Listen to this conversation with Chrysler Museum of Art curator Seth Feman and Columbus Museum curator Jonathan Frederick Walz — we discuss the art and life of the extraordinary American artist Alma Woodsey Thomas. Seth and Jonathan are co-curators of the major traveling exhibition Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful
Laura Muir— The story of how an unusual coffee and tea service made its way from Weimar, Germany, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, is both remarkable and emblematic of the way in which Harvard University’s extensive Bauhaus collection came into being. Founded in 1919 by German architect Walter Gropius and closed just
Brandon Ruud— The catalogue for the exhibition Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820–1920 was a labor of love, a treat to produce, and, especially, a visual feast thanks to the number of objects and the generosity of so many lenders willing to include some of their greatest masterpieces. The book’s
“It is now so warm that I am in only my Shirt and the Frogs are in full Tune.” —Mark Catesby in South Carolina and the Caribbean, 1722-26 Henrietta McBurney– The English naturalist Mark Catesby (1683-1749) wrote to his sponsor the botanist, William Sherard, about the extreme weather conditions in
In this episode of the Yale University Press podcast, we talk about the life and drawings of the self-taught artist Joseph E. Yoakum with the Art Institute of Chicago‘s Mark Pascale and MoMA‘s Esther Adler, two of the curators of the current traveling retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work and
Patrick Pardo— The sixth and final volume of the John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné covers the years 2011 through 2019. It was published in late January 2021, roughly a year after Baldessari’s death on January 2, 2020, at the age of 88. Thirty canvases comprise John Baldessari’s “Space Between” series, which he had
Susan Bernofsky— In the spring of 1909, thirty-one-year-old novelist Robert Walser, then living in Berlin, saw a performance by one of the greatest ballet dancers of the twentieth century. Anna Pavlova wasn’t yet the international star she would later become, though she was already a lead dancer with the Maryinsky
Jonathan Frederick Walz— Perspicacious art historian Melissa Ho—who, in her role as curator of twentieth-century art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, oversees the largest public collection of Alma Thomas paintings on canvas—describes the artist’s output as “sensorially rich work that engages sound and touch as well as vision.” Vivid,
Monica Bravo– After a long period of staying at home, social distancing, and masking up, we are told—at last—that the world is opening up. Breathing a collective sigh of relief (one that still does not extend to every community worldwide, I hasten to add), many are rushing to once again
Lucy Bradnock— Instances of feminist artists citing Artaud are curious and not a little confusing. The French poet and dramaturg died in 1948, leaving behind a legacy that was both bound up in historical modernism and dogged by accusations of misogyny. Neither would seem to align him with second wave