Dazzled by Art

When Cara Romero (b. 1977) found herself unable to adequately communicate in words her indigenous experience in America, she turned to another language: photography. Cara Romero, '3 Sisters,' 2022, archival pigment print. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Acquisition and Preservation of Native American Art Fund; 2022.47.2. © Cara Romero When Cara Romero (b. 1977) found herself unable to adequately communicate in words her indigenous experience in America, she turned to another language: photography. Romero split her childhood between the sprawling metropolis of Houston and the remote Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, CA. As an undergraduate anthropology student at the University of Houston, she couldn’t fully express what she saw, felt, and experienced on the reservation. During her junior year, she stumbled into a black and white film class. “While I struggled writing about contemporary Native issues, I fell in love with (photography) for its power ...

If you shed tears when a museum closes, expect to do a lot of crying. After a 20-year run, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City closed its doors in 2024. Its building on West 17th Street in Manhattan, which represented a large financial drain on the museum’s overall resources, is in the process of being sold, and a spokeswoman for the museum of Himalayan art framed the shuttering thusly: “We closed the building so that we could reallocate these resources to pursue an ambitious global program to achieve broader impact but also set the museum on a more sustainable path for decades to come.” The objects from the collection will not be sold—and indeed, the Rubin just announced the acquisition of works by ​​Tenzin Gyurmey Dorjee, Shraddha Shrestha and Shushank Shrestha—but if you want to see those works and others, you’ll find them in exhibitions at other institutions in the U.S. and abroad. Loans will likely be the foundation of the institution’s decentralized “museum without walls” ...

Enjoy these artsy products from the comfort of home the week recommends The 8 best items to buy from beloved museum gift shops Enjoy these artsy products from the comfort of home Newsletter sign up A teacup from Taipei; a teapot inspired by Van Gogh: Art can be yours at home. (Image credit: Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images) By Catherine Garcia, The Week US published 16 January 2025 That Van Gogh has to stay on the gallery wall. But there is a way to bring your favorite art home from a museum. Head to the gift shop and take your time perusing the carefully curated offerings — you will always find products featuring the masterpieces on exhibition, alongside one-of-a-kind works by local artisans. The following items, available in person at the shops or online, provide a tangible reminder of your museum experience. The Promenade eau du toilette from The Getty Museum in Los Angeles 'The Promenade' fragrance has floral notes, just like the painting (Image credit: The ...

Dame Tracey Emin and Sir Grayson Perry are celebrated with solo exhibitions at the suitably palatial Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and Wallace Collection in London, while Performance artist Leigh Bowery has a posthumous retrospective at Tate Modern. Brazilian Modernism has a moment at the Royal Academy of Arts and Guggenheim Bilbao, a new foundation dedicated to ceramics opens in Sintra and Paula Rego is exhibited with Adriana Varejão at Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon. Grayson Perry (c) Richard Ansett, shot exclusively for the Wallace Collection, London (c) Richard Ansett, shot exclusively for the Wallace Collection, London From London’s esteemed arts institutions Tate Modern, Royal Academy of Arts and the Wallace Collection, to acclaimed European museums including the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon and Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, there are a wealth of new exhibitions to see in Spring 2024. Leigh Bowery, Legendary Australian performance artist and fash...

Beset by colonial controversy, difficult finances and the discovery of a thief on the inside, Britain’s No 1 museum is in deep trouble. Can it restore its reputation? The British Museum is everybody’s idea of a museum, but at the same time, it is hardly like a museum at all. It is more like a little state. The rooms you visit on a day out are the least of it: the museum is not the contents of its display cases. It is an embassy, a university, a police station, a science lab, a customs house, a base for archaeological excavations, a place of asylum, a retail business, a publisher, a morgue, a detective agency. “We’re not a warehouse, [or] a mausoleum,” its chair, the UK’s former chancellor George Osborne, told guests at the museum’s annual trustees’ dinner in November. On the contrary, it is both these things, and others beside. It is a sprawling, chaotic reflection of Britain’s psyche over 300 years: its voracious curiosity and cultural relativism; its pugnacious superiority complex;...

Research is revealing the hidden story of one of Britain’s most intriguing archaeological finds The horror and drama of Roman gladiatorial combat still fascinates the public - and has done so for centuries. That fascination is symbolized by books, films - and paintings, such as this one by the 19th century French artist, Jean-Léon Gérôme. (Phoenix Art Museum) New research is revealing the remarkable story of one of Britain’s most enigmatic archaeological finds - a Roman gladiator helmet, discovered buried in a field in East Anglia. The artefact, which will feature in a major British Museum travelling exhibition on gladiators in Britain, being launched later in January, was found by a farmer out ploughing his land near the village of Hawkedon, Essex, back in 1965 - but it's only now that scientists and historians have begun investigating it in detail. Their new findings are of international importance - and suggest that the gladiatorial troop associated with the helmet may ha...

In her books, Elizabeth Lev takes us on a journey to the heart of the faith and its inextricable link to art. Michelangelo, Last Judgment fresco from the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City(VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images) Click and Clack, those lovable car mechanics of the airwaves, had many running jokes in their decades-long show, but probably none was so often used as their jabs against anyone studying art history. It was amusing to hear their wise-cracks, and for a while, you might’ve convinced me they were on to something. But then last October happened. Where was I? Well, on October 8, I was standing outside the Vatican Museum door, shivering slightly in the (very) early morning air, waiting with my pilgrimage group for our tour guide. We didn’t have long to wait, and we were soon being ushered into the museum by none other than art historian Elizabeth Lev — living proof that dear Tom and Ray were wrong about the pitfalls of this line of study. I’d occasionally read Lev’s co...

"Art helped us rediscover that we had a story and an experience to offer." Daniel Buren, Sulle Vigne: Punti di vista, 2001. Ph Alessandro Moggi Nestled in the picturesque hills of Chianti, Tuscany, just under an hour from Siena, Castello di Ama is a love letter to the land, blending wine production and contemporary art into a seamless and intimate experience that captures the “genius loci”—the very essence of this storied place. Curator Philip Larratt-Smith, who has long been part of the estate’s journey, sums it up in the book Growing and Guarding as “a microcosm of time, history, nature, and art. It embodies a contained and intimate space where nothing is monumental, grandiose, or exaggerated. Everything blends harmoniously with the landscape.” One of the souls at the heart of this remarkable story is Lorenza Sebasti, an Italian wine and art enthusiast and collector who, driven by a profound passion for this land, moved to Ama after graduating with a degree in economic...