About MsSusanB

Arts and technology writer who is in the know about the latest and greatest that New York City – and other places in the country – have to offer and the fossils that are being dug up around the world

Medieval Foodies

Posted on September 29, 2013 by MsSusanB

When you enter Mr. Morgan’s Library, you never know what you’re going to find, since the curators are always surprising us with treasures from the archives. Remember when the volcano spit ash all over Europe several years ago and all the flights were grounded? The Magna Carta couldn’t get home, so it took up residence for a few months right in front of Mr. Morgan’s big fireplace in the East Room.

If you get over there before October 6, you’ll get to see something just as unique – a scroll from the mid-1400s containing 200 recipes (in Middle English, of course) that are fit for a king or royal lord. Move over, Smorgasburg!

The scroll would have been created by foodies some time around the reign of Henry VI (1422-1461) or Edward IV (1461-1483) during the War of the Roses. Henry’s objections to the aristocrats’ rights protected by the Magna Carta led to civil war, which was won by Edward, his successor from the House of York. At least someone was eating well and practicing penmanship during this tumultuous time in Merry Olde England.

30-foot walls of Mr. Morgan’s Library have three stories of inlaid Circassian walnut bookcases with treasures of world literature. Photo © 2006 Todd Eberle

The cookery scroll is displayed right inside the library door, past the historic marbled rotunda, keeping company with one of Mr. Morgan’s three Gutenberg bibles just opposite. It’s fitting that these two treasures are holding court together: one showing the hand-crafted way that oral traditions of the one percent were being preserved; the other suggesting the revolution that was about to unfold as movable type and printing presses made the printed word universally accessible. Check out the amazing digital facsimile of Mr. Morgan’s printed treasure.

The scroll is part of an ongoing exhibition series, Treasures from the Vault, which also features music, letters, and manuscripts from the greats of Western culture. Check out the surroundings.

Here’s a video of everyone’s favorite still-working Tudor kitchen at Hampton Court Palace. The palace wasn’t built until 1529, but it will give you a visual on how some high-end cooks could have been using the scroll 550 years ago.

For more detailed 14^th century cooking techniques, check out the YouTube by MedievalArtScience.

Front Row at Chinese Fashion Runway

Posted on September 23, 2013 by MsSusanB

Vivienne Tam’s 2007 embroidered/quilted silk cheongsam and Peter Som’s 2010 chartreuse and yellow silk dress.

Silk dresses from Vivienne Tam’s 2007 and Peter Som’s 2010 collections

In a brilliant move to honor some of the City’s fashion favorites, the Museum of Chinese in America is welcoming everyone downtown to see their bright, joyful tribute, Front Row: New York City’s Chinese-American Designers, which they’ve extended until December 1.

The show’s been a hit, with many museumgoers and fashion insiders making the trek downtown to wonderfully welcoming MOCA.

Inside the gallery, you’ll see a grand celebration of the contributions made to NYC’s fashion scene by a host of greats– the irrepressible Anna Sui, evocative Vivienne Tam, minimalist superstar Yeohlee, sumptuous Vera Wang, Jason Wu (one of Michelle Obama’s favorite), and eleven others.

Take a look at what we saw on our Flickr feed.

Striped dress by Wayne Lu and two by Anna Sui

Some of the dazzlers include Vera Wang’s cardinal red ballgown embellished with horsehair trim, Zang Toi’s red knit embroidered red-carpet gown, and Anna Sui’s silver leather punk ensemble first seen on the runway on Linda Evangelista back in 1993. Take a look. It easily holds up today, particularly with the addition of the Peruvian tassel cap. For a bit of nostalgia, check out the vintage New York Times coverage of that show, which also features great reviews of Zang Toi and Yeohlee, too.

Curator and featured designer Mary Ping did a great job showcasing iconic looks, video clips of memorable runway shows, and video interviews with the designers. She worked with an advisory committee from the Met, FIT, and Parsons, and the overall effect is top-class – smaller than shows that the Costume Institute or FIT mount in their main galleries, but every bit as thoughtful, well documented, and illuminating.

Organza and horsehair trim on Vera Wang’s Spring 2013 gown.

