Articles
Posted 01/23/13
Spirit Feel: A New Orleans Collection
Africa feels close in New Orleans. You hear it in the blue notes and polyrhythmic drumming of jazz. You taste it in the okra-laden gumbos and rice dishes of the local cuisine. You see it in a host of traditional arts, from the richly beaded parading costumes of Mardi Gras Indians to the near-ubiquitous "shotgun" house-a form that derives from African models and is perfectly suited to the sultry climate of a Gulf Coast port.
Posted 01/20/13
Forces for the new: Collectors and the 1913 Armory Show
On February 17, 1913, the most important art event ever held in America-the International Exhibition of Modern Art, quickly abbreviated to the "Armory Show" on account of its location in the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory at Lexington Avenue and Twenty-Fifth Street-opened its doors.
Posted 12/19/12
The Lanford Wilson collection of self-taught art
"Honest, shockingly sincere, and unfettered"
Posted 12/19/12
Louis C. Tiffany's landscapes of devotion
Today Louis Comfort Tiffany is widely recognized as America's leading designer of the decades around 1900, but during his lifetime he was best known primarily as a designer of religious art, particularly memorial windows. They were installed by the thousands-mostly in Protestant churches and cemetery mausoleums-and formed the bulk of his business over four decades. An exhibition now on view at the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City is refocusing our attention on this aspect of Tiffany's artistic output.
Posted 12/19/12
Sarah Goodrich: Mapping places in the heart
In a time of cultural awakening when Boston was hailed as the Athens of America, Sarah Goodrich (Fig. 3) was the city's pre-eminent portrait miniaturist, creating indelible likenesses for more than a quarter-century between 1815 and 1850. Favored by such notable patrons as Daniel Webster, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, Edward Everett, and William Lindall Winthrop, she graced her sitters with an aura of intimacy that still flames in the mind's eye. Newly discovered examples of Goodrich's work and further historical research have added to the narrative of her life and renew our appreciation of "America's finest woman miniaturist."
