Category Archives: Uncategorized

  1. Beyond the Mountain at the Asian Art Museum

          FOONG Ping, Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art here introduces her new show “Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese artists on the Classical Forms” to our press corps in Seattle. I have to warn you that I am a Ping groupie, I think she is really brilliant based on her lecture to members […]

  2. Artists on Fire: Deborah Faye Lawrence and Nancy Kiefer

      Hats off to Bonfire Gallery for another cutting-edge exhibition with two of the most outrageous artists in Seattle. Deborah Faye Lawrence and Nancy Kiefer both push the boundaries of what is acceptable, but in strikingly different ways.   The title “Still Hung Up,” refers to a phrase that used to refer to passionate affairs […]

  3. Midtown Square: The Public Art Display!

      “Midtown Square at 23rd and Union is a major destination for outstanding public art.   The overall theme of all the panels is “Reverence and Discovery.” Although not planned, all the art work is unified by similar colors such as purple, yellow, orange, pink, black. Barry Johnson specifically explains why he chose the unusual […]

  4. A Visit to South Africa by Pamela Allara and the new opera Sibyl by William Kentridge

          Some background information: in the 1980s, when I taught modern art history at Tufts, I was the academic advisor for the students in the MFA program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. One of my students, Kim Berman, was from Johannesburg and she was very active in the anti-apartheid […]

  5. Louise Bourgeois Goes Way Beyond Anyone Else

        Louise Bourgeois affects us viscerally. The extraordinary physicality of her work outstrips any other art addressing the female body and its  excruciating alterations from pregnancy, childbirth,  parenting, sexuality,  abuse, aging.   I once met her in Houston at a conference of women artists who were marching for the ERA in 1975. She was […]

  6. Hew Locke “The Procession” at the Tate Britain

        On our trip to London one of the most exciting experiences was seeing Hew Locke’s “Procession” filling the central court of the Tate Britain with its brilliant collaged figures entirely constructed from recycled materials.   The Tate is on the site of a former prison, which I wrote about in 2017. Now we […]

  7. The Stonehenge Exhibition at the British Museum

    Right after we arrived in London, we went to the Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum. I got free press passes for me, Henry and Henry’s sister, Imogen.   There were so many amazing aspects to this display that it is impossible to convey the depth and extent of the experience. Not to mention the […]

  8. The Mad Hatter Hotel in London

    For my first blog post on our exciting trip to London I feature our special hotel The Mad Hatter! As we checked in we were welcomed by Alice through the Looking Glass, literally. her hand enters a mirror which reflects the check in desk. Behind the desk was a large hat!   So why the […]

  9. Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water

    Canadian (Musqueam First Nation) Susan Point’s The First People suggests one theme of the amazing exhibition “Our Blue Planet:Global Visions of Water” at the Seattle Art Museum only until May 30.   Made of red and yellow cedar the piece seems to speak to us of both survival and sorrow, as these faces, each one […]

  10. Embodied Change: South Asian Art Across Time at the Asian Art Museum

      Natalia Di Pietranto, the new Assistant Curator of South Asian Art at the Seattle Art Museum  explains her first exhibition “Embodied Change, Asian Art Across Time” as follows “I wanted to . . . explore how the body is a site of both personal intimacy and possibility for change. . . I hope that […]

  11. Michelle Kumata

      this article originally appeared in a shorter version here http://www.artaccess.com/articles/12634620   Bonfire Gallery “Michelle Kumata: Regeneration” to March 26   We are compelled to enter “Regeneration,” Michelle Kumata’s exhibition at the Bonfire Gallery by the banners in the gallery windows.   In the exhibition, Kumata is addressing the difficult subject of the long term […]

  12. 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 […]

  13. Christina Reed: Confronting Whiteness and its Exclusions

        Christina Reed’s exhibition  “Reckoning” confronts us with our own whiteness and oblivous racism head on and with ingenuity.   The exhibition consists of three parts. The first is Reflection, a wall filled with large black and white prints based on historical photographs of white people: juries, business men, families, picket fences, interspersed with […]

  14. Subversion: The Art of Slavery Abolitionism

    Subersion and the Art of Slavery Abololition is an astonishing work of research and provocative ideas.

  15. Morgan Peterson on Greed, Power, Control and Murder

          “Born of our Culture: American Excess” a recent installation at Method Gallery by Morgan Peterson tells it like it is in our contemporary moment. Morgan Petersen has long been fascinated by true crime and the amplifying role that media plays in our culture starting with the 1969 Charles Manson murders My fascination […]

  16. Ghost of a Dream and Elizabeth ‘Mumbet’ Freeman

    Ghost of a Dream and Elizabeth Mumbet Freedom at the new MassArtArt Museum

  17. Youth Climate March in Seattle October 29 A Great Success!

    Seattle Youth Climate March in Seattle a huge success.

  18. Firelei Báez, To breathe full and free

      Pamela Allara, Ph.D., my colleague in art history and all things, contributed this post about a stunning exhibition in Boston. Firelei Báez’s installation, “To Breathe Full and Free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction…” at the Institute of Contemporary Art’s Watershed gallery was one of the most exciting exhibitions that the ICA has mounted […]

  19. Imna Arroyo: Immersed in Yemaya and Iroko Water and Life

      as     Imna Arroyo’s work, taken as a whole, creates a puzzle of intersecting chronologies, which appear to form the subjective representation of an aesthetic philosophy that reaches toward celestial planes. Humberto Figueroa Iroko, Tree of Life, p. 56   Imna Arroyo bridges art and spirituality in a deeply personal and effective art.  […]

  20. Defusing Radical Alice Neel

          Observe these two portraits On the right is the feature image of the Metropolitan Museum of Art current exhibition of the work of Alice Neel “People Come First” It is identified as a portrait of “Elenka”1936,  about which there is no information except that she “presumably numbered among the several bohemians with […]

  21. One art exhibition

    We only went to one art exhibition on Amorgos. The work of Zaxou Vasiliki. You see her here with the poster for her exhibition and the entrance to her small shop . Her exhibition was in the Chora. Her shop is in Langada. Xazou creates portraits from stained glass that she cuts into mosaic like […]

  22. Creative Lving in the Cyclades

    Of course everyone I spoke of in the last post was creative, archeologists at the museums and the Temple of Demeter, textile artists, potters, Kitron distillers. In this blog post I am highlighting another creative person, Sofia Gavala, partner in the stunning Amorgos beach hotel Lakki Village Family Beach Hotel  This hotel is run by […]

  23. Art, Culture, and Small Museums in the Cyclades

      The tiny archeological museums on Amorgos and Naxos were filled with artifacts found on those islands. The intimacy of the spaces, the variety of different types of sculptures, the sense of discovery make visits to these museums delightful.     The first museum that we visited was the Archeological Collection of Amorgos, in the […]

  24. A Memorial On the island of Amorgos in Greece 2021

      We went to Greece to honor Henry’s sister Carolina who died on the Cycladic Island of Amorgos last October. She had a beautiful village funeral the next day.       .           It is a steep road up from the sea to the mountain village of Langada  where Carolina […]