Just as Jazz in the Garden means it's summer, ice skating by the National Mall means it's (nearly) winter. more ›

This month, area museums commemorate 9/11, showcase Andy Warhol and revel in bioluminescence. more ›

Remember the woman who went berzerk on Paul Gauguin's "Two Tahitian Women" inside the National Gallery of Art in April, then claimed that Gauguin was "evil," that the work is "very homosexual," and that she was given instructions by "a radio in [her] head" controlled by "the American CIA" to burn the painting? Yeah, she came back. more ›

"I feel that Gauguin is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two two women in the painting and it's very homosexual." That's the reasoning offered by the 53-year-old Alexandria woman who was arrested after trying to pull down and batter Paul Gauguin's “Two Tahitian Women” at the National Gallery of Art last Friday. Susan Burns -- who The Smoking Gun reports has been arrested in the past for carjacking, disorderly conduct, trespassing, and assault on a law enforcement officer -- also said that the painting "should be burned" and said she was "from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head" before stating she'd kill the investigator. more ›

Normally, the National Gallery of Art is a serene place, where art lovers view priceless masterworks and tourists plop down during the sweltering summer to just sit enjoy the air conditioning. But someone going nuts, pounding and attempting to pull a painting from the wall, then being “immediately restrained and detained” by "a guy who was visiting the gallery," well, that's a rare occurrence. more ›

Is there such thing as a boring photo? Martin Parr's series of Boring Postcards books, which collected photographs of banal architecture, evaded the question with a camp factor that distracts the reader from the ennui of yet another hotel room or highway rest stop. But as an aesthetic, the brutal and often Brutalist tedium of such images owes more than a little to minimalism – and to photographer Lewis Baltz. more ›

>> In her lifetime, Hildreth Meière was considered the most famous, distinguished, and prolific Art Deco muralist in the country. This month, the National Building Museum opens the first major retrospective of her work in Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meière. On view will be Ms. Meière's sketches, studies in gouache, full-scale cartoons and models which represent 25 of her most important commissions. Opening March 19. more ›

There are rules around present-opening, and that's only right. No one likes the spoil-sport who tip-toes down the day before a major celebration to ravenously rent open their gifts with gluttony and glee. Mostly on Art 2010, I've exercised a great deal of restraint in waiting patiently until the decreed and agreed day when I could unveil a painted or sculpted thing to you: saints stuck fast to their official feasts days, festivals were fused to the correct calendar mark. It wasn't always easy, I'll grant you that (patience is not one of my most easy virtues), but there's no point pinpointing a year with higgledy-piggledy highlights. more ›

For all the hijinks and jolliness of this time of year, late December can be tension territory. Fun friends or family get-togethers can get altogether less fun when your cousin comments on something she shouldn't, or brother and sister start bickering about a thing over the brandy butter and mince pies. Putting lots of people into a space and filling them up on food and booze can sometimes add fuel to the fire of seasonal stress, and tips for taking the testiness down a notch are appearing everywhere right about now. The salient point to stick to, I suppose, is that a picture-perfect holiday gathering is a cheesy movie myth, and nothing more. And anyway, it seems that sometimes a little knife-edge tension can actually come out looking rather lovely: Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece (1976-1978) by Sir Henry Moore stands serene and shimming at the National Gallery of Art East entrance, and what an enveloping and evolving work it is. more ›

It's that time of year, when sniffles and sneezes and snorts and wheezes are all around as people succumb to seasonal coughs and colds. If the passenger on the bus beside you isn't honking into a hankie, then your colleagues at work will be chugging hot tea with honey for their throats. It's a big job, battling to keep at bay all those bugs and bacteria being airborne as everyone is eventually felled by a fat bout of flu. Well, worry not, because to boost your immune systems today I've a peachy picture to make you feel all better. more ›

Extensive travel is just one of the perks of art. During the course of this year, I've been to places I'm not sure I'll see again before I expire. Painted pictures at the National Gallery of Art have broadened my horizons, and I still have a few more pit-stops on the traveling train before my year profiling 365 works of art screeches to a halt on December 31. Today, we travel into the heart of America, with two artists who capture the charm of this country with disarming visions. Both Grant Wood (1891 - 1942) and Thomas Hart Benton (1889 - 1975) resisted the trend towards abstraction that dominated American art in the 1920s and 30s; instead, they stuck to the figurative convention, reflecting life in more realistic terms. more ›

I'm attached to the saint we're talking about today: St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and gave his name to that fantastic place in Fife (legend says that relics were conveyed there from Constantinople in the 10th century). Andrew was a brother of Saint Peter and, like him, a disciple of Christ. Andrew's attribute is an X-shaped cross, following the method of his martyrdom: he requested not to die on a Latin cross, deeming himself unworthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus. St Andrew's Cross is still on the national flag of Scotland. more ›

I once read that the key to the power of people-persuasion is the curveball. As in, when faced with a person who isn't receptive to what you're saying, going on a tangent or offering some unique unexpected angle on a situation can be the way through a communication impasse. I adore art that persuades with a visual curveball, jolting us upright and making us take proper sustained notice in the process. In the case of Daybreak - A Time to Rest (1967), it's an enormous pair of hugely disproportioned feet, sitting padded and fat, flush with the picture plane. more ›

It's time to bust out the bunting, Britain: William has popped that all important question! In fact, he and Kate got engaged in Kenya last month in a move that ended a marathon eight-year courtship. Prime Minister David Cameron was among the first to congratulate them, stepping outside No. 10 to state that William is "extremely excited" and "thrilled." more ›

