2 October 2007 | Americas
In the summer 2007 issue of American Art (published by the Smithsonian), editor Cynthia Mills writes: … we can sense a shift in the questions scholars are bringing to the nation’s visual history … from inquiries into science and sensation to a “serious” attention to humor … studies of American art and artists, once considered [...]
7 September 2007 | Americas, Modern
Are they genuine? Decide for yourself, now through December 9 at Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art. From the Boston Globe: “‘There obviously remains a mystery here,’ said Claude Cernuschi, a BC art history professor and one of the show’s curators. Still, the 178-page catalog, also released yesterday, did contain some revelations. For example, although [...]
7 June 2007 | Americas, Contemporary
We recently received the book Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, edited by artist Sam Durant, with contributions from Danny Glover, Amiri Baraka, Kathleen Cleaver, St. Clair Bourne, Colette Gaiter, and Greg Morozumi. Durant writes in his introduction, “Many of the images in this book may shock viewers coming to them for the [...]
24 May 2007 | Americas, Museums
In the spring 2007 issue of Latino Studies, Karen Mary Davalos writes on “the meaning of Chicana art collections”: “private collectors fill the vacancy left by local and federal museums and establish a public repository of Chicana art and culture … [like] feminist activists who generate movements for social change … [enacting] a poetics of [...]
23 May 2007 | Americas, Architecture
Diane Brand writes on “Sets and Extras: Ephemeral Architecture and Urban Ceremony in Rio de Janeiro (1808-1821)” in the latest Journal of Latin American Studies (15:3). In the early 19th century, the Prince Regent of Portugal fled to Rio ahead of Napoleon’s anticipated arrival. There, “the royal family indulged in a combination of ephemeral architecture [...]
21 May 2007 | Americas, Conferences, Museums
Has anyone written about the phenomenon of art scholars and curators who also collect? According to Princeton University, John Wilmerding “revealed May 4 at a reception and dinner in honor of his retirement that he is the previously anonymous donor of a major gift of Pop art to the Princeton University Art Museum.” Also, “a [...]
In the most recent Colonial Latin American Review (15:2), Jeanette Favrot Peterson reviews Gabriela Siracusano’s recent book El Poder de los colores. De lo material a lo simbólico en las prácticas culturales andinas, Siglos XVI-XVIII: “[This] is a groundbreaking book that bridges the divide between science and art, conservation and aesthetics, or between praxis and [...]
7 March 2007 | Americas, Museums
From the Chicago Tribune: “Asking who designed Louis Comfort Tiffany’s iconic lamps might seem the decorative art world’s equivalent to the schoolyard stumper, ‘Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?’ While Ulysses S. Grant is indeed buried in Grant’s tomb, fresh evidence reveals that Tiffany did not design most of the lavish leaded-glass lamps bearing his name, [...]
19 February 2007 | Americas, Conferences, Museums
Contributor Ross Finocchio reports: “When, during a morning panel on art collecting, a bad projector distorted the dimensions of the Giorgione ‘Nativity’ in Washington’s National Gallery, the audience immediately erupted in protest. As the IT staff scurried to fix the problem, speaker Roger Crum calmly quipped, ‘As you’ll learn, Kress believed in expansion but this [...]
14 January 2007 | Americas, Museums
In The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman recaps the recent controversy over Eakins’ Gross Clinic (and visits some other Eakins paintings). The painting was being lured away from Thomas Jefferson University not by the National Gallery alone, but by the National Gallery in collaboration with Alice L. Walton. Did the subsequent outcry result from a [...]
22 December 2006 | Americas, Museums
From the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Mayor Street announced that Thomas Eakins’ masterpiece The Gross Clinic would remain in Philadelphia. The local fund-raising effort to buy the painting has received more than 2,000 contributions from more than 30 states, sources at the Philadelphia Museum of Art said.”
30 November 2006 | Americas, Museums
From the Philadelphia Inquirer: “The campaign to raise $68 million and retain Thomas Eakins’ monumental painting The Gross Clinic in Philadelphia has reached about one-third of its goal, officials said yesterday, with the number of donations now running into the hundreds. With just under four weeks left to raise the remainder, Anne d’Harnoncourt, director and [...]
27 November 2006 | Americas, Modern, Museums
From the Houston Chronicle: “Emily Ballew Neff, curator of American painting and sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is shaking up the art world with her new exhibit, The Modern West. In it, she shows that the American West influenced artists not usually considered Western — a group that includes, most controversially, Jackson [...]
10 November 2006 | Americas
Adam Mazmanian reviews Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture by Michael Kammen in the Washington City Paper: “When sculptor Henry Kirke Brown previewed a bronze of Gen. Winfield Scott for his heirs in the early 1870s, the family was aghast to see the Civil War hero portrayed atop a mare. Although [...]
12 May 2006 | Americas, Modern
The National Gallery’s Sheeler exhibition features a catalogue by Charles Brock. While “exhibitions have been devoted respectively to his photographs, paintings, and drawings, the relationships across media in his work have been relatively neglected. The root cause of this [is that] Sheeler and his dealer, Edith Halpert, consciously emphasized the distinctions between his painting and [...]
5 May 2006 | Americas
“Margaretta M. Lovell, a professor of American art and architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of a Smithsonian American Art Museum award that recognizes outstanding scholarship in American art. A three-member committee of American art scholars recently recommended Lovell for the 18th annual Charles C. Eldredge Prize for distinguished scholarship in [...]
18 April 2006 | Americas, Museums
From the Washington Post: “David Sellin, 75, an art historian who lectured widely and was curator in the Office of the Architect of the Capitol from 1976 to 1980, died April 11 at Washington Hospital Center. He had lymphatic cancer. Dr. Sellin settled in the Washington area in 1971 after teaching jobs at Colgate and [...]
17 April 2006 | Americas
The Marion Greenwood mural owned by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville may well survive its controversy, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education: “The painting is under wraps again to protect it from a leaky ceiling, but Jan F. Simek, executive assistant to the chancellor, says administrators hope to put it on permanent display in [...]
4 April 2006 | Americas
From Artinfo.com: “The Frick Collection has announced it plans to establish a Center for the History of Collecting in America … In the works are five initiatives which include: the creation of an online directory of dealers and collectors, the establishment of a fellowship program supporting study at the Frick for six to eight weeks, [...]
16 March 2006 | Americas
Should the 28-foot mural made by Marion Greenwood for the University of Tennessee be allowed to see the light of day? “The west end of the painting in the early 1970s caused controversy among students because some saw Greenwood’s representation of blacks as stereotypical” and so it’s been covered by wood paneling ever since. Blogger [...]
