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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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Agriculture revised its famous food pyramid, jettisoning the familiar hierarchical graphic in favor of vertical rainbow stripes representing the various nutritional groups. A stick figure bounded up a staircase built into one side, to reinforce the idea of adding regular physical activity to all those whole grains and veggies. The […] Imagined Medieval Comics Illuminate the Absurdities of Modern...

How times have changed since our late 80s college days. Undergrads do research online, upload assignments to a server, stream music, download affirmative sexual consent contracts, and turn to Facebook when it's time to find a ride home for the holidays. But one aspect of the collegiate lifestyle remains unchanged. They still festoon their dorm rooms with […] The First Museum Dedicated Exclusively to Poster Art...