How an Art Heist at Taco Bell Is Fueling a Thriving Black Market
In 2015, a Taco Bell in Westlake, Ohio, made headlines when someone stole a printed canvas featuring an original artwork designed for the fast food chain. Fast forward nearly a decade, and there appears to be a thriving black market for the art, which has been a pillar of the restaurant’s decor for some 20 […]
In a New Show at Gladstone, Alissa Bennett Unpacks the Mystery Novel ‘The Secret History’
About six years ago, Alissa Bennett, a director at the Gladstone Gallery, fell under the thrall of Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel, The Secret History. The book traces a coterie of students studying ancient Greek at an isolated Northeastern college. Myth, reality, and ritual overlap and ultimately Dionysian rites collide with deadly hubris. Bennett read it, […]
Do Art History Majors Really Face the Worst Job Prospects of Any Profession?
Art History majors face the worst employment prospects of any profession after graduating from college, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found. The data, released by the Fed in February, became a talking point online this week, just as students close out the academic year and many start the job […]
Fotografiska New York to Settle Lawsuit Alleging Pregnancy Discrimination
Fotografiska’s New York outpost has reached a tentative settlement agreement with a former worker who alleged in a lawsuit that she faced discrimination for being pregnant. Lawyers for the worker revealed that the settlement was reached in principle in a June 12 letter to the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, asking for time to […]
Macron’s Divisive Plan to Install Contemporary Stained Glass in Notre-Dame Thwarted
A highly controversial proposal to replace the historic stained glass windows in Paris’s iconic Notre-Dame cathedral with contemporary works has been rejected by France’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission. President Emmanuel Macron could still go against its advice but his position has been significantly weakened by the shock result of France’s recent election. The original […]
Is ‘Moby Dick’ America’s Most Illustrated Novel? A New Exhibition Makes the Case
Today, Moby Dick’s place in the literary canon is as weighty as its titular antagonist, but upon its release in 1851, the book barely made a ripple. “This is an odd book, professing to be a novel, wantonly eccentric and outrageously bombastic,” wrote the London Literary Gazette, before declaring it so torturous that readers might […]
4,000-Year-Old Temple Predating Machu Picchu Unearthed in Peru
Archaeologists working in Peru have made a truly remarkable discovery. The remains of an ancient temple and theater that have been dated to 3,500 years older than the famed ancient site of Machu Picchu have been uncovered by a team led by Luis Muro Ynoñán from the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. While Machu Picchu, […]
A Chic Berkshires Hotel Will Host an Invite-Only Art Fair Next Summer
There is a rich tradition of art fairs taking place in hotels. The Armory Show debuted at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York some three decades ago. More recently, New York has seen the Dependent and the Fridge, whose names riffed on Independent and Frieze, respectively. There’s also the Felix Art Fair in Los […]
A Rare U.K. Stamp, Legendary for Its Misprinting, Heads to Auction
Between 1841 and 1879, British authorities issued billions of Penny Red stamps, serving a communication revolution driven by rising literacy rates that saw letter-writing boom. Philatelists are indifferent to the hundreds of thousands of these that have survived. The Plate 77 Penny Red, however, quickens the pulse and, for the deep pocketed and extremely fortunate […]
Construction Workers in Rome Discover Emperor Caligula’s Garden
The cliché runs that you can’t fix a water main or break ground in the Italian capital without uncovering Roman treasure. So it has been proven, with the Italian Ministry of Culture announcing that a major project to pedestrianize an area around the Vatican has discovered a garden belonging to Emperor Caligula. In fact, it’s […]