Artist Birthday: Jules Olitski
Jules Olitski was a Ukrainian-born American artist who was instrumental in developing the Color Field painting style. Color Field, which involved staining canvas rather than using brushes, was the ant ...
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Curator's Corner
Artist Birthday for: Clarence Carter (1904-2000 US)
Clarence Holbrook Carter was a painter primarily known for his depictions of American life in the period between world wars (1918-1940). He is particularly well known for his riveting views of rural A ...
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Curator's Corner
Artist Birthday: John Smibert (1688-1751 US, born Scotland)
The first successful, trained painter to open a studio in the American colonies (in Boston), John Smibert represented the archetypal society portrait painter that the newly prosperous New England colo ...
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Curator's Corner
Bringing Women's History Month to a Close
There are many of what I consider “art heroes” among artists, and if anyone deserves such a title, it would be the late Miriam Schapiro (1923-2015, US, born Canada). She was a key player i ...
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Curator's Corner
Artist Birthday: George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879 US)
After portraiture had dominated the subject matter of colonial, and early American painting, genre scenes, still life, and landscape subjects all asserted importance in the early 1800s.George Caleb&nb ...
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Curator's Corner
National Let's Laugh Day
Although the origin of Let’s Laugh Day is unknown, it has been celebrated since 2019 as a way of stressing “laughter is the best medicine.” The national day stresses the benefit of l ...
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Curator's Corner
Artist Birthday: Charles Peale Polk (1767-1822 US)
Charles Peale Polk faced a rough childhood when both parents died in the same period, but Polk was fortunate to have a successful artist uncle in Philadelphia, with whom he went to live at the age of ...
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Curator's Corner
Spring is Almost Here...Really
I have not shown a Childe Hassam (1859-1935 US) since around 2012, and I am such a big fan of his painting, I could not resist celebrating the coming of spring (on 20 March) with this spring green of ...
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Curator's Corner
This Day in History 11 March, 1895: Boston Public Library
On this date, the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library was opened to the public. Called by the city the “palace of the people”, the library was the first public building in the Beau ...
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Curator's Corner
March is Women's History Month
There was a period in the early 1900s, before World War I (1914-1918) when many American artists looked to European painting for inspiration and modern modes of expression, including abstraction. Even ...
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