Have You Met the Big Four?

Painters by numbers. Canada has it’s Group of Seven. Cuba has Los Diez Pintores Concretos. The Taos Six applied academic techniques to indigenous themes, producing a uniquely American school of painting. Then there’s the international group of wildlife painters of the late 1800s and early 1900s — Richard Friese, Wilhelm Kuhnert, Bruno Liljefors, and Carl Rungius […]

Have You Met Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella?

At the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC is an unexpected exhibition titled Impressive: Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella (on through October 20, 2024). Ranging across the blue walls of three adjacent alcoves, a series of twenty-five 17th-century prints by artist Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella (Lyon,1641-Paris,1676) depicts The Entrance of the Emperor Sigismond into Mantua (1675). The […]

Discovering the Menil Collection

With a wink to Gene Autry and Tex Ritter who lauded the Lone Star state with the song, Deep in the Heart of Texas, I’m singing the praises of the Menil Collection, deep in the heart of Houston. In an idyllic tree-shaded art neighborhood covering 30 urban acres, the Menil campus includes five museum buildings, […]

Curiouser and Curiouser – The “Wundercammer” is a “Thing” in Houston

Not unlike Grandma’s curio cabinet, a 16th- and 17th-century ‘cabinet of curiosity” was filled with a collector’s treasures. Although a small collection might have been laid out in a drawer, or arrayed on shelves, the term cabinet originally was defined as a room rather than a piece of furniture (think water closet and the Italian equivalent, gabinetto). It […]

Have You Met Jules André Smith?

Jules Andre Smith’s experimental artist’s colony is an aesthetic masterpiece, created over 22 years by his singular artistic vision. Now the Maitland Art Center, and one of the only remaining examples “Mayan Revival” fantasy architecture in the Southeastern U.S. Smith’s compound is must-see National Historic Landmark. […]

David Bowie’s Post-Modernist Space Oddities

From the Renaissance through the mid-19th century, Western artists applied the logic of perspective in their work and were judged by their skill in reproducing reality. But fundamental changes in technology, science and philosophy were occurring by the end of the 19th century, inducing a series of new aesthetic movements. Some were longer-lived than others. […]

Have You Met Diné (Navajo) Photographer, Will Wilson?

Diné photographer Will Wilson (b. 1969) presents an authentic, contemporary depiction of Indigenous culture, using historical photographic techniques, in a comparative dialog with the work of Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952). Curtis holds an enduring place the history of photography as a result of his life’s work, the 20-volume The North American Indian. Between 1900 and […]