Frédéric Bazille at the National Gallery of Art.
Saint-Gaudens in Washington, D.C.
Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907), 1900. Patinated plaster. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire, on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Art. On July 18, 1863, one of the first Union Army units of African-American soldiers stormed Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor. Led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the …
Uncompromising Truth
In 1841 the English art critic and social theorist John Ruskin hired a young valet by the name of John Hobbs. For the sake of propriety Ruskin resolved to address Hobbs as “George,” on the principle that a Victorian gentleman, even one with advanced political beliefs, should not have to share his name with a servant. Hobbs’s duties, although initially …
The Way We See Things Now: The Times, the National Gallery, and the new orthodoxy
On Friday March 6 Roberta Smith of the New York Times delivered a spirited and largely negative review of the recent reopening of the American painting galleries at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Held fast in the grip of what she describes as the “strictly orthodox” arrangement of periods and schools, the rooms bored her and, she …