ARTES MAGAZINE

“We find ourselves faced with the only reality—despite ourselves we encourage our painters to reproduce us on their canvases just as we are, with our costumes and customs.” ~Émile Zola (1868) Does life imitate art, or art imitate life? Addressing that very quandary, a stunningly-curated show at the Met demonstrates how to pull out all [...]

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America, but for half-a-century he was the young country’s dominant wildlife artist. His seminal Birds of America (1827-39), a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed others’ work and remains a standard against which ornithological renditions [...]

A recent tour of the newly expanded and renovated Yale University Art Gallery, in New Haven Connecticut, has visitors treading on a little-noticed engraved marker inlayed in the stone floor of the Ancient Arts gallery. Cool winter light slants into the space from nearby Chapel Street, illuminating the inscription: ‘Col. JOHN TRUMBULL, Patriot and Artist, Friend [...]

Hurricane Sandy devastated New York’s Chelsea Gallery district. Hit particularly hard were the most prestigious street level venues. The surging Hudson River flooded the area as well as wiped out basement storage areas. Entire exhibitions were lost as well as multiple millions of dollars worth of works in basement storage areas. This was particularly devastating [...]

Scholar and art critic, Francine Koslow Miller, Ph.D., has recently completed a book, Cashing in on Culture: Betraying the Trust at the Rose Art Museum (Hol Art Books, Tucson, Arizona, 2012) investigating the chain of events that led to Brandeis University’s decision to sell off significant portions of its art collection in order to raise funds [...]

Editor’s Note: Here, Ken Yellis’ analysis of the museum world gains particular currency in today’s political climate: because, most recently, on Saturday, October 8, 2011, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington was closed after anti-war demonstrators swarmed the building to protest a drone exhibit. Security guards used pepper spray to repel them, sickening [...]

       A brisk mid-winter walk through the streets of lower Manhattan eventually led me under the iconic Romanesque arch that stands at the center of Washington Square. To my left, a uniformly-pristine row of Federalist-era, brick-and-columned town houses, standing like monuments to another, more gentile time. Over the years, NYU’s bustling urban academic community has [...]

In my small New England city, the post office was a down-scaled, classically-inspired structure of harmonious proportions, designed to serve as a symbolic link to a democratic ideal, filled with promise, several hundred miles south, in L’Enfant’s capital city of Washington, D.C.. For many years, when I was a young stamp collector, I would patiently [...]

If you are concerned about the numerous fake Salvador Dali signatures floating around, here’s another one to consider: located at the top of the Yann Weymouth designed, (HOK, http://www.hok.com/) the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, this one is etched in reinforced concrete. Distinguishing the planar façade of the building – what amounts to a [...]

New England’s harsh winds and beating rain seemed to be conspiring against me as I rushed to the airport, for a flight that I hoped would not be cancelled or delayed. My ultimate destination was 1200 miles away and much warmer—opening night of Art Basel/ Miami Beach. Carried up by a gust of wind, my [...]