At a time when the Garment Center has gotten a little quiet and most manufacturing has shifted to China and other Asian countries, it’s a nice touch just to include just a sampling of the behind-the-scenes work of this illustrious and talented group – a few notebook sketches and some of the paper patterns from Yeohlee’s 38^th Street atelier.

Embroidered train of Zang Toi’s 1991 red-carpet knit dress worn by Gong Li

As Tim Gunn would say, “Go, go, go!”

Thousands Flock to the Light

Posted on September 21, 2013 by MsSusanB

Imagine you are laying on the floor of the Guggenheim rotunda and that you are looking up at James Turrell’s new work. This is what you’d see.

The colors slowly, slowly morph for the next hour, changing from pink to green to yellow until they work through the entire color cycle. As yellow fades, you see the white, glowing sun…or is it the moon?

Aten Reign moment in the Guggenheim atrium, James Turrell’s site-specific spectacular. Source: Guggenheim

You need to get there to experience the spectacular light before September 25, when James Turrell takes his leave of New York, the end of his first major show here. The museum’s exhibition site is wonderful, but it’s no match for the out-of-this-world, cosmic experience of his masterful Aten Reign.

The Guggenheim has blocked off the famous skylight and any view of the atrium from its gallery spiral. Viewing the light show from the ground floor, all viewers see are these rings of slowly changing light with an oval center – a natural shape that Mr. Turrell loves.

Out-of-towners expecting to have the fun of walking up the ramp and looking down on ever-tinier ground-floor visitors will be disappointed. But other magical Turrell encounters await.

On Level 2, we found celebrated security guard, Jeffrey Martinez (see this week’s New York Times profile on him) holding throngs in rapt attention explaining the magic wrought by Mr. Turrell with his corner floor-to-ceiling strip of light. Martinez told us that although it appeared to be a vertical “light”, we were actually seeing an illumination emanating from behind the false wall. The New York Times was right to single him out for a story, because it felt like we were meeting a celebrity with art-world smarts, gently cautioning people against trying to touch and asking them to “stand back” to give the piece some space.

Afrum I (White), 1967, one of Mr. Turrell’s early cross-corner projections. Source: Guggenheim

Upstairs, the show presents two more light installations that mimic two of the twenty 2D etchings precisely ringing a small gallery. Mr. Turrell creates the illusion, on paper, of light glowing from the white cubes surrounded by the ink. You just have to see them and then turn the corner to see “square” beams of light illuminating two walls. In the second room, Afrum I (White) astounds. You think you’re seeing a levitating white cube of light. Magical.

Hear him talk about his view of Mr. Wright’s philosophy and building and why they are so right for one another:

Enough said. Go see it.

Spoiler alert: The Guggenheim’s YouTube site has several videos about how Turrell and the team created the magic on the spiral.

LA Whimsy Runs Riot at The Met

Posted on September 17, 2013 by MsSusanB

The catalog cover shows a close-up of Price’s finely sanded surface

Catalog cover close-up of Price’s finely sanded ceramic surfaces

If you want to feel happy, step into the Frank Gehry-designed space at the back of the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art before September 22 to see Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective. You’ll find colorful abstract ceramic sculptures that absolutely defy you to smile.

Blobs, twists, eggs with things popping out, and joyful fantasy shapes abound in the clean, white space. It’s impossible to make sense out of any of it, except the feeling that you are let loose inside the mind of a California artist, who claimed to have a “highway to the unconscious.”

Price, a superstar on the West Coast, is fairly unknown here in the East, so it’s nice to get to know him. As a student, he was tutored by legendary ceramic artist Peter Voulkos and then worked mostly around Venice, California (and occasionally Taos) for the next 50 years, producing delightful, collectable pieces, and hanging out with LA greats Rusha, Irwin, Keinholz, Bell, and Bengston.

Pastel, 1995, fired and painted clay. Courtesy: James Corcoran Gallery. © Ken Price. Photo: © Fredrik Nilsen.

Pastel, 1995, Ken Price’s fired and painted clay sculpture, courtesy of the James Corcoran Gallery. © Ken Price. Photo: © Fredrik Nilsen.

The show begins with Price’s most recent work and works back through time, so you’ll encounter some of the larger, crazier, colorful pieces right as you walk in. Some of the ceramic surfaces of look pebbly and coarse, but this is right where Price worked his magic. He painted coat after coat atop his fired pieces, and then meticulously sanded it all down to make a silky smooth surface. You really can’t tell unless you’re eyeball-to-eyeball with the blob sculptures, but the cover of the catalog (top left) gives you a hint.

