Brilliance and madness; poverty and fame—the life of Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919) forms one of the more fascinating chapters in the history of American art.
Strange bedfellows: Munch and Johns at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Asked to name two artists least likely to be paired in a museum exhibition, you could do worse than to suggest Edvard Munch and Jasper Johns. The former is the father of expressionism, maker of The Scream and other paintings filled with anxiety and existential dread; the latter is best known for his cool and detached depictions of commonplace objects such as flags and targets—works that laid the foundation for pop art and other contemporary art movements.
Art at the Brandywine River Museum of Art
A decidedly different perspective on the pasture can be seen at the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Pennsylvania.
Bumper crop: Art and the farm at Reynolda House
Though the United States has been predominantly a nation of city dwellers since the 1920s, the farm still figures large in the American consciousness.
Crowning achievements at the Currier
Since the early nineteenth century, Mount Washington, the highest peak in the northeastern United States at 6,288 feet, has played muse to some of America’s most famous artists, including Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt. Dramatic views of the “Crown of New England” rendered by painters and photographers helped spur the growth of scenic tourism in New Hamphire’s The White Mountains, …
Rhode Island gets its due
Thanks to an active export market that sent its wares to the southern colonies, Canada, and parts of the Caribbean, furniture makers of Rhode Island enjoyed an influence far greater than their industry’s small size. The region’s superlative, and often misattributed, craftsmanship from the colonial and early Federal periods is the focus of a new exhibition, Art and Industry in …
Dramatic Encounters at the 2016 Biennale des Antiquaires
There was an air of confident renewal at this year’s Biennale des Antiquaires, the grand and sophisticated Paris showcase for art, antiques, jewelry, and antiquities which, despite its name, will become an annual event next year under a new name to be announced in October. A dramatic wood figure from Yimam, circa 1650, at the booth of Galerie Meyer. Photo by Marisa Bartolucci. …
Disruptive influences in Philadelphia
This fall the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents two exhibitions about art and artistry that upended the cultural apple cart—albeit in vastly different times, places, ways, and contexts. September 3 saw the debut of Classical Splendor: Painted Furniture for a Grand Philadelphia House—a showcase for a suite of furnishings designed by the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe and fabricated in …
Meet the Meyers at the Jewish Museum
By Stephanie L. Herdrich, Metropolitan Museum of Art John Singer Sargent’s Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children, a dazzling display of fin-desiècle opulence and bravura painting, is the focus of a dossier exhibition this fall at New York’s Jewish Museum. The exhibition explores the sitter’s identity and life as a privileged Jew in late Victorian London and affords visitors a …
A Look at the Life of “Blind Tom” Wiggins
The once famous career of the musical prodigy Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins, born a slave and raised to entertain audiences here and abroad with uncanny feats of musical mastery, tainted virtually everyone who touched it. Wiggins’s owners exploited him and profited hugely from his earnings (his concerts and sheet music yielded an astonishing $20,000 in 1879); critics and reporters wrote …