In 1774 Patrick Henry was a delegate to the Continental Congress held in Philadelphia. Along with his associate Samuel Adams (founder of the Sons of Liberty in Boston), they agitated for a war of Independence against Great Britain. As the Continental Congress proceeded, Patrick Henry rallied the colonists to unite against British rule, he proclaimed: “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians,…
This essay is not about the Art Nouveau movement, but it is about famed folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. On March 1, 2023 Mitchell received the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. But first, before I detail my reaction to the award… a repentant confession. I’m writing this as someone who, once upon a time, was a youthful enthusiast…
As an artist, I see Karl Bodmer’s artworks as key to understanding America. I discovered his works in the late 1960s and have studied them every since. He was an artist-adventurer in the mid-1800s who travelled the wilds of North America to document the lives of indigenous people with sketches, water colors, and elaborate oil paintings. I always found Bodmer’s…
In December 2022 my wife Jeannine and I fled Lost Angeles, California to vacation in the wilds of Arizona. The following impressions and photos will describe our adventures in the Wild West of the Union’s 48th state. We first visited Prescott, the historic city in Yavapai County. The population of Prescott is around 45,800 souls, which is just about the…
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”…
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…
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,…
Art In America: 300 Years Of Innovation, is a massive exhibition of American painting from the Colonial period to the present, now on display in the communist People’s Republic of China. Billed as the first survey of American art ever displayed in the “People’s Republic,” the exhibit is drawn from major U.S. and European collections, and presents 130 significant works…