This experience suggests the type of fun, contemporary shows that The Met will mount when it takes up residence at the Whitney’s building on Madison, once that institution decamps for the High Line in 2015.

Take 3 minutes to let curator Stephanie Barron walk you through LACMA’s installation earlier this year, which is pretty much what you’ll experience on Fifth Avenue. She tells you a little about Gehry’s gallery approach and talks about her relationship with the fun, fabulous Ken Price. Enjoy the spin, and get over to The Met for some real California fun.

Wood Goes Against Grain at MAD

Posted on September 14, 2013 by MsSusanB

Pablo Reinoso’s whimsical wooden shoes

All those years walking up and down the aisles at craft fairs may have you convinced that there’s nothing new in wood art. Get over to the final days of Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft, and Design at the Museum of Art and Design.

It’s not what you’d expect, and curator Lowery Stokes Sims has done a magnificent job in telling us what’s trending now with forward-looking artists on the scene.

In short, she focuses her two-floor exhibition on seven trends that she sees: Artists, like Ai Weiwei, working on socio-political themes, whimsical designers who make us smile, digital artists pushing the envelope with wood, collages, virtuoso technique, takes on trees, and works that just capitalize on the beautiful texture in the wood itself.

Check out our Flickr feed for views of some of our favorite works, and MAD’s four-minute video as Sims herself walks you through the show, the artists, and her thinking about the pieces and themes.

Steam-bent ash chairs by Christopher Kurtz

But let’s focus on some of our favorites, which you can see on Flickr.

Wood as fashion: What about these shoes by Pablo Reinoso? If you’re thinking Dutch wooden shoes, think again, because these dainties are inspired by Thonet chairs, that he’s embellished with long, wooden “tails”. Or wooden hats by fashionable Moody & Farrell of London.

Music: How did Maria Elena Gonzalez go from looking at a fallen birch tree to creating paper-thin birch rolls that can create stunning music on a player piano? Watch and hear it all on this video of her player piano in action.

Laurel Roth’s Hominid: Chimpanze (2011) from vere wood with Swarovsky crystals in the teeth

How-did-they-do-that category: Bud Latvin’s gravity-defying wooden spiral sculptures, Christopher Kurtz’s impossible steam-bent chairs, and Elisa Strozyk’s wooden textile.

Recycled surprises: Think about what it took to turn 8,000 recycled chopsticks into a collapsible sofa. Good going, Yuya Yoshida.

If you can get to this show today or tomorrow, go. If not, take time to meet Leonard Drew in his studio, see his wood works in progress, and hear what success in wood feels like:

Stylish NYC Micro-Housing Showcased at MCNY

Posted on September 13, 2013 by MsSusanB

The 325 square-foot solution on display at MCNY: the TV wall slides away to reveal storage shelves. Source: MCNY

With all the single people living in Manhattan and the outer boroughs, it’s kind of shocking to find that building stylish, affordable micro-units is still illegal in most of the City. What’s a renter to do?

Get over to Museum of the City of New York pronto and take a look at the future in the hugely popular show, Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers.

It’s no surprise that the housing stock here doesn’t match the demand. MCNY and the Citizens Housing & Planning Council got together to put on a show that raises the possibility of change, showcases several innovative solutions proposed by design teams, and presents a full-scale, walk-through model apartment: a 325 square-foot micro-space (built and furnished by Clei and Resource Furniture).

The sofa turns into a bed. Source: MCNY

Apparently our City’s is due to grow by 600,000 people over the next 20 years, so the question becomes – where is everyone going to live? How can people live affordably? Is there a way to create living spaces that are flexible as families grow? Listen as CHPC’s Jerilyn Perine lays it all out in this fascinating 11-minute presentation at the 2011 kick-off to the project, focusing on housing demand, illegal rentals, and rental history in New York.

Currently, the City regulates things such as occupancy, density, minimum room size, parking areas, lot coverage, the number of dwelling units that can be on a single lot, and the proportion of living vs. working space in some parts of town. And, yes, most neighborhoods prohibit building spaces like the micro-studio at the center of the MCNY show. CHPC’s projects imagined what could be if some of those regulations (well intended) were relaxed.

