In 1983, William H. Luers, a new American ambassador to Czechoslovakia, bet on a long shot for its future: Vaclav Havel, the often-imprisoned poet-playwright and enemy of the Communist state. But after leading a peaceful revolution to oust the regime, the long shot cultural leader became the democratically-elected last president …
It’s probably too much to show up at one of these Costume Institute shows looking for the object that ties the whole thing together. Just because they’re about clothes doesn’t mean they have to do what a smart outfit does. And yet damn if I didn’t find a single object …
The Met Gala has outdone itself, even before it’s begun. The annual gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — the flashy fashion extravaganza that highlights the city’s social scene every May — raised a record $31 million this year, museum officials announced on Monday, the biggest gross in the …
The preternaturally astute portrait painter John Singer Sargent is often identified as an American, but he belonged to no one country. Born in Florence, Italy, to expat parents who moved the family around Europe with the seasons, Sargent (1856-1925) spent a formative decade in Paris before making London his base …
Earlier this month the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrated the opening of an exhibition by the painter Amy Sherald — Michelle Obama’s official portraitist — with a champagne toast over lush arrangements of daffodils and yellow ranunculus. At the Museum of Modern Art, another recent blowout event honored an …
This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times. When Daniel Merritt became chief curator of an art museum at 32, he did not expect his profession to require him — or the public — to put on skis. But …
By now, you probably know the first Monday in May is not just any old Monday: It’s the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute benefit, a.k.a. the Oscars of the East Coast or the party of the year. We think of it as the Fashion X Games or the All-Star …
On a brisk morning a few weeks ago on the roof terrace of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the artist Jennie C. Jones was previewing “Ensemble,” her suite of elegant, angular sculptural works for the museum’s annual Roof Garden commission, which opens on Tuesday. Three sculptures glistened in the sunlight, …
The dragon lady, the courtesan, the submissive beauty — these enduring stereotypes of Asian and Southeast Asian femininity circulated in Europe and America centuries before the vast majority of Westerners had ever laid eyes on a real flesh-and-blood woman from those parts of the world. A major, and maybe surprising, …
The Center for Art and Advocacy, a nonprofit that assists artists who have served time in prison, will inaugurate its first physical space on Thursday. The hub, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, opens to the public with an exhibition, “Collective Gestures: Building Community Through Practice,” featuring works by the …
