What inspired the little dog in Rembrandt's The Night Watch? Anne Lenders, a curator at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, who has been working on restoring the 1642 painting, has a theory. When browsing an exhibition, she saw a dog that looked familiar in a drawing by Adriaen van de Venne, a Dutch […]

For the past 120 years, the U.S. National Audubon Society has worked on bird conservation and for the past 16, it's run a contest to find the most stunning imagery of our feathered friends. @[email protected] shares some of the winning photos, from a royal tern feeding its chick a fish to a […]

Some of the workers most affected by AI have been artists, illustrators and graphic designers. For his AI Killed My Job series, @brianmerchant spoke with some of them about ridiculous costume designs, whether comics might be at least temporarily immune to the technology, and cleaning up the […]

Which is harder to draw: A kiss, or a horse? @aftermath.site's Isaiah Colbert spoke to Samuel Deats, co-director of "Castlevania" and "Castlevania: Nocturne," to find out. https://flip.it/E-kiej #art #culture #drawing #anime #television #tv #entertainment

Each year, the monsoon waters consume the lower reaches of an art studio in Dien Phuong, Vietnam. But instead of sweeping the striking cube-shaped structure away, the rising tide flows gently through its perforated brick walls. A clever, and important, design feature amid the growing climate […]

Artist Amy Sherald decided to keep her exhibition "American Sublime" from being installed at the Smithsonian after the gallery told her it had concerns about the painting Trans Forming Liberty, which presents the Statue of Liberty as a Black trans woman. She writes for MSNBC about the importance […]

A giant portrait of U.S. President Donald Trump, stretching across three stories, now hangs on the exterior of the Department of Labor. @[email protected] explains why people are alarmed by this. "Historically, authoritarian leaders — such as Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong […]

U.S. President Donald Trump has escalated his campaign against the Smithsonian Institution and its museums, saying in a Truth Social post that there is too much focus on "how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been." The comments come after the White House announced a […]

35 years ago, Jim Sanborn presented the cryptographic sculpture Kryptos to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. Made from copper, granite, quartz and petrified wood, it has four sections, each of which holds a message in code. Over the years, three of the sections have been […]

This might be one of the weirder conspiracy theories we've heard — and that's saying something. A group of protestors claims that the famed sculptor Anish Kapoor has trapped a man inside his Cloud Gate piece (commonly known as "The Bean"), which has been in Chicago's Millennium Park for more […]

There's a new exhibition and book looking back at the career of British painter David Hockney. @csmonitor takes a look at what to expect from both, including his famous swimming-pool paintings, set designs for operas, and the "220 for 2020" iPad works he made during the pandemic, which had the […]

Last week, the social media accounts of the Department of Homeland Security posted an image of "American Progress," a 19th-century painting that depicts a floating white woman herding buffalo and Native people off Western lands. Its caption read: "A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth […]

Artist Amy Sherald has canceled her Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery show, "American Sublime," amid discussions of removing a painting that shows a trans woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Sherald told The New York Times that the Smithsonian […] [Original post on flipboard.social]

Philadelphia anthropologist, playwright and poetic ethnographer Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon recently collaborated with photographer Joseph V. Labolito on a project where she performed a poem to accompany his 1980s shot of a little girl hanging out with her dad. Here's what she wrote — seven […]

Last weekend, Elon Musk shared some images on his X platform that he claimed had been created by the Grok AI system. They were actually just edits of original work by Australian artist Charles Brooks, a former concert cellist who is known for photographing the insides of instruments. An X user […]

Our photography newsletter this week focuses on LGBTQIA+ photographers, including the Village Voice's Fred McDarrah and Zanele Muholi, a nonbinary artist who explores race, gender and sexuality in their work. The collection also includes a piece about the Getty Center's new exhibition on how […]

President Trump has made significant changes to the design of the Oval Office since January. It's an aesthetic that photo editor Emily Keegin describes as "gilded rococo hellscape." For @newyorktimes's Visual Studies series, she breaks down the look's lineage and significance, from the Palace of […]

