Rudolph Schindler’s house in West Hollywood doesn’t appear on any of the Hollywood star maps, yet it’s among the most important and revolutionary residences in America. While the likes of Lucille Ball or Liz Taylor never lived in the home, the stars of design and...
Early in his career, R.C. Gorman was staying at the Safari Hotel in downtown Scottsdale, Arizona, before the opening of his solo show at a nearby gallery when he realized there was nothing in the hotel lobby advertising the show. He called his teenage cousin...
Working on a commissioned portrait in his newlyopened New Orleans studio in early 1837, Alfred Jacob Miller looked up to see a handsome, well-dressed man enter the shop and watch quietly for a few moments as he painted. Miller may not have thought much of...
John Wayne stood looking at a painting by Olaf Wieghorst, an artist he knew and admired and whose work he collected. The painting, Spring Rain, is a night scene depicting a mounted cowboy in the rain, water running off his hat, coat, and his drenched...
If a picture says a thousand words, then Hopi potter Nampeyo [c. 1859 – 1942] has shared many great tales. Widely known as the most remarkable Pueblo potter of all time, Nampeyo was a prolific artist, and her legacy upholds its place in the world...
Last summer, turn-of-the-20th-century photographer Royal W. (Roland) Reed Jr. finally received recognition for his imagery of Indigenous Americans at a permanent exhibit in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The Roland Reed Gallery has been a long time coming and honors an artist whose untimely death in 1934...
One morning in 1923, Swedish-American painter Gunnar Mauritz Widforss was having breakfast in Camp Curry at Yosemite National Park when Park Service Director Stephen Mather asked if he could join him. Mather was out of uniform, as was his custom, so he could solicit honest...
R.E.C. Chipper Thompson, husband of the late artist Lanford Monroe [1950–2000], remembers a visit they made to Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France. Monet’s house was closed to the public that day, but Monroe wanted to see inside. So, with permission from the guard, Thompson...
When the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco was badly damaged by fire following the deadly earthquake of 1906, architect and engineer Julia Morgan was hired to design and oversee the building’s restoration. Known for her hands-on approach, the 34-year-old architect arrived early on the first...
By the time Catharine Carter Critcher set off on her own for Taos, New Mexico in 1920, she was 52 and had been making her living from art for almost three decades. She had spent five years in Paris, started an art school there and...