Read about the background of CHPC’s Making Room project and design competition and find links to related TED talks, sites, and the proposed design solutions – stacks of prefabricated apartments, mini-bungalows for the Bronx, and repurposed industrial spaces in Brooklyn. The CHPC site shows details of each of the five featured plans.

But the star of the MCNY show is the model studio. Here’s a video of what you can experience for a few more days. (The show was held over by popular demand.) Note the transformation of the Cubista (the ottoman-looking piece of furniture that unfolds), and so many other smart small-space design choices.

Water, Water Everywhere at the Academy

Posted on September 7, 2013 by MsSusanB

Tintagel, 1881. Large, masterful watercolor depicting castle ruins on the Cornwall coast of England, which Richards associated with the legends of King Arthur.

Tintagel, 1881. Large, masterful watercolor by William Trost Richards depicting castle ruins on the Cornwall coast of England, which Richards associated with the legends of King Arthur. Who needs to mess with oil paint and build big canvases when you can do this with water and paper?

In a brilliant pairing, the National Academy Museum has mounted dual shows by artists who draw their greatest inspiration from water. There’s no need for a trip out of town to experience crashing waves, monumental waterfalls, and wide expanses of sea and sky done by one of America’s greatest watercolorists of all time and a celebrated 21^st century painter.

William Trost Richards: Visions of Land and Sea features 60 works from the Academy’s collection – early graphite sketches, oil paintings, and beautiful, grand, sweeping watercolor vistas that are some of the tiniest, most meticulous works you’ll see anywhere. Some are on display for the first time, which is remarkable considering that critics believe WTR to be among the greatest American landscape painters of the 19^th century.

Seascape (1875), a watercolor on cream paper that’s only 9 X 14 inches. Source: National Academy

Seascape (1875), a tiny but monumental watercolor by William Trost Richards on cream paper. It’s only 9 X 14 inches. Source: National Academy

Inspired by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites early in his career, WTR began documenting the intricacies of the Wissahickon River paths near Germantown, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. He soon became part of the American watercolor movement that began making works that were just as grand, romantic, and full of transcendence as anything by Church or Bierstadt. Quite a feat, when you’re working on such a tiny scale.

He spent years perfecting vistas of the ocean and sky from his home near Newport and on travels to the edges of the British Isles. Remarkably, he kept the horizon low to showcase the sky, all meticulously painted and built up from a ground of blue-gray wove paper. It’s remarkable how he evokes mood, rocks, night, dusk, and pale sky from that gray. Click here for more.

Steir’s monumental Blue River (2005) – one of her celebrated Waterfall series. Steir’s monumental Blue River (2005) – one of her celebrated Waterfall series. The video shows its true scale.

Pat Steir’s paintings, on the other hand, feature an opposite approach. Like Sam Francis or early post-Pop color-field painters, she pours, splatters, and drips her paint across canvases that seem a mile high and a block long. The masterwork on display at the Academy is Blue River, a virtual waterfall that’s just as mesmerizing as any of WTR’s watercolors, but done in bold, wide strokes on a larger-than-life canvas.

Go this weekend and delight in the masterful scenery. Pat herself indulges in the joy right here.

If you miss the Academy show, be sure to look for Pat’s Everlasting Waterfall hanging on the Fifth Floor of the Brooklyn Museum right next to Church.

Civil War Photos and High Line

Posted on September 1, 2013 by MsSusanB

The High Bridge and the former Civil War rail line, now turned into a pedestrian walking trail across the Appomattox River last year by the State of Virginia.

What can you see from the perspective of 150 years after Gettysburg? If you go to Farmville, Virginia, you can experience a tranquil, soaring view of lush greenery 160 feet above the Appomattox River – a railroad trestle that was once burned, chopped, and torn apart in desperation just a few days before Lee’s surrender.

If you go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today or tomorrow, you can see Photography and the American Civil War, a show on the First Floor that snaps you back to the birth of image-making, self-promotion, and day-to-day documentation in a way that makes today’s mania for image-sharing look a little lame in comparison.

Essentially, there were over 2,000 photographers roaming through the North and South during those four years of the Civil War. They produced over 1 million pictures of people, soldiers, current/former slaves, battlefield encampments, and more. Photographers trailed the troops everywhere they went, setting up tented studios on site.

