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Curator's Corner

Spring Impression by a Truly Lyrical Artist

Monday, April 6, 2026 | Karl Cole

Every so often I try to explore artists whose names have never been – as the saying goes – a “household word.” That is unfortunate, because many relatively lesser well known ar ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Jimoh Buraimoh (born 1943 Nigeria)

Friday, April 3, 2026 | Karl Cole

In the early 1900s, Western artists became fascinated by African art, and the potential to use it as a springboard to abstraction. To the present day, there are many African artists who have continue ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770 Italy)

Thursday, March 5, 2026 | Karl Cole

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was a Venetian Rococo/Late Baroque painter who reinvigorated Venetian painting. He was most renowned in his time for his ambitious frescoes with which he decorated churches a ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Asger Jorn (1914-1973 Denmark)

Tuesday, March 3, 2026 | Karl Cole

Asger Jorn was a leading painter of the European post-war CoBrA artists group. The CoBrA artists sought to distance European abstraction from its tradition of geometric forms, introducing more express ...

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Curator's Corner

March 2026 is Women's History Month

Monday, March 2, 2026 | Karl Cole

I have always maintained that there is no period in history anywhere in the world when women artists did not play a significant role in the world’s cultures. Up until about fifty years ago, howe ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist's Birthday: Gabriele Münter (1877-1962 Germany)

Thursday, February 19, 2026 | Karl Cole

Like the American modernist movement Abstract Expressionism, German Expressionism was dominated by male artists with strong personalities. But there were many significant women Expressionists in Germa ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Fernand Léger (1881-1955 France)

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

The art movement called Cubism -- which incorporated the element of time -- was developed by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) around 1908. While Picasso and Braque moved on to ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Fitz Henry Lane

Thursday, December 18, 2025 | Karl Cole

At the same time the Hudson River School was flourishing in the Northeast US, some artists sought to add a spiritual aspect to American landscape painting by concentrating on light and atmosphere. ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Santiago Cárdenas

Thursday, December 4, 2025 | Karl Cole

The countries of Central and South America experienced a Renaissance of modernism in art, due in part to influences these artists derived from Europe and the United States, and more importantly, becau ...

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Curator's Corner

Art for National Fig Week: Luis Meléndez

Monday, November 3, 2025 | Karl Cole

November 1-7 is National Fig Week, and we celebrate with Baroque art! Just as very different painting styles co-existed in late Baroque France – the Rococo which catered to the nobility, and ...

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Curator's Corner

National Coffee Day: Elizabeth Murray

Monday, September 29, 2025 | Karl Cole

Cups of coffee appeared frequently in Elizabeth Murray's paintings.  National Coffee Day was first celebrated in about 2005, but did not take off as a holiday until September 29, 2009. That&rs ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Laura Shechter

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 | Karl Cole

Laura Shechter is an extraordinarily gifted, contemporary realist still life artist who is part of the large body of American artists who have persisted in pursuing the cherished American love of obse ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Jess (Collins)

Wednesday, August 6, 2025 | Karl Cole

Jess (Collins) is probably best known for his incredibly complex collages. He was a painter who initially worked as a chemist. He started doing collages in the early 1950s after seeing the works o ...

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Curator's Corner

National Oyster Day: Osias Beert, the Elder

Tuesday, August 5, 2025 | Karl Cole

Art historians consider Osias Beert possibly the first significant Baroque Flemish still life painter. The still life medium was just catching on in popularity during his period of activity, ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Gustav Klimt

Monday, July 14, 2025 | Karl Cole

Gustav Klimt, along with Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) was a leading Austrian modernist at the turn of the 1900s. Although noted as a society portrait painter in an Art Nouveau/Byzantine mosaic li ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Juan Sánchez Cotán

Wednesday, June 25, 2025 | Karl Cole

Juan Sánchez Cotán was a Spanish Baroque painter who helped popularize the still life genre in Spanish Baroque painting. Spanish Renaissance and Baroque art were greatly influenced by th ...

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