In an act of vandalism on par with the burning of the Library of Alexandria, during the sixteenth century Spanish conquistadors and priests destroyed the Maya codices, or the written sum of that civilization’s history and literature…
Shadowy Figures
When Charles Scribner’s Sons decided to publish an illustrated book on hoofed mammals in 1953, it was probably not a subject with promising financial prospects—a worthy scientific treatise, perhaps, but certainly not something expected to appeal to the general public. Yet when the book appeared, its dazzling black-and-white graphics made it one of Scribner’s most appealing offerings of the year…
Current and coming: Making Icebergs at Olana
Olana—the historic estate of Hudson River school artist Frederic Edwin Church, with its faux-Persian mansion surrounded by a landscape devised by the painter as a living work of art—is hosting winter art exhibitions for the first time…
Art Deco in Jamaica
Not long after art deco design received an international showcase at the famed Paris universal exposition of 1925, inspired responses to the new style emerged in virtually every field of the applied and visual arts…
Current and coming: In Stitches at Colonial Williamsburg
Stitched in Time: American Needlework features some sixty examples of bed rugs, samplers, quilted petticoats, embroidered hand towels, crewelwork, mourning and commemorative needlework, and more.
Current and coming: Art of the WPA at the Crocker
Such was its success, the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration has been invoked any number of times since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s day…
Editor’s Letter: January/February 2023
There’s a new attraction in New York City: the Museum of Broadway…
End notes: Frill Seekers
Did you ever wonder how Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s use of distinctive collars with her judicial robes ever came about?
Current and Coming: Hopper’s New York at the Whitney
Edward Hopper has a strong claim to being the Whitney Museum of American Art’s favorite artist: an institution within the institution.
Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat
Alfred Maurer was at the forefront of aesthetic developments throughout his prodigious thirty-five-year career.