A painting snagged at an estate sale for just $30 sold at auction for a record-breaking $1.35 million. The late famed surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie’s “Alderman Merriam’s Shells,” which was purchased by a fortunate thrifter with an eye for quality art, sold on Thursday at Freeman’s Auctions on the Upper East Side. “Obviously, we are over … Read more
The greater Los Angeles area boasts more museums than any metropolis in the world — over 800, with 100 in LA proper alone — but none of them offer a $210 R2D2 cookie jar, until now. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened last week, adding a sprawling $1 billion campus to Exposition Park, already … Read more
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening Night gala celebrated with an incredible drone light show flying high above its spaceship-like structure on Saturday. Captain America and R2-D2 took center stage, followed by the Millennium Falcon and the dragon from the hit Shrek movies. The Lucas Museum, founded by legendary filmmaker George Lucas and his … Read more
A clairvoyant collector with an eagle eye for quality art snagged a painting at a Michigan estate sale this summer for a mere $30 — and now it’s expected to fetch up to $250,000 at a Manhattan auction. The unnamed buyer realized they might have something special on their hands when they spotted a signature … Read more
Massive works of art are appearing in the sand along one Bay Area beach, all created by a single artist who gets to work while most people are going to bed. Brighton Denevan, 34, starts working on his intricate designs around 11 p.m. On a recent Tuesday night, Denevan arrived at Keller Beach in Point … Read more
Almost every New Yorker is feeling the financial strain these days — it’s like you can’t step outside without being slapped with a $50 tax nobody voted for. Where does it all go? Mostly, we’re just existing — inflated Uber rides, $20 salad bowls, $9 iced lattes on our way to work. Some of us have that … Read more
Two adorable little girls dressed in frilly white — the elder wearing a blue sash, the younger sporting a pink one — are captured by the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir in a moment of innocence nearly 150 years ago. In the 1881 Impressionist masterpiece “Pink and Blue,” familiar from innumerable postcards, jigsaw puzzles, and art prints, … Read more
Italy on Tuesday put on display one of the best known examples of Etruscan painting, panels from a tomb that it acquired for $17 million in the Culture Ministry’s buying spree of big-ticket pieces of the country’s cultural heritage. The ministry announced in May that it had acquired the fresco panels, dating from the 4th century, from … Read more
When Harley Langberg, 38, visits the grocery store, he doesn’t carry around a shopping list. Instead, he’s in the aisles studying photos on his phone of Jalen Brunson, the NYC skyline and the FIFA World Cup trophy to find vegetables with the right colors and textures to recreate edible versions of the visuals. Hustling during … Read more
Everything is moving so fast in the rainforest, with life pulsing all around: in front, above, and below your feet. The 360-degree cube takes the eye on a deep dive into exotic flora and fauna. Then comes an even deeper dive into the inner workings of trees, the sap pulsing through a usually invisible network. … Read more
A prominent San Francisco arts patron and her husband were found mysteriously dead in a running car on Monday evening, the California Highway Patrol said. Judith Sheldon, 84, daughter of filmmaker William Wyler, and her husband Wylie Sheldon, 86, were found inside of a red Jeep Compass stopped at the shoulder of Interstate 5 near … Read more
For more than 500 years, Venus’ sideways glance has sparked endless debate. Now, scientists believe Sandro Botticelli wasn’t taking artistic license at all in his iconic “Birth of Venus” painting. The legendary artist may have faithfully painted the subtle signs of the devastating illness that killed his muse decades before modern medicine could explain it. … Read more
The Knicks are really nailing the finals. A superfan who works as a nail technician paid homage to New York’s basketball team by painting its players on her nails — and the results are All-Star adorable. The talented tech, who goes by Tamami, painstakingly drew the faces of Jalen Brunson, Jordan Clarkson and Karl-Anthony Towns … Read more
The lines at The Met are wrapping around the block, tourists are shoulder-to-shoulder at MoMA and summer crowds are packing nearly every major cultural attraction in the city. But some of New York’s most fascinating museums and galleries are hiding in plain sight. While visitors flock to the city’s marquee institutions, a quieter world of … Read more
The force is officially strong with Los Angeles. Breathtaking new flyover footage has revealed a majestic outside look at the highly anticipated Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in LA’s Exposition Park, sending social media into a frenzy ahead of its official opening date. An aerial view of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art at Exposition … Read more
It was ripe for the picking. Banana bandits scored a sweet steal worth a whopping $6.2 million, nabbing the yellow, crescent-shaped centerpiece of “Comedian,” a masterpiece by Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan, from the Centre Pompidou-Metz museum in France this weekend. The fruity theft comes just one year after a gallery visitor was discovered eating the banana that … Read more
A film buff found a lost 1968 British TV movie about vampires that sparked a legend it was so terrifying it was marked for destruction, a preservation group announced. “No Such Thing as a Vampire” — one of six episodes from the short-lived 1960s BBC anthology series “Late Night Horror” — has been missing for … Read more
It takes guts to make a fashionable impact in New York City. And Renata Buzzo’s got ‘em. In fact, her guts, lungs and uterus — all hand-stitched to third-dimensional perfection in a dress she calls “Corset Anatomia,” or “The Anatomy Corset” — will be on full display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for the … Read more
Learning in La La Land? Seriously, we’re not class clowning. With new museums, educational exhibitions, and erudite events popping up across the city, a brainier Tinseltown hopes to teach you and your family a thing or two about the arts and sciences. The latest arrival is Dataland, a k a the Museum of AI Arts, located downtown … Read more
At 1 p.m. on a warm spring Thursday, a crowd spills onto the sidewalk at Melrose and Western in Los Angeles — long one of the city’s more commercially undesirable intersections, but today an epicenter of cool. Influencers and the casually affluent, purse dogs in tow, they’re here for jamón serrano y queso arepas, coconut … Read more