Museums

Sweden’s Nationalmuseum renovation balances history with modernisation

Back to black: the best in contemporary black architecture

Over the centuries, the colour black is steeped in a history of functionality – the Vikings used black tar as a protective coating in both shipbuilding and architectural practices; the Japanese charred wood to preserve their constructs against the elements...

Italian sportswear giant Fila looks backwards to go forwards

Successful sportswear brands are no longer purveyors of just clothing and equipment for sports. They are now fashion brands. And footwear brands. And media publishers. And high fashion collaborators. They are lifestyle labels and video-makers and cultural icons to be...

The art of the beautiful game: football moves off pitch and into the museum

Football has many guises. It is a pastime where schoolboys scrape knees in a courtyard; a tear-jerking symbol of national pride; a multi-billion dollar industry with corporate interest; a global franchise with a zealot-like devotion to the athletes – the...

Leonor Antunes threads Bauhaus, brutalism and Cuban design in new installations

In her sublime, site-specific installations, Leonor Antunes pays homage to the practice of forgotten female luminaries in modern architecture, design and art. In Mexico City at the Tamayo Museum, she has reassembled pieces of objects made by the late Cuban...

The artists bringing their candid vision to queer photography

Tom Jackson, a fifty-something dump-truck driver and self-styled ‘redneck’ living in an insalubrious basement studio, made Netflix viewers everywhere weep when he was made over and reunited with his lost love by Queer Eye’s Fab Five. When Monica Beverly Hillz...

What’s next for Azerbaijan’s flourishing art scene, plus the best Baku galleries

Having only emerged from more than 50 years of communist rule in 1991, Azerbaijan has spent the last 25 years redefining itself. Gentrification has been rapid, especially in the past decade, and in the capital city of Baku, a skyline...

The contemporary art museum making waves on a French Riviera island

A visit to the newly launched contemporary art museum, the Fondation Carmignac hidden away on the island of Porquerolles along the French Riviera, is somewhat of an odyssey, which is exactly what its founders intended. ‘It’s a kind of striptease...

MoMA spotlights France’s booming technology scene in New York

New York’s MoMA is looking across the pond for its tech inspiration, specifically to Paris. For New York Design Week, MoMA Retail has enlisted the help of La French Tech, an innovative public policy initiative that has fostered the booming...

The influence of graphic design on politics, protest and power

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and a giant inflatable rubber duck. The latest exhibition at London’s Design Museum, ‘Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18’ (named after the iconic Shepard Fairey poster of Barack Obama, and the viral Trump meme, respectively)...

Google’s latest AI experiment reveals hidden colour connections in art

Earlier this year, Google’s Arts & Culture app ignited a viral storm with its ‘art selfie’ feature – social media feeds were awash with selfies of users and their fine art doppelgängers. More recently, Google announced a follow-up experiment: Art...

A new 60s-inspired book captures the rarest colours in the world

The Harvard Art Museums hold over 2500 of the world’s rarest pigments, from bits of Egyptian blue glass dating to 1,000 BCE to newly released fluorescent hues. Public access to the colour library has been restricted – until now...