Photography by Gavin Ashworth Crafted, bought, sold, and collected, folk art erotica, especially American folk erotica, has a lively presence in the world of art and antiques, as virtually any dealer will attest. (“The easiest things to sell are good erotica and good political materials. They leave the door the quickest,” Brooklyn-based dealer Steven S. Powers observes.) What this material …
New collector: Spratling silver
The son of Dr. William P. Spratling, a celebrated neurologist and pioneer in treating epilepsy, William Spratling had a tragic childhood, losing his mother and a sister when he was ten, and his father five years later. He went on to Auburn University in Alabama, where he majored in architecture and was apparently teaching the subject there within two years …
Breaking ground: British folk art at the Tate
In 1768, when the British Royal Academy of Arts was established, it emphatically distinguished the fine arts from crafts by exiling the latter, declaring that “no needlework, artificial flowers, cut-paper, shell-work or any such performances should be admitted.” By 1948 artworks from outside the mainstream still had not overcome this prejudice, prompting the designer, writer, and folk art enthusiast Enid …
Events: Exhibitions, symposiums, and lectures
Fore more, visit our calendar. Left: Eagle by Bernard Langlais, ,ca. 1964, raw and painted wood, 96 x 48 x 3 inches, Colby College Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Bernard Langlais. Photo: Pixel Acuity. On view at Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine. July 19 to January 4, 2015. ALABAMA Montgomery Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts: “Origins: The First Twenty-Five …
Object of devotion at MOBiA
It was big news in the museum world when the New York Times reported that a rare exhibition of Donatello, considered by some to be the finest sculptor of the Renaissance, was coming to New York City. But the venue for Sculpture in the Age of Donatello: Renaissance Masterpieces From Florence Cathedral (on view from February 20 through June 14, …
Touching nature
Originally published in May/June 2014 If traversing a well-curated exhibition can be compared to strolling through a beautifully tended garden or park, it is entirely appropriate that a show devoted to close looking at nature should take the idea of a nature walk as its guiding metaphor. “Of Green Leaf, Bird and Flower”: Artists’ Books and the Natural World, opening …
Editor’s letter, March/April 2014
The photographs by Charles Marville in this issue and on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art strike me as an important early chapter in the story of our modern lives. Marville’s job was to photograph Paris before and after Baron Haussmann erased its centuries old densely wound streets, replacing them with the broad new avenues and alluring vistas that …
Chrysler Museum reopens
Visitors approaching the grand front entrance of Norfolk, Virginia’s Chrysler Museum of Art on its reopening on May 10 could be forgiven for not realizing that a major transformation has taken place. So seamlessly have the flanking wings been enlarged and the gardens in front of them so surreptitiously moved forward that it is only when inside that the impact …
ADA Award profile: Brock Jobe
Some people have the good fortune to find a unique path that leads to discovery and is enriched by sharing. For them life can be an endless adventure, laced with exploration and learning, younger people to mentor, and a broadening circle of those who share their interests and become close friends. Brock Jobe, this year’s recipient of the ADA Award …
Harmonic inventions
For most of his eighty-five years H. Peter Stern has carried within him the vision of a lost Eden. As a boy on vacation from his European boarding school he often traveled back to Bucharest by Orient Express. Approaching home he thrilled to the sight of the Transylvanian plains, where farmers in sheepskin jackets and tall fur hats worked golden …