1. Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise in Seattle

    Images courtesy of Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore and Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence Three panels are shining in the depths of the Seattle Art Museum, the Birth of Eve (bottom) Saul and David (not pictured) and Jacob and Esau (top) Their glowing gold surfaces have been restored by new technologies, this is the […]

  2. Martin Luther King Day in Seattle!

    All ages all ethnicities, all came together for peace and justice

  3. War Made Easy How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

    Last night I saw War Made Easy, an amazing film that traces the way war is constructed by Presidents in the same way over and over, putting over first lies, then drumbeats, “Peace” “Freedom” “Democracy” to make war, spread destruction, kill thousands.In World War I ten percent of deaths were civilians. In the Iraq war […]

  4. Robert Storr: Trapped in a Modernist Box

    Throngs gathered on January 10 to hear Robert Storr, Dean of Yale Art School, last curator of the Venice Biennial, former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, speak at Kane Hall on the campus of the University of Washington.He was talking about Kim Jones, whose work is on exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery […]

  5. Deportations: Artists Can Make Visible the Invisible

    Deportations are part of the US today. We think of the Nazis deporting Jews to concentration camp, we think of the US sending the Japanese to prison camps in World War II, but today, in partnership with the anti immigrant frenzy is the deportation frenzy.Few artists have addressed this subject, other than Chicanos, whose families […]

  6. SPARC Paint Down the Wall

    These are a few details from a still unfinished mural in the parking lot of SPARC, The Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice, California.The project is called Paint Down the Wall. The mural is the work of a team of young muralists, some of whom have worked with SPARC for a number of […]

  7. Happy New Year! Resist Ignorance!

    I am starting the New Year with a quote from someone who declares himself to be ignorant. “But I can’t tell Jose Cuervo from Al Queda operatives by looking at them because they cut their beards off. It’s like trying to get fly manure out of pepper without your glasses on you know? I mean […]