Over the course of her career, Barbara Stafford has established herself the preeminent scholar of the intersections of the arts and sciences, articulating new theories and methods for understanding the sublime, the mysterious, the inscrutable. Omnivo...

The City of Light. For many, these four words instantly conjure late nineteenth-century Paris and the garish colors of Toulouse-Lautrec's iconic posters. More recently, the Eiffel Tower's nightly show of sparkling electric lights has come to exemplif...

Tokyo during the 1960s was in a state of uproar, full of protests, riots, and insurrection. Tatsumi Hijikata – the initiator of the "Butoh" performance art and the seminal figure in Japan's experimental arts culture of the 1960s – created his most fa...

Launched in 1999, "Afterall" is a journal of contemporary art that offers in-depth analysis of artists' work, along with essays that broaden the context in which to understand it. Its academic format differentiates it from popular review magazines. I...

There's nothing quite like a relationship with an aged pet – a dog or cat who has been at our side for years, forming an ineffable bond. Pampered pets, however, are a rarity among animals who have been domesticated. Farm animals, for example, are usu...

In 2015 the Renaissance Society presented an exhibition of newly commissioned works by Los Angeles-based artist Mathias Poledna. Coinciding with the museum's centennial, it marked the final show in the institution's first hundred years. For this pr...

"Eaglemania" celebrates Boston College's mascot, a monumental Japanese bronze eagle, following its recent conservation and return to view. Donated in the 1950s by the estate of diplomat and collector Larz Anderson (1866-1937) and his wife, Isabel (18...

The title of Richard Rezac's Renaissance Society exhibition, "Address", plays on the multivalent quality of the word. As a noun, it refers to a unique identifier of a precise location. As a verb, it refers to a form of communication crafted for a spe...

This richly illustrated volume offers an in-depth look into artist Sadie Benning's exhibition "Shared Eye", presented at the Renaissance Society and the Kunsthalle Basel. The forty mixed-media panels in "Shared Eye" defy easy categorization: they inc...

"Some Kind of Duty" features all new handmade weavings by Chicago-based artist Karolina Gnatowski, known as kg. In monumental and small-scale tapestries, kg, anAmerican artist who was born in Poland incorporates references ranging from Polish immigra...