At the time of their acquisition in 1995, Cornelis Verbeeck's paintings Dutch Warship Attacking a Spanish Galley and Spanish Galleon Firing Its Cannons were covered with layers of discolored varnish. Their sojourn in the conservation lab, however, revealed a complex story that transformed our understanding of these paintings.

From the psyche series, designed about 1740, woven 1744-46. By Francois Boucher.

Art preparator Theresa King-Dickinson ruminates on the universal privilege of art appreciation.

Islamic art curator Navina Haidar extols the implications and aesthetics of the broken or incomplete.

Artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, representing the U.S. for the 2011 Venice Biennale, and Commissioner Lisa Freiman, of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, discuss meaning in Allora & Calzadilla's work and their use of 'poetic glue'.

Mateo Tannatt asked us to meet him at the old zoo in Griffith Park to discuss his work in the exhibition "All of this and nothing". Tannatt makes sculptures, paintings, photographs, videos, prints, and performances inspired by everyday urban experiences and the quotidian sites in which inspiration or creativity occur. Carefully positioning objects in diverse mediums adjacent to one another in what he calls "landscapes of objects," Tannatt creates a fragmentary and associative narrative that remains esoteric and incomplete.

While Dianna Molzan was working on her pieces in "All of this and nothing" we visited her in her Los Angeles studio in November, 2010. Molzan's paintings explore established tropes in the language of painting by borrowing the techniques of recognizable historical styles, then attempting to overcome mannerism through radical alterations to the picture plane. She deconstructs and then rebuilds her canvases into wholly original forms that experiment with the painting surface to become sculptural in their presentation.

In ancient Greece, the phrase "to make pottery" meant to work hard. While all Greek pottery was made by similar methods, the pottery techniques of Athens are especially well understood. The typical Athenian pottery workshop was a small establishment consisting of a potter and several assistants. The potter prepared the clay, threw or formed the vases, and oversaw their firing. He may also have decorated the vases himself, or employed vase-painters to decorate his wares.