For years, the Nigerian artist El Anatsui was highly regarded for his abstract wood sculptures. But he didn’t really receive the acclaim he deserved in the mainstream until he showed his elegant metal tapestries made from flattened aluminum bottle tops at the Venice Biennale in 2007.... More >>

In 1958, the late artist Jay DeFeo went to work on a new project guided only by, what she called, “an idea that had a center to it.” Eight years and 2,300 pounds later, her enormous painting The Rose, one of her most famous works, was finished. After being forklifted out of her San... More >>

Claude Monet may be best known as a master of Impressionism, but he could also be considered as one of the first style bloggers ever. Really! His paintings, such as Women in the Garden and Luncheon on the Grass, documented a revolutionary time for clothing. The Metropolitan Museum of... More >>

In Patti Smith’s National Book Award–winning memoir, Just Kids, the singer-songwriter wrote about her time living with Robert Mapplethorpe in Clinton Hill, where the two young bohemians experimented with various forms of artistic expression. Photographer Lloyd Ziff, a Pratt student... More >>

One of the most well-known images of the Gutai movement in Japan is that of Saburo Murakami tearing through a row of large frames covered in paper. His Passing Through (1956) embodied the spirit of the group that believed artwork needed to break free from the canvas in order to speak to a new... More >>

If you’ve laughed anytime in the past 50 years, you owe Harvey Kurtzman some thanks. Triple-threat Kurtzman (writer, editor, cartoonist) and publisher William Gaines created Mad magazine in 1952, and Kurtzman’s bloody-knuckle satire inspired everyone from R. Crumb to Terry Gilliam... More >>

New Yorkers love to find things to complain about, but how often do we provide real solutions? For the next four days, the New Museum turns New York City into Ideas City, a biennial festival of conferences, workshops, and more than 100 independent projects and public events where ideas and... More >>