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It’s been over a month since public health precautions led almost every school in the United States to switch to online instruction. While there are obviously much greater tragedies unfolding daily, it’s hard not to empathize with students who have watched countless special events—proms, commencements, spring sports, performances, hotly anticipated rites of passage—go poof. In New […] Experience New York City’s Fabled Mid-Century Nightclubs in...

Museums around the world have temporarily closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, and each of these institutions has used its downtime differently. Some have provided online versions of the experiences previously offered in their physical galleries; others have started prolonged battles on Twitter. No, not the kind of prolonged battle one normally associates with Twitter, but […] Museum Curators Create a Contest to See Who...

London-based couple Filippo and Marianna's self-isolation project calls to mind artist (and museum curator) Bill Scanga's At the Met, exhibited nearly 20 years ago as part of the group show Almost Warm and Fuzzy: Childhood and Contemporary Art at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now known as MoMA PS1). Scanga's installation involved hanging mini-replicas of works from the Metropolitan Museum's American collection […] An Art Gallery for Gerbils: Two Quarantined Londoners...

One can only tolerate so many educational videos in self-isolation before the brain begins to rebel. Hands-on learning. That's what we're craving. And ultimately, that's what the Getty provides with an addictive challenge to captive audiences on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to re-create iconic artworks using three household objects. Participants are encouraged to look at the Getty's […] Ingenious Improvised Recreations of Vermeer’s <i>Girl with a...

In 2002, Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov made cinema history with Russian Ark, which dramatizes a wide swath of his homeland's history in a single, unbroken 96-minute shot. What's more, he and his collaborators shot it all in a single location, one both rich with historical resonance and not exactly wide-open to movie shoots: St Petersburg's […] A 5-Hour, One-Take Cinematic Journey through Russia’s Hermitage...

Photo by Tom Winckels, via Wikimedia Commons If you happened to have a trip to China scheduled for this time of year, chances are you don't anymore. Travel to and from that country has been severely curtailed since the Chinese city of Wuhan saw a large-scale outbreak of the novel coronavirus, about which you can […] Chinese Museums, Closed by the Coronavirus, Put Their...

No matter how many public institutions you visit in a day—schools, libraries, museums, or the dreaded DMV—you may still feel like privatized services are closing in. And if you’re a fan of national parks and public lands, you’re keenly aware they’re at risk of being eaten up by developers and energy companies. The commons are […] The Smithsonian Puts 2.8 Million High-Res Images Online...

There are many roads to wellness. Meditation, yoga, exercise, and healthy diet are all effective therapies for bringing down stress levels. But we shouldn’t discount an activity we once used to while hours away as children, and that adults by the millions have taken to in recent years. Coloring takes us out of ourselves, say experts […] Free Coloring Books from World-Class Libraries & Museums:...

Only recently has “actor” become an acceptable gender-neutral term for performers of stage and screen. Prior to that, we had “actor” and “actress,” and while there may have been some problematic assumptions concerning the type of woman who might be drawn to the profession, there was arguably linguistic parity between the two words. Not so […] <i>Radical Women</i>: Stream the Getty’s Podcast That Features...

You've almost certainly been to more art museums than you can remember, and more than likely to a few museums of natural history, science, and technology as well. But think hard: have you ever set foot inside a museum of philosophy? Not just an exhibition dealing with philosophers or philosophical concepts, but a single institution […] The First Real Museum of Philosophy Prepares to...

First trips to Paris all run the same risk: that of the museums consuming all of one's time in the city. What those new to Paris need is a museum-going strategy, not that one size will fit all. Tailoring such a strategy to one's own interests and pursuits requires a sense of each museum's collection, […] 14 Paris Museums Put 300,000 Works of Art...

The successes of the Freedman’s Bureau, initiated by Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and first administered under Oliver Howard’s War Department, are all the more remarkable considering the intense popular and political opposition to the agency. Under Lincoln’s successor, impeached Southern Democrat Andrew Johnson, the Bureau at times became a hostile entity to the very people […] The Names of 1.8 Million Emancipated Slaves Are...

Let's pretend our Fairy Art Mother is granting one wish—to spend the night inside the painting of your choice. What painting will we each choose, and why? Will you sleep out in the open, undisturbed by lions, a la Rousseau’s The Sleeping Gypsy? Or experience the voluptuous dreams of Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June? Paul Gaugin’s portrait of his […] You Can Sleep in an Edward Hopper Painting...

Two years ago, a scandalous “art heist” at the Neues Museum in Berlin—involving illegally made 3D scans of the bust of Nefertiti—turned out to be a different kind of crime. The two Egyptian artists who released the scans claimed they had made the images with a hidden “hacked Kinect Sensor,” reports Annalee Newitz at Ars […] Download Stunning 3D Scans of the Bust of...

Art saves lives, and art can also save an individual from the stigma of an arrest record, provided that the arrest is for one of 15 non-violent misdemeanors. Project Reset, a museum-based early diversion program in three of New York City’s five boroughs, aims to reframe the way youthful (and not so youthful) offenders see […] Art Class Instead Of Jail: New Program Lets...

Readers will receive no prizes for guessing what they'll find, broadly speaking, at the Van Gogh Museum. But they may well be surprised by the full scope of the Van Gogh and Van Gogh-related work and information on offer for their free perusal at the Van Gogh Museum's online collection. Naturally, you can view and […] Explore 1400 Paintings & Drawings by Vincent van...

Like many New Yorkers, retired sanitation worker Nelson Molina has a keen interest in his fellow citizens' discards. But whereas others risk bedbugs for the occasional curbside score or dumpster dive as an enviro-political act, Molina’s interest is couched in the curatorial. The bulk of his collection was amassed between 1981 and 2015, while he was on […] Treasures in the Trash: A Secret Museum Inside...

“All my jokes are Indianapolis,” Kurt Vonnegut once said. “All my attitudes are Indianapolis. My adenoids are Indianapolis. If I ever severed myself from Indianapolis, I would be out of business. What people like about me is Indianapolis.” He delivered those words to a high-school audience in his hometown of Indianapolis in 1986, and a […] A New Kurt Vonnegut Museum Opens in Indianapolis...