A Wes Wilson band poster, 1967

When Posters Went Psychedelic

Posters were originally a method of advertising and promotion, but in the 1960s, a new crop of psychedelic signs became emblematic of the counterculture.
Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David

Napoleon Bonaparte’s Personal #Brand

Napoleon didn't like sitting for portraits, and yet artists and mass market prints helped cement his legendary status.
'Ohne Titel' by Wassily Kandinsky, 1923

Art Is Good for Your Brain

The field of neuroaesthetics uses neuroscience to understand how art affects our brains, both when we're making it and when we're viewing it.
The Indian's Vespers by Asher Brown Durand, 1847

Subscription Art for the 19th-Century Set

How the American Art-Union brought fine art to the people, via a subscription service, in the 1840s.
Design 513, Damask, 1956 and Design 104, Printed Silk and Fortisan Casement [curtain fabric], 1955, by Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fraught Attempt at Mass Production

The famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright famously loathed commercialism, and yet he (reluctantly) designed commercial homewares to be mass produced.
Rossia macrosoma, Stout Bobtail Squid

The Delicate Science-Art of the Blaschka Invertebrate Collection

The Cornell Collection of Blaschka Invertebrate Models includes hundreds of glass models of sea creatures, making it both a teaching tool and a metaphor.
Allegorical Groups Representing the Four Continents: America by Francesco Bertos

These Gravity-Defying Sculptures Provoked Accusations of Demonic Possession

Demons and artists, it seems, pull from the same bag of tricks. They take ordinary matter and transform it into something more wondrous, more terrifying.
Untitled by Ann McCoy and Untitled by Larry Bell

The Rise and Fall of Hologram Art

Major artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Louise Bourgeois have experimented with holography, but it has yet to be taken seriously as an art form.
An assistant curator at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall inspects a rare painting that is currently being kept at the museum store and warehouse

How Museums Tidy Up

Deaccessioning old works can be a complicated and fraught process. But even museums have to spring-clean now and then.
Untitled, 1981, by Jean-Michel Basquiat

How Basquiat Used His Surroundings as a Canvas

Jean-Michel Basquiat created art that commented on New York City, while also contributing to its architecture and style.