Editor’s letter, September 2009

Editorial StaffOpinion

One of the things I admire about Electra Havemeyer Webb was her instinctive sense that the cultural designations of high-, low-, and middlebrow were silly.  I do not mean to suggest that Webb was a prophet of late twentieth-century multiculturalism or that she could have argued for the relative merits of a beautifully carved duck decoy vis à vis a …

An appreciation of Henry Ossawa Tanner

Editorial StaffArt

September 2009 | Within nine years of moving abroad, Henry Ossawa Tanner, America’s first major African American artist, had become an international success. By 1900 he ranked among the leading American artists in Paris and was widely considered the premier biblical painter of his day. Exhibiting regularly at the Paris Salon, he was attracting even greater critical acclaim than Thomas …