Boston Museum of Fine Arts

"Since its founding in 1912, Oscar Heyman & Brothers has created fabulous jewels for some of the world's elite houses, causing it to be known in the trade as "the jewelers' jeweler." The Heyman Brothers arrived in New York from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, bringing with them their training in their uncle's workshop. The company quickly established a name for itself in the industry, working with top houses such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels...

In the decades around 1900, postcards were Twitter, email, Flickr and Facebook, all wrapped into one. A postcard craze swept the world, and billions of cards were bought, mailed and pasted into albums. Many famous artists turned to the new medium, but one of the great pleasures and enigmas of postcards is how some of the most beautiful and interesting examples were made by artists whose names we barely know. Drawing on the riches of the Leonard A....

In the early 1980s, art and writing labeled as graffiti transitioned from New York City walls and subway trains onto canvas and into art galleries. Young artists who freely sampled from their urban experiences and their largely black, Latino and immigrant histories infused the downtown art scene with expressionist, pop and graffiti-inspired compositions. Jean-Michel Basquiat was among the best known of these emerging artists. He and his fellow creators...

"A mother stitches a few lines of prayer into a bedcover for her son serving in the Union army during the Civil War. A formerly enslaved African American woman creates a quilt populated by Biblical figures alongside celestial events. A quilted Lady Liberty, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln mark the resignation of Richard Nixon. These are just a few of the diverse and sometimes hidden stories of the American experience told by quilts and bedcovers...