Mistress of Her Domain

Alexandra Frantischek Rodriguez-Jack Art, Furniture & Decorative Arts, In the Galleries

Emerging during the late Middle Ages, the domestic space known as the estrado kept pace with the ever-increasing reach and buying power of well-to-do households in Spain and the Spanish Americas, becoming a showcase for fineries from the world over. But as a female-coded area, it provided women a degree of autonomy and self-expression not generally possible in Continental or colonial society of the time.

Artful Distortions

Margaret Shakespeare Art

In the nineteenth century Paul Kane’s dignified and captivatingly detailed paintings of Native American life, along with the artist’s published travelogue from his sojourn across the continent, did much to form Western notions about North America’s original inhabitants…

Objects: Eggs for Kings

Benjamin Davidson and Pippa Biddle Art

Treasured and embellished ostrich eggs litter what is one of the strangest side paths of decorative arts history—as well as one of the oldest…