It was the day of Louisa McElwain’s annual studio tour. Organized each summer by Evoke Contemporary, the event would see invited collectors and friends gather for a barbecue, painting demonstration, and tour of the artist’s studio and small ranch just north of Santa Fe. The...
Born in 1925 and raised on the Gulf Coast in the small oil town of Port Arthur, Texas, Robert Rauschenberg matured into an internationally influential artist and a citizen of the globe. Known to his friends as Bob, he may never have visited the Denver...
As one of her first jobs after college, Shan Goshorn was hired by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Indian Arts and Crafts Board to visually document traditional Cherokee basket weaving patterns. Raised in Baltimore, Maryland, but having spent summers with Eastern Band Cherokee relatives...
The last time Mara Williams, Chief Curator of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, saw Emily Mason, it was about a week before the artist’s death in December 2019. At the time, Mason was in rural Vermont where, for more than 50 years, she spent...
His face was that of a Renaissance prince. His dark hair framed it, his piercing eyes glared, and a crooked nose — broken in childhood — looked permanently out of joint. Though often dressed in overalls and a T-shirt, he wore a trim mustache that...
In the years following World War II and into the Cold War era, an edge of existential uncertainty clouded the collective American mind in a way that it hadn’t before. Then along came a sprightly, witty, self-assured but humble old lady who painted cheerful scenes...
Ralph Brownell McGrew is considered by some to be one of the best Western portraitists of the 20th century. He painted portraits of the Diné (Navajo) and Hopi people of Arizona and New Mexico with such exceptional ability that his work is often said to...
An Andy Warhol image of Elvis Presley, like the artist’s paintings of Marilyn Monroe, is pure Americana, a mirror reflecting early 1960s culture and its fascination with celebrity. Elvis as a singing teen heartthrob, a beach-scene matinee idol, is double Americana. But Warhol added another...
In 1948, a young photographer named Gordon Parks spent weeks getting to know and aiming his camera at the gritty world of 17-year-old Leonard “Red” Jackson on the streets of New York City. The photo essay that resulted, “Harlem Gang Leader,” was published in Life...
The pitchfork is what many people notice first, its tines sharp and unforgiving, its handle rigid in the farmer’s grip. His eyes stare coolly, and his mouth is set in moral rectitude — or is it half-concealed levity? The woman by his side (His wife?...