‘Design for a giant crossbow.’
Leonardo da Vinci
As Leonardo da Vinci found centuries ago, scholars of art, design, engineering and science can work together for mutual benefit.
Old man (possible self-portrait) and water studies, c 1508-9.
Wikimedia Commons
Leonardo’s obsession with water flowed through his technical work, his art and his scientific ideas.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of Two Warriors Heads for the Battle of Anghiari, c. 1504-5. Black chalk or charcoal, some traces of red chalk on paper. Google Art Project.
Wikimedia Commons.
Leonardo’s professional life reveals his genius for creating technologies of destruction.
Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings and mechanical designs reveal his fascination with engineering, motion, anatomy and ageing.
Google Art Project, via Wikimedia Commons.
Leonardo’s interest in the human form and replicating human bodily movement foreshadow ideas present in modern robotics.
Audio walk by zURBS: changing the way you see the city.
Frederic Tschepp.
Those in charge of urban spaces would like the public to believe that town and city environments have a predetermined function: participatory art challenges this view.
A visitor enjoys the art of Banksy exhbition at the Mudec Museum in Milan.
EPA-EFE
Banksy’s legal team has won an action to stop unauthorised products featuring his work alongside an Italian museum exhibition.
Shuttrstock
The US president as avant-garde provocateur.
Artist Jennifer Rubell hired a model to vacuum for two hours each night from Feb. 1 to Feb. 17.
Ryan Maxwell Photography
A new piece of performance art features a lookalike Ivanka Trump vacuuming crumbs. Not only is it a cutting commentary on labor and gender, but it also highlights the complicity of the viewer.
The painting: ‘In the Bathroom’ is part of exhibition ‘Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory’ at London’s Tate Modern gallery.
EPA-EFE/Neil Hall
A London exhibition of the French post-impressionist painter is an opportunity to examine what it is that fascinates us about art itself.
Central American asylum seekers paint murals on Casa Tochan, a refugee shelter in Mexico City.
Doris Bara
A human rights researcher documents the stories of Central American migrants leaving behind endemic poverty and high homicide rates. In limbo in Mexico, many use art therapy to express their anxiety.
Detail from Mickalene Thomas’s ‘Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe: Les trois femmes noires’ which is part of a show called ‘Femmes Noires’ currently at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
The Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehmann Collection © Mickalene Thomas
A recent and powerful exhibit by New York artist Mickalene Thomas at the Art Gallery of Ontario has opened the door for some deep discussions about Black Canadian women and visual representation.
The Port Talbot Banksy.
Ben Birchall/PA Wire/PA Images
Unsolicited artwork by the world famous artist can cause big problems for private building owners.
In his Quarterly Essay, Smee laments the erosion of ‘inner life’ thanks to digital technology.
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Smee insists that the rich and intense visions of artists such as Cézanne or Chekhov are increasingly lost to us.
Lighting causes damage to paintings over time.
Juan Di Nella/Unsplash
Researchers have found a way to reduce light damage to artworks by up to 47% by optimising LEDs to prevent light from being absorbed by the artwork.
Private corporations have now become the arbiters of community standards, making decisions about what content is permissible to circulate.
Sexual subcultures create space for critical social conversations and the formation of meaningful political alliances.
The exhibition ‘Gurlitt: Status Report Nazi Art Theft and Its Consequences’, at the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland.
EPA-EFE/Anthony Afex
The discovery of an apartment crammed with art has revealed the dark history of collaboration and looting during the days of the Third Reich.
One of the plundered Benin plaques, at the British Museum.
Shutterstock.
Colonial powers plundered the heritage of countries all over the world – restitution is long overdue.
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
We’ve had 90 years of those famous ears.
Lifetime Supply. Bee Hughes.
Art can be a powerful means to confront and subvert stigma around menstruation.
#MagicCarpet at King’s Artists – New Thinking, New Making, now on in the Arcade at Bush House, King’s College London. Photograph by Alex Lloyd, KCL.
Art is no cure all. But it can open up new spaces for us to ask new questions.