FUSION OF OLD AND NEW: INNOVATION IN TRADITIONAL ART FORMS

One of my favorite things is watching tradition take on new form. Dabu printing—an ancient Rajasthan technique—is being reinvented by contemporary designers using new color palettes and abstract motifs to create works of art for modern fashion that still preserve roots.
This is exactly the blend of traditional techniques with contemporary vision that ignites imagination. Think of:

• Silk scarves with medieval motifs on modern silhouettes
• Folk embroidery used on minimalistic décor
• Pottery designs illuminated with smart lighting

And for those who want to try art themselves, modern kits like Customisable paint by numbers make it easy for anyone to paint a personal masterpiece while keeping the creative spirit alive.

The pattern is simple: blending the old with the new creates art that resonates with modern sensibility while honoring heritage. It is how art forms survive—not by freezing in time, but by evolving.

 

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The featured artists’ work embodied this spirit of resilience and imagination.

• Portland-based interdisciplinary artist Benjamin Spalding created birds with wood, steel and acrylic, gouache, colored pencil and pastel, which brought movement and rhythm inspired by his Puerto Rican roots and nature.
• Internationally trained artist and educator Haley Nannig contributed her impressive silk work depicting historic fishing shacks washed away in the historic January 2024 storms, with layered paintings conveying the fluidity and beauty of the environment.
• Sculptor Ian Ellis provided sustainably crafted designs with natural and reclaimed elements, including steel, kelp and Irish moss to honor overlooked aspects of Maine’s ecology.
• Jordan Carey blended Bermudian craft and social critique through his expertise in fashion and kite-making, using bamboo, handmade paper and natural indigo dye for his unique creations.
• Lokotah Sanborn’s moving photomontages were influenced by his experience in community organizing for land return, cultural continuity and Indigenous sovereignty.
• Multi-media artist Michel Droge shared immersive, deep-sea–inspired paintings, drawings and film viewed through the lens of queer ecology to promote awareness and conservation of overlooked environmental areas.
• Posey (Pamela Moulton), a Franco-American multidisciplinary artist, collaborated with the community to transform salvaged fishing nets and plastic into playful, eco-mythic installations that highlight climate issues specific to Maine.

Since its first annual Challenge in 2020, Envision Resilience has been working to advance innovative planning and design in the face of climate change through student and community partnerships. By connecting current and future professionals working across disciplines, the organization creates opportunities for communities to reimagine climate challenges and inspire resilient solutions.

At its heart, Envision Resilience is a place-based, multi-university design studio and community engagement initiative, pairing student teams from participating universities with coastal communities for a semester spent researching and proposing creative ideas for challenges related to housing, stormwater management and coastal infrastructure, habitats, and ecology. But its programming also fosters innovative storytelling – harnessing art’s power to translate complex climate realities into emotionally accessible narratives. Over the past five years, Envision Resilience has bridged science, design, and art throughout communities on the front lines of climate change throughout the Northeast.

A few weeks prior to the installation at the SPACE Gallery, another exhibition unfolded at the Portland Public Library in February where visitors encountered student designs alongside the vibrant work of illustrator Lin Snow. Snow’s naturalist illustrations, with their vivid chromatic lens, provided visual reflections on ecosystem balance and climate impacts that complemented the technical innovation of the student design proposals. From living shorelines and green stormwater infrastructure to reimagined transportation systems in a low-carbon future, each design was developed through months of community engagement with Portland and South Portland residents.

Community participation is key to the challenge, not only in developing designs for the future but also in sharing and embracing that vision through a series of public exhibitions. This collaborative approach continued at the South Portland Public Library in March, where Pame Chévez Zendejas’s artwork punctuated the exhibition space. The visual artist’s work examines the natural world through compelling imagery that explores climate change impacts on ecosystems and communities. Her contributions offered striking visual reflections on resilience and adaptation, drawing parallels between student innovation and artistic interpretation.

From flood lines stenciled on sidewalks to murals that echo community voices, Envision Resilience has brought climate adaptation into public view, turning buildings and streetscapes into vivid calls for action. In October 2021, as part of their inaugural Envision Resilience Nantucket Challenge on Nantucket, the program unveiled the “Rising Above” light projection, which transformed the historic scallop shanty on Old North Wharf into a compelling story of rising seas and shifting shorelines. Owned by Nantucket native and environmental advocate Ginger Andrews, the shanty took on new life as a luminous symbol of the island’s delicate balance between preservation, adaptation, and inevitable change.

Running on a five-minute loop, a light projection of waves traced historic tides and projected future water levels created by Scenic and Projection Designer Michael Clark, reminding passersby that climate change is already at our door. For Andrews, a fifth-generation scalloper and steward of the island, the shanty became a metaphor for resilience. As she put it, “It’s knowing what you can save, what you can’t save, and getting out of the way when there’s something going down.” This breakthrough moment revealed art’s capacity to transform abstract threats into tangible, emotional experiences.

Building on this understanding of art’s power to conceptualize climate change, the 2022 Envision Resilience Narragansett Bay Challenge celebrated and supported the “The Seas Are Rising and So Are We,” a mural in Warren, Rhode Island developed by The Avenue Concept and the Town of Warren, which honors the endangered saltmarsh sparrow and the fragile habitat it calls home.

Painted by Boston artist Josie Morway, the symbols in the mural were drawn from local ecology and inspired by the first chapter of Elizabeth Rush’s Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, which chronicles the loss of a beloved tupelo tree to encroaching seas. Echoed through Warren’s streets and beyond was her haunting question: “Who do we want to become as the climate changes us?” Envision Resilience worked with their partners to spread the word and purchased copies of Rush’s book, as well as invited the author, who biked over from Providence for the event, to be available for signing.

Warren’s climate adaptation projects underscore the town’s courage in confronting hard decisions about retreat and resilience—where community advisor and then Director of Planning Bob Rulli was stewarding early phases of the first managed retreat plan for the town. The mural serves as a public gathering point for conversation and awareness, embodying the same principle that guided the Nantucket installation: making the invisible visible through art. It stands as a local reminder, connecting ecological grief with collective resolve.

Envision Resilience doubled down on their community-centered approach for the 2023 Envision Resilience New Bedford and Fairhaven Challenge in Massachusetts with a mural in New Bedford’s North End. Designed by University of Massachusetts Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts student Ethan Moyer and brought to life by local artist and organizer David Andrews, the mural captures a moment of quiet optimism: A young person gazing toward an uncertain future, framed by the neighborhood’s familiar buildings and waves flowing through their hair. The mural was chosen through a neighborhood vote and its unveiling that late summer afternoon on Acushnet Avenue became a celebration – a moment where art brought the community together to see their shared story reflected in color.

This project, born from a collaboration among Envision Resilience, New Bedford Creative, Love the Ave, MassDevelopment TDI and UMass Dartmouth, stands as a testament to the power of public art to unify diverse voices. It grounds climate adaptation in the lived experience, culture, and identity of place, which is a mission that began to take shape three years earlier on another New England coast.

