Interviews & Essays

Those original 176 emojis covered themes like weather, modes of transportation, sports, technology, and of course, emotions. But if you’re thinking emojis get their name from the “emo” in emotion, you would be wrong—According to MoMA, “e” meant picture, while “moji” meant character.

Glass artist Jonathan Michael Davis was forced to navigate the changing context of a 2019 airport commission—for which he designed coronal sculptures—when COVID arrived. “What began as an initial attempt to find humor in playing with deceptive aesthetics and ambiguous shapes quickly turned into a dark irony.”

April Bey’s practice is grounded in the fundamental truth that systems and attitudes don’t need to be the way they are. Through both her striking aesthetic and her conceptual approach, Bey breaks down the false limitations set by the visual arts and society; she expands, melts, and redefines categories and mediums.

Pablo Picasso, arguably the most recognized name in 20th-century art, is also one of the most frenetically prolific, and well-documented.

As the British-Australian photographer Tim Page confirmed during an interview in 2019: “Vietnam was the first and last war with no censorship.”For some photographers, the search for gory and violent images became almost a challenge. For others, Philip Jones Griffiths above all, recording the Vietnamese horrors widened the purpose of their craft in order to reveal the futility of war and its everlasting consequences.

In Kehinde Wiley's first renowned works, he replaced white royalty, nobility, and saints with young Black men. "Rumors of War" is, among other things, a continuation of his determination to address the representation, or lack thereof, of Blackness throughout art history.

The end of WWI left the world in a tense political situation that soon generated new ambitions and rivalries. In Europe, the feelings of humiliation, together with political and economic instability, propelled some countries, such as Italy and Germany, to political extremism.

Though Aboriginal art is only one of many Indigenous Australian art traditions, it is also one of the most recognizable art forms across the globe. Known for its bold patterns, vibrant colors, distinctive dot patterning, and strong symbolism, many experts believe it to be the oldest continuous art tradition.

The Casa della Regina Carolina Project, focused on an imperial Roman home in Pompeii, seeks to rework many aspects of how we view Roman life, but the team’s current goals are to examine how people of myriad socio-economic backgrounds would have experienced the planted garden spaces of an elite Roman home.

Born in the late nineteenth century, Modernism sought to challenge conventional institutions of its time. The late nineteenth century saw a shifting European political structure, with the birth of nation-states rising from the ashes of empires. This period was also significant in academic achievements and rapid industrialization.