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It’s a good bet your first box of crayons or watercolors was a simple affair of six or so colors… just like the palette belonging to Amenemopet, vizier to Pharaoh Amenhotep III (c.1391 – c.1354 BC), a pleasure-loving patron of the arts whose rule coincided with a period of great prosperity. Amenemopet’s well-used artist’s palette, above, […] A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with...

You can go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today, and in real life at that. This isn’t true of all the world’s great art institutions, still shut down as many are by measures in response to the past year’s coronavirus pandemic. But then, none of them have offered a digital visiting experience quite like […] Take a New Virtual Reality Tour of the...

Photo by Guilhem Vellut Weary as we are of hearing about not just the coronavirus but viruses in general, shall we we turn our attention to parasites instead? The Meguro Parasitological Museum has been concentrating its intellectual and educational energies in that direction since 1953. Located in the eponymous neighborhood of Tokyo, it houses more […] Discover Tokyo’s Museum Dedicated to Parasites: A Unique...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzk7FG2X-c0 It’s not unusual for an institution to recognize a major benefactor’s generosity by naming something in their honor – a wing, an atrium, a library, a gymnasium, a concert hall… But bathrooms? It’s a fitting tribute for the Pope of Trash, filmmaker John Waters. So fitting that he himself suggested it when donating 372 prints, […] John Waters Gives Art Collection to The Baltimore...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQV-0nbAFjE Experimental director and animator Paul Bush‘s 2015 short film The Five-Minute Museum, above, is the dizzying antidote to standing, footsore, in front of a vitrine crowded with Ancient Greek amphoras or exquisitely crafted pocket watches and wondering, not about history, culture or the nature of time, but whether you can justify spending $15 for an underwhelming cheese and tomato […] The Five Minute Museum: A Stop Motion Animation...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkD43oXeloQ Bob Ross is as renowned for the gentle encouragement of his voice as for his speedy technique: indeed, these very qualities are synonymous with the name “Bob Ross.” His revival in recent years has as much to do with the de-stressing effects of his permed onscreen persona as with our awe, ironic or otherwise, […] Experience the <I>Bob Ross Experience</I>: A New Museum...

The poet and painter William Blake toiled in obscurity, for the most part, and died in poverty. Twenty some years after his death, his rebellious spirit gained traction with the Pre-Raphaelites. By the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Blake was ripe to be venerated as a counter-cultural hero, for having flown in the face of convention, while championing gender and […] William Blake’s Paintings Come to Life in Two...

Can you remember when you last visited a museum? Even if you didn't much care for them before the time of the coronavirus, you're probably beginning to miss them right about now. At least the internet technology that has kept our communication open and our entertainment flowing — and, regrettably for some, kept our work […] Take Immersive Virtual Tours of the World’s Great...

Léonide Massine may not be not the most famous name to grace socialite Elizabeth Fuller Chapman’s home movies. In terms of 21st century name brand recognition, he definitely lags behind art world heavies Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brâncuși, Henri Matisse, composer Igor Stravinsky, novelist Colette, playwright Thornton Wilder, the ever-formidable poet and collector Gertrude Stein, and her longtime companion Alice B. Toklas. Such were the […] Watch Home Movies Starring Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse,...

No first trip to Mexico City is complete without a visit to the Frida Kahlo Museum. Located in the village-turned-borough of Coyoacán south of the city's center, it requires a short trip-within-a-trip to get there. But even for travelers who know nothing of Kahlo's art, it's worth the effort — especially since they'll come away […] Take a Virtual Tour of Frida Kahlo’s Blue...

As critics and fans wrote excitedly upon its release, Marvel’s Black Panther did an excellent job of creating sympathy for its villain. Many found Erik Killmonger’s radicalism more appealing than the hero’s moderation for some specific reasons, beginning with the heist at the “Museum of Great Britain,” a thinly fictionalized British Museum. “In one scene,” […] The British Museum is Full of Looted Artifacts...

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…  —Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States of America He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he […] Shannon LaNier Poses as His Sixth Great-Grandfather Thomas...

Shoes and boots, show where your feet have gone. —Guy Sebeus, 10 New Scythian Tales  In the age of fast fashion, when planned obsolescence, cheap materials, and shoddy construction have become the norm, how startling to encounter a stylish women’s boot that’s truly built to last… …like, for 2300 years. It helps to have landed in a Scythian […] Exquisite 2300-Year-Old Scythian Woman’s Boot Preserved in the...

View this post on Instagram A post shared by New Museum (@newmuseum) on May 14, 2020 at 10:10am PDT Many friends have expressed a sense of relief that their elderly parents passed before the coronavirus pandemic hit, but I sure wish my stepfather were here to witness Iggy Pop crossing the rainbow bridge with the […] Iggy Pop, David Byrne, and More Come Together...

A few months before Philaelphia’s Mütter Museum, exercising now familiar COVID-19 precautions, closed its doors to the public, it co-sponsored a parade to honor the victims to the previous century’s Spanish Flu pandemic, as well as "those who keep us safe today.” The event was part of a temporary exhibition, Spit Spreads Death: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 in […] Take a Virtual Tour of the Mütter Museum...

Let us pray that organization expert Marie Kondo never comes within spitting distance of A Boy’s Room, part of the Studio Ghibli museum’s Where a Film is Born installation. It’s not likely that every single item in the massive (and no doubt well dusted) collection of books, postcards, hand tools, pictures, figurines, and other assorted tchotchkes pictured above […] A Virtual Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio...

Willem Janszoon Blaeu Celestial Globe 1602 No matter how accustomed we've grown over the centuries to flat maps of the world, they can never be perfectly accurate. Strictly speaking, no map can perfectly capture the territory it describes (an impossibility memorably fictionalized by Jorge Luis Borges in "On Exactitude in Science"), but there's a reason […] 3D Interactive Globes Now Online: Spin Through an...

Of the many world class museums treating a stuck-at-home public to virtual tours of their collections, none inspire the resolve for future travel as the Stay At Home Museum, an initiative of the Flanders tourism board. Before the COVID-19 epidemic response demanded the temporary shuttering of all such attractions, the region was entering the final […] The Stay At Home Museum: Your Private, Guided...