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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Carlo Carrà

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 | Karl Cole

Carlo Carrà's work reflects the use of the Impressionist palette of pure colors by the Pointillists, while his segmenting of the subject to indicate movement reflects a similar aesthetic concer ...

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Curator's Corner

Black History Month: Woodruff, Lewis, Jennings

Monday, February 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

My celebration of Black History Month continues with three more artists who are very important in the history of art—Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, and Wilmer Jennings. They represent the divergen ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Shimizu Seifu

Monday, February 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

The Chinese had a legend of the brave carp who swam against the current on the Yellow River to mate, and few were courageous enough to swim over the Dragon Gate waterfall. Those that did turned into d ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Alfredo Jaar

Wednesday, February 5, 2025 | Karl Cole

Alfredo Jaar is an installation artist whose work is conceptual and documents injustice, genocide, ongoing famine, and other major afflictions to humanity in many parts of the world. ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Shinsui Itō

Tuesday, February 4, 2025 | Karl Cole

As an artist associated with the shin hanga movement, Shinsui Itō incorporated Western elements of perspective and attention to sculptural form into his work. He also observed compositional aspects of ...

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Curator's Corner

Black History Month: Herring, Tolliver, Middleton

Monday, February 3, 2025 | Karl Cole

I’m kicking off National Black History Month with artists I find fascinating. Their styles are extraordinary, and their names are probably not on the tips of every art historian’s tongue&m ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Alvar Aalto

Monday, February 3, 2025 | Karl Cole

Alvar Aalto designed all of the furnishings for his buildings. Using native birch, Aalto designed a number of chairs and stools made entirely of bent plywood and laminated wood. He also invented some ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Barnett Newman

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 | Karl Cole

Barnett Newman’s earliest paintings share the organic/biomorphic abstract forms of Mark Rothko’s early works from the 1940s. By 1946, however, his forms began to be more abstract and shed ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Claes Oldenburg

Tuesday, January 28, 2025 | Karl Cole

Claes Oldenburg believed that art should literally be made of the ordinary world. His theory was that the reality of art would replace everyday reality. An important early work was The Street (1960). ...

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Curator's Corner

Visualizing Cold in Works of Art

Monday, January 27, 2025 | Karl Cole

It probably does not need saying by now, but the last week has been quite cold in New England. I thought it might be interesting to see how artists visually interpret the idea of “cold.”&n ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Francis Picabia

Wednesday, January 22, 2025 | Karl Cole

Francis Picabia was a standout Cubist painter who avoided the common subject matter of Cubism, still life and portraits, opting for documenting personal experiences and memories. ...

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Curator's Corner

Jackson Pollock Month

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 | Karl Cole

The birthday of New York School painter Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) is January 28th, so I’m going to call January 2025 "Curator's Corner Jackson Pollock Month." I often feel that ...

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Curator's Corner

Humor in Art Since the 1500s

Monday, January 13, 2025 | Karl Cole

Now that winter has set in with a vengeance, I think it is the perfect time to look at some art that can elicit a smile. ...

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Curator's Corner

Happy New Year 2025: teamLab

Monday, December 30, 2024 | Karl Cole

I can’t think of a nicer way to end 2024’s blog posts than with images from the beautiful immersive digital installation, Proliferating Immense Life - A Whole Year per Year, by the Japanes ...

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Article

Editor's Letter: Collaboration

Friday, December 20, 2024 | Frank Juárez

Teaching can be a solitary experience, even if your art department has multiple art teachers. The art room becomes an island full of art, materials, and ideas. The reality is that this does not have t ...

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Article

Coolaboration

Friday, December 20, 2024 | Linda Schober

As educators, we teach skills that are valuable in the classroom as well as skills that can be carried into students’ everyday lives. Kindness and collaboration are crucial skills in all aspects ...

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