How Art Looks at Age
Having made my weekly visit to my dear friend Alice in a senior residence—where she was committed by a state conservator—I began thinking about how society perceives older (and I refuse to ...
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Curator’s Corner
Another Art History Myth Busted
I’m sure you are all familiar with the refrain we hear in art history books about the differences between the Renaissance in Northern Europe and Italy. Well, to put it mildly, the idea that the ...
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Curator’s Corner
Early Renaissance Sculpture
Just this week, I became reacquainted with this BEAUTIFUL head from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, probably from Flanders/Burgundy. Being half-Swiss I naturally gravitated in college to the study of t ...
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Curator’s Corner
An Ode to "Swiss"
I just returned from a week in Switzerland to visit family. Walking through their churches—stripped of all sculpture, painting, and Biblical stained glass because of the Reformation’s frow ...
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Curator’s Corner
National "Something" Month IV: Books
Rounding out our “national something month” is National Book Month. You can probably imagine that I would not feature just a run-of-the-mill book for this blog. I choose instead one of the ...
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Curator’s Corner
New Acquisitions: Treasured Books
I’ve really admired the work of manuscript illuminators since I went to the Newbury Library at the University of Chicago while in grad school. I got to actually hold some of these precious works ...
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Curator’s Corner
Northern Renaissance Engraver
I like showing you works from the Renaissance period in Northern Europe. This is partly because my mother was Swiss and I wrote my master’s thesis about a Swiss Renaissance painter (yes, Switzer ...
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Curator’s Corner
Mannerism Ars Medica
With all the talk about health care reform these days, I thought it would be fun to take a look at how people in the past viewed the health care field, in art of course: apparently not that differentl ...
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Curator’s Corner
What Is Realism?
American art has always been characterized by a strong reverence for realism, from the early colonial portraits by artists such as John Singleton Copley, through the Hudson River School, and into the ...
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