Category Archives: American art

We do this here! Students curate exhibits!

From the New York Times, March 15, 2017.

On College Campuses, a New Role for Students: Museum Curator, b

Students from ARTH 317: Laboratory in Museum Studies, are curating an exhibition on the work of Margaret Sutton (1905-90), New York artist and 1926 graduate of Mary Washington. Opening is April 19, 2017.

https://nyti.ms/2mL3QxY

Reception of African-American artists

This is a fascinating article and series of short videos about how American museums are now collecting work by 20th- and 21st-c. African-American artists.

A quote from the article: “There was a joke for a long time that if you went into a museum, you’d think America had only two black artists — Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden — and even then, you wouldn’t see very much,” said Lowery Stokes Sims, the first African-American curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and later the president of the Studio Museum in Harlem. “I think there is a sea change finally happening. It’s not happening everywhere, and there’s still a long way to go, but there’s momentum.”

Randy Kennedy, “Black Artists and the March into the Museum, New York Times, 11/28/15.

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Environmental art

One of the most extraordinary works of Environmental Art is Walter de Maria’s “Lightening Field,” created in 1977 outside Quemado, New Mexico.  How does this work  encourage us to think about connections between art (that which is made by human hands) and nature (that which we find in the world)?

Walter de Maria, Lightening Field, 1977

Walter de Maria, Lightening Field, 1977

Read Blake Gopnik’s article from the Washington Post (August 13, 2009) for more…