Happy July 2018: Edward Penfield
I want to wish everyone a happy July, even though it pains me when I think that the summer is half over, here in New England anyway. However, what better way to ignore that idea than to focus on art? ...
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Curator's Corner
An Art Ode to Labor Day Week: Okumura Masanobu
My Labor Day Week series continues with this ukiyo-e woodcut. ...
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Curator's Corner
Sumidagawa in July: Japanese Woodcuts
The actual festival of Sumidagawa (“Sumida River”) occurs in Tokyo in the last week of August, but there are fireworks in Tokyo from May through August, starting with the Opening of the Su ...
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Curator's Corner
Not an Easter Egg
On our planet, the egg has been almost universally viewed as a symbol of rebirth and fertility since ancient times (imagine ancient eyes seeing something living come out of something hard and apparent ...
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Curator's Corner
Hanami in Spring: Terasaki Kōgyō, Katsushika Hokusai, Shibata Zeshin
With warm weather finally starting to return, I’m going to continue to celebrate spring with ART. Hanami is Japanese for “blossom viewing,” and is the name given to the annual spring ...
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Curator's Corner
New Year for the Sensibilities
Leave it to Honoré Daumier to sum up a personality that could be any number of jerks in our current narrow-minded, materialistic, me-me-me culture. In honor of the advent of 2017, I decided to ...
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Curator's Corner
First Snow Response
In the last week we had our first measurable snow in Massachusetts. I’m totally the kind of dork who’s all “it’s so pretty to walk around when it’s snowing.” And si ...
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Curator's Corner
An Autumn Idyll from Japan
One of the most fascinating things I learned (among many fascinating things) while studying Japanese culture and art when in college, was that Japanese scholars would routinely debate the virtues of a ...
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Curator's Corner
Vacation Time Activities in Art
I was on vacation recently in Provincetown and, being an art history nerd, thought I would give some visual explanations. ...
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Curator's Corner
The Expanded Toulouse-Lautrec
Last week I was a jaded art historian. This week I am a socially responsible one. I always feel it is unfortunate when appreciators of art only know one genre of the work of a certain artist. Everyone ...
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