Blackboards were wiped after use: they were meant for immediate communication, not for record. Even as they were being used, their messages were continuously revised, erased and renewed. But when Einstein came to Oxford in 1931, he was already an international celebrity. After one of his lectures a blackboard was preserved and has become a kind of relic. It is the most famous object in this Museum.
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

The Grand Tour is back, and this time it's in York. [Previously]
posted on Jun 6, 2008 - View this thread

Smashing Magazine has gone pixel mad with a celebration of the art form.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

ANSI art gets the respect it is due. On January 12th, 2008, ACiD Productions produced an art show of legendary MS-DOS artists Somms and Lord Jazz. Their digital art was turned into hangable pieces using home-brew scrollable LCD light boxes hung on the gallery walls.
posted on Feb 19, 2008 - View this thread

Sculptor John Kearney of Chicago and Provincetown and his wife Lynn have been running Chicago's Contemporary Art Workshop in a former dairy for almost 60 years. Unlike their better-known contemporary the Hyde Park Art Center, (founded nearly the same year) the pair never let the gallery move beyond its original mission, to discover and support young artists, especially those with little or no exhibition background. The Workshop had early solo exhibitions for both artists who went on to fame, and those whose careers fizzled (full disclosure-that would be me) and has exhibited thousands in its 6 decades. Kearney, who worked with found objects from early in his career, is the best-known sculptor you never heard of, with his creative and amusing bumper sculptures all over Chicago.
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

I may not know art, but I know what I like.
posted on Jan 16, 2008 - View this thread

When he's not recording more songs than Bob Dylan, former Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard is busy creating collages, many of which can now be seen online in an exhibit from Studio Dante in New York City.
posted on Dec 18, 2007 - View this thread

New York artist Ashley Hope's Ripeness is All exhibit at the Tilton Gallery recreates crime scene photographs of murdered women from the 1910s through the 1990s as oil paintings on huge 4' x 6' canvasses. [some nsfw art]
posted on Nov 30, 2007 - View this thread

The Nocturnes Gallery
posted on Nov 23, 2007 - View this thread

"Teenage Stories." Award-winning photography by Julia Fullerton-Batten (flash). With interviews (pdf).
posted on Nov 21, 2007 - View this thread

A small gallery of talking boards and planchettes by various artists. (Warning: navigation is somewhat clunky.)
posted on Nov 1, 2007 - View this thread

Mural Mosaics! Artists come together to create beautiful themed murals, made of hundreds of relevant paintings.
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

"A paper around her neck said she was Ida, but Ida said nothing at all." So tells the story of the saddest, unluckiest girl that ever lived.
posted on Sep 6, 2007 - View this thread

The Grand Tour. Until August 31st, the National Gallery in England is putting reproductions of famous paintings on the streets of London, with MP3 audio guides and maps available for download. The reaction has been good.
posted on Aug 5, 2007 - View this thread

Walking is a crazy animation of a character walking around the walls of an art gallery, where each frame of the animation was painted on the walls & then wiped clean for the next frame. Via.
posted on Jul 6, 2007 - View this thread

KetchupArt.com. Submit your own. [via It's Knuttz]
posted on Mar 6, 2007 - View this thread

Japan's National Diet Library Gallery has been mentioned here before, but the Pink Tentacle blog came across some fantastic late Edo period illustrations in the NDL Gallery by Kurimoto Tanshu (栗本丹洲, 1756 - 1834). Apparently he was a doctor, but he seems to be better known for his hundreds of biological illustrations. Many are of sea creatures, but there are also quite a few other plants and animals. ranging from realistic renditions to bizarre creatures. A huge and varied collection, but all are equally fascinating.
posted on Dec 20, 2006 - View this thread

Drop Dead Gorgeous a Photo Gallery of not so safe treats by Daniela Edburg. (via the morning news)
posted on Dec 20, 2006 - View this thread

