Museums Archives

Home Museums

A detail from one of the poster designs for the protests at the Whitney.

Ideas

‘It’s Not Just About Art—It’s About Our City’: Why Decolonize This Place Held a Nine-Week Protest at the Whitney

Two organizers from the organization that spearheaded the demonstrations in New York City discuss how their members' background in art and art history informed their nine-week action.

Katie Kilkenny

Members of the public view Dippy the dinosaur at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum on January 22nd, 2019, in Glasgow, Scotland. Diplodocus carnegii, a Sauropod, was named after Andrew Carnegie, who funded the excavation in Wyoming in 1899. Dippy is one of several replicas donated by Carnegie to several countries around the world.

Ideas

The Diplodocus and the Robber Baron

Ilja Nieuwland's new book is the story of how fossils and their replicas become tools of capitalism, power, and privilege.

Lydia Pyne

How Gen Z Presents a Challenge to Traditional Arts Organizations

Social institutions that nourish the arts need to offer young people aesthetic experiences that reflect their lived experiences.

Mary Ittelson

Caravaggio's David With the Head of Goliath, ca. 1607.

News in Brief

American Museum Collections Are Overwhelmingly White and Male

An analysis of the artists represented in the permanent collections of America's major art museums finds three-quarters of them are white men.

Tom Jacobs

Wagner Free Institute of Science, Aye-Aye specimen in Exhibition Hall

Ideas

America’s Endangered Natural History Museums Hold the DNA Secrets of a Vanishing World

If it's true we're on the verge of a sixth extinction, these smaller collections offer crucial perspectives—and specimens—that bigger museums simply can't provide.

Colin Dickey

Two roses sit on the edge of one of the reflecting pools at the September 11th Memorial following a commemoration ceremony for the victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2016, in New York City.

Why Don’t We Ever Seem to Learn From History?

When we ask images and monuments to bear the burden of our conscience, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Patrick Nathan

Visitors stand on a suspended bridge, 12 meters above the ground, to take a closer look at paintings by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt during the "Stairway to Klimt" exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The exhibition, marking the centenary of the death of Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), allows visitors to access 13 paintings commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph.

Viewfinder: Austria’s Capital City Celebrates Vienna Modernism

Visitors stand on a suspended bridge to take a closer look at paintings by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Pacific Standard Staff

The House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation and The Natural History Museum, Whale People Protectors of the Sea, exhibition at Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, Florida, 2018.

Social Justice

A Traveling Museum Builds Support for Native Resistance to Resource Extraction

The Natural History Museum is popping up across the country to draw attention to the struggle of the Lummi Nation in the Pacific Northwest.

Arvind Dilawar

The video kiosk in Cleveland's Public Square was part of Julia Christensen's project "Waiting for a Break."

Environment

The Fine Art of Thin Ice

Multimedia artist Julia Christensen took video cameras to Lake Erie to document the ice that keeps the lake healthy—and what its absence could mean in the future.

Jillian Steinhauer