Since 1955, a jury of acclaimed photographers and journalists have selected the best photos submitted by photojournalists, agencies, magazines, and newspapers to the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam for an international exhibition. The works attest to the power of image and often transcend cultural differences, highlighting the most compelling photography documenting current events. This year's show kicked off in Milan at the Galleria Carla Sozzani May 4 and runs through Sunday, May 29.

The Foundation's only condition is to display every photo without censorship. This year's winners include Martin Roemers' image of The Netherlands for Panos Pictures, Daniel Berehulak's image of Pakistani flood victims for Getty Images, and Jodie Bieber's image of Bibi Aisha, an 18-year-old woman from the Oruzgan province of Afghanistan, for Time. If you've seen the latter, you likely haven't forgotten it. We've parked the graphic—and evocative—shot after the jump.

English digital artist Matt Pyke—perhaps best known for his audio-visual installation, Forever, at the Victoria and Albert Museum—is currently presenting his first solo show, Super-Computer-Romantics, at the newly renovated La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris.

Curated by La Gaîté Lyrique's Jerome Delormas and former Jalouse correspondent Charlotte Léouzon, the exhibit features eight of Pyke's video installations, both animated and live-action. Dancers disintegrating into bubbles across a 69-foot-wide wall, three-meter high walking cartoon monsters erupting in flames on ten-feet-tall screens—each piece explores Pyke's desire to bring life and empathy into art.

The works are on view through May 27.

Also: Submit your own text-based artwork to be featured in Pyke's show. All will be credited. Tweet @universalevery with the hashtag #inthissecond.

Detail from “Interior with Young Woman Tracing a Flower” by Martin Drolling, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Rooms with A View: The Open Window in the 19th Century,” is more than a little familiar to us, thanks to our recurring back-page series "Room with a View." But this exhibit, which opened last week and continues through July 4, features paintings and drawings that depict their subjects’ private lives as well as the historic events taking place outside their windows.

Drawn from collections in Europe and the U.S., the 57 19th-century pieces are spread though four rooms, each with a different focus. The various compositions—interiors with figures, artist’s studios, empty rooms, and drawings—are united by their defiance of the artistic norms of the time such as formal portraits and large-scale historical paintings.

Instead, the works address the tumultuous events of the era through small details, such as a bloodied foot, representing a war injury, in a painting by Wilhelm Bendz. The painting ”Woman at the Window” by Caspar David Friedrich, depicts a woman looking longingly out the window, seemingly trapped in her room. It's a fitting inclusion: The original room with a view is from the E.M. Forster novel, A Room with a View, about a young woman’s experience in the repressive society of early 20th-century England.

This weekend, Geneva-based art gallery Analix Forever presents their first show in Paris at Six Elzévir: Concrete Islands, a group photography and video exhibition curated by London Architecture Diary co-founder and editor-in-chief, Elias Redstone.

The artists' works explore social and political values in turbulence and our emotional connections to urban architectural projects.

Greek architect Andreas Angelidakis debuts Troll, the fictional story of a modernist apartment building, Chara, in downtown Athens. Built by the architects Spanos and Papailiopoulos in 1960 and spanning an entire city block, Chara began deteriorating in recent years, due to Athens' continuing urbanization and economic fallout. Angelidakis' take is that "ruins are just buildings on their way to becoming nature"—and that the building wants to become a mountain and leave the city altogether.

Dutch photographer Iwan Baan, a frequent "Where Are You?" contributor, unveils Chandigarh and Brasília—both works born from political agendas. Baan's photographs show lives that have adapted to social rituals and basic needs—the mundanities of life—in the two invented cities. The background: Oscar Niemeyer's Museu Nacional provides little protection from the elements within Brasília's urban plan, laid out by Lúcio Costa. A rain-soaked man stands in the open, while small crowds find shelter under the building's entrance. In Le Corbusier's Palace of the Assembly in Chandigarh, two men are seen bathing through the concrete façade. Do they live or work in the building? The answer is ambiguous.

Other artists presenting at Six Elzévir include Citizen K editor-in-chief Frédéric Chaubin, former Tate Modern-featured filmmaker Mounir Fatmi, and former Palais de Tokyo artist in residence Niklas Goldbach.

The works are on view Saturday, April 9 through Sunday, April 17.

We at Condé Nast Traveler are always keen to recognize companies that help to sustain and revitalize the environment in which they do business. But when such a company makes delicious Napa Valley wine while reducing its environmental footprint, well that’s like Christmas, July 4th, and our birthday all rolled into one.