Art is power. Two of London's biggest names in art just went head to head. Yesterday the Serpentine Gallery opened an exhibition by new Chinese artists in Battersea Power Station, allowing the public to see inside the city's greatest piece of abandoned architecture for the first time. Not to be outdone the Tate Modern, the other London art gallery built in an abandoned power station, hits back with its new interactive exhibit tomorrow.
posted on Oct 9, 2006 - View this thread

Interesting gallery of images people have made using a program called zBrush. (some images nsfw)
posted on Sep 17, 2006 - View this thread

The Match World Virtual Museum is dedicated to showcasing the best artwork from the ~25,000 matchbooks in the collection of the Japanese Match Manufacturers Association, including Foreign Matchbooks, Advertising on Matchbooks and various matchbook companies, all with decent, sized images available if you click on the thumbnail versions. Some really attractive stuff in here. Previously on Metafilter
posted on Aug 21, 2006 - View this thread

Friday flash fun, a day late. The National Gallery of Art has some awesome Flash apps intended for kids, but lots of fun for adults. My favorites: Flow, PixelFace, Mobile.
posted on Aug 12, 2006 - View this thread

Astronomy Quilts "My quilts are to communicate ideas, express feelings, tell stories, and encourage the progress of anti-entropy coalescing order from disorder."
posted on Aug 4, 2006 - View this thread

Ink drawings by Ben Tolman: Huge, intricate, somewhat NSFW. There may be an issue with the side frame not scrolling in Firefox; if this is the case, click here, here, here, and here to see the galleries.
posted on Jul 8, 2006 - View this thread

Illustrations by Reilly Stroope. (Flash interface.)
posted on Mar 26, 2006 - View this thread

The Narrow Gauge Circle hosts, among other fine features, the Ted Kierscey Collection -- page after page after page of historical photographs of Colorado's railroad and mining towns.
posted on Mar 23, 2006 - View this thread

Igor Sergeev has been collecting full, unopened cigarette packs from all over the world since 1976. His site now features over 21,000 photos, arranged in alphabetical order by brand name. Some are fascinating simply for the way they differ from what we're used to seeing at the 7-11; others are straight-up nine kinds of awesome.
posted on Mar 20, 2006 - View this thread

Not safe for work: Baby Art: the profoundly fucked-up artwork of one Trevor Brown, a fabulously unwell individual.
posted on Mar 2, 2006 - View this thread

The always great (and frequently linked) RetroCrush currently has an exhibit on Polish movie posters for western films; seemingly devoid of the original branding & identity art, it's fun to try and guess what movie the images could even be trying to promote. Some are beautiful, some are amateurish, all are intriguing.
posted on Feb 12, 2006 - View this thread

Cover Art: The Time Collection [Flash] "In 1978 Time Magazine gave to the National Portrait Gallery some 800 works of original art that had at one time or another appeared on its covers." The gallery has created an online-only exhibition of the covers (the museum is closed for renovation until July 4, 2006). "And while one may normally imagine ornately framed oils of distinguished luminaries when thinking of the NPG, the Time covers offer a much closer to 'street level' survey of the prominent figures of any specific period." [via CSM]
posted on Dec 14, 2005 - View this thread

The winners of the 2005 Nikon Small World Competition are up (previous years going back to 1977 are also worth a look). Photomicrography produces some amazing imagery, giving us glimpses into both the inner workings of living things, and the intricate structure of nonliving things (just click "find all").
posted on Dec 4, 2005 - View this thread

Norman Koren - photographs and tutorials
posted on Nov 18, 2005 - View this thread

Zdzislaw Beksinski (warning: music) produced some hauntingly beautiful, disturbing works of art: many, many paintings, as well as photographs, drawings, and digital creations. Sadly, he was killed earlier this year.
posted on Nov 13, 2005 - View this thread

Wild-Landscape photography
posted on Oct 27, 2005 - View this thread

ArtsConversations , the archives of the C/IAF's Netropolitan Museum.
Browse works of art, sculpture, photography (some NSFW) , and more. [via->via->via chunky bacon]
posted on Oct 13, 2005 - View this thread

