Portal:Visual arts

The Cloisters, also known as the Met Cloisters, is a museum in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. The museum, situated in Fort Tryon Park, specializes in European medieval art and architecture, with a focus on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Governed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it contains a large collection of medieval artworks shown in the architectural settings of French monasteries and abbeys. Its buildings are centered around four cloisters—the Cuxa, Saint-Guilhem, Bonnefont and Trie—that were acquired by American sculptor and art dealer George Grey Barnard in France before 1913, and moved to New York. Barnard's collection was bought for the museum by financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. Other major sources of objects were the collections of J. P. Morgan and Joseph Brummer.

The museum's building was designed by the architect Charles Collens, on a site on a steep hill, with upper and lower levels. It contains medieval gardens and a series of chapels and themed galleries, including the Romanesque, Fuentidueña, Unicorn, Spanish, and Gothic rooms. The design, layout, and ambiance of the building are intended to evoke a sense of medieval European monastic life. It holds about 5,000 works of art and architecture, all European and mostly dating from the Byzantine to the early Renaissance periods, mainly during the 12th through 15th centuries. The objects include stone and wood sculptures, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, of which the best known include the c. 1422 Early Netherlandish Mérode Altarpiece and the c. 1495–1505 Flemish Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. (Full article...)

“	The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.	”
	— Marcel Duchamp, The Creative Act (1957)

Agata Oleksiak (born 5 April 1978), known as Olek, is a Polish artist who is based in New York City. Their works include sculptures, installations such as crocheted bicycles, inflatables, performance pieces, and fiber art. They have covered buildings, sculptures, people, and an apartment with crochet and have exhibited in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, France, Italy, Poland, and Costa Rica. (Full article...)

• ... that Gurl.com's initial content used drawings of women instead of photos to avoid concerns about body image?
• ... that Nickelodeon storyboard artists created a book with hundreds of pornographic drawings of SpongeBob SquarePants characters?
• ... that entry to the British Royal Military Academy required the use of a drawing triangle with a completely different purpose from those used today?
• ... that Percy Kelly hoarded his drawings and paintings until the end of his life, saying that his cottage would someday "upstage Beatrix Potter's home"?
• ... that filmmaker Matthias Hoene won an award for a commercial of dogs having sex?
• ... that André Delvaux was a magic-realist filmmaker who was made a baron by the king of Belgium?
• ... that the documentary Railway with a Heart of Gold has actual footage of a derailment captured whilst the filmmaker was attached to the side of the train?
• ... that the Q contains a drawing of "a buff Ned Flanders from The Simpsons with protruding nipples"?