From glowing light installations to colorful murals and thoughtful student designs, each project amplifies local history and perseverance. These stories build community resilience, not only in infrastructure and policy but also in how we understand ourselves and our relationship to a changing world. As Envision Resilience moves beyond 2025, its mission grows bolder and broader. The Portland and South Portland exhibitions this year illustrated a commitment to embedding climate adaptation into everyday life, making it a shared, visible endeavor that connects communities and their parallel climate challenges throughout the Northeast

Envision Resilience reveals art’s transformative power and reinforces the importance of collaboration, creativity and hope in imagining equitable and adaptive futures.

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So, to create this article, we consulted professional artists who manage to find buyers for their paintings and earn their talents. Yes, imagine, they do exist in reality. If you want to become an artist, here’s what the pros had to say.

Tip 1: Learn the Basics

All sciences and crafts begin with basic knowledge. If you attended art school, you just need to refresh the information you got there. If you just picked up a pencil for the first time, it’s a good idea to enroll in drawing and painting classes or at least finds online art classes, read textbooks, and listen to audio courses. A true artist should be able to mix paints on their own and understand what color and color scale, shadow and penumbra, proportions and perspective are. These basics are not dead theory; they are basic knowledge that makes work easier.

An artist also needs to know exactly what tools they need to best do what they love to do. Then, when you decide on your style and technique, study it more thoroughly. And not to imitate another, but solely for the sake of mastering the secrets of skill.

Tip 2: Do Not Get Hung Up Going In Only One Direction

Many experienced artists are aware of their weaknesses. For example, one painter perfectly paints landscapes, but understanding the complexities of human anatomy was something he could not master, even after years of effort.

You can learn a lot by improving your knowledge and skills to become a universal artist and a master. Try to expand your horizons, discover new directions and styles, the culture of different eras, the art of different countries. Try to apply all the findings and techniques in your practice.

A narrow vision is not good for an artist; a creator should be able to go beyond the established patterns. Try to mix different styles and techniques. Your work will immediately become more interesting.

Tip 3: Study All Kinda and Genres of Fine Art

It is said that real artists must understand all the nuances of fine art. It is necessary not only to be able to draw with pencils and paints but also to study different techniques. You will only benefit if you learn how to work with various mediums: crayons, oil, acrylics, and watercolor. In addition, at least learn the basics of graphics editors. It’s an important component for business if nothing else. You’ll be able to process photos of your work or design a brochure and invitations for an exhibition.

Tip 4: Work Every Day

If the best testament for a writer is “not a day without a line,” then for an artist, it must be “not a day without a drawing,” or better several. Experienced artists know how quickly the quality of work increases if you force yourself to do 30 sketches a day. It takes a lot of work to become a true artist, to develop your original and recognizable style, to find your “zest.” Dedicate at least 30 minutes a day to creativity. Inspiration is a capricious thing it does not always come, and often not at the moment when it is required. In rare cases, images or stories come to us almost ready-made. As a rule, everything is revealed in fragments, literally in crumbs.

So, what to do if there is no inspiration for too long? Keep working, overcome all the difficulties and build your creative life step by step, day by day. One painter I know, on occasions, when there are no new ideas and inspiration for a long time, just paints the view out the window. He lives in the center of St. Petersburg, so it’s not hard for him to find beauty.

Tip 5: Learn From The Greats

It is very useful for an artist to study in-depth the work of acknowledged masters. If you can’t see the paintings of famous artists, then study albums of fine arts, the Internet will help you! Try to look for the smallest details of the paintings of great artists of the past, who immortalized their names in art.

Do not forget that copying is welcome for educational purposes and despised for imitative purposes.

Tip 6: Try to Create Something New

An artist needs to hone his or her skills in the pursuit of perfection, such as depicting butterflies. To do this, you need to increase your skill level with daily exercises. In time, the exercises will lead to other priorities in your art. If you want to become an artist that everyone will recognize, you have to find a way to create work that hasn’t existed before you and offer the world a whole new product.

Some artists spend their entire lives painting nymphs as they were taught at art school and remain anonymous, despite their obvious talent and skill. Finding a new avenue in art is very difficult and painstaking work. Perhaps what you create today will be a total failure, or perhaps the opposite, a masterpiece. And you’ll never know until you try it.

Tip 7: Don’t Be Afraid to Show Your Paintings To the World

Artists who paint but do not show their work to the world should not hope for lifetime fame. You should not only create masterpieces but also show them to people.

Even if you create only for yourself, it never hurts to show your work to those who understand art. Many novice painters are afraid of criticism. But are you really going to let someone lower your self-esteem? You’ve put so much thought, effort and time into your work, only to have it relegated to a dark closet? That certainly doesn’t sound like a wise decision. Especially today when the Internet allows any creative person to showcase the product of their talent. You don’t have to have a one-artist exhibition right away.

Your paintings don’t have to be masterpieces or even finished works. You can simply publish a report on your blog about how a painting called “Portrait of a Lady in Blue” or “Sunrise over the Bay” is going. The more often you show your work, the easier it will be for you to deal with criticism. And, most importantly, this way you’ll be more likely to know what direction you should take.

Tip 8: Enjoy Criticism

A few more words about criticism. Artists who live around people always get comments on their work. If an artist can’t listen to criticism calmly, then what kind of an artist is he? So be happy with any comments, both positive and negative, because they are necessary for your development.

If they criticize you, take it to heart, but don’t take others’ words as an attempt to humiliate you. If you are a beginning artist, you should listen especially carefully. Suddenly, there is something you can learn. In this case, you don’t need to abandon your original style, but perhaps adjust to incorporate other valid ideas and input. 

Tip 9: Speak More With Fellow Artists

More experienced artists can give you tips, teach you something new, or give a helpful comment about your work, looking at it with a fresh professional eye.

Attend creative workshops. It’s a great way to see how contemporary art lives, in what direction it’s developing. In the end, networking with your colleagues is always useful. Thanks to professional acquaintances you will have a better chance of being invited to an exhibition or finding buyers for your paintings.

Tip 10: Don’t Paint for the Sole Purpose of Making Someone Happy

The artist’s job is to find beauty, to create and share their experiences with the world, and then to move on. You don’t have to dwell on one painting for a long time and think about how else to improve it. No need to constantly worry about how the audience will react to your work. Don’t try to create to please any audience, otherwise, it won’t be art, but a commercial enterprise.

Author Bio: Gabriella Tou leads freelance projects as a content writer. She will give you the best recommendations on how to write my college essay. Gabriella is inspired by nature and paintings.

All images: https://www.pexels.com

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What Types of Objects Can Be Insured?

You can insure pretty much any piece of art you have in your home. It can be made of precious stones or metals, or even from everyday materials like wood, clay, stone, or even paper. Besides art pieces and sculptures, you can also insure antique furniture, coins, etc. Moreover, the things you want to insure do not have to be old and extremely expensive nor something from today’s top collectible artists. Quite the contrary, they can be works of living artists or something you are emotionally attached to.

In short, fine art pieces that you should definitely insure are those unique pieces that are impossible to replace, pieces that you often lend to museums, collections whose value would increasingly drop if just one of the pieces would get damaged, or pieces that are just too old and fragile. It’s simple. There is fine art moving insurance for any art piece in your home.

What Does the Fine Art Moving Insurance Cover?