Visions of Science
posted on Sep 28, 2005 - View this thread

Alex Bernasconi's (Mostly Wildlife) Photography [via MeCha]
posted on Sep 16, 2005 - View this thread

The Official George & Ira Gershwin Web Site
[Flash required]
posted on Sep 1, 2005 - View this thread

The Lotus Eater ... a creepy gallery that has a flash interface that doesn't actually suck.
posted on Aug 29, 2005 - View this thread

Bathsheba Grossman: a geometric sculptor
posted on Aug 26, 2005 - View this thread

Overshadowed - images by Keith Kin Yan
posted on Aug 18, 2005 - View this thread

Post No Bills. At the intersection of life and advertising one may unexpectedly find art, or at least humor. Henry Ho shines a light on it. (42 pages. Or view all thumbnails together)
posted on Jul 29, 2005 - View this thread

Casino carpet gallery. [via scrubbles.net]
posted on Jun 28, 2005 - View this thread

Ansel Adams's Landscapes
posted on Jun 7, 2005 - View this thread

CG Challenges - the largest online art contests of their kind, where artists are challenged to create outstanding artworks based upon set themes, while working under restrictions. For CG students, an additional bonus is the view of the creation process.
posted on May 23, 2005 - View this thread

Chromasia - a photo blog
posted on May 18, 2005 - View this thread

A cool idea, and a fun allegory: Bird and butterfly collages made with old bank notes (two pages, horizontal scrolling). Click the images to view larger versions and see the notes that were used (scroll down). More here without the note source info.
posted on May 10, 2005 - View this thread

Iconic graffiti artist and cult hero, Banksy, has expanded his 'establishment' art resumé with exhibits in New York's most important art galleries.

Not very guerrilla of him.

Except that the galleries didn't know.
Naughty Banksy.
posted on Mar 24, 2005 - View this thread

The Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art. Images from Japanese psychiatric medication advertisements: 1956-2003 (via Absent without leave)
posted on Mar 9, 2005 - View this thread

MakingRoom magazine.
posted on Mar 4, 2005 - View this thread

The Light and the Land
posted on Feb 28, 2005 - View this thread

tag, you're it.
posted on Feb 24, 2005 - View this thread

The Numeric Diaries... So cool. After entering, use the side arrows to navigate back and forth, choose from the drop-down menu, or use the thumbnails to view images going back to October 1, 2003. Some images mouse over or click through for further treats or links. And when you're done, you can visit the main site at Trezart for a lot more art and fun. (French language, via the archives of the great gmtPlus9)
posted on Feb 16, 2005 - View this thread

A trifecta of photographic sites: TrekEarth,TrekLens and TrekNature.
posted on Jan 25, 2005 - View this thread

The mystery of Stefan Mart and the 'Tales of the Nations'. "The Tales of Nations" was not an ordinary book that you could buy in a book store, and it's mysterious narrator/illustrator disappeared into the darkness of Hitler's Germany, seemingly without a trace. Learn the background, read the stories, and view all 150 fabulous colour illustrations — "small in size, but strong in expression, each a microcosm packed with action, each a feast for the eyes like a beautifully set jewel".
posted on Jan 9, 2005 - View this thread

It appears to be so simple, but as Fred Astaire once said "they'll never know how hard I work to let the strings show."
Kirsten Ulve started out as a Graphic Designer and later turned to Illustration. You've seen her work on things like Uno Cards, Nick at Night and TV Land. She is a master at caricatures and even has a freaky cool gallery to view as well.
posted on Nov 30, 2004 - View this thread