Here's a @Flipboard Storyboard curated by @miaq that celebrates the work of photographers of Asian and Pacific Islander descent. Discover Corky Lee's documentation of Asian American activism, how Manny Crisostomo travels to capture images of Indigenous and Pacific Islander people, and more. “Our […]

@ArtPhotosDesk @RollingStone From their tour: "The movie that was tonight. Thx to our director @aknight" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44Ihcf-rB3Q

The All-American Rejects have been on tour — but they're not playing arenas or clubs. Since early May, the band has been popping up in bowling alleys, corn fields, barns and college campuses as part of their mission to challenge the overpricing of live music events. The final show in the Give […]

Takashi Murakami's “JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige,” opened at Gagosian New York earlier this month.@ArtNews's Daniel Cassady interviewed Murakami about creating the show, and the act and art of copying. "This, as it turns out, is what growth looks like for Murakami […]

Yasunao Tone, a composer and artist who bridged the gap between music and visual arts, has died at age 90. Here's @ArtNews's tribute to the cerebral, experimental and highly influential sound maker, who described his work as like "a parasite without a host," and of whom Yoko Ono once said: “I […]

There's something compelling about photos and paintings of boats: Humans and their vessels against a backdrop that can be calm, peaceful, powerful and terrifying, sometimes shifting from one to the other in minutes. Here's @salvomic's @Flipboard Storyboard about the technical side of taking […]

Artist Jessica Poundstone has written a book about the history of dogs in art, and it's a delight. LitHub shares some of the images, including a sketch on limestone discovered in Egypt and believed to be from around 1295 BCE, a poodle powder box from 1940s France, and some portly Japanese […]

This evening is the Met Gala in New York City, a benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, and fashion's biggest night out. For 2025, the exhibition's theme is Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, guest-curated by Monica Miller, who wrote […] [Original post on flipboard.social]

Controversies in art are nothing new, from the rejection by the Church of Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin in the 1600s because its depiction of Mary was too realistic, to Marcel Duchamp's challenges to decorum in the early 20th century. @ArtNews says this trend has accelerated in the 2000s and […]

What do you think a book cover for "Do the Right Thing" or "Fargo" would look like? Artist and illustrator Matt Stevens imagines designs for both, plus 98 other films, in a box of collectible postcards, "Good Movies as Old Books." LitHub reproduces a few of his covers here […]

Malick Sidibé was known as the Eye of Bamako because of his cataloging of Mali's capital through the 1960s and 1970s. In the years after the country gained its independence from France, Sidibé photographed everyone from exuberant youngsters dancing in nightclubs to people posing seriously in his […]

What happens when you wake up with a Banksy on your wall? @BBCNews looks at what happened to two homeowners who experienced exactly that. "Both artworks have been taken off the houses they were painted on — a complex, expensive operation that uses specialist equipment — so they can be sold," […]

The Mississippi Museum of Art is home to one of the American South's largest collections of quilts. A new exhibition there, Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South, aims to offer "a cohesive experiential study of American art through a Black feminist lens," curator Dr. Sharbreon […]

What is art? And can animals make it? Philosopher Shawn Simpson takes a look at this, using the examples of male satin bowerbirds, which make adorned archways from twigs, whale song, pig paintings, and blue manakin birds' song-and-dance routines. https://flip.it/VU1vqm #art #artists […]

Yesterday was the third annual Corgi Derby, an event that pays tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II by racing her favorite dog breed. Juno was the fastest to complete the 230-foot course in Musselburgh, Scotland, and was presented with a trophy and treats by Judy Murray, mother of tennis […]

Marc Chagall's painting, White Crucifixion, was Pope Francis's favorite. "Pain is depicted there with serenity," said the late pontiff of the 1938 work, which was created in reaction to Nazi crimes against Jews. Forward examines how Francis' experiences under military dictatorship in Argentina […]

"This is a quiet photo that speaks loudly," says World Press Photo executive director Joumana El Zein Khoury of the World Press Photo of the year. The portrait of nine-year-old Mahmoud Ajjour, who lost both arms in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City in March 2024 was taken by Palestinian […]