The things your insurance covers, of course, depend on the insurance company itself. In general, all insurance companies take complete responsibility and claim that they will cover all risks. However, there are always some coverage exclusions. For instance, if your fine art gets damaged during the move because of fire, flood, or another natural disaster, you will get full compensation. Or, if your pieces get stolen or lost, the insuring company will take all the responsibility too. But, if there is a war, or if you are keeping your pieces in a storage unit with moths and vermin, you will probably not get your money back. So, when choosing an insurance company, be sure to ask the insuring agent about all scenarios they do and do not cover. 

How do the Insurers Value the Fine Art Pieces?

Another question you should ask your insuring agent is how are fine art pieces valued. This can be pretty subjective, and it will, once again, depend on your insurance company. If you want to get the exact prices and answers to all of your questions, it would be best to contact the company and ask for an estimate. They will be more than happy to do it. Or simply ask your art agent if you have one. But, in general, the value of your fine art pieces will depend on the following aspects: 

• Purchase price 
• The item’s value in the time of the damage/loss
• Declared value 
• Replacement cost 

You may be surprised at the prices when you first hear or see them, but do not let that scare you. Insuring fine art comes with a hefty price tag simply because those pieces are expensive themselves! Just think about it – how much money did you spend on a particular piece, or how much money will you need to pay if something goes wrong with your art? 

How to Find A Reliable Fine Art Moving Insurer? 

Finding somebody who will take full responsibility for your fine art is extremely hard. There are, of course, many insurance companies out there that deal with these kinds of things, just like there are companies that deal with buying and selling fine art, but you must make sure that the company you chose is reliable and high-principled.

The first thing you should do is ask various people for recommendations. These should be people you trust and those who have some experience dealing with art or, even better, moving it. If you cannot find anybody who can recommend an insurance company that will cover art during the moving process, turn to the Internet and do thorough research on the companies you find there. A background check is a must. Be sure to check the company’s website, social media, comments section, and what other people say about them on various forums. That is the only way you can find a reliable fine art moving insurer. 

What Will Your Job Be?

Fine art moving insurers are there only if something goes wrong with your art. This means that everything else must be done either by you or by a moving company. The cheapest option will be to have a DIY kind of relocation. But keep in mind that this kind of relocation will consume a lot of your time, energy, nerves, and ultimately, money. Not to mention that it will be a lot more complex and stressful. On the other hand, hiring professional movers will be more expensive. But, with their professional help, you will be sure that your fine art pieces will arrive at your new address intact and ready to enjoy in their new home.

If you opt for the second option, be sure to find the best moving and the most reliable moving company out there. It should not be just any moving company, but one that specializes in moving fine art. Those professionals are the only ones who know how to properly pack and prepare any art piece for your upcoming relocation. After all, while fine art moving insurance will compensate for any damages, it’s in your best interest to do your best to prevent anything from happening in the first place. 

Author Bio: Angela Simmons has been working for Simplify Valet Storage & Moving. She specializes in moving art pieces and similar specialty items. In her free time, Angela also enjoys going to museums and art galleries. She is a wife, a mother of two, and a cat owner.

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But in a time full of darkness, there is a beacon of light for both art lovers and artists as The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (mowna) announces their new online Biennial, a museum born out of the pandemic and specifically designed for the digital age. Launching Friday, April 30, 2021, the show will run until September 22, 2021, and features an international pool of artists selected from 44 countries throughout the world.

Co-founders Cari Ann and Joey Zaza created this new online Biennial with the goal of supporting artists by not only showcasing their work, but also helping them make a living. In fact, 70% of the profits earned by the museum through membership sales, store sales, and ticket sales go directly to the artists!

The Museum spent the greater half of January and February selecting artists to participate in their new online Biennial and they are proud to announce they will be supporting over 100 artists on their digital platform with over 20 hours of content to be viewed from images, paintings, drawings, videos, fashion, sculptures, photography, and much more.

Co-founder Joey Zaza says “there’s nowhere else that you can see this collection of art, in this way. There are hours of artwork to explore, play with, and listen to, twenty-four hours a day.”

Featured works include “The Lockdown”, a VR sonic memory installation by Mana Saei, “Planes of resistance” an empathy experiment to explore the world from the vantage point of a black woman using autobiographical acrylic compositions and sound by Linda Rebeiz, a Lebanese-Senegalese artist living in Accra, Ghana, “ERRANDS”, a portrait series documenting our shared shelter-in-place experiences by Zachary Handler of Baltimore, Maryland who will perform 3 slots of portraits per week for the month of May to museum guests, first come, first serve. “Susan” is an interactive augmented/virtual reality and video sculpture web experience by Sue Roh, a Brooklyn-based Korean-American multimedia artist navigating the IRL and URL. “Black Man in America” is a film by Vance Brown and Justina Kamiel Grayman from New York, NY. An interactive new-media installation, “AuxeticBreath”, visualizes the rhythmic respiratory rate, as well as tidal volume of collective human breaths using soft robotics covered with auxetic structures by Hyejun Younof Salzburg, Austria. “PETSCII leaks” by ailadi, an Italian artist whose works have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, are a series of ASCII inspired gif comics. A series of experimental music videos from the opera “The Magic Hummingbird” by Joseph Martin Waters from San Diego, CA will also be shown.

To kick off the Biennial, mowna will host a special screening of the feature doc The Faithful: The King, The Pope, The Princess, by Annie Berman on April 30th at 9 pm Eastern Time. The opening event will also be followed by a Q&A and a first look at the entrance to the Biennial!

Tickets and museum memberships can be purchased on their website, https://www.mowna.org/.

About mowna

mowna seeks to create an ever changing, fun, thoughtful, beautifully designed space to encourage awareness and mindfulness through the exhibition and experience of art and serves the public’s need for art for the highest good of all. By addressing the current needs of not only the artist but also the audience, mowna is breaking barriers within the global art community.

mowna offers the preservation of artworks through an online collection that is an educational resource and archive for its members and its artists, and aims to find, display, and support wild and newfangled art through the incorporation of innovative new technologies and mediums. mowna provides artists with financial compensation for their art and expands awareness of their talents via a sustainable platform where they can flourish.

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Why Colonization?

Of course, the reason for colonization of these places had more to do with the industrialization of Europe and a need for their resources than a desire to learn about their culture or art. Colonization meant taking over an area and changing their economy, religion, and social structure. Social Darwinism justified their actions as they considered these people lower in the evolutionary hierarchy and therefore more primitive than themselves.

Some Europeans were beginning to branch out their way of thinking, especially artists, and we’re looking for something different to explore rather than copying the old masters as generations before had done. Their belief in themselves as the top of the food chain, as far as social Darwinism was concerned, meant they justified their actions in taking whatever they wanted from those they colonized or other countries they deemed “primitive”. 

Modernist artists wanted to create something different from what was generally accepted by the academia of the time, and primitive art was the way to go.

Why Steal from Other Cultures?

The Western world was changing, ideologies such as capitalism and communism were rising and falling, and artists were responding to the changes by expanding the definition of art. Why did artists turn to these other cultures for inspiration in their artwork?

During the early twentieth century, many of the perceived attributes of tribal cultures and pre-Christian religions were also on the minds of Europeans, such as uninhibited spontaneity and sexual expression. Was Primitivism a way to express discontent with expected European social behavior? Dissatisfied with the limits of European art, artists enjoyed a fresh view of the art of primitive cultures, finding a sincerity they had lost.

