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Artists

Self-Portrait by Romaine Brooks, 1923

The World Is Finally Ready to Understand Romaine Brooks

An early 20th-century artist, Brooks was long marginalized, her work overlooked, in part because of her fluid sexual and gender identity

Self-Portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States, 1932, by Frida Kahlo (Colección Maria y Manuel Reyero, New York)

Explore Frida Kahlo’s Mexico City

Here are four places with connections to the late Mexican artist to visit on her birthday, July 6, and beyond

Rijksmuseum and chill.

Cool Finds

Explore the Netherlands’ Most Iconic Museum

The Rijksmuseum is now the best-represented institution in the Google Cultural Institute

Workers start to encircle the island of San Paolo with the first floating elements, April 2016.

Nine Northern Italian Destinations to Visit After You View Christo’s “Floating Piers”

Cultural and historical treasures abound near Lake Iseo

Tolkien relied on maps to write his books—and cared a lot about how his fans saw Middle-earth.

Cool Finds

One Day Only: A Chance to View One Map to Rule Them All

A rare Tolkien-annotated map goes on display June 23

Cool Finds

This New York Project Wants You to Write on the Walls

Writing On It All gives voice—and a pen—to one and all

Cool Finds

One of the World’s Most Colorful Places Is in Taiwan

Rainbow Family Village shows there’s nothing a man with a paintbrush can’t do

Ahhh...that was satisfying.

Cool Finds

This New Satellite Project Helps People Find Patterns in City Spaces

Terrapattern turns a mad world into a satisfying, matchy-matchy nirvana

Untitled, 2016, Jack Ludden. Digital photomontage of Self-portrait, 2014 (left), Self-portrait, 1989 (right), and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1989

How a Museum Cancelling a Controversial Mapplethorpe Exhibition Changed My Life

As an intern at the Corcoran, I suddenly understood the power of art

Sita Bhaumik, Saqib Keval, Jocelyn Jackson and Norma Listman (People's Kitchen Collective)

The Smithsonian Gets Experimental and Field-Tests a New Forum for Bringing Artists to the Public

A Two-Day Festival in the historic Arts & Industries Building brings community, artists and scholars together for a “Culture Lab”

Bower by Martin Puryear, 1980, Sitka spruce, pine, and copper tacks

Martin Puryear’s Hometown Retrospective Brings the World Renowned Artist Back to His Roots

After treks to Africa, Scandinavia and Japan, Puryear’s works go on display at the Smithsonian, where he first developed his curiosity for world cultures

Pozzi and her team at the Washed Ashore project, achieve a remarkable and convincing array of textures.

Age of Humans

There’s a Bunch of Animals at the Zoo this Summer Made Out of Ocean Garbage

Delightfully whimsical, the sculptures drive home the message that there’s a whole lot of trash washing ashore

Cool Finds

This Museum Made Art Out of a John Deere Harvester

‘Continuous Service Altered Daily’ finds life inside a familiar machine

Cool Finds

Paris’ Iconic “Love Locks” Bridge Is Now Home to a Set of Creepy Statues

The rotating art installation on the Pont des Arts bridge was inspired by classical mythology

Portraits of Infamy by Roger Shimomura, 2016

Commentary

The Public Puts Great Trust in Museums, and Now It’s Time Museums Trust the Public

A new exhibition, curated by the community, debuts this weekend at the Smithsonian

"One of the first questions I ask myself," says Washington, D.C.-based artist Linn Meyers is, "'How well can I approach the quirks of the architecture?'"

The Mesmerizing Results When a Museum Asks an Artist to Draw All Over Its Walls

Linn Meyers took on the monumental task of creating a 400-foot-long artwork at the Hirshhorn

Construction on Lago d’Iseo, Christo says, was as challenging as “building a highway.”

The Inside Story of Christo’s Floating Piers

The renowned artist dazzles the world again, this time using a lake in northern Italy as his canvas

Sculptor Anne Arnold and her husband, the abstract painter Ernest Briggs, owned a house with a barn in Montville, Maine, where they raised farm animals, including pigs, cows, and chickens, and kept many dogs and cats. Arnold frequently relied on photographs of her menagerie to create her lively sculptures of animals in metal and wood.

A Look at the Creative Process and What Makes an Artist Tick

A new exhibition delivers a better understanding of where artists find their inspiration

Ten Things to Love in What Is Now the Nation’s Largest Modern Art Museum

SFMOMA is finally open after three years of renovations, and it’s magnificent

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