During the year I lived in Milan, I learned a few things about Mediterranean mealtimes. Breakfast is bolted on the hop, but lunches are long and dinners drawn-out. Even in the middle of an overbooked day at the office, colleagues would collect up bags and blackberries at midday and march out for a repast done right. And right means your primo pasto, secondo and perhaps a light little something for dessert (some scoops of tiramisu or a creme caramel). The point is there's ritual, and a regular order to things in Italian eating -- and what I was most struck by when I first got there was seeing the cigarette slot into the sequence right after the sweet, with the short sharp shot of espresso ingested to expedite the afternoon's work. more ›

If you thought you were safe from harassment by ghouls, gremlins and hobgoblins after Halloween, think again. November 2 is, by tradition, the Day of All Souls -- on which (it has been believed) the unhappy souls of the dead return to their former homes. In the past, people were so superstitious about unsolicited and unsavory visits to their homes on All Souls, that they’d keep the kitchen warm and leave food on the table overnight to appease passing spirits and specters. more ›

Death and the Miser is by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 - 1516) a Netherlandish painter whose work was popular and influential during the 16th century but then long forgotten. But since his rediscovery at the start of the 20th century, Bosch’s art has both engrossed and grossed-out viewers with its compellingly strange character. more ›

I'm reading a collection of short stories at the moment that I'm having a hard time putting down. In some part, that's down to the genre: bite-sized morsels of natty narrative are easily snatched between breakfast, lunch and dinner. But it's more to do with the lurid, lucid and crazy-laced quality of these stories. At first, I was plain put off by the tales, finding them steeped a little too deep in horror or fantasy or oddness. But then it hit me: things that appear even a little surreal do a good job of illuminating our lives. Granted, fantasy can distort, mask or even hide reality, but it can also show us the world we (think) we know in a way that makes us realize we've never really looked at it at close quarters.

This is a revelation that I brought to bear when considering this crazy painting at the National Gallery of Art. more ›

Most of us are in the habit of counting up messages, cards, deliveries and so forth on our birthdays. Even as the ages slide by and we profess to wanting to forget yet another year notched on our life-post, there's still that sneaking bit of us that loves a bit of attention, and can't help but gauge popularity and importance by the barometer of birthday communications. more ›

This is Lucretia (1664), as painted by Rembrandt van Rijn, housed at the National Gallery of Art. It is, in short, a belter of an oil. more ›

Horoscopes: I fall fickle on either side of the fence on this one. But we are about to enter my sign, Libra, so it's only right that the emblem (the scales or a balance, the only symbol of the zodiac that's represented by an inanimate object) should take center stage today. more ›

I hope you've been practicing your stitches, readers, since September is National Sewing Month! Observance of the month began in 1982 with a proclamation from President Ronald Reagan declaring it "in recognition of the importance of home sewing to our Nation." To help along all our industrious, craftiness urges is today's artist Diego Velázquez (1599 - 1660) who's right up there as the greatest figure of Spain's golden age of the arts (which reached its peak during the reign -- from 1621 to 1665 -- of his major patron, Kind Philip IV). more ›

I like to look on as female politicians plan particular strategies for gaining women’s support. Often, they turn to criticizing size-zero models, as if a remark that digs into the skinny ribs of undernourished actress-model-whatevers will secure solidarity in the female voting ranks. In England, one woman now wading into the weight debate is Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, who recently announced a "body-confidence summit" to discuss "skinny celebrities." Hers is a familiar refrain: skin-tight stars make us sad and hack at our self-esteem, so Featherstone feels us women need more curvy role models. She picks out and praises Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as ‘absolutely fabulous’. more ›

I was just in London and found time for Trafalgar Square, to see what was sitting on top of the famous Fourth Plinth. In recent years, this erstwhile empty pedestal (it was made in the 1840s to exhibit an equestrian statue that was never completed) has played host to works by Marc Quinn (Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2005), Thomas Schütte (Model for a Hotel, 2007) and Anthony Gormley (One and Other, 2009, in which members of the public "became" the art work by booking hour-long sessions on the Plinth). more ›

As you know from the byline at the end of every Tuesday's Permanent Collection post, I'm profiling 365 masterworks at the National Gallery of Art this year for my project Art 2010, which appears on my website Head for Art. It may be madness to inspect and dissect so many pieces in the NGA, so let's take moment to see the big picture -- at high speed, of course! more ›

Tonight at Politics & Prose, writer and angler Paul Greenberg will read from his new book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food. It's a book that's swum into stores at just the right time, as people turn their minds more to the repercussions of our consumption. Farmed versus wild salmon; rising mercury levels in tuna; sustainability and ethics: there's a lot to weigh up before we batter a bit of plaice and stick it next to some chips. more ›

Chronologically, one of the last images in Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, is a portrait of Bob Dylan taken in New York's Tompkins Square Park in 1992. This one photo demonstrates what's great about this exhibit, but also what's problematic about it. On the one hand: it's a picture of Bob Dylan made by Allen Ginsberg, one of the great voices of the counterculture as seen by another, a pair of aging veterans of a scene which by then had become positively mainstream, if not thoroughly commodified. But is it the visual art, or the cultural gravitas, that makes this an great photograph? more ›

The author Edward Verrall Lucas once wrote “there is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.” So that’s some serious refreshment, then. more ›