Cuvaison Estate Wines does exactly that. Its 400 acre estate in Carneros is certified Napa Green for numerous efforts toward sustainability. One of these is very visible: 1,428 solar panels that supply over 80% of the winery's electrical needs. More are being added to bring that number to 95%. Another is a partnership with Yemm & Hart, a recycling company that converts cork into self-sustaining products. Over 13 billion (that's right, billion!) natural cork wine stoppers are sold each year. And most simply go into landfills. Cuvaison and Yemm & Hart try to make a dent in this enormous amount by recycling corks for use as shoe soles, bulletin boards, packaging materials, and other items.

Like all wineries, Cuvaison uses a ton of water. But instead of simply letting it become runoff, all process water is recycled through a wastewater treatment system and re-employed as irrigation water on the vineyard.

This earth friendly culture has even spilled over to Cuvaison employees, who embrace a ride-sharing and bike-to-work program, which saved 17,000 miles on the road last year. Also, staffers receive CFL light bulbs for their home and $500 toward the purchase of a car—if it's a hybrid.

So the next time you're picking out a bottle of vino for that dinner party, consider directing your consumer dollars toward one that respects the land.

Sure, you have hundreds of Facebook friends, but what have all your digital chums ever done for you but tag you in those embarrassing photos from that debaucherous Saturday night? Do yourself a favor and and become a fan of Expedia on Facebook and you'll have a shot at winning one of 13 awesome trips for you and five of your flesh-and-blood friends in what the online travel site is calling the largest sweepstakes ever hosted on Facebook. The rules are pretty simple: become a fan of Expedia on Facebook and create a "virtual airplane" flying to the destination featured in the trip you want to win. You need to convince at least five friends to "fan" Expedia and board your plane, and your chances of winning increase with every one of your Facebook friends that you bring to Expedia; with 25 friends onto your plane, your chance of winning doubles—and with 50 friends on your plane your chances triple.

Among the trips we're drooling over:

• A 14-day oddesy through South America with stops in Chile, Peru, and Brazil's Iguacu National Park. Along the way you'll stay in Santiago, Chile; Lima, Peru; and see the stunning Atacama Desert and the sacred valley of the Incas, including Machu Picchu.

• First-Class tickets to Paris where you'll spend seven nights in a five-star hotel, cruise the River Seine, and stop at the Eiffel Tower before jetting down to Provence for two days.
• First-Class tickets to Cape Town where you'll dive with sharks, whale watch, and hike Table Mountain, returning to a five-star hotel every night where you can relax with a bottle (or two) of the best South African wines.
• A seven-day Mediterranean cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line's Jade, on which you'll stay in an exclusive 6,000 square foot Garden Villa with three bedrooms, a private whirlpool and steam room, and a personal butler.

As a bonus, Expedia is handing out four $250 travel credits DAILY to contest participants who contribute pictures and share their stories of why they want to visit a particular featured destination. So get over to Expedia's Facebook page, bring your buds, and share your travel stories. You just may end up on a real plane on a holiday for you and five of your friends valued at over $100,000. And while you're sharing all your travel tales with Expedia, don't forget to link to us—we don't have any money to offer, but we sure do love hearing about your adventures and seeing your photos.

Photo: Flickr/Schristia

Already a global financial center, Singapore is now taking steps to become even more cosmopolitan with its new ArtScience Museum, just opened at the multi-billion dollar Marina Bay Sands resort. Designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the ArtScience Museum examines the link between—you guessed it—art and science, reflecting Singapore's desire to become a more important cultural capital.

In fact, we've heard some gossip that the museum was initially slated to be an Asian Guggenheim of sorts, but plans crumbled when the New York art institute demanded a steep price for rights to its name—and that was before they even started talking about the art.

Instead, Marina Bay Sands decided to open the ArtScience Museum, and it settled on another nickname: "The Welcoming Hand of Singapore." The title pays tribute to the museum's edifice, whose round center supports 10 finger-like structures, the tallest about 60 meters high. The hand-inspired nickname also seems fitting for a space set to explore the connection between two fields that come alive in the laboratory and the studio, where hand meets mind. "We looked at the lowest common denominator between art and science, asking ourselves what they have in common," Museum Director Tom Zaller told us. "We kept coming back to one word, and that word was inspiration."

The museum's showcase exhibit, "ArtScience: A Journey through Creativity," examines the creative process in three stages. To begin, visitors ascend a "floating staircase" and view a series of translucent scrolls, each featuring questions that motivated great innovators of the past. In a second gallery, representations of inventions like Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine, a Kongming lantern, and a high-tech robotic fish suspend from the ceiling, while a multimedia presentation of lights, sound, and kinetic images are a feast for the senses in the third gallery.

