Thomas J Price, Grounded in the Stars
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Thomas J Price, Grounded in the Stars

You might be dismayed to learn that many contemporary statue makers are cheaters when it comes to fashioning sculptures from bronze or marble. Even individuals involved in the arts might be shocked to discover that present-day “sculptors” have never touched clay or marble, let along cast a statue in bronze. I believe that’s the case with Grounded in the Stars,…

Oprah Winfrey Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery
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Oprah Winfrey Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery

On Dec. 13, 2023, during a ceremony attended by throngs of media reporters, the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Washington, D.C. unveiled a nearly life-size oil painting of Oprah Winfrey. The painting was created by a 37-year-old Black artist from Chicago named Shawn Michael Warren. The newest painting to grace the National Portrait Gallery was commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution,…

The Boston MFA & George Jackson
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The Boston MFA & George Jackson

While visiting Boston, Massachusetts in July, 2023, I visited the city’s Museum of Fine Art (MFA). Strolling through the museum’s Art of the Americas wing I happened upon the Artists of African Descent gallery. I was puzzled by an artwork I found there, an acrylic portrait painting created in the red, black, and green colors favored by black nationalists and…

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The Embrace Does Not Convey Greatness

The Embrace, a new sculpture dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King, has turned out to be contentious rather than unifying. Black conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas won the commission to create the monument now displayed in the Boston Common of Massachusetts. What Thomas came up with is a headless bronze structure—a jumble of…

Picturing the Obamas and Kehinde Wiley
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Picturing the Obamas and Kehinde Wiley

I can’t recall such an unending fuss about a presidential portrait. The hoopla at the 2018 unveiling of the portraits of former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery was fairly understandable, but then came the media blitz. Every magazine and paper in the US celebrated the portraits. Likewise “The Obama Portraits Tour”…

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Sanford Biggers Is Not An Oracle

On May 11, 2021 the Smithsonian Magazine ran an article with the headline, This Monumental ‘Oracle’ Statue in NYC Subverts Traditional Sculpture. Artist Sanford  Biggers was being touted by the magazine as the first artist to be invited by the Rockefeller Center to take over their campus with a multimedia survey exhibition. He was also being applauded for exhibiting his…