News

Jan 21, 2020

Huntsville Embraces all Employees

Huntsville Hospital Health System is the first hospital in the state of Alabama to offer a facility dog program called “Canines for Coping”.  The program launched in the summer of 2019 at the Women and Children’s Center at Huntsville Hospital and features a lovable golden retriever names Asteroid who is a professionally trained therapy dog.  Asteroid is trained to help patients cope with stressful situations including procedures and bereavements.

Jan 20, 2020

Five Old Master Paintings Stolen 40 Years Ago in a Notorious Art Heist Have Been Recovered Thanks to a German Mayor’s Ingenious Plan

The paintings are returning to a Baroque palace having been smuggled into West Germany in the 1980s.

Featured on news.artnet.com

When the mayor of a small German city was shown a photograph last year of a painting hanging on a living room wall, he recognized the work immediately. It was one of five Old Master paintings stolen from the Friedenstein Palace in Gotha nearly 40 years ago in an audacious theft that East Germany’s feared police failed to solve.

Jan 15, 2020

Kids help curate new sectors of Bay Area art scene

Featured on sfchronicle.com

Bay Area artist Sofie Ramos specializes in large-scale installations comprised of found objects: chairs, textured cushions, stairs and giant bouncy balls, to name a few. But until recently, she didn’t plan for the chairs to be sat on, or the steps to be stepped on.

Jan 13, 2020

Feeling Artsy? Here's How Making Art Helps Your Brain

Featured on npr.org

A lot of my free time is spent doodling. I'm a journalist on NPR's science desk by day. But all the time in between, I am an artist — specifically, a cartoonist.

I draw in between tasks. I sketch at the coffee shop before work. And I like challenging myself to complete a zine — a little magazine — on my 20-minute bus commute.

Jan 07, 2020

Targeting Cultural Sites in War Is Illegal. It’s Also Barbaric.

President Trump’s repeated threats to destroy Iran’s treasures of art and architecture make the United States seem as debased as ISIS‌ or the Taliban.

Featured on nytimes.com

The wars and insurgencies that battered the Middle East over the last decade delivered not only a horrible toll of death and displacement, but also a wasteland of cultural destruction, reducing to rubble the Assyrian gates of Nineveh, the Great Mosque of Aleppo and countless other treasures, ancient and modern.

Jan 06, 2020

How Do You Move 100+ Monet Masterpieces? Very, Very Carefully

Featured on npr.org

Visitors to the Denver Art Museum can currently see 120 different paintings by Claude Monet from all over the world. But how did they get there — like, literally get there?

Jan 02, 2020

5 of the Most Notorious Art Thieves, Swindlers, and Forgers of the 21st Century—and How They Were Finally Caught

These scammers of the art world concocted elaborate ruses that read like fiction, but all are true.

Featured on news.artnet.com

“It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in,” wrote Raymond Chandler in the classic detective novel The Big Sleep. Chandler wasn’t talking about the art world specifically, but the sentiment captures some of its well-heeled, occasionally unscrupulous dealings.

Dec 26, 2019

Best Art of 2019

This was a year of highs that included political protest in the art world, a historic Whitney Biennial, inspiring monuments and a revamped MoMA.

Featured on nytimes.com

Unexpected Delights

From retrospectives to debut shows, and, yes, even the MoMA reopening, art held our attention with innovation and variety.

1. MoMA’s Reopening

Dec 24, 2019

Art Schools of the Future Need to Teach Students to Understand Technology. How Will That Change the Future of Art?

Art schools have been slow to adapt to the digital revolution. Now, they're finally catching up.

Featured on news.artnet.com

Are you a sculptor? A painter? An illustrator? For decades, art students starting out have asked themselves these questions. But these categories could look very different in the near future, as art schools belatedly attempt to incorporate new technology into their curricula. 

Dec 23, 2019

From Picasso to Leonardo: The Most Expensive Art Sales Of The 2010s

Featured on forbes.com

The overflow crowd at Christie’s auction house broke into applause when the gavel fell on the blockbuster art sale of the decade. On the evening of November 15, 2017, a little-known Saudi prince, bidding over the phone, agreed to pay $450.3 million for “Salvator Mundi,” a 500-year-old portrait of a solemn Jesus Christ hyped by Christie’s as the “The Last da Vinci.” No matter that many art scholars believed the work was a product of Leonardo’s studio rather than the master himself.

Dec 18, 2019

Visit museums or art galleries and you may live longer, new research suggests

Featured on cnn.com

A trip to the theater, museum or art gallery could help you live longer. And the more often you get that culture fix the better, a new study suggests.

Dec 12, 2019

30th Anniversary for Lubbock, Texas

The Garden & Arts Center has been hosting the Lubbock, Texas National Arts Program for 30 years! They have such a long history of offering the employees of this city an opportunity to share their work and deepen connections with one another. What an amazing accomplishment it is to have brought forth the talents of their community for so many years. Longtime member of the GAC, BriAnna Cruz, did a wonderful job coordinating the show this year and even after thirty years says that she and all the GAC staff are excited and energized for NAP shows to come!

Dec 12, 2019

Boston, Massachusetts Winner Overcome with Emotion

The walls of Boston’s City Hall were graced with the artworks of city employees and their family members from October 7th through November 29th for the 3rd Annual National Arts Program Exhibition. John Crowley who is the longtime Curator and Exhibitions Coordinator for Boston's City Hall Galleries, coordinates the NAP exhibit. This show helps foster a passion for the arts in their employee community and we are thrilled that Mr. Crowley has taken it upon himself to coordinate this exhibit which uplifts and honors so many of the hard-working City of Boston employees and their families.

Dec 12, 2019

University of Maryland Medical Center Does it Again

Kerry Sobol, Director of Patient Experience and Commitment to Excellence (C2X), stepped in and ran the whole show for the 7th Annual University of Maryland Medical Center NAP Exhibit! With approximately 8,000 people invited to participate; promoting and organizing this show is quite an undertaking. Kerry and her staff handle it beautifully every year. This year there were 184 pieces of art hung throughout the University of Maryland Medical Center Atrium lobby for all to enjoy.

Dec 11, 2019

The $120,000 Banana Highlights The Elitism Of The Art World

Featured on forbes.com

There’s a reason so many people find the art world to be impenetrable and elitist  - it’s designed to be. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love visiting my local art gallery; it’s a great place to take the kids, and often, I discover beautiful and thought-provoking pieces. But sometimes, I feel downright frustrated by the works that have been chosen for inclusion.