Simplifying the Native

However, the cultures that these Europeans idealized were not ones they knew a lot about. They developed a simplistic understanding, structured by the primitivist’s desires, their lack of knowledge of other societies, and racism. Did artists also fall into this category, inspired by a simplistic view of native art?

Although Modernists used the motifs of colonialized indigenous peoples as inspiration for their break from European traditions, did they impose their meaning to the artwork they were affected by? To take a cross, the symbol of Christianity, and use it inappropriately or casually in a painting might offend some people of that faith. The reason Western Modernist artists did not think twice about appropriating other culture’s images into their art was because of the primitive label they had given them, in response to Europeans’ belief in their superiority.

What Made it Primitive Art?

Primitive stylistic traits, as defined by Europeans of that time, included simple outlines, symbolic signs, distorted figures, and repetitive patterns. Copying these things into their artwork didn’t make their finished products African or Asian, but it did make them very different than traditional European art that was acceptable at that time.

Credit Where It’s Due

Does the inclusion of other culture’s motifs create an entirely new style or genre of art, or do we simply continue to call it European art because of the artist’s nationality? Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is not completely African, but it isn’t completely European either. Yet abstract art and cubism are accredited to Western evolution.

African masks, for instance, with their non-realistic and symbolic human or animal forms, had been using abstract shapes and forms before this time but did not achieve the status of changing history as cubism artists did after copying their style. Is this because Africa was not considered as evolved by the Westerners of the time? If Europe had invented the fork, only after seeing it used in one of their colonized countries, would it still be attributed to them? This is a part of cultural appropriation where not only does the dominant force adopt an element from a subordinate culture, but also receives credit for it.

Japanese Influence on European Art

During the Kaei era in Japan, foreign merchant ships began to visit the country, ending their national isolation, and exposing European artists to their style of art. Japanese woodblock prints were easy to reproduce and distribute and became a strong influence in modern art. Certain aesthetic properties were of particular interest to European artists such as the presentation of space, off-centered arrangements, vibrant colors, and light with no shadows.

As well, the subject of many of the prints included everyday life themes, which corresponded with the Realism movement of the late 1900s. This movement, as well as others after it, was inspired by the Japanese use of flat color in large areas of their prints, with limited graduation, which technique drew attention to the surface of their artwork. Realists used various techniques to promote pictorial constructions rather than illusionism in their paintings including rough brush strokes and textured canvas surfaces.

Henri Matisse’s Red Room and Paul Gauguin’s The Vision after the Sermon both contain large areas of flat red color. How much they were influenced by Japanese art? Again, Western artists saw things in these foreign prints that they liked and therefore began emulating them. Can the resulting art still be considered completely European, even though the artists were?

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by Japanese prints, as seen in his painting, At the Moulin Rouge. We can compare it to the woodblock print of Japanese artist, Yoshiiku. They both have similar spatial diagonals and strong line patterns, especially in the background. These motifs are what make this painting interesting and noteworthy. The half shown figures, the colors (especially the bright green on the woman’s face), and the background, all could be inspired by Asian or other cultures’ artwork. The woman with the green face reminds us of a mask, perhaps an African mask. Perhaps it was a reference to her social standing as compared to colonized indigenous people, in the hierarchy of social Darwinism. Other artists who also used Japanese aesthetics in their artwork include Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Degas.

The Art Nouveau artists liked the decorative quality of Japanese images, with artists such as Aubrey Beardsley incorporating their style into his artwork. His illustration, The Peacock Skirt, has the same graceful curving lines and delicate patterns as Japanese prints. Comparing his use of natural patterns and imagery to Japanese woodblock prints, with their strong line elements, could also have influenced his choice of focusing on line drawing.

Other Cultures That Were Stolen from Africa and Oceanic Colonies

Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, incorporated elements from other cultures. Some of the women’s faces were based on African or Iberian sculpture, which may also have represented their status in society (women working in a brothel) as equal to the primitive colonized peoples, according to the social hierarchy of the times. Picasso collected African and Oceanic artifacts, like many people of that time. Did people’s collections emphasize their feelings of ownership of the art and serve as permission to copy such motifs? Also, because of the anonymity (artists of Africa and the Oceanic did not always sign their pieces, and were not singled out by Westerners) of their artwork, and because it was labeled Folk Art, did European artists have an easier time rationalizing their plagiarism? 

Henri Matisse was another artist influenced by African sculpture. He found that African art techniques of simplification increased emotion without always being realistic. This description could also be used for other modern art movements such as cubism and abstract art. Some of Matisse’s works show simple structures and lines. La Danse, from 1909, with nude figures dancing, painted with little detail or attention to proportions, makes us think of a tribal ritual or dance. Was this painting in some way showing a celebration of nature? Was Matisse celebrating his new freedom in creating artwork that rejected the conventional models?

Artistic Movements That Were Influenced by Other Cultures

Other artistic movements affected by other culture’s artwork were the German Expressionists, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists. All incorporated stylistic elements from the artifacts of Africa, Oceania, and the native peoples of the Americas.

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. The use of another culture’s art as inspiration or a guide for artists trying to break away from conventional European art would fall into this category. The artifacts shipped to Europe after colonization could have been important religious or sacred items for the indigenous cultures. Western colonizers of that time did not respect such local traditions and generally attempted to convert their settlements to Christianity.

However, the term cultural appropriation does not seem completely correct in the aspect of art, since it suggests that their culture was stolen from them. Can a place’s culture be stolen through sculptures and artifacts? Other actions on the part of Western colonizers crushed and replaced indigenous cultures, confirming that stolen artifacts alone do not doom cultural survival.

As well, European artists did not integrate the same meaning behind the stolen artifacts into their own culture (the religious or traditional beliefs or uses), rather the Modernists generally just used the motifs they liked. Perhaps exploitation would better fit the European’s actions. They used the aesthetics of another culture to their advantage and ultimately received credit for it. However, the ideas and images of Modernists might not have been explored if not for the colonization of other countries, and the exportation of their art and artifacts.

Perhaps it is not wrong to borrow motifs and ideas from other cultures, as long as respect is paid to their origins and permission is obtained. We are inspired by everything and everyone around us, but we should be careful not to use our advantages to appropriate other people`s or culture`s ideas in a way that they would not approve of or without giving credit. These works were also used in a propaganda sense, as they showed Europe’s dominion over their colonized areas. This wasn’t a new idea, as art has been used as propaganda throughout history.

Works Cited:

Hegel Goutier, Picasso and the African Masters, The Courier, 9 (December/January/February 2009): retrieved 12 April 2010.

Ian Chilvers. Primitivism, A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art. 1999. Encyclopedia.com, 18 April 2010

Henri Matisse, retrieved 14 April 2010. Kleiner, Fred, and Christin Mamiya. Gardner’s Art Through The Ages, 12th ed. California: Wadsworth, 2005.

Primitive Art, Art and Popular Culture, 2010. The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia, 1 February 2010.

Primitivism, Art and Popular Culture, 2010. The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia, 4 February 2008

About the author: Diane H. Wong used to be a business coach. Besides, she is a writer at DoMyWriting where she prefers to spend her spare time working out marketing strategies. In this case, she has an opportunity to share her experience with others and keep up with advancing technologies.

