Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Art”
By Amy a. Weinstein; originally published in January 2005. Appealing to the imagination of children of all ages, the toy collection of the New-York Historical Society offers a miniature window into nineteenth-century American family life. The approximately three thousand objects that constitute the collection are made of wood, metal, paper, ceramic, and cloth and trace the social, economic, political, and …
When Virginia-born George Caleb Bingham was seven, his father lost most of the family’s fortune, and they moved to Missouri to build a new life, settling first in Franklin, on the banks of the Missouri River, and later on a farm in Saline County. Who knows what would have caught his imagination had Bingham stayed in Virginia, but there is …
They were big, brawny, and bold. The near-identical sofas in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA)-once celebrated as rare examples of gilded furniture from the shop of John Henry Belter-were so visually pushy that the former curator of American arts, David Park Curry, dubbed them the “Tarleton Twins.” Today, following several years of research and an extensive conservation campaign, …
Along the storied waterways of old Bohemia, where the Vlatava (Moldau) and Labe (Elbe) Rivers run their courses, the former flowing into the latter, the princely and diplomatic Lobkowicz family, dating back to the fifteenth century, has returned to reestablish an all encompassing cultural presence in what is now the Czech Republic. Twentieth century history usually shows refugees from political …
National Gallery, London, February 2000. Time to kill before a memorial service at a church on the Strand. A sign pointed toward an exhibition of the trompe l’oeil “letter racks” (whatever they were) by the seventeenth-century painter Cornelius Gijsbrechts (whoever he was). Why not? I walked into the show expecting to be amused by painted illusions. I walked out entranced …
This year marks the centennial of the Great War and museums around the globe have been in a wartime fervor setting up exhibitions to commemorate the conflict. The Great War: A Cinematic Legacy • Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY • to September 21 • moma.org The Great War: A Cinematic Legacy is comprised of 50 movie screenings emphasizing …
Collecting can be as much a declaration of independence as it is a need for possession, particularly when the objects of desire are unorthodox and the pursuer is a sentient, intelligent woman. Appreciating something different, something odd, something not sanctified or certified by art history, almost inevitably leads to discovering an identity, asserting individuality, and transporting oneself into a new …
Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending one of the Frick Collection’s “Summer Nights,” a series that offers free after-hours admission and a number of activities centered on a single exhibition–lectures and live music among them. This particular evening was focused on Men in Armor: El Greco and Pulzone Face to Face, an exhibition with just two paintings. Jeongho …
By Ruth Davidson; Originally published in January 1971 For the enchantment of visitors to Asia House Gallery this month and next there will be on view byōbu, or Japanese painted screens, from twelve museums and private collections in New York. Arranged so as to suggest their appearance in a Japanese house, the twenty six screens will be shown in two …
In this, the quietest season of the year for the New York art world, when most of the commercial galleries are shuttered and the museums have been abandoned to the tourists, it behooves the critic to slow down for a few weeks and smell the flowers. By that I mean returning to the permanent collections and observing the recent addition …