When you think of Duke University, do you think “Basketball”? “Medical school”? Or do you think “Art”? Like any top university, Duke has built a Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, and the Nasher Museum of Art is a classic adjunct to that program. Founded in 1969 with the acquisition of 200 medieval […]
Category: Art History
Asheville Art Museum: Summer 2022 Special Exhibitions
Asheville is an art town, boasting two separate studio & gallery districts, numerous art and craft-related museums and historic houses … and the recently expanded Asheville Art Museum. The Museum’s collection of American art of the 20th and 21st centuries presents the narrative of art and culture in western North Carolina and Southern Appalachia, within […]
Savannah’s Art Museums – Part 3. The Telfair Academy
You might expect the South’s oldest art museum to be in the capital city of one of the southern states, not in a city of 330,000 (2022). But in 1885, Savannah –with about 35,000 residents — was nearly twice the size of the second-largest city in the state, Augusta. In fact, when Savannah was established […]
Savannah’s Art Museums – Part 2. Jepson Center: The art of today, mostly.
Part 1 (Savannah’s Jepson Center – an architectural delight) of this 3-part series about the Telfair Museums began with, “I just had a museum experience that blissed me out, from beginning to end!” The architecture enhanced the experience, to be sure, but the art absolutely held it’s own. In addition to the awesome architecture of […]
GO WEST SAID A SMALL VOICE Gustave Baumann and Dreams of New Mexico
In the 20th century, the works of Gustave Baumann became iconic representations of the American Southwest. He drew upon a wide range of influences, from the German avant-garde to the rich cultural heritage of the Indigenous populations of North America.” This exhibition reveals Baumann in the context of those influences and offers insights into the development of his identity as an artist. […]
Art in Context: Seraphs Are Red, Cherubs Are Blue
Surrounded by the highest choir of angels, this portrait of King Charles VII’s favorite mistress was commissioned by the King’s treasurer for his wife’s mortuary altar. […]
Rosa Bonheur: The Most Famous Artist You’ve Never Heard Of …
In the 19th-century, during her lifetime Rosa Bonheur was one of the most famous artists in all of Europe and North America. Required to obtain a cross-dressing permit in order to venture into the world of men — for the sake of her art — she took that world by storm! […]
Visualizing 4000 Years of Spanish History
The collection of the Hispanic Society of America reveals the history of Spain and its place in the world, from antiquity to modern times. Unrivaled outside Spain, the scope and quality of the collection is hard to believe, considering that it was largely amassed by a single inspired collector. […]
Art in Context: Not Living in the Moment
For people who lived (and died) in the 14th century — when the Great Plague (aka the Black Death, the Great Mortality) killed roughly half the world’s population — a truly horrible death was not hard to envision. It’s almost impossible for most of us, today, to understand the constant presence of death that was the reality of life for everyone until very recent times. […]
Isamu Noguchi: Knowing the Ways of Nature
There is perhaps no more serene space in New York City than the Noguchi Museum and Garden in Queens. Profoundly influenced by Brancusi, Isamu Noguchi blended modernism and abstraction with Japanese traditions to create a powerful aesthetic of simplicity. […]