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If you are picking up the college right now, you might have already realized that the options are infinite! So make sure you check out this list of the top seven universities that offer the best art programs in the country.

Yale University

For years now, Yale University has been stealing everyone’s thunder as the best MFA programs college, which is no surprise as it is Yale – one of the oldest and most reputable schools in the country. But along with its impressive history and medieval campus style, it’s anything but outdated. Yale’s neoteric classrooms and studios are up and running to fuel creativity and action.

The choice of fine arts is endless! They have a School of Architecture, Music, Art, and Drama with dozens of specialties to choose from, where painting and photography deserve special attention.

Along with that, there is a vibrant arts and cultural life with hundreds of exhibits hosted each year, museums and galleries with a wealth of content, and over 200 annual concerts, many of which you can enjoy for free. The competition is high, and so are the tuition costs. Quality comes at a price, right?

Rhode Island School of Design

RISD has deep faith that practice makes perfect and implements this principle in their art and design studies. Here, you won’t be bored with tons of theoretic assignments but rather encourages you to spend hours in a studio bringing your ideas to life and polishing your techniques.

The number of specialties is rich. The school offers degrees in architecture, photography, painting, sculpture, glass, and different areas of design. And as the classes don’t usually exceed 1o individuals, every student of the group can have valuable time with their classmates and teachers.

As far as tuition costs go, studying here will cost you a good dollar but figures speak for themselves: 9 of 10 graduates get employed within the first three years of graduating.

California Institute of the Arts

Not without vanity, CalArts is one of the best schools to become a professional artist. Housing sic separate arts schools, it offers over 70 comprehensive degree programs in visual, performing, media, and literary arts of both bachelor and master level. There’s even a doctorate program, so if you see yourself as a Performer-Composer, you can get a Doctorate of Music Arts degree here.

For itchy feet, there are plenty of opportunities to go abroad on an exchange program, participate in international festivals and seminars, or get an internship. Current destinations include France, Taiwan, Mexico, Portugal, Scotland, and Italy, among others.

Maryland Institute College of Art

Founded in 1826, Maryland Institute College of Art is the oldest American art college with quite a mystical history. While it survived two huge fires (surprisingly, both happened on the same day and month – February 7) it never lost its former greatness and continued training students and hosting art-specific events.

Today, the College of Art hosts an array of pre-college, post-bachelor, BFA, and MFA programs, as well as studio art courses for young people, where some of them are partially or fully online.

The list of specialties is huge; here, you’ll find programs on graphic design, photography, architecture, ceramics, painting, filmmaking, game design, theatre, and more. Its gem, however, is the UX design program, which focuses on the intersection between art and technology. Plus, the program is fully online, so you can enjoy both art and studies from the comfort of your cozy room.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is not usually associated with art studies and training, but it turns out they have something to impress young artists. Introduced in 2009, its Art, Culture, and Technology program was born from the merger of the Visual Arts Program and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the latter of which has been operating since the end of the 1960s and has brought up many interdisciplinary artists.

It’s not an art program in the traditional sense. Each year, it enrolls as little as six individuals and looks rather like a combination of visual art studies and experimentation, where students are encouraged to participate in other MIT programs and use the benefits of its laboratories. In the end, graduates receive a Master of Science degree, so this might not be the option for everyone. But if you’re looking for an art and tech mix background, getting a diploma from one of the best technical universities in the country is a great way to jumpstart your career.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

As one of the top three art schools in the US, this private university grew up from an art students’ cooperative into today’s museum and school with comprehensive artistic education. The courses of study include art technology, administration, theory and criticism, art therapy, as well as many hands-on specialties, such as architecture, painting and drawing, photography, sculpture, animation, fiber, and writing among others. 

The SAIC campus includes seven buildings and is located in the immediate vicinity of the Art Institute of Chicago. It also owns a few additional buildings that serve as student galleries. In a 2002 survey carried out by Columbia University’s National Arts Journalism Program, the School was called the most influential art school in the nation. 

Savannah College of Art and Design

Founded in 1978 to grant degrees that were yet unavailable in the southeast of the US, the SCAD grew, and its expansion now includes two schools in Georgia, an online degree educational program, and another school abroad in Lacoste, France. The College has all the necessary accreditations, and each year it enrolls over 14,000 students from home and internationally.

As much as it can brag about its student diversity, it offers a truckload of different specialties. Along with more traditional programs in architecture, filmmaking, painting, photography, and performing arts, there is a good selection of IT specialties on user experience design, game development, and immersive reality. However, if you are more into creating tangible objects that have practical value, you should appreciate their BFA and MFA programs on furniture design, jewelry, or fibers. 

Its message can’t be ignored either: SCAD works closely with local authorities and puts a lot of effort to preserve Savannah’s architectural heritage by restoring old buildings and using them as their facilities. Today, the campus includes 67 buildings, a good number of which has kept that Southern Gothic feel and antique beauty, which can be one of the best sources of inspiration for an art student.

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About the Author:

Floyd Colon was born March 12, 1990, and grew up in Texas, USA, learning about courses of art. Floyd now lives in Colorado with his wife and son. Floyd enjoys writing as a freelancer for Pro-papers. When not writing bestselling novels, he likes to breed domestic rabbits.

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Globalization

Art and insurance are both global businesses. However, as it is internationalized, art becomes vulnerable to more interruptions and uncertainty.

According to the South China Morning Post, the results from a Christie’s auction house’s annual show in 2017 revealed that clients in Asia spent more on non-Asian art and artifacts than Asian pieces. Despite a growing appetite for Western art in China, the trade war and political unrest has taken a toll on consumption. For example, a New York art gallery expanded to Beijing and Hong Kong, but closed due to uncertainty. In the United Kingdom, the world’s second largest art market, Brexit is having a similar impact on the art market.

The unknown will continue to impact the global art market in the new year, affecting both appetite and prices. Failing to find solutions to these overarching issues will lead to negative impacts on art consumption. After all, the art market, like any other financial market, does not thrive on uncertainty.

On the positive side of globalization, art is flourishing in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and Russia – markets that helped stabilize prices during the last global financial crisis. The value of Arab states in the art market is reinforced by recent expansion like The Louvre and Guggenheim’s new locations in Abu Dhabi. Russia’s hot market, however, may see some softening in 2020 because of sanctions and fluctuations in the petroleum market.

Climate Change

Collectors, galleries and institutions will continue to grapple with climate change exposure. According to the World Meteorological Organization, over 62 million people around the world were impacted by extreme weather in 2018. The uptick in extreme weather events – from hurricanes and wildfires to subzero cold and drought – all factor into how art needs to be handled, transported, displayed and stored.

There are different exposures to art based on zip codes. In the event of a catastrophic loss, insurers know what the exposure is and how it has been priced. Since 2005, insurance professionals have focused on aggregate issues, or accumulation of exposure, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Rita to ensure there is enough reserve to fulfill policyholder’s claims.

The art world will also continue to struggle with rising water levels. The World Meteorological Organization’s report also claimed that over 35 million people were affected by flooding in 2018. Coastal cities that serve as hubs for the industry, like Miami, Venice, Amsterdam, and New York, are a growing area of concern. Conversations about how to best safeguard the art will continue in the upcoming year – with everything from moving facilities to building new systems to protect priceless works. 

