Art & Design

Arts

Too Many Artists, Too Little Time: The Problems And Promise Of The Whitney

7:29pm March 07, 2014

by Karen Michel

It's time again for the show that people love to hate: the Whitney Biennial, an overview of American art. Critics often trash it, but as Karen Michel says, this year's showcase has a few surprises.

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Arts

These Guitars Are For The Birds — Literally

7:44pm January 15, 2014

A new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., features a flock of 70 finches and an array of tuned and amplified guitars. As the flock fills the open room, the birds are free to land on the guitars, making music of their own as they move and jump off the instruments.

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Other exhibits on display at the Museum include "Silicon Body Part Piercing Displays," "Cambodian Menu Photo Rejects" and "New York City Tip Jars."

Arts

Tiny Museum Preserves Proof Of Creators' Crazy Stories

7:38pm January 02, 2014

by Margot Adler

Housed in an old elevator shaft off a Manhattan alleyway, the Museum's 18 small shelves hold random objects like bootleg Sharpies and prison dice made of bread. Co-creator Josh Safdie says the Museum's roots lie in its founders' outlandish stories.

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Mountain Gorillas, one of the first dioramas on which Fred Scherer apprenticed, completed in 1936.

Arts

In The Background: Art You May Never Notice

12:31am December 18, 2013

by Claire O'Neill

Why that unassuming museum art — which you'll find behind taxidermic bison and birds — deserves a closer look.

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Andre Le Notre pumped in water from the Seine River to create the Grand Canal at Chateau of Versailles.

Royal Gardener Planted The Seed Of Urban Planning At Versailles

10:45am December 10, 2013

by Eleanor Beardsley

Andre Le Notre helped turn an old hunting lodge into the Versailles we know today, taking his profession way beyond a trade. Experts say Le Notre's work was so groundbreaking, it continues to influence contemporary urban architecture. This year marks the 400th anniversary of Le Notre's birth.

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Bickering In Bangladesh; Curling; Glow-In-The-Dark Tattoos

3:31pm December 07, 2013

by NPR Staff

Ozy editor Eugene Robinson tells NPR's Arun Rath about two dueling divas in Bangladeshi politics, the rising popularity of an obscure winter sport, and tattoos that you can wear to work.

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Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of 15 17th century Dutch paintings on view at New York's Frick Collection through early 2014.

Arts

'Pearl Earring' Is The Crown Jewel Of The Frick's Dutch Exhibit

7:48pm December 05, 2013

by Lloyd Schwartz

New York City is home to more paintings by Johannes Vermeer — eight — than any other city. And until mid-January, it's playing host to one more: the world-renowned Girl with a Pearl Earring. Critic Lloyd Schwartz says, since the painting's 1994 restoration, "It's even more breathtaking than I remembered."

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The boats of For Those in Peril on the Sea, by artist Hew Locke, hang in the entrance hall of the Perez Art Museum Miami, which opens this week.

Arts

For Miami, A New Art Project, Complete With Drama

6:02pm December 03, 2013

by Greg Allen

The Perez Art Museum Miami opens this week, and despite praise for the building's design, the museum faces controversy over its name and has an uphill battle in a city where the art scene is already defined by private collectors.

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"A Slave Carrying Her Fate In Her Hands," Frances

Trove Of Artifacts Trumpets African-American Triumphs

6:44pm November 26, 2013

by Allison Keyes

More than 35 years ago, Bernard and Shirley Kinsey began acquiring documents, artifacts and artworks that tell the story of the African-American experience. The collection, which spans more than 400 years, spotlights not black pain, they say, but the strength and resilience of African-Americans.

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The walls of 5Pointz were once covered in graffiti. Artists worldwide came to New York to paint the warehouse surface.

Arts

Remembering 5Pointz: A Five-Story Building That Told Plenty More

6:54pm November 21, 2013

by Bruce Wallace

The walls of the warehouse complex in Queens were once covered with ever-evolving spray-painted art. But the graffiti museum (of sorts) has been painted over in preparation for demolition, and artists are mourning the loss.

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