Fall in Love with Fabric Samples

Donald Brothers was a storied Scottish firm that produced amazing fabric designs. Feast your eyes on a selection today.
Alex Steinweiss

Album Cover Artwork Was Super Boring before Alex Steinweiss

Inspired by the Bauhaus and WPA posters, the midcentury designer all but invented the modern record-album cover.
Benin royal shrine head, between 15th century and 16th century

The Benin Bronzes and the Cultural History of Museums

What an 1897 exhibition at the British Museum can tell us about how African artworks were perceived in an era of imperialism.
Length of Brocaded Silk, Italy, 18th century

Eighteenth-Century Spies in the European Silk Industry

Curious about the advancing wonders of the age, savants traveled abroad to gather trade secrets for their homeland.
Watercolor No.185, Marsh Ragwort

Victorian Botanical Paintings

Amateur botanist Margaret Rebecca Dickinson painted the wildflowers she collected in the English countryside.
The front page of the exhibition catalog for "Womanhouse" (January 30 – February 28, 1972), feminist art exhibition organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program.

The Origins of the Feminist Art Movement

Before the Guerrilla Girls, Women Artists in Revolution pressured institutions to include women artists, inspiring similar groups around the U.S.
Big Jim Colosimo by Pauline Boty and Portrait fragmenté by Evelyne Axell

The Women of Pop

In addition to bringing attention to overlooked artists, one scholar argues that art criticism has contributed to their obscurity.
Alexis Ward's Lockdown Art

Preserving the History of Coronavirus in Queens

Curator Annie Tummino on the Queens College COVID-19 Collection.
Kuan Yin and Attendants, 1368

Hair Embroidery as Women’s Buddhist Practice

In late imperial China, it was a devotional art using hairs plucked from devotees' own heads.
Meta Warrick Fuller

How Sculptor Meta Warrick Challenged White Supremacy

A 1907 exhibition on the founding of Jamestown featured the work of an artist determined to counter demeaning stereotypes.