Half of Timothy O’Sullivan’s stereo photo, Farmville, Va. April 1865, High Bridge of the South Side Railroad across the Appomattox. Source: Library of Congress

As soon as you walk into the tented galleries, you’ll see a dizzying array of new technology and firsts – the first campaign button (Lincoln’s) using photos, the carte de visite mass marketed by Sojourner Truth to raise funds and promote her many social-change initiatives (check it out), stereo photos, albumen silver prints from glass negatives, Matthew Brady’s Union Square photo studio for the rich and famous, and before-and-after panoramas of what was going on at the front (not easy when the medium does not capture motion). But that’s just the first two rooms, so plan about an hour or more for the rest of the show.

Timothy O’Sullivan’s 1865 photograph, High Bridge, Appomattox, Va. from Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War [c1866] Source: Library of Congress

The photos from this week’s walk across the High Bridge in central Virginia is in stark contrast to the Library of Congress photos of the site in 1865, just after the war ended – a ground-up view of the famous rail bridge that was part of the historic photo-tome produced and marketed to the wealthy by Alexander Gardner and a stereo view of same, produced for the 3-D mass market. See and compare more views of Virginia’s Civil War “high line” with our Flickr photos.

There’s a lot more to the Met’s show than it’s possible to write about here (like the original $100K reward poster for Booth that was the first time photos were used in a perp search) and the fact that Brady never actually went to a battlefield (he sent others).

Matthew Brady’s 1860s studio camera is part of the Met’s show. Source: Lowenthell Family Photography Collection.

It’s simply one of the best shows that the Met has mounted, and congratulations to curator Jeff Rosenheim for this triumph. He’s written a great blog post and recorded a nice 30-minute video that sums up a lot of his thinking.

Check it out and if you’ve missed it, get your Amtrak ticket and head South: This mind-bending, must-see show is coming to the Gibbes Museum, Charleston, South Carolina (September 27, 2013–January 5, 2014), and the New Orleans Museum of Art (January 31–May 4, 2014).

African Art – 20th-c Modern Master Collectables

Posted on August 31, 2013 by MsSusanB

Sculptural Element from a Reliquary Ensemble: Head. The first African sculpture to be exhibited with modern masters in NY at Robert Coady’s Washington Square Gallery. This pre-1914 wood sculpture is from Gabon. Source: Curtis Galleries, Inc.

The first African sculpture to be exhibited with modern masters in NY at Coady’s Washington Square Gallery in 1914. From Gabon. Source: Curtis Galleries, Inc.

The show closing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend, African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde, is a love letter to the advent of modernist art in New York 100 years ago. In the early 1900s, artists like Picasso and Matisse began looking more closely at the exotic shapes and forms pouring out of Gabon and Cote d’Ivoire – the primary sources of wooden African statuary at the time in Europe.

The Armory Show in 1913, rocked New York, where crowds viewed disruptive cubist works by Picasso, Duchamp, and Braque. Although the edgy work startled New Yorkers and the press, American modern artists and connoisseurs went crazy for African art because it looked so “modern”.

Sensing an opportunity, Stieglitz sent his friend, Marius de Zayas, to Europe to bring back more. Good thing, since Europe was soon at war and the global art scene shifted to New York. Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery and the Washington Square Gallery in the Village became leaders of the new trend, mounting a series of shows. De Zayas had to push Stieglitz to mix African art with Picasso, and it worked. One critic looked and said, “Here are the fathers of Gaugin, Matisse, and Picasso!”

Clara Sipprell’s 1916 Portrait of Max Weber, where the artist holds a wooden figure from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He bought it in 1906, the first African sculpture to be brought back to the City by a New York art-lover. Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This show is special because the curators really went all out – huge photo-murals of the ground-breaking shows, the actual works you see in the photos, and photos of same from the magazines and newspapers of the day. It’s an art-history, primitive art, and modernist master trifecta.

Visitors feel like they’re stepping right into 291 itself, seeing mash-ups of African art, nature objects, and European cubist works. Poking through the vitrines, you’ll see works appearing in New York for the first time since 1914, gorgeous Sheeler photos of early exhibitions, and lots of work collected by Mr. Schamberg (for whom NYPL’s Harlem library/collection/study center is named).

