Nostalgia in American Art
I read in the New York Times that up until 1999 “nostalgia” was considered a mental illness. Well, you could have knocked me for a loop with that one. One usually gets warm fuzzies from be ...
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Curator's Corner
The Wari: Andean Textile Arts
Recently a royal tomb of the Andean Wari culture was excavated in Peru about 175 miles north of Lima. It contained the mummified bodies of 57 royal women and 6 female servants (assumed sacrificed). Th ...
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Curator's Corner
American Originals: Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald-Wright
I’ve mentioned in previous blogs how spotty modernism was in American art in the early 1900s. Since the colonial period, American artists had a tenacious obsession with realism, including the wo ...
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Curator's Corner
Furniture conforming to...? Jere Osgood
Traditionally, furniture was designed to conform to the human body and what was being worn at the time. That’s why we see low side chairs with no arms during the mid-1800s when women were wearin ...
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Curator's Corner
Lacquer: Japanese Negoro Ware
The art of lacquer has long fascinated me. When I was in an Asian Art seminar in college (decades ago), I learned that ancient Chinese bodies coated in lacquer still had supple skin. Now that’s ...
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Curator's Corner
The Windsor Connection
My nephew just repainted our kitchen table and chairs. It occurred to me that the chairs are modern day versions of the Windsor chair. Our chairs even have the elegant h-stretcher joining the legs, an ...
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Curator's Corner
The Brueghel (Bruegel) Family
Having ancestry in northern Europe (Switzerland), I naturally gravitated toward Northern Renaissance art in college. I’m particularly fond of Flemish artists, because they reflect a similar unva ...
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Curator's Corner
A Unique Design: Maria Benktzon
In the mid-1900s, Scandinavian artists emerged at the forefront of modernism in all facets of design: architecture, furniture, and the art of household objects. Among them were many women who came up ...
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Curator's Corner
You Think You Know Ancient Egypt?
At first glance this small sculpture would lead the viewer to believe that it was firmly within the realm of ancient Egyptian art. It actually belongs to a culture that bordered dynastic Egypt, and tw ...
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Curator's Corner
National Jewish American Heritage Month: Helen Frankenthaler
As an art historian who grew up in the age of blossoming feminist art movements, one of my major disappointments has always been the significant women artists of previous movements who were not given ...
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