When artists imagine the future these days, it looks bleak and dark — and actually, fair enough. But for Boomers, it was colorful, shiny, and sometimes sexy — and that's at least partly down to the late Syd Mead, the concept artist who worked on "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," "Tron" and "Blade […]

There was huge backlash last month when OpenAI announced its new AI image generator and demonstrated it by showing Studio Ghibli-inspired pictures. The company's CEO, Sam Altman, responded to the criticism last Sunday by describing it as "democratization" of art creation. @ArtNews's digital […]

Need something to make you smile? Popular Science shares 15 images from the International Pet Photography Awards, including shots of an elegant whippet, a gentle Friesian stallion, and a sweet rescue rat named Button. https://flip.it/e7vYpd #photography #photos #pets #lifestyle #dogsofmastodon […]

The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los Angeles faces federal funding cuts of $2 million as a result of DOGE's actions. But the team at JANM isn't pulling back any of its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. “Our community is based on diversity, equity is guaranteed to us in the […]

Millions of protestors took to the streets of the U.S. on Saturday for the Hands Off protests. @jkottke of @kottke has collated links to some of the best photography, including shots from @TheAtlantic, @npr and more. https://flip.it/NxBNzl #photography #photos #handsoff #uspolitics […]

Artist Rashid Johnson has spent his career exploring his anxiety, through paintings, sculptures, photos and more. His most famous work, Anxious Men, is on T-shirts, plates and jewelery, including a necklace worn by Kendall Roy in "Succession." @time spoke to Johnson about his early days, his […]

The latest target for Trump's crackdowns is the Smithsonian Institution and its museums and education and research centers. A new executive order directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate "improper, divisive or anti-American" ideology from programs at the Institution, which receives federal […]

"To Every Orange Tree," a show focused on anti-imperialist and liberation movements by Rhode Island School of Design students, staff and local community members, has been shuttered, four days into its run. This appears to have been done in response to accusations by the StopAntisemitism X […]

Kim Kardashian faced swift backlash after posting on Instagram about her Tesla-festooned photoshoot for indie fashion mag Perfect. The top comment on her post, with over 20,000 likes, said "never buying skims again," referring to Kardashian's shapewear brand. Artnet's critic Ben Davis looks at […]

A Canadian artist has canceled his show, "Since 1957," which was due to open on May 2 in New York, over President Trump's annexation threats. "The United States is no longer a country that Canadians can trust, and I feel it would be unpleasant and wrong to mount a show in the U.S. at this time […]

6,000 homes were destroyed in Altadena, L.A. County, by the recent wildfires. In many cases, all that remains standing is the chimney and fireplace — often covered in tiles designed by artist Ernest Batchelder. @Dwell writes about a grassroots movement to salvage some of those tiles — and the […]

After 28 years at the helm of the fashion brand her late brother founded, Donatella Versace has stepped down. @CNN shares photos of her career at the heart of the fashion industry: the early days working with Herb Ritts; the aftermath of Gianni's murder; her stalwart support for LGBTQ rights […]

A photo of a polar bear surrounded by flowers has won the second Nature Photography Contest. Christopher Paetkau took the shot in the Arctic using a drone. @Phoblographer took a look at all the gear Paetkau and other winning photographers used. The writer's conclusion: "It’s proof that the […]

A new book highlights the work of Jay Matternes, the paleoartist whose work adorns the walls of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and American Museum of Natural History, as well as the pages of National Geographic and Scientific American […] [Original post on flipboard.social]

"Woman Carrying the Embers," a 17th-century painting by Dutch master Pieter Brueghel the Younger, vanished from the National Museum in Gdansk, Poland, around 1974. @CBSNews reports on how it was discovered when — unbelievably — it went on display at the Gouda Museum in the Netherlands, billed […]

Let’s meet up! I’m hosting a photo walk through some of my favorite graffiti and mural filled alleys in SF’s Mission District and any Fediverse folks are invited. We’ll meet up at 24th and Valencia at 2pm on March 1st and hit up some of my favorite […] [Original post on pixelfed.social]