You push a button. A spring releases a bowling ball, which hurtles down a ramp toward a switch that uncages a bird, whose beak twirls a dial that activates the printer that spits out your ticket. That’s not actually how admission to “The Art of Rube Goldberg” works, but it’s how the legendary cartoonist might…
Oskar Rabin, a leading figure in subversive Soviet art who first gained international attention for hanging from a moving bulldozer, died November 7 in Florence. He was 90 years old. Rabin was in Florence for an exhibition of his work, The New York Times reports. The filmmaker Evgeny Smoljanski, who directed a documentary about the…
Objects and images, linking memory and history, are a mainstay of museum exhibitions. They are the embodiment of synecdoche, the part standing in for the whole. A photo album, a china set, a teddy bear — even the most quotidian of artifacts — all resonate with special poignancy when associated with stories of persecution and…
While it has only existed for nine years, the Dutch restitution project, Museale Verwervingen is already close to completing its mission to find and return art stolen from Jewish families by Nazis and their collaborators. 172 pieces from 42 Dutch museums and the Royal Collection have been identified as potentially looted. Many of the items,…
A few faces in Nathan Fendrich’s photos are familiar: then-general Ariel Sharon beams while surrounded by soldiers; Chaim Topol, the Israeli actor played Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” But most of the subjects remain a mystery 45 years after he photographed them in the heat of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Fendrich, 84, donated…
A thrilling new exhibition about Harry Houdini pulls off an elaborate trick of its own. “Inescapable: The Life and Legacy of Harry Houdini,” at the Jewish Museum of Maryland through January 2019, manages to make the mythical magician’s story feel fresh — an achievement that’s almost as hard as making an elephant disappear, which Houdini…
On September 10, 2018 photographer Nan Goldin continued her protest of Purdue Pharma, which she believes is turning a profit off of opioid addiction — and this time she brought backup. Hyperallergic reports that Goldin’s organization P.A.I.N. Sackler, the Appalachian-based arts collective Queer Appalachia and leadership group the Voices Project joined forces in a statement…
A drawing by the British sculptor Henry Moore, estimated to be worth over $90,000, has been discovered in the most notorious hoard of Nazi-looted art found this century. As The Guardian reports, Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Bern asked the BBC program “Fact or Fortune” to determine the origins and authenticity of the watercolor sketch, which depicts several…
When the Viennese cabaret artist and art collector Fritz Grünbaum was deported to the Dachau concentration camp in 1938 — he would die there in 1941 — his art collection numbered more than 400 works, many by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. Much of his collection was confiscated by the Nazis after his deportation, after…
Chicago is a city renowned for its public art, from Anish Kapoor’s Instagram-omnipresent “Cloud Gate,” better known as the Bean, to Marc Chagall’s mosaic “Four Seasons” at the Chase Tower Plaza. Now, a piece of public art situated nearby both of those works, Yaacov Agam’s “Communication X9,” has been removed from the Michigan Avenue address…
Google the words “iconic Israeli photo,” and a predictable image comes up. It is the photograph of the three awestruck Israeli paratroopers against the Western Wall, taken just after Israel captured it from Jordan in 1967. Photographed by David Rubinger, who died last year, the picture symbolizes Israel’s triumph in the Six Day War, a…
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