennifer Trask, 2011, includes sewing needles, antler, various teeth and bones and cast resin with bone powder, among other materials.

Bones and Blood Lurk Within These Stunning Works of Art

Sculptor Jennifer Trask sees a rich backstory in her materials

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

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

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

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

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

Pablo Picasso by Albert Eugene Gallatin, 1934

Commentary

Why It Takes a Great Rivalry to Produce Great Art

Smithsonian historian David Ward takes a look at a new book by Sebastian Smee on the contentious games artists play

Zora Neale Hurston by Carl Van Vechten, Noble Black Women: The Harlem Renaissance and After,1935, printed 1983

These Rarely Seen Photographs Are a Who’s Who of the Harlem Renaissance

Carl Van Vechten captured and archived images of most of the era’s great artists, musicians and thought leaders

That's not an art forger—it's a copyist.

Cool Finds

What’s With the People With Easels in Art Museums?

Inside the longest-running program at the MET

Put down your pencil—convincing computer-generated handwriting is here.

New Research

This Algorithm Lets You “Write” Like the Greats

Your words, their handwriting

The Next Rembrandt 2

Has the Incredible Accuracy of Art Reproduction Ruined the Way We Experience Masterpieces?

Precise digital replicas allow more people to own and view great works of art, minus their soul

The Dessen Bauhaus was home to ambitious movement that went far beyond blocky architecture.

Cool Finds

Harvard Just Launched a Fascinating Resource All About Bauhaus

The newly digitized collection is as ambitious as the art school it documents

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