American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life
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American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life

ByMark Vallen

Celebrated American paintings were presented at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition titled American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915. The exhibit was comprised of 103 paintings that depicted the American experience from the colonial period to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. On display were iconic canvases by the likes of John Singleton Copley,…

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Millard Sheets: The Early Years

ByMark Vallen

Millard Sheets: The Early Years (1926-1944), on display at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) through May 30, 2010, is an important exhibit of works by a leading California exponent of the “American Scene” painters, those artists given to documenting ordinary Americans going about their everyday lives. Incorporated into the American Scene genre were the subcategories of “Regionalism” and…

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Obama Reduces Arts Funding

ByMark Vallen

On February 1, 2010, President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011, which includes funding cuts to both the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The funding to each institution will be cut by more than $6 million, dropping their current budgets of $167.5 million to $161.3 million. The President’s…

2009: Year in Review

ByMark Vallen

Ah, 2009, when the bold slogans of “Hope” and “Change” morphed into sighs of “Disappointment” and “Business as Usual.” Now is the time to cast away political illusions and resume the work of creating new realities! What better place to start than a “Year in Review” presentation? On a brief personal note, I have been working on a large body…

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O Blessed Christmas!

ByMark Vallen

Hark the Herald Angels Sing! Machine Gun Clatter! Bomb Blast! Poison Gas! The anti-militarist Christmas message from John Heartfield shown at left was published on December 26, 1935, in the German magazine, Arbeiter-Illustriete Zeitung (AIZ, or “Worker’s Illustrated Paper”). The title of the photomontage, O du fröhliche, O du selige, gnadenbringende Zeit (O joyful, o blessed, miracle-bringing time), was taken…