Museum guests can even design their own projects at interactive kiosks, creating a virtual postcard and then sharing it with friends online or viewing a projection of it on one of the gallery walls.

Situated along the Marina Bay waterfront, the museum building itself is a draw. The roof has a large hole that allows rainwater to fall through the center atrium like a waterfall, dropping 35 meters to a pool on the lowest level. For sustainability, the rainwater channels back through a water feature to create a continuous waterfall cycle, though the museum also recycles some of it for use in its bathrooms (part of Singapore's Green Mark program). And for some natural sunlight, the "fingertips" of the Welcoming Hand feature skylights to illuminate the curved interior. "The building combines the aesthetic and functional, the visual and technological, and for me, really represents the forward-looking spirit of Singapore," Safdie wrote in an e-mail.

Indeed, Marina Bay Sands seems optimistic about the museum's future potential. The resort's website says it will serve as "the spiritual home of the burgeoning ArtScience movement," though Zaller clarified: "I don't know that it's yet a movement," he said. "Maybe it will be some day." Between its floating staircase, cyclical waterfall and robotic fish, the museum is sure to spark some conversation, and maybe even a bit of inspiration.

Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art is about to give visitors a taste of Venice, literally. Its upcoming exhibit, Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals will be paired with a gustatory experience inspired by the collection. Chef Fabio Trabocchi (most recently of New York's Fiamma) has created an Italian-themed menu for the gallery’s café that will offer gallery-goers a chance to enjoy not only Venetian landscapes but the region’s flavors as well.

This isn’t the Garden Café's first themed menu. Spanish and French cuisine preceded Garden Café Italia, which debuts today and will run through March 20, 2012. Brodetto di pesce and chicken parmigiana star in Trabocchi’s culinary collection, which he says will showcase traditional preparation. “When it comes to art I think I like to catch the spirit of a particular time in Italy and what food was doing in that time,” he says. “The initiative is to really embrace all Italian culture. You go to see the artwork and will be able to have Italian food and wine and have the full Italian experience.”

They say cooking is an art, so why not showcase gastronomy alongside photographs and frescoes?

Above: Canaletto, The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking West, with Santa Maria della Salute, about 1729, oil on canvas, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffe.

Photo: Alexander Newton

The British Art Show is in orbit toward London with a diverse collection of contemporary works. Themed “In the Days of the Comet” after the 1906 H.G. Wells novel, the seventh incarnation of the show has diverged from its origins as a survey show and evolved into a more curated exposition.

The quinquennial show started its tour in Nottingham last fall, but much of the buzz centers on the London exhibition, as the show hasn’t stopped in the capital city for 20 years. Glasgow and Plymouth round out the show’s trajectory, with each location purportedly featuring something new.

American artist Christian Marclay’s movie montage “The Clock” has elicited a storm of attention. The piece is a 24-hour collage of found film clips featuring timepieces synchronized with real time. (While certainly a fascinating undertaking, one has to wonder who would actually sit through the entire picture.)

Other works are less obviously tied to the motif of comets as emblems of time, which anyway seems a little contrived—but the show’s curators, Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton, describe the celestial significance:

We are interested in the recurrent nature of the comet as a symbol of how each version of the present collides with the past and the future, and the work of the artists in British Art Show 7, in many different ways, contest assumptions of how “the now” might be understood.

Nebulous present-past-future mystique aside, the art itself is certainly worth a gander: stuffed nylon tights that bulge like ambiguous fleshy forms, a severed head vomiting into a bucket, an enormous orange teddy bear head, pictured. With work from 39 artists ranging from photography to performance, the British Art Show 7 has something for everyone, in London from February 16 through April 17 at the Hayward Gallery.

Previously closed for months due to major renovation, Louis Vuitton's space on Omotesandō is set to reopen next Saturday. The shop has undergone many changes—one of them being the inaugural exhibition of its Espace, located on the seventh floor, bathed in natural day- and streetlight and enhanced by the house's custom lights.

French artist Xavier Veilhan—perhaps best known for '07's Aérolite, the exhibition spun from his sculptures of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel of Air (see: Pocket Symphony), and his '09 exhibition at the Château de Versailles—has been selected for the inaugural show, Free Fall. Veilhan's aesthetic is rooted in urban reality, blending ancient art technique with new processes.

Four works will debut, reflecting the theme. Tokyo Statue, 2011, is a four-meter-high silhouette representative of Veilhan's exemplary work: statues representing scanned human figures. Stabile n°1, 2011, consists of miscellaneous square tubular elements, lacquered plain, with an emphasis on supporting lines of gravity.

The works are on view January 15 through May 8.