Art & Design

Fragments Tell a Story of Pain and Pride

Mark Lyons

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955.

“America I Am: The African American Imprint,” at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, offers proof that the history of America and the history of America’s blacks are inseparable.

• Slide Show: Framing the Black Experience

Major Gift of Art Pottery to Adorn Met’s Restyled American Wing

The collector Robert A. Ellison Jr. plans to donate 250 American ceramics to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, filling a gap in the museum’s holdings.

• Times Topics: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Listening to Schroeder: ‘Peanuts’ Scholars Find Messages in Cartoon’s Scores

Musicologists and art curators have learned that there was much more than a punch line to Charles Schulz’s invocation of Beethoven’s music in his “Peanuts” strips.

• Slide Show: Schroeder’s (and Schulz’s) Muse

Leonard E. B. Andrews, Buyer of Wyeth Art, Dies at 83

Mr. Andrews rocked the art world when he bought 240 previously unknown Andrew Wyeth works depicting a mysterious, sometimes nude woman known as Helga.

Museums Look Inward for Their Own Bailouts

Urban institutions rethink their missions in a push for survival.

• Slide Show: Redefining the Museum

Coosje van Bruggen, Sculptor, Dies at 66

Ms. van Bruggen was a critic, art historian and artist known for the colorful public sculptures she created around the world with her husband, the Pop artist Claes Oldenburg.

Philip Egan, a Designer of a Fabled Sedan, Dies at 88

Mr. Egan was an industrial designer and author who was one of the last surviving members of the Tucker ’48 design team.

'The Sky Below'

It’s hard not to be seduced by Stacey D’Erasmo’s selfish hero, an artist whose hunger for expression, for a father and for a home embodies a sense of entrapment that could make anyone behave badly.

• First Chapter

Celebrating Animation

“It All Started Here” focuses on animation produced in New York City and, perhaps surprisingly, Westchester over the past 103 years.

• Where the Toons Are

Taking the Scenic Route, and Finding Bona Fide Art

With the help of models, an exhibition in Greenwich traces the evolution of set design from past to present.

Where Fashion Meets Its Artistic Match

“Fashion Forward,” at the Islip Art Museum, explores the linkages between art, design, architecture and fashion.

Stimulus Money for a Mob Museum. Got a Problem?

The godfathers of a plan to seek federal financing for a Las Vegas museum on organized crime say the museum and the city have become scapegoats.

Brooklyn Philharmonic's New Firehouse Home

The architectural firm that will redesign a former firehouse to serve as the new home of the Brooklyn Philharmonic has unveiled its plans, the real estate Web site GlobeSt.com reported.

Where Outsiders Come in From the Cold

Now in its 17th year, the Outsider Art Fair has forsaken the Puck Building for midtown, and the art rises to the occasion of the more refined environment.

• Slide Show: New Discoveries, New Artists

In the Gloom, Seeing Rembrandt With New Eyes

Looking at Dutch painting from inside an economic collapse, with a market on the rocks, and a Gilded Age revealed as fool’s gold.

A Painter of Flags Unfurls His Emotions, Slowly

An exhibit of 87 paintings, drawings and prints at the Museum of Modern Art makes for an excellent introduction for anyone just getting to know Jasper Johns’s work.

• Slide Show: On Target

Portraits Taken by the Writer as a Young Woman (in Hard Times)

Eudora Welty’s photographs of Mississippi and Manhattan, now on view at the Museum of the City of New York, create a compelling record of Depression-era life.

• Slide Show: ‘One Writer’s Beginnings’

A Berliner’s Portraits of People and Her Familiar, and Foreign, Home

The photographer Gisèle Freund, whose work is on display in two different exhibitions in Berlin, wasn’t a great photojournalist, but she was a gifted pioneer.

• Slide Show: Gisèle Freund in Berlin

Didier Aaron, 85, French Antiques Dealer, Is Dead

Mr. Aaron was the Paris antiques dealer whose gallery on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré became the center of a mini-empire of fine French furniture.

Edd Cartier, 94, Pulp Illustrator, Dies

Mr. Cartier’s noirish illustrations for the pulp magazine The Shadow and action-packed, often whimsical illustrations for stories by L. Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov and other writers made him one of the leading science-fiction and horror artists of his time.

It Is What It Is: Portraits of the Human Figure

The painter Philip Pearlstein’s seven-decade career is the focus of a small, surprisingly varied exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum.

• Slide Show: Known for Nudes, but There Is More to See

Judging an Elusive Artist by His Distinctive Covers

Barney Bubbles’s lusciously witty artwork for bands like Hawkwind and Elvis Costello and the Attractions has made him a hero to young designers.

Not in the Name of Love: Allegorical Imagery for Newlyweds

“The Triumph of Marriage,” a beautiful, compact show at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, displays 15 panels from Renaissance marriage chests.

Photographs Worth a Double Take

A close look a prosaic photograph by Friedhelm Denkeler, on display in the show “First Doubt: Optical Confusion in Modern Photography” at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Celebrating a Decade of Nurturing Artists on the Verge

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum checks in with veterans of a career-boosting visual arts program.

Design Loves a Depression

Few of the arts benefited from the late economic boom more than design, but a little austerity could give designers a new sense of relevance.

Oliver Lincoln Lundquist, Designer, Is Dead at 92

Mr. Lundquist, an architect and industrial designer, led the team that created the United Nations logo.

The Art of Cooking, and Vice Versa

The ingredients of “Seed Stage,” an installation by Corin Hewitt at the Whitney Museum, include performance, photography, sculpture and cooking.

Valuable Artworks Stolen in Berlin

An etching by Picasso and prints by Matisse and Braque were among 30 works stolen from a Berlin gallery during the New Year’s holiday.

Museum Director Is Briton of the Year

Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, was named Briton of the Year by The Times of London.

Sir Michael Levey, 81, Art Historian, Is Dead

The prolific and wide-ranging art historian presided over the expansion of the National Gallery in London as its director.