The damage that was caused and the significant losses were, to some degree, a surprise to the insurance industry, which had never seen seasons with that degree of intensity. Areas faced with wildfires, as well as surrounding areas, become more susceptible to flooding while recovering. This increased risk is a result of the dramatic change in terrain and the ground’s diminished ability to absorb water. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says that areas affected by wildfires are at increased risk for up to five years to face flash flooding and mudflows, even if they were not typically flood-prone areas in the past. 

Wildfires continue to intensify in both scope and frequency. In 2016 and 2017, California was hit by major brushfire losses. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there were 65,575 wildfires in 2016 and 71,499 wildfires in 2017. In 2016 5.4 million acres were burned, and in 2017 it increased to 10 million acres, which was higher than the 10-year average.

This is a major concern for the art industry, since fire makes the restoration process of damaged art very difficult, and at times impossible. Fire can completely consume artwork, and smoke and heat damage can lead to significant challenges. All art collectors, especially people in fire-prone areas, need to invest in art insurance or risk losing their pieces for good.

Escalation of Art Values

In 2020 art values will continue their sharp upward trajectory as wealth increases around the world. According to The Art Market 2019, a report written by founder of Arts Economics, Dr. Clare McAndrew, the art market was valued at $67.4 billion in 2018, a six percent increase from the year before.

The spread of wealth around the world has expanded art worldwide, especially in China – now home to the world’s most billionaires, India, and Saudi Arabia; access to disposable incomes to acquire artwork has increased consumption. However, this becomes a matter of supply and demand; there are only so many historic artworks available for purchase.

Overall, there are many changes on the horizon within the art market in the new decade. Similar to other areas of business, the art world will need to prepare for and adapt to challenges presented by societal, economic, and environmental concerns. Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how these obstacles are overcome, and how it will impact the way art is bought, sold, and protected.

Joe Dunn has served as president & CEO of Huntington T. Block (HTB) for nearly 15 years.  HTB is the leading specialty fine art insurance brokerage firm in the United States and manages exclusive underwriting facilities for Lloyd’s of London. Joe has grown the practice by successfully leading the team by providing risk management and insurance solutions to the fine art industry. Sources: South China Morning Post, World Meteorological Organization, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Interagency Fire Center, The Art Market 2019, and Arts Economics.

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By Linda Mariano

In today’s world of art and art collections, it’s not unusual to find a private collection turned into a world class museum collection, but it is rare to find one that revolves around sculpture—and becomes a museum. At Austin’s UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum that’s exactly what you have. The UMLAUF exhibits the works of Charles Umlauf, the artists that influenced him, and other contemporary sculptors and artists in a fabulous natural setting. Beginning as his home and studio, then donated in 1985 to the city of Austin for public enjoyment, the UMLAUF has become a vital component of Texas’ vibrant visual arts community.

We recently spoke with Executive Director, Sarah Story, about her appointment to the UMLAUF and her vision for the museum’s future. Since starting her position in April 2018, Story has expanded the exhibitions, programs, and led the institution through a rebranding which increased museum attendance by 35% in the past year alone. Her enthusiastic demeanor and love and appreciation of art comes naturally, having been raised in a family of artists and receiving her BFA in painting and Masters in Art Administration. You might say she was groomed for her new role from an early age. After several positions at other museums, including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses, and Rowan Oak, Home of William Faulkner, she says she’s “excited about leading the museum to operate efficiently in order to have the most impact possible in exhibitions, programs, and events for the community.”

The Michael Ray Charles Exhibition

And that brings us to the newest exhibition at the UMLAUF by internationally-renowned artist Michael Ray Charles. “Not only does Michael Ray make powerful, important art, but he has been collecting historical pop culture sculptural objects for years that inflect his art,” the UMLAUF’s curator, Katie Robinson Edwards, said. “Visitors will have a chance to see his current work in the context of the objects and themes that have inspired him.”

The exhibition, Michael Ray Charles, consists of three groups of images that inflect one another: a series of new drawings Charles created specifically for the UMLAUF show, his complete 2018 Flatbed Press print portfolio (featuring a poem written in response to the prints by poet and professor Meta DuEwa Jones), and historical objects lent from Charles’ personal research collection. Viewers will see that Charles uses his amassed collection of cultural objects to inspire his thought-provoking images of commentary on the social, cultural, and visual stereotypes and biases of black people in today’s world. It’s a reflection of the past, a statement of the present, and a hope and revelation for changing the future.

Dr. Cherise Smith, the Chair and Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Executive Director of the Galleries at Black Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote about the exhibition, “While somewhat distinct, the three groups give testament to the importance of history and historic objects to Charles’ artistic practice. Particularly evident is how Charles functions as an archivist, one who collects material and visual culture, not just to feed his imagination, but also to make a meaningful intervention in popular culture.”

“We want our exhibitions to be ever-more relevant to the wide variety of people who make up Austin and the many tourists who come to visit,” Story added. “The Michael Ray Charles exhibition boasts the perfect combination of old and new, and ties into the Austin community seamlessly. He is a talented, thoughtful artist, and we are so grateful to have the opportunity to bring his important work to Austin.”

The Whole Community Philosophy

Tying back to the community takes multiple forms at the UMLAUF—and it’s multi-faceted. The collection of more than 200 sculptures, paintings, and drawings by 20th century American sculptor, Charles Umlauf, is used as a teaching tool to encourage the understanding and appreciation of sculpture. Visitors, teachers, and students alike can take a stroll through the garden to find an incredible collection of touchable bronze sculptures.

The UMLAUF has worked with the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI) to develop a program of Touch Tours. TSBVI faculty trained the UMLAUF’s docents and volunteers to ensure blind and visually impaired patrons have the best experience and engagement possible. At the UMLAUF, they invite and encourage you to “touch the art.” In an effort to make art accessible to everyone, the UMLAUF has implemented a program for the deaf community as well with captioned orientation videos and docents trained to interpret in sign language.

It’s Sarah Story’s influence once again. It’s a belief in the cascading impact of art and its importance and influence at all levels that becomes a key to the future of art. Quite simply, Story believes: “Museums are an asset to the community because they bring people from diverse lifestyles and backgrounds into a place that allows for contemplation, interaction, participation and discussion. Art can be a nonthreatening catalyst to spark productive conversations and interactions.”

The UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum continues to fulfill Charles Umlauf’s goal of giving pleasure and enjoyment to the people of Texas and beyond. It is also fulfilling Story’s belief in the power and sway of art on the community at large.

About the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum

The UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded around a vast collection of work by American sculptor Charles Umlauf. The UMLAUF exhibits the work of Charles Umlauf, artists who influenced him, and other contemporary sculptors in a natural setting, and provides educational experiences that encourage the understanding and appreciation of sculpture. For more information, visit www.umlaufsculpture.org, or call (512) 445-5582. The UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum is located at 605 Azie Morton Road (formerly Robert E. Lee Road), Austin TX 78704.

