Persuasive Percussion is an album cover from a set of seven that Josef Albers designed for Command Records. It presents regular columns of dots with the top-most released from the rigid grid below to hover randomly in space, conveying syncopation, rhythm and tone. Albers, principally associated with the Dessau Bauhaus prior to teaching at Black...

Battista Franco was a gifted draftsman, engraver and painter, born in Venice who studied in Rome early in his career. Primary information on Franco comes from Vasari who dedicated a chapter on him in the Vite, which details his influences and major projects in Rome and in Venice. Franco's primary influence was Michelangelo and he...

So, realistically, what were the chances that an important decorative art drawing, executed by perhaps the most important artist of the Italian Renaissance, would be discovered in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum?  Well, as it turned out, pretty likely. It was no accident that in the spring of 2002, Sir Timothy Clifford,...