Mitt Romney's proposed federal funding cuts for Big Bird got mentioned by President Obama in Tuesday night's hotly contentious debate. The Republican's planned

One of four versions of Edvard Munch's iconic "The Scream" is in New York for a brief visit, but only a tiny fraction of the interested public here will get the chance to see it. That's because Sotheby's current presale exhibition of this art-history touchstone and popular-culture legend, to be...

Art lovers approaching the venerable Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's sparkling new entrance pavilion are in for a shock when they catch sight of its striking copper facade, chemically patinated to bright Statue-of-Liberty green. This brash industrial-looking addition to the 110-year-old Venetian-style palazzo, a short walk on the Fenway...

After more than six years of intense planning, construction and collection-building (supported by more than $1 billion in contributions from Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, members of her family,...

It's not entirely finished yet, and it's been under the radar in terms of press coverage. But Rem Koolhaas' new Milstein Hall, tucked behind the Arts Quad at Cornell University, has...

What a difference a new president makes!

Thanks in part to personal conversations initiated by Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence, who assumed his post Jan. 1, an agreement has now...

The anticipatory buzz surrounding the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty," May 4-July 31, has just become supersonic, thanks to a certain high-profile client of the British fashion house.

The Met's website for its Costume Institute's new exhibition, at this writing (five days before the show...

Deborah Voigt and Bryn Terfel in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of "Die Walküre"
All photos and video courtesy of Metropolitan Opera

In some ways, the Metropolitan Opera's first performance Friday night of the new Robert Lepage production of Richard Wagner's "Die Walküre,"...

Have you ever read a review of an exhibition that you've just seen, and felt as if you...

Whenever I visit Philadelphia (as I did late last month), I indulge my morbid fascination for the slow-motion death of a great single-collector facility --...

The National Portrait Gallery's controversial gay-themed show---Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture---closed on Feb. 13 as...

The sad and shocking results of the complete inventory of the Egyptian Museum that Zahi Hawass,...

A non-Egyptian Egyptologist who is a regular reader of my CultureGrrl blog has forwarded to me an eyewitness account from a member of a French archaeological expedition in Egypt about the antiquities situation at Saqqara, an ancient burial ground. This on-the-ground description is from a reliable source and...

With a large group of House Republicans now calling for the elimination of federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, arts lovers would have welcomed a brief endorsement of the importance of culture in President Obama's State of...

How did Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough analyze the potential damage from the political, cultural and religious firestorm that erupted over his...

What would you say if I told you that I was about to build a new art museum with gallery walls that could not be hung with art and a skylit exhibition space that would be used to display light-sensitive...