MoMA Free Tomorrow for New York MeFi Readers! Well, everyone, actually. The Museum of Modern Art in New York reopens tomorrow and graciously offers a day of free entrance for all. Your chance to avoid the much-criticized $20 admission (views: con, pro-fessional, mayoral). Even good old free-admission Fridays bear the price tag of aggressive name-branding [paragraph 6] by an image-crazy donor (it's not charity anymore if it's advertising, folks, much less design-heady classiness-by-association). Some reports (scroll) from the press preview.
posted on Nov 19, 2004 - View this thread

Photography of David Maisel.
posted on Oct 6, 2004 - View this thread

No Air-Kissing Please, We're British [via artsjournal]
posted on Sep 21, 2004 - View this thread

20th-century American artist, Alice Neele , "The Auntie Hero": "While Uptowners were making their way downtown to have their portraits painted by Warhol, Downtowners were going up to 107th Street to sit for this bohemian, auntie-like artist." Check out seven decades of raw, sometimes amazing, but always deeply humane portraits of the often larger-than-life figures who peopled the New York art/lit scene and Neel's personal landscape, including such iconic irrepressibles as Joe Gould, Andy Warhol, Annie Sprinkle, and Bella Abzug. (NSFW)
posted on Sep 16, 2004 - View this thread

Delightful magical realism by artist Rob Gonsalves. If you enjoy these, then also be sure to check out the wonderful works of Curt Frankenstein. This post made possible by AskMe, and the kind and lovely MeFites Orb and Faze.
posted on Sep 13, 2004 - View this thread

Keith's Fractal Art.
posted on Jul 3, 2004 - View this thread

Lines on Paper has a great nine-page gallery of business cards embellished by comic artist notables. Here's my fave by Dennis Worden. For more yummy comic browsing, consult the Comiclopedia (from Lambiek, which also has an illustrated history of Dutch comics).
posted on Jun 29, 2004 - View this thread

Chaoscopia.
posted on Jun 19, 2004 - View this thread

Abstrakt: the photography of frank lemire.
posted on Jun 10, 2004 - View this thread

The Infinite Art of Kerry Mitchell and Janet Parke.
posted on Jun 8, 2004 - View this thread

Resonance Fine Art.
posted on Jun 7, 2004 - View this thread

Blatte's Pages.
posted on May 31, 2004 - View this thread

The Visual Record.
posted on May 5, 2004 - View this thread

The Hammond Gallery.
posted on May 3, 2004 - View this thread

PhotoSymphony.
posted on Apr 28, 2004 - View this thread

China Avant-Garde is a wonderful site for exploring Chinese post Cultural Revolution art, with excellent accompanying texts. Browse the featured artists and see an Exhibition from a Private Collection. Also, Inside Out: New Chinese Art is a beautiful site focusing on this recent "explosion of diverse work that is simultaneously exhilarating and bewildering", and you will find more great examples at Chinese Contemporary (click on the artist's name for information and all thumbnails for that artist), plus marvelous Chinese avant-garde posters at Rene Wanner's poster pages and Who's Who in Chinese Posters, and at the Hochschule der Kuenste, Berlin (view works here).
posted on Jan 19, 2004 - View this thread

Sheremey's Gallery. Russian artists and photographers.
posted on Nov 28, 2003 - View this thread

Astonishing geometric art using only folded paper plates, from Bradford Hansen-Smith at wholemovement. View the gallery of fantastic polyhedral creations, and learn how to do it yourself. (For more fun with paper plates, see also Paper Plate Education: Serving the Universe on a Paper Plate.)
posted on Oct 27, 2003 - View this thread

The On-Line Picasso Project offers 6,893 works for your ogling pleasure, plus an obsessively documented chronological bio. I'm stunned. (please read the user's manual, inside.)
posted on Oct 2, 2003 - View this thread

"A wicked noblewoman presides over a decadent court of masked revelers. The most beautiful of waxen automatons is brought to life by a sorceress, her very heart hiding a deadly secret. And then love triumphs, if but for a single moment, before a sudden and terrifying finale. This is the bizarre world of The Princess of Wax".

