Deceiving the Eye: American Trompe-l'Oeil Realism
I’ve written before about the long-standing interest in extreme realism in American painting. Colonial American self-taught artists (“limners”) may not have been schooled in anatomy, ...
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Curator's Corner
And This Is a Portrait of Whom?
I don’t often laugh about art history (seriously!), but now and then one just can’t help it. With this group of “portraits,” I had to keep in mind that: A) the people who bough ...
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Curator's Corner
June is Busting Out All Over: Tina Leser
I guess Memorial Day is the official “beginning” of outdoor grilling season in the US. I don’t really know the “official” date because I’ve lived in apartments all ...
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Curator's Corner
Renaissance Perspective or Butterfly? Mark Grotjahn
I don’t like to admit to something like this, but when I first saw this work in the MoMA collection, I didn’t pay that much attention to it. When I saw it a second time the other day, I wa ...
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Curator's Corner
Lathe and Nature Magic: David Sengel
When I see a work of art that blows me away, I’ve just got to share it with as many people as I possibly can. This work was my “epiphany of the week” that I recently sent to my co-wo ...
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Curator's Corner
Still Life and Our Culture of Abundance: John F. Francis
I got so excited the other night while watching Antiques Roadshow. A person brought two little still-life paintings from 1865, and I said to myself, “Oh, those look like John Francis’s wor ...
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Curator's Corner
The Raphael of Flowers: Pierre Joseph Redouté
I don’t usually experience beauty attacks when considering art from France of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Neoclassicism isn’t my thing! But this artist is a standout in a period otherw ...
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Curator's Corner
Beauty Attack: Henry Bacon
I must say, one of the things that keeps me young (in spirit, of course) is the constant beauty attacks I experience at work while looking at art from all over the world and every conceivable time per ...
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Curator's Corner
The Bill for Art
No, this is not some sort of philosophical jaunt through current government threats to cut all funding for the arts and libraries, though goodness knows that could be a college dissertation. Actually, ...
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Curator's Corner
Not an Easter Egg
On our planet, the egg has been almost universally viewed as a symbol of rebirth and fertility since ancient times (imagine ancient eyes seeing something living come out of something hard and apparent ...
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