Blogs

Curator's Corner

Have You Had Your Fiber Today? Sheila Hicks

Monday, July 30, 2018 | Karl Cole

As you all know, I’m not a fan of the words “decorative arts,” “artisan,” “crafts,” or “craftsperson.” I think we’re way beyond that now. If ...

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Curator's Corner

Put on Your SPF 100 Sunblock: Alex Katz

Tuesday, July 24, 2018 | Karl Cole

Alex Katz’s birthday is today, the 24th of July. Happy Birthday to this extraordinary artist! I’ve come to be a great admirer of his work, and find it unfortunate that he is sometimes ...

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Curator's Corner

Hans Hofmann's Important Art Colony School

Monday, July 16, 2018 | Karl Cole

I will soon be on my way to Provincetown for vacation. Some of my favorite things to do with my husband in Provincetown are looking at the art in all the galleries and finding out where certain artist ...

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Curator's Corner

Wear a Protective Mask! Merete Larsen

Monday, July 9, 2018 | Karl Cole

My dear friend Matt was an engineering professor at a local university. You wonder why I start with that line? Well, that’s because he was also an artist in wood, as I mentioned in a previous po ...

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Curator's Corner

Happy July 2018: Edward Penfield

Monday, July 2, 2018 | Karl Cole

I want to wish everyone a happy July, even though it pains me when I think that the summer is half over, here in New England anyway. However, what better way to ignore that idea than to focus on art? ...

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Curator's Corner

Claude Raguet Hirst Realism

Monday, June 25, 2018 | Karl Cole

Nothing showcases the American obsession with realism in art during the 1800s better than the brief Trompe l’Oeil Realism movement of the 1880s and 1890s. Like the Dutch Baroque realist still-li ...

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Curator's Corner

Porcelain in the West

Monday, June 18, 2018 | Karl Cole

What do you think of when I say “porcelain”? “American” is probably not the first word that springs to mind when paired with “porcelain.” We all know that China dev ...

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Curator's Corner

American Impressionist Women: Fern Isabel Coppedge, Harriet Lumis, and Helen Hamilton

Monday, June 11, 2018 | Karl Cole

The joy of approaching summer always makes me think of color, and color makes me think of Impressionism—American Impressionism in this case. The Ten American Painters group was formed in 1898 by ...

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Curator's Corner

Illustrator Barbara Shermund

Monday, June 4, 2018 | Karl Cole

As we know, women have been artists since the beginning of recorded time. The dawn of women artists as a significant part of magazine, book, and newspaper illustration, however, came at the end of the ...

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Curator's Corner

National Textiles Month

Tuesday, May 29, 2018 | Karl Cole

Although I’m an art historian, sometimes I feel that art should just be looked at rather than analyzed to death. When I read somewhere that May is National Textiles Month (May 3rd was National T ...

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Curator's Corner

Mobility Awareness Month: Kawasaki Kazuo and Rainer Küschall

Monday, May 21, 2018 | Karl Cole

By the early 21st century, it is certainly no longer questioned that industrial design and art have learned how to go hand-in-hand. I think we also agree that most creative efforts—from chefs to ...

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Curator's Corner

Furniture or Sculpture?

Monday, May 14, 2018 | Karl Cole

I took furniture history classes in grad school and even was a TA for the professor, so I learned to absolutely love studying the history of furniture. It seems to me, though, as our digital image col ...

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Curator's Corner

Never "Pin" an Artist to One Art Form! Harry Bertoia

Monday, May 7, 2018 | Karl Cole

The word “pin” was entirely accidental in the title of this posting, but I’m sticking with it. In the 1980s, I received a broken-down version of Harry Bertoia’s (1915–197 ...

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Curator's Corner

Architecture as Sculpture: Hoysala Empire

Monday, April 30, 2018 | Karl Cole

When Western art history books talk about “architectural sculpture,” it is usually in the context of Romanesque and Gothic churches/cathedrals in Europe. When one is looking at temple arch ...

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Curator's Corner

Self-Taught Artists

Monday, April 23, 2018 | Karl Cole

I was recently studying the insanely wonderful art of contemporary artist Carmen Cartiness Johnson, and I noticed that her artist’s statement said right off the bat that she is “self-taugh ...

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Curator's Corner

Reused Design Materials: Tejo Remy

Tuesday, April 17, 2018 | Karl Cole

I read a very disturbing article recently, which stated that a large percentage of the clothes we could donate for reuse ends up in landfills. This is disturbing because a lot of the materials do not ...

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