Limned by descriptors such as "sinister", "ravishing" and "decadent", illustrated by a noted French surrealist painter, and inspired by a real-life fantastical figure, "The Princess of Wax - a Cruel Tale" (web site here), promises to be a satisfyingly twisted modern addition to the cherished fairy tale genre. More >>>
posted on Sep 15, 2003 - View this thread

Mark Ryden is to the iconic saucer-eyed urchins of the '60s as Salvador Dali is to Hickory Dickory Dock. His delicate palette, fine details and classical references offer compelling counterpoint to the deliciously disturbing imagery of les tykes terrible in collections such as "Blood: Miniature Paintings of Sorrow & Fear"; "Bunnies and Bees: Paintings Created to Illustrate DIVINE TRUTH in Accordance with the Secret Principles of SCIENCE AND SOUL"; and "The Meat Show: Paintings about Childen, God, and USDA Grade A Beef". Plus, they're kids - with big eyes!
posted on Sep 8, 2003 - View this thread

Shag's Online Galleries (NSFW). Pour yourself a martini and slip into some hip retro art by Shag. I particularly enjoy Dead Musicians Suite and Death's Endless Vacation, but there are plenty of images with no skeletons in them for those of you who prefer celebrities, monkeys who wear fez or dangerous women.
posted on Aug 31, 2003 - View this thread

Hot See-thru action! Radiography and Art: The obliging X-ray can detect forgeries, reveal the hidden process of genius (Picasso 1 [6 pages], 2, 3), and even serve as a glorious medium itself (Innervisions; Beyond Light; Mefi thread The Secret Garden).

Intrigued? Perhaps you'll want to check out How to make radiographs on Polaroid film from noah.org's X-ray page.
posted on Jul 10, 2003 - View this thread

Robots Have Feelings Too is a group art show at the Culture Cache gallery in San Francisco through mid-May. It features work by more than 60 established and emerging artists, illustrators, cartoonists and graffiti writers. The online exhibit is fun to surf, with samples and biogs for each artist, and links to their web page. Meet some new artists! (via HOPPE)
posted on May 7, 2003 - View this thread

German Objectivist photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) once said "the best constructions for industrial design have already been anticipated in nature." Do your eyes a favor and look here.
posted on Apr 30, 2003 - View this thread

Reality is beginning to seem more and more like Naoto Hattori's surreality; check the gallery and see if you agree. ("Money, Blunts, 40's And Bitches" just amuses me hugely - I think it's the "bitches".) I particularly like the "Extras" section, in which he reveals a bit of the process behind the paintings. (Plus, snowboards!)
posted on Mar 28, 2003 - View this thread

StreetMattress.com - Much like "found art", this site chronicles the phenomenon of abandoned mattresses, and finally gives the public a forum on which to comment on them. Some if my favorites are here, here, and here.
posted on Jun 11, 2002 - View this thread

"World's largest and most complete private collection of eyeglasses" Galleria Guglielmo Tabacchi in Padua, Italy, with objects dating back to " ..1285, when glasses were first created in Venice...". Check out Elton John's shades in Celebrities - he too belongs in the 13th century.
posted on Mar 14, 2002 - View this thread

My favorite art site After going to the Smithsonian's Scenes Of American Life when it came through Seattle--about the first time I'd gone to an art exhibition in years, to show you what a scenester I'm not--I went looking for online works by George Tooker after seeing In The Summer House there. I came across The Tigertail Virtual Museum--for quality, this is the best site I've yet to see, even if it lacks the breadth of my previous favorite; Carol Gerten-Jackson's CGFA--no Bouguerau's, for instance. But beau coup works by 20th century American artists--now you can send spam or Three Stooges Wallpaper and it'll be aht... Cool or what? And your favorites?
posted on Sep 28, 2001 - View this thread

Once Upon a Forest It's the weekend; head for a gallery. Some interactive, some not. Stereo sound makes it more fun.
posted on Jun 22, 2001 - View this thread