Linda Mariano is the Editor-in-Chief for Art Business News and Managing Director of Marketing for Redwood Media Group. With a career that spans 30 years, Mariano is a leader in marketing, brand management, e-commerce and promotion initiatives for major retailers, specialty retail, art industry, licensing partnerships, media and entertainment, as well as entrepreneurial business environments. For Redwood Media Group, Linda oversees the marketing and brand extension efforts of the company.

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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco, California 

Richard Mosse: Incoming | Oct. 26, 2019 – Feb. 17, 2020

From 2014 to 2016, artist Richard Mosse documented the mass migration and displacement of people unfolding across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in an attempt to find “adequate images” for today’s society. Filmed with a military-grade camera that detects and images body heat across great distances, these powerful scenes are on view in the exhibition Richard Mosse: Incoming. Epic in scope and by turns lyrical and vivid, and harrowing and violent, the three-channel video projection Incoming depicts major flows of migrants from regions in Africa and the Middle East to emergency shelters in Europe. The heat-vision camera used creates otherworldly footage that renders covert viewing visible and implicates us — the audience — in seeing our fellow humans as others. This immersive video installation will be accompanied by panoramic photographs from The Castle, a series of “heat maps” or digital composites of refugee camps.

https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/richard-mosse-incoming/

Museum of Modern Art

New York, New York

Betye Saar: The Legends of Black Girl’s Window | Oct. 21, 2019 – Jan. 21, 2020

After nearly a decade of focused work in printmaking, artist Betye Saar created her autobiographical assemblage Black Girl’s Window in 1969. This exhibition explores the relation between her experimental print practice and the new artistic language debuted in that famous work, tracing themes of family, history, and mysticism, which have been at the core of Saar’s work from its earliest days. Celebrating the recent acquisition of 42 rare, early works on paper, this is the first dedicated examination of Saar’s work as a printmaker.

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5060

member: Pope.L, 1978-2001 | Oct. 21, 2019 – Jan. 21, 2020

Referring to himself as “a fisherman of social absurdity,” Pope.L has developed a body of work that poses provocative questions about a culture consumed with success yet riven by social, racial, and economic conflict. Resisting easy categorization, his career encompasses theatrical performances, street actions, language, painting, video, drawing, installation, and sculpture. Pope.L’s work explores the fraught connection between prosperity and what he calls “have-not-ness.” This tension is heightened by the presentation of these subversive artworks within a major art museum.

member: Pope.L, 1978–2001 focuses on a group of landmark performances that have defined the artist as a consummate agitator and humorist who has used his body to examine division and inequality on the streets and stages of New York City and in the more rustic environs of Maine, where he taught for 20 years.

The title member ponders the terms and stakes of membership for a provocateur who constantly strives “to reinvent what’s beneath us, to remind us where we all come from,” making material out of categories of race, gender, and citizenship that are intimately entwined.

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5059

Sur modermo: Journeys of Abstraction—The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift | Oct. 21, 2019 – Mar. 21, 2020

Sur moderno: Journeys of Abstraction—The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift is drawn primarily from the paintings, sculptures, and works on paper donated to the Museum by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. This extraordinarily comprehensive collection provides the foundation for a journey through the history of abstract and concrete art from South America at mid-century. The exhibition explores the transformative power of abstraction in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay, focusing on both the way that artists reinvented the art object itself and the role of art in the renewal of the social environment. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5061

Musée du Louvre

Paris, France

Leonardo da Vinci | Oct. 24, 2019 – Feb. 24, 2020

An exceptional exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci will be presented at the Musée du Louvre in the fall of 2019. A unique group of artworks that only the Louvre could bring together, in addition to its outstanding collection of paintings and drawings by the Italian master.

The year 2019 has a special significance for the Louvre, as it will mark the fifth centenary of the artist’s death at Amboise, in the Loire Valley. When his patron Giuliano de’ Medici died, Leonardo da Vinci left Italy for France at the invitation of the new French king, François I. Probably around November 1516, he arrived at the Château du Clos Lucé, a stone’s throw from the king’s residence at Amboise.

This château was the splendid home provided by François I for Leonardo, whom he appointed “First Painter, Engineer and Architect to the King,” a position for which the artist received a princely allowance. This is where he spent the last three years of his life, compiling notes on various scientific and artistic subjects with a view to publishing treatises, and working on the paintings he had brought with him to France, such as Saint Anne, the Mona Lisa and Saint John the Baptist. Some remarkable drawings from this period, done on French-made paper, illustrate his work on hydraulic projects, festivities for the king and a monumental equestrian sculpture.

https://www.louvre.fr/en/leonardo-da-vinci

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Richmond, Virginia

Edward Hopper and the American Hotel | Oct. 26, 2019 – Feb. 23, 2020

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presents the premiere of Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, the first in-depth study of hospitality settings depicted in the works of one of the most celebrated American artists. Edward Hopper (1882–1967) found artistic value and cultural significance in the most commonplace sites and settings. Hopper’s spare depictions of familiar public and private spaces are often understood within the contexts of isolation, loneliness, and ennui of early and mid-20th-century America. As this exhibition shows, however, Hopper’s immersion in the world of hotels, motels, hospitality services, and mobility in general presents a new framework for understanding the artist’s work.

Curated by Dr. Leo G. Mazow, the Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art at VMFA, assisted by Dr. Sarah G. Powers, the exhibition features Hopper’s depictions of hotels, motels, tourist homes, boardinghouses, and apartment hotels. These images of hospitality settings both challenge and expand the themes of loneliness and fragmentation usually attributed to his work. They inform our understanding of a shifting American landscape and America’s fascination with the new possibilities of automobile travel and the attendant flourishing of hotels, motels, and tourist homes. Hopper was not only a frequent traveler and guest of all variety of accommodations, but worked as an illustrator for hotel trade magazines early in his career. Thus, his work offers an insider’s perspective into the hospitality services industry during a pivotal moment in its evolution. Exhibition visitors will recognize how hotels and motels—as figurative or metaphorical destinations—have fixed themselves in our experiences and permeated our collective psyche.

Denver Art Museum

Denver, Colorado 

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature | Oct. 21, 2019 – Feb. 2, 2020

The Denver Art Museum will be home to the most comprehensive U.S. exhibition of Monet paintings in more than two decades. The exhibition will feature more than 120 paintings spanning Monet’s entire career and will focus on the celebrated French impressionist artist’s enduring relationship with nature and his response to the varied and distinct places in which he worked.

Monet traveled more extensively than any other impressionist artist in search of new motifs. His journeys to varied places including the rugged Normandy coast, the sunny Mediterranean, London, the Netherlands, and Norway inspired artworks that will be featured in the presentation. The exhibition will uncover Monet’s continuous dialogue with nature and its places through a thematic and chronological arrangement, from the first examples of artworks still indebted to the landscape tradition to the revolutionary compositions and series of his late years.

https://denverartmuseum.org/exhibitions/claude-monet

Museo Nacional del Prado

Madrid, Spain

Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana | Oct. 22, 2019 – Feb. 2, 2020

The exhibition will reveal the artistic personality of two of the most outstanding women artists in western art. Through a total of 60 works and for the first time, the Museo del Prado will jointly present the most important paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola (ca.1535-1625) and Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614). The two artists achieved recognition and fame among their contemporaries for and despite their status as female painters. Both were able to break away from the prevailing stereotypes assigned to women in relation to artistic practice and the deep-rooted scepticism regarding women’s creative and artistic abilities.

