In the long eighteenth century, artists from Udaipur, a city of lakes in northwestern India, specialized in depicting the vivid sensory ambience of its historic palaces, reservoirs, temples, bazaars, and durbars.

One of the central ideas that we explore in Piranesi Unbound is how a book comes together as the product of collaboration. As an artist, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) worked in many forms and materials.

Formless, mutable, transparent: the element of water posed major challenges for the visual artists of the Renaissance. To the engineers of the era, water represented a force that could be harnessed for human industry but was equally possessed of formidable destructive power.

The Emancipation Memorial sits imprisoned in a cage in Washington’s Lincoln Park, waiting to hear whether it will be exiled or set free. The fate of its replica in Boston is also hanging in the balance, as a petition for its removal has been signed by thousands.

As many of us look out at the world from behind the walls and windows of our homes or reach out to others through screens and online chats, we increasingly find the boundaries between time and space blurring before our eyes.

An exhibition titled Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture will be shown at the Smithsonian American Art Museum located at 8th & F Streets NW in Washington, DC, opening in 2020.