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…
Sometimes when you build a museum, the past finds you. A few weeks ago Uri Geller, the Israeli illusionist who made his name in the 1970s by using his mind to bend spoons on television, sensed something beneath the debris at the building site of his forthcoming museum, the Uri Geller Museum in Jaffa, Haaretz…
The mandrake is a small, perennial plant that grows in warm Mediterranean climates. Its flowers are a pretty shade of purple, but its roots can be deadly. Pluck a mandrake from the soil and you’ll find a tiny man hanging down underneath the leaves, screaming loudly enough to kill anyone nearby. The only safe way…
It appears that Jewish couple Rita and Jerry Alter walked away from a 1985 trip to an Arizona museum with quite the souvenir. After Rita’s death in 2017, the Alters’ home in New Mexico was found to contain a long-lost Willem de Kooning painting, worth $160 million, yet no evidence had previously linked them to…
The Jewish-German photojournalist Gerda Taro’s brief life was filled with firsts. She is widely considered to have been the first woman photographer assigned to the frontlines and, unfortunately, the first to die on assignment. Today would have marked her 108th birthday, and Google is celebrating her considerable legacy with a doodle on its homepage. Taro,…
On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was black, was shot outside the Cuddel Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio by police officer Timothy Loehmann, who is white. Rice would die the following day from gunshot wounds to the torso. At the time of the shooting, Rice was carrying a black Airsoft gun, a toy,…
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