Some Flourish While Others Decline
It drives me absolutely nuts as an art historian the way Western art history textbooks treat Mesoamerican and South American cultures in a peripheral way, yet fawn all over ancient Greece and ancient ...
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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
Vietnam, part 2
Yesterday I told you about the Champa kingdom that flourished in Vietnam. For the second post in my series on Vietnamese art, I will introduce you to the development of ceramics in Vietnam. ...
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Curator's Corner
A National Treasure
Every so often it dawns on me how artists can be more than the production of their art. They can evolve to be a great gift from their country, their culture, and act as representatives of humankind&rs ...
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Curator's Corner
It's Summer
It seems that every year it takes longer and longer for summer to get here. Then when it does get here, it’s gone in a flash! I can’t think of anything bad to say about summer, well, excep ...
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Curator's Corner
Rookwood, A National Treasure
I’m a really big fan of American art pottery, so you can just imagine me doing a little jig of joy in my office when we recently acquired this gorgeous pitcher from the Brooklyn Museum! If I cou ...
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Curator's Corner
Endlessly Engaging (Ancient) Egypt
Naturally occurring pattern always fascinates me, especially when there’s a good art history story behind it. I present you with three ancient Egyptian vessels, all with different, random patter ...
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Curator's Corner
German American Heritage Month
The more things change, etc. I get really irritated with people who say in speeches that immigrants to the US should “speak American.” For one thing, “American” isn’t a l ...
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Curator's Corner
Survey No. 8: Neoclassicism
Art is produced steadily on a second-by-second basis throughout the world. In our art history survey, we are now entering the 1800s, a period in world history when the influence of art from non-Wester ...
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