Museums

Ashley May on the fire that destroyed Brazil’s Museu Nacional—and the risk factors for American museums.

Ann Marlowe visits the Pilotta museum complex—one of Italy’s overlooked gems.

Catherine Addington reviews “Heavenly Bodies,” the Met’s exhibition of Godly garments and high couture.

James Gardner on the surprising resilience of Giacometti’s spindly statues.

The Vienna Philharmonic is in the United States this month, performing in New York and Florida under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel. As a New Yorker who attends concerts on a regular basis, I never miss a chance to hear the orchestra’s performances at Carnegie Hall. Two years ago I even had the…

By acclamation the Art Institute of Chicago is already one of the great museums of the world, but earlier this month it laid hands on a work that its director called a “transformative acquisition.” The work is by the absurdist painter-provocateur-conman Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). The New York…

What won’t our loftier cultural institutions do to attract youthful patrons? In an age in which symphony pops concerts feature music from video games, it would seem not much. But the envelope was recently pushed in Pittsburgh.

The moment its doors officially open, the new Museum of the Bible, with its prime real estate in the capital, will be the nation’s most prominent institution dedicated to educating the general public about Judeo-Christian ideas and history. But it is far from the first attraction built by…

What role does the Bible play in Americans’ lives? A century ago the answer to that question would have been straightforward: It was the most important book in the home, perhaps read daily, and the place where major events in a family’s history (births, deaths, marriages) were recorded. It was…

It's always a source of delight when liberal pieties collide. Which is what happened last week in Laguna Beach, California, when Art had it out with the Environment—and Art lost. What made the contretemps doubly delicious was that the art in question had been promoted as an environmental statement.

In the unpredictable and often baffling way that hip, new meaning can glom onto even the stuffiest of words, “curating” has emerged in recent years as a ubiquitous cultural tag for fashion, groceries, Instagram posts, Pinterest accounts, and much else. Grammy winner Usher “curated” a July 4…

The Berkshire Museum, a venerable, century-old museum of art and history in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, is making enormous changes to its dowdy displays. Two years of planning, 22 focus groups (uh-oh), and two multimillion-dollar fundraising drives have yielded a “New Vision,” described as a bold,…

Philadelphia

Pensacola, Fla.

New York

New York

Whatever Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Museum in Baltimore, thinks of the larger world, he has a somewhat jaundiced view of the art world itself, or at least that corner of it that forms his main area of expertise, medieval and Byzantine art. And the impression we are left with from…

New York

New York

Madrid

There is no shortage of researchers and educators who tell us that art is good for our health and well-being, our quality of life, and as a means for understanding ourselves and others. Where too many people come up short is paying to get into art museums—$25 at the Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and…