Category Archives: American Art

  1. Kenjiro Nomura American Modernist

     “Kenjiro Nomura American Modernist, An Issei Artist’s Journey” (Cascadia Art Museum, Edmonds, to February 20) Kenjiro Nomura (1896 – 1956) came from Japan to Tacoma at the age of ten in 1907. while living in Tacoma as a child, he attended a Japanese Language school where he was fortunate to have a skilled teacher who […]

  2. Charles White: Humanist

          The huge mural by Charles White, “5 great American Negroes” overwhelms us before we even enter the Charles White retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.   In this first mural Charles White created for the government sponsored WPA mural program, Sojourner Truth leads a march of freed slaves […]

  3. Carletta Carrington Wilson’s “letter to a laundress”

            Carletta Carrington Wilson addresses her  “letter to a laundress”  to her great great grandmother, but her profound photo/poem installation currently on view at the Kittredge Gallery in Tacoma  (only until September 29) honors the work of all those who, in her words, “took in wash.”   She found photographs of anonymous […]

  4. Kerry James Marshall Maestro and Shaman

    Kerry James Marshall Retrospective glories in the humanity and history of African Americans, and confronts the prejudices of the white eye, the white museum, the white art history

  5. “¡Presente!: The Young Lords in New York”

    El Presente at El Museo del Barrio features the Young Lords of 1969-71, their activism and their art, a wonderful piece of history.

  6. Art AIDS America at the Tacoma Art Museum on World AIDS Day

    On this World AIDS Day, I offer a review of the comprehensive exhibition at the Tacoma Art Museum, Art AIDS America. It includes 127 works, many media, and a thesis that artists who addressed AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s permanently changed the course of American art by demonstrating strategies to address political issues.

  7. Led by Indigenous voices, all ages protest Arctic Drilling

    From Indigenous poets to Raging Grannies, from children and youth to college students, to people of every age, everyone is participating in the protest of Shell’s Polar Pioneer oil drilling platform with creative non violent civil disobedience at its best

  8. American Art at the Newly Expanded Tacoma Art Museum

    The generous donation of the Haub Family Collection gives the Tacoma Art Museum an opportunity to rethink Western Art and its meaning.