Something is features a newly commissioned body of work by Indianapolis-based emerging artist Lauren Zoll that explores the intersections of painting and video. Numerous large-scale paintings, videos, and a collage affixed directly to the gallery wall will form an immersive and variable installation in the Carmen & Mark Holeman Gallery. Something is proposes an open-ended investigation—the title itself is the start of a phrase to be completed by exhibition visitors as they interpret the changing and foreign environment of the installation within the gallery.

From August 16–19, 2012, six Tibetan Buddhist monks travelled to San Francisco from the Drepung Loseling Phukhang Monastery in South India to create a sand mandala for the Asian Art Museum. Over four days, they meticulously applied powdered pigments to a geometric mandala outline. The monks intend that the sand mandala will generate positive effects that radiate over the entire region. They believe that the mandala's presence will bless both the environment and the beings therein, thus making a Buddhist contribution to world peace.

Ann Hamilton presented a lecture on her nearly 30-year career as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series at the National Gallery of Art on September 16, 2011. Hamilton has made multimedia installations with stunning qualities and quantities of materials: a room lined with small canvas dummies, a table spread with human and animal teeth, the artist herself wearing a man's suit covered in a layer of thousands of toothpicks. Along the way, she has constantly set and reset the course of contemporary art.

Designers Constantin and Laurene Boym describe working at GlassLab during a design session at The Corning Museum of Glass, August 7 - 8, 2012.

Designer Michele Oka Doner describes working at GlassLab during a design session at The Corning Museum of Glass, July 31 - August 1, 2012.

Designer Jon Otis describes working at GlassLab during a design session at The Corning Museum of Glass, July 17 - 18, 2012.

Technological breakthroughs are usually as much revelations as revolutions, satisfying powerful latent demands. Twentieth-century people embraced mobility, economy, lightness, spontaneity, rapid feedback and sharing with friends and family. Supplanting earlier miniature cameras, the 21st-century cell phone camera has delivered all those qualities. Like the Polaroid and the cheap film camera, it offers a distinctive look that appeals even to some professionals. And it has also amplified anxieties about photography: security, privacy, and intellectual property.

Chop Stick, created by the Swedish architecture duo visiondivision, provides visitors to 100 Acres a place to sit, swing, and enjoy refreshments in an outdoor pavilion crafted almost entirely from a single tree. The 100-foot-tall tulip tree—the state tree of Indiana—was found in a forest near Anderson, Indiana, and transported to 100 Acres with a large portion of its limbs intact. The design for Chop Stick revolves around the architects' ambition to harvest a material as gently and thoughtfully as possible.