Stieglitz’s Picasso and Braque show at 291 Gallery (Dec 1914-Jan 1915). This features a Kota reliquary statue hung as art, like the fine Picasso nearby, a brass bowl, and a wasp nest. Source: Stieglitz photo from The Met.

Since Georgia O’Keefe gave Mr. Stieglitz’s entire collection to the Met, the show packs in many surprises — his African works, his Matisse and Rivera paintings, and issues of Camera Work. There are key pieces from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art and loans from Philadelphia’s Arnesberg collection.

In 1923, the Brooklyn Museum was the first museum in the West to show African art as “art” (versus “anthropology”), Penn was the first museum to actively collect it, and we all know what Mr. Barnes did when he displayed his magnificent modernist collection.

Check out all the objects in this amazing exhibition, but walk through the show in person if you can.

If you have some time, sit in on the curator’s talk via YouTube. Around 33:00 they start talking about the works in the show with a nice split screen that shows the speakers and the slides, so skip ahead and take a provocative, virtual tour.

Anxious, Turbulent Skies in Masterful Landscapes

Posted on August 23, 2013 by MsSusanB

Frederic Edwin Church’s depiction of the volcanic eruption in Ecuador -- Cotopaxi, painted in 1862 and exhibited the following year. Source: Detroit Institute of Arts.

Frederic Edwin Church’s depiction of the volcanic eruption in Ecuador — Cotopaxi, painted in 1862 and shown the following year. Source: Detroit Institute of Arts.

Who expects that gigantic, bold 18^th-century people-free landscapes by Bierstadt and Church to bear the heft of telling the anxious backstory of America before, during, and after the Civil War?

It’s true. Big landscapes are the booknds to the dramatic story told by the Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s exhibition to honor the 150^th anniversary of Gettysburg, American Painting and the Civil War, installed through September 2 on the upper and lower levels of the Met’s Lehman Wing.

Seeing the stunning upper-gallery works within the context of America’s troubled times is a must. You’ll never look again at a Bierstadt or Church again without checking its date to see if it was painted in the 1859-1865 range.

Sanford R. Giffins’s 1863 oil, A Coming Storm, says it all. Retouched by the artist in 1880. Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Hear Smithsonian curator Eleanor Jones Harvey’s three-minute introduction to how these magnificent landscapes became the “emotional barometer” of the country and what approach genre painters took in the midst of changing times. Then, check out the Smithsonian’s nice timeline and click on Church’s Meteor of 1860 and Our Banner in the Sky from 1861 to see what was in the news while these were being created in the studio.

You’ll find Sanford Gilfford’s A Coming Storm (1863) in the timeline in 1865. Ironically, this was owned by Shakespearean superstar Edwin Booth right after it was painted, but before his brother actor John Wilkes changed history and trashed the family name. When Melville saw the painting in a New York gallery a few weeks later in April 1865, he felt the tragic irony so profoundly that he had to write a poem to process it all.

Bierstadt’s Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, exhibited in 1865, one year after Lincoln signed legislation declaring this a public reserve. Source: Birmingham Museum of Art.

Church, Homer, and Gifford also painted camp life during the War, and those up-close-and-personal works are also featured in the show, alongside very precise oils of Confederate encampments by Conrad Wise Chapman. Thanks to Richmond’s Museum of the Confederacy, which loaned the works by Chapman, you’ll get to see the famous experimental submarine, The Hunley as it was in 1863. The submersible was raised from the depths near Charleston in 2000 with the tar bucket you’ll see in Chapman’s oil painting

But back to the giant landscape that closes the show upstairs. Bierstadt paid someone to take his place in the Union Army, so maybe that’s why his mind was free concentrate on more placid, ethereal works, such as the show’s finale, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California of 1865 – a immersive look into the California Eden that Lincoln’s signature in 1864 preserved as public land and away from scarred landscapes of the battlefield states.

What’s the connection between Arctic exploration and unusual nighttime phenomenon of 1864? Watch this video to see how Church used them to convey the mood of the country through his powerful, gigantic, beautiful Aurora Borealis.

See a slide show of 34 paintings in the show and access the full set of video podcasts on the Smithsonian’s web site.

itsnewstoyou

Susan B's advice on what you shouldn't miss in NYC and other museums

Author Archives: MsSusanB