Surrealist artists at the first Surrealist Exhibition to be held in London. Back row, from left, are Rupert Lee, Ruthven Todd, Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Herbert Read, E LT Mesens, George Reavey and Hugh Sykes-Davies. Front row, from left, Diana Lee, Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar, Sheila Legge and unknown.

Surrealism at 100: A Reading List

On the centennial of the founding of Surrealism, this reading list examines its radical beginnings, its mass popularity, and its continued evolution.
Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth by Pierre Mignard I

Painting Race

The construction and expression of race by skin color literally became visible in Western art in the eighteenth century.
Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist

How Renaissance Art Found Its Way to American Museums

We take for granted the Titians and Botticellis that hang in galleries across the United States, little aware of the appetites and inclinations of those who acquired them.
Ceiling of the Room of the giants in Palazzo Del Te, Mantua

Lessons in Mannerism at the Palazzo del Te

The offbeat and unexpected Palazzo del Te, designed by Giulio Romano for Federigo II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, has become an icon of Mannerist architecture.
Original art for The Shadow by Charles Coll

What the Shadow Says

The appearance of the vigilante crime fighter known as the Shadow in the writings of Plath, Kerouac, and Baraka reveals a twentieth-century duality.
American sculptor Alexander Calder in a studio surrounded by his work, c. 1955

Alexander Calder, Sculptor

Calder was known for both his delicately balanced kinetic sculptures and the massive steel abstractions he designed for public squares around the world.
Charlotte Cushman, 1843

The Long Shadow of the Jolly Bachelors

More than a century ago, Charlotte Cushman presided over a group of queer female artists who supported one another’s creativity and left a pioneering, if overlooked, legacy.
Interior of the Musée des Monuments Français, between 1795 and 1816

Saving Art from the Revolution, for the Revolution

Alexandre Lenoir’s Musée des monuments français, founded to protect French artifacts from the revolutionary mobs, was one of the first popular museums of Europe.
Maud Lewis

Remembering Maud Lewis

A symbol of resilience and resourcefulness, Lewis remains one of Canada’s best-loved and most-celebrated folk artists.
Hand drawn illustration of african woman with pink hair

Going “Black to the Future”

How has Afrofuturism supported the imagining of other worlds in the face of the anthropogenic climate crisis?