Art and Museums

What these artists saw from 1861 to 2008 at Coney Island and how they chose to portray it varied widely in style and mood over time, mirroring the aspirations and disappointments of the era and of the country. Taken together, these tableaux of wonder and menace, hope and despair, dreams and nightmares, become metaphors for the collective soul of a nation.    more »

English novelist William Thackeray observed: "That is not a smear of purple you see yonder, but a beautiful whale, whose tail has just slapped a half-dozen whale-boats into perdition; and as for what you fancied to be a few zig-zag lines spattered on the canvas at hap-hazard, look! they turn out to be a ship with all her sails." Apparently Turner undertook the painting — which was returned to him — for the collector Elhanan Bicknell, who had made his fortune in the whale-oil business. more »

The British Museum is staging a major exhibition on two lost Egyptian cities and their recent rediscovery by archaeologists beneath the Mediterranean seabed. Opening for an extended run of six months, The BP exhibition Sunken cities: Egypt’s lost worlds is the Museum's first large-scale exhibition of underwater discoveries. more »

WalkingStick’s biography is inextricably intertwined with her art. The exhibition examines key moments of her life, which further illuminate the artist’s methods and motivations. Her entrance into the male-dominated New York art scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with her exhibition of vivid, playful explorations of the body, set the pace for a career of innovation and unique expression, breaking down barriers for both women and American Indian artists. more »