Emancipated Artist: Moses Williams
In honor of Juneteenth this week, I present an earlier experience of emancipation—that of artist Moses Williams. When he was 9 years old, Williams’s parents were emancipated. At the time, ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
National Meat Week 2024
National Meat Week, a celebration founded in 2005 by Chris Cantey and Erni Walker in Tallahassee, Florida, goes from 28 January to 4 February this year. It is meant to be a celebration of feastin ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
October Is National Apple Month: Levi Wells Prentice
I can’t think of a better way to celebrate National Apple Month than with one of THE most incredible paintings I’ve ever seen on the subject. The first time I saw this painting by Levi Wel ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
An American Original: Charles Willson Peale
In England’s American colonies, it was natural for colonial artists who were eager for a vital school of painting of their own to look to British art for inspiration. By the time of the American ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
Thanksgiving Week 2022: John F. Francis Still Life
I don’t usually attend a large buffet-style Thanksgiving dinner, but I always observe the underlying reason for Thanksgiving: being grateful. Among the many things I am grateful for—a ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
Respect for the Aged Day: John Singleton Copley
The concept of filial piety (reverence for one’s elders) has been deeply ingrained in many cultures around the world for forever. At one time this may have been the case in the West, but the obs ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
World Watercolor Month: Yosa Buson
If any artists could be called the “masters” of watercolor, it would be the artists of Asia—particularly far eastern Asia (Japan, China, Korea)—who, for centuries, used in ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
Claude Raguet Hirst Realism
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 ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
African American History Month: Thomas Gross, Jr. and Moses Williams
Let us not forget that African American artists have existed since the founding of America. Unfortunately, they were not colonists, but forced here as slaves on Dutch, Portuguese, French, Spanish, and ...
Read More
Curator's Corner
What's in a Number? Ancient Persia, Anna Claypoole Peale, McKim Mead and White
It’s 2018 now. Does the number eighteen conjure up anything for you? A lot of people make a big deal about turning age eighteen, but for me that just conjures up nightmares of bullying, a face b ...
Read More