The exhibition will present the work of these two women, whose artistic personalities were to some extent obscured over the course of time but who in the last thirty years have once again aroused the interest of specialists and the general public.

https://www.museodelprado.es/en/whats-on/exhibition/sofonisba-anguissola-y-lavinia-fontana-dos/5f6c56c8-e81a-bf38-5f3f-9a2c2f5c60eb

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Washington, DC

Pat Steir: Color Wheel | Oct. 24, 2019 – Sept. 7, 2020

The Hirshhorn will host the largest painting installation to date by the acclaimed abstract painter Pat Steir. The exhibition is an expansive new suite of paintings by the artist, spanning the entire perimeter of the Museum’s second-floor inner-circle galleries, extending nearly four hundred linear feet. These immersive works will transform the Museum into a vibrant spectrum of color. The thirty large-scale paintings, when presented together as a group, will create an immense color wheel that shifts hues with each painting, with the pours on each canvas often appearing in the complementary hue of the monochrome background.

Over the past four decades, Steir has produced a commanding body of abstract paintings that draw on the artist’s distinctive method of combining meticulous brushwork with multiple layers of drips and pours, simultaneously carefully calibrated and apparently random. Drawing on motifs from Chinese ink painting and gestural abstraction, Steir’s paintings are formed by brushing and pouring multiple layers of paint, allowing gravity to guide the cascading forms. Her signature technique echoes the metaphysical ideas of harmony with nature expressed in Zen Buddhist and Daoist thought, even as it redefines the conventional flat picture plane to sculpt deep, transcendent space. At the Hirshhorn, this commission will activate the entire gallery as visitors walk around the space, exploring the wheel’s spectrums. Moreover, Steir’s paintings will create a dialogue with the Gordon Bunshaft-designed outdoor fountain and seasonal changes visible through the Museum’s windows.

https://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/pat-steir/

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Houston, Texas

Monet to Picasso: A Very Private Collection | Oct. 20, 2019 – Jan. 12, 2020

Monet to Picasso: A Very Private Collection features paintings by the pivotal artists who sparked the major art movements of the late-19th through mid-20th century. This significant private collection has never been presented as a whole.

Assembled over decades, these paintings chronicle key moments in the development of modern art in Paris: the evolution of Impressionism from its roots in the work of artists, including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and represented by the work of Mary Cassatt, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley; the emergence of the Post-Impressionist painters, including Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh; and the leading figures of 20th-century abstraction, including Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

https://www.mfah.org/exhibitions/impressionist-autumn

Whitney Museum of American Art

New York, New York

Order and Ornament: Roy Lichtenstein’s Entablatures | Sept. 27, 2019 – Sept. 27, 2020

This exhibition will present a diverse array of works on paper by Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) related to his Entablatures series from the 1970s. Inspired by the architectural facades and ornamental motifs he encountered around Wall Street and elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, the series addresses many of Lichtenstein’s central artistic themes while demonstrating a unique emphasis on texture, surface, relief, and reflectivity.

Named after the horizontal structures that sit atop the columns in Classical Greek architecture, Lichtenstein’s Entablatures represent a distinctly American derivative, one based in revivalist, industrialized architectural imitations that were built en masse in the early twentieth century. By isolating clichéd symbols of—in the artist’s words—“imperial power” and “the establishment,” Lichtenstein traces the effect of mass production and replication on cultural forms. A sustained investigation into pattern and repetition, the Entablatures also underscore the echoes of Classical order embedded within Minimalist sculpture and Color Field painting.

The first exhibition at the Whitney devoted to Lichtenstein’s work since the transformative gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection, this capsule presentation provides a focused look at a single pivotal series, highlighting the artist’s inventive processes and techniques across drawings, collages, prints, photographs, and archival materials.

https://www.whitney.org/exhibitions/roy-lichtenstein-entablatures

Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, Ohio

Michelangelo: Mind of the Master | Sept. 22, 2019 – Jan. 5, 2020

The name of the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) is synonymous with creative genius and virtuosity. The exhibition Michelangelo: Mind of the Master presents an unprecedented opportunity for museum visitors to experience the brilliance of Michelangelo’s achievements on an intimate scale through more than two dozen original drawings. Michelangelo’s genius is especially evident through his breathtaking draftsmanship on sheets filled with multiple figures and close studies of human anatomy. These working sketches invite us to look over the shoulder of one of Western art history’s most influential masters and to experience firsthand his boundless creativity and extraordinary mastery of the human form. These drawings demonstrate Michelangelo’s inventive preparations for his most important and groundbreaking commissions, including the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco, sculptures for the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, and the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Michelangelo: Mind of the Master brings to the United States for the first time a group of drawings by Michelangelo from the remarkable collection of the Teylers Museum (Haarlem, The Netherlands), which was formed in the 18th century in part from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–1689). Additional drawings from the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum round out the display. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by Emily J. Peters (Cleveland Museum of Art), Julian Brooks (J. Paul Getty Museum), and Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken (Teylers Museum) that explore Michelangelo’s working methods and major projects, as well as the fascinating history of the ownership of his drawings after his death.

https://www.clevelandart.org/exhibitions/michelangelo-mind-master

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Boston, Massachusetts

Yayoi Kusama: LOVE IS CALLING | Sept. 24, 2019 – Feb. 7, 2020

An icon of contemporary art, Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Matsumoto, Japan) has interwoven ideas of pop art, minimalism, and psychedelia throughout her work in paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, design, and architectural interventions over her long and influential career. LOVE IS CALLING, which premiered in Japan in 2013, is the most immersive and kaleidoscopic of the artist’s Infinity Mirror Rooms. Representing the culmination of her artistic achievements, it exemplifies the breadth of her visual vocabulary—from her signature polka dots and soft sculptures to brilliant colors, the spoken word, and most importantly, endless reflections and the illusion of space. It is composed of a darkened, mirrored room illuminated by inflatable, tentacle-like forms—covered in the artist’s characteristic polka dots—that extend from the floor and ceiling, gradually changing colors. As visitors walk throughout the installation, a sound recording of Kusama reciting a love poem in Japanese plays continuously. Written by the artist, the poem’s title translates to Residing in a Castle of Shed Tears in English. Exploring enduring themes including life and death, the poem poignantly expresses Kusama’s hope to spread a universal message of love through her art. LOVE IS CALLING will be accompanied by a focused presentation drawn from the ICA’s collection titled Beyond Infinity: Contemporary Art After Kusama that will offer insight into Kusama’s influences and her important legacy on contemporary art.

Kusama is one of today’s most recognized and celebrated artists. In addition to her widely popular Infinity Mirror Rooms, Kusama creates vibrant paintings, works on paper, and sculpture with abstract imagery. In 1966, the ICA exhibited an Infinity Mirror Room, now titled Endless Love Show, in the ICA exhibition Multiplicity; the museum also owns a 1953 drawing by the artist, titled A Flower (No. 14). LOVE IS CALLING is the largest of Kusama’s existing Infinity Mirror Rooms, and the first one held in the permanent collection of a New England museum.

https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/yayoi-kusama-love-calling

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