On Sunday, the legendary landscape artist Christo passed away at 84. Across a five-decade career with his wife Jeanne-Claude (1935–2009), Christo completed surreal environmental installations that encouraged people to see, feel, and interact. The duo’s site-specific (and often temporary) works spanned the globe—from the coastline of Australia to the streets of Paris; the mountains of Colorado to the very heart of Berlin—and garnered a dedicated following of culture-hungry pilgrims, eager to catch each work before it disappeared.

In 2018, London’s Hyde Park hosted Christo’s latest masterpiece: “The London Mastaba,” an enormous sculpture made out of 7,000 colorful barrels floating in Serpentine Lake. He had only recently secured permission to wrap Paris’s Arc de Triomphe in fabric—one of his most highly anticipated undertakings and one that will continue as planned in September 2021. Revisit our 2018 travel issue cover story with the artist, in which he shares how his visions transformed ordinary places into unmissable destinations.

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Before Ellsworth Kelly passed away in 2015, he completed the transcendent and monumental Austin, a 2,715-square-foot stone building that celebrates color, form, and light, and the harmonious beauty they create together. Inside the Romanesque-inspired chapel, three striking stained glass window formations create patterns of colored light that meander throughout the interior over the course of the day.

Though the building is currently closed, the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin has created an online portal that offers visitors a look inside. The livestream, which launched in honor of Kelly’s 97th birthday, offers a rare opportunity to experience the artwork’s full course of movement of light from dawn to dusk. “I hope visitors experience Austin as a place of calm,” Kelly once said. “Go there and rest your eyes, rest your mind.”

Much like the towering redwoods in his home state of Oregon, Stefan Bishop’s sculptures command their surroundings while giving rise to profound questions about our relationship with the elements. His latest body of work, on view by appointment at Ralph Pucci in Los Angeles, effortlessly treads the lines between art and design, ascribing dashes of anthropomorphism to the abstract forms that percolate in his subconscious.

Calico Wallpaper began with the inspiration to move art beyond the frame and incorporate its elements into everyday interior spaces. Through experimentation with re-appropriating traditional art forms, and the digital enlargement of unique, handmade patterns, the idea was born to create custom non-repeating wall murals.

Surface Says: The wallpapers created by this Brooklyn studio, launched in 2013 by husband-wife team Rachel and Nick Cope, are nothing less than art itself. Calico’s detail-driven approach and unique aesthetic have quickly propelled the young company to the top of its class.

Andoni Bastarrika transforms wet sand into realistic life-size animal sculptures.

NYU treats this year’s graduates to a bizarre virtual sendoff ceremony.

Ford’s SUVs use an ingenious car heater hack to kill Covid-19 germs.

Though the iPhone 12 hasn’t dropped, the iPhone 13 may have leaked.