As a young woman, O’Keeffe learned to play the violin and piano. But she was also a talented visual artist, which made her wonder which path she would take in her education – music or art? We know which career path she chose – a modernist painter of nature, New York cityscapes, and New Mexico landscapes.
But deep in her artistic upbringing, she figured out a way to have the best of both – using music as a conduit to make abstractions that express emotion, hidden feelings, and channel pure beauty. It’s a hidden, personal dimension to O’Keeffe’s creativity that is on display at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s capsure exhibition, A Circle that Nothing Can Break, on view in Santa Fe through June 7, 2026.
O’Keeffe’s 1970s watercolor Untitled (Abstraction Blue Wave and Three Red Circles). Painted after she lost her central vision with help from Belarmino López.
The title of the exhibition refers to a comment by Georgia in a 1922 letter to her husband – the influential photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz – in which she said their relationship was “like a circle that nothing can break.” Looking around the small gallery, circles and arcs are everywhere – in her earliest charcoal abstractions, a circle of blue sky seen through a curved goat horn, and her late-in-life abstractions.
O’Keeffe’s 1945 pastel Goat’s Horns with Blue. Courtesy: private collection
Even some of her favorite fashion accessories feature circles! Take a look at some of our favorites in our Flickr album.
O’Keeffe’s 1915-1916 charcoal drawing Abstraction with Curve and Circle.
Personal accessories featuring the circle motif – a 1960s-1970s Italian scarf with concentric circle designs and her signature 1930s “OK” brooch from Alexander Calder.
When O’Keeffe took summer classes at the University of Virginia in 1912, her teacher Alon Bennett often played music on his Victrola during class and encouraged her to explore expressionist synergy between music and art. Around 1914, she also read Kandinsky’s influential book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. It made quite an impression on her with quotes such as “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmony, the soul is the piano…(and) the artist is the hand which plays…”
Georgia’s early charcoal works show her experimentation in using lines as “sounds” and interest in using circles in an expressionistic way. In letters to her long-time friend Anita Pollitzer, sent in 1915-1916 while she was teaching in South Carolina, Georgia said she did a “liberating series of drawings.” She explained that she often played violin for many hours to interpet her feelings, and then translated it all through her charcoal drawings.
O’Keeffe’s 1919 oil painting Green Lines and Pink.
O’Keeffe’s 1970s watercolor Abstraction Dark Green Lines with Red and Pink. Painted with the assistance of Belarmino López.
These drawings electrified her future husband, Alfred Stieglitz, who immediately mounted them for a show in his gallery and kick-started her career.
Four O’Keeffe 1970s watercolors (painted with assistance from Belarmino López) – Untitled (Abstraction Pink Curve and Circles), Untitled (Orange and Red Wave), Abstraction, and Untitled (Abstration Blue Curve and Circles).
In New York, the couple shared a love of live concert and recorded music throughout their lives together. By the time Georgia moved to New Mexico, she had assembled an extensive classical record collection. During the 1960s, when she began to lose her eyesight, listening to music from the comfort of her BARWA Lounger was a near-daily afternoon routine.
The exhibition selects paintings from throughout Georgia’s life featuring this circle motif – early oil paintings and sketches through to her late-in-life watercolors (done in her nineties with help from artist Mino López) that revisit these early themes. Note the upper arcs that suggest the top of a violin. She remembered it all.
Listen to this fascinating talk by music education professor Janet Revell Barret, who provides an in-depth explanation of how O’Keeffe’s early training and musical inclinations led her to greater expression on the page and canvas:
Just before the US Bicentennial in 1976, a city rose inside 88 Pine Street in downtown Manhattan – Creative Time’s first public art project. It was a crazy, hilarious, participatory comic papier-mâché labrynth that was dreamed up by a beloved Pop Art power couple – Red Grooms and Mimi Gross – that was a love letter to New York City.
Their cartoon Manhattan had everything – Times Square, the World Trade Center, the Staten Island Ferry, Wall Street, and even a subway car on springs you could enter and bounce around in amid life-sized papier-mâché and soft-sculpted passengers.
Publicity and photos from the 1976 installation of Ruckus Manhattan at Marlborough Gallery on 57th Street.
Within the 6,400-square-foot area, you could walk through big brightly painted, silly constructions to experience all the sights, sounds, and crazy characters everyone observes and bumps into on New York City streets. It was sensational (drawing 50,000 visitors) and people came back over and over to catch things they didn’t notice the first time.
Film still from Ruckus Manhattan documentary by Red Grooms and Mimi Gross, showing Red Grooms at work on the Woolworth Building for the 1975 installation at 88 Pine Street, Financial District.
The major part of the first-floor installation depicts the blue waters of New York Harbor (an undulating, draped blue plastic sheet) and a big, cartoon-like Staten Island Ferry – Dame of the Narrows – pulling into its berth at the terminal. The yellow ferry boat is packed with picture-taking tourists, commuters, vehicles, and (as usual) a few passengers and a motorcyclist poised at the edge of the lower deck, waiting for the bump against the landing and the hinged gate release before scooting ashore.
Dame of the Narrows, a 1975 installation by Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, and their collaborators known as the Ruckus Construction Company; here, a cartoon version of the Staten Island Ferry is about to arrive at the dock.
A seagull sits atop the vertical wooden pillars that line the terminal approach. It’s the same as you’ve witnessed a thousand times in real life. Funny how the harbor smells, humidity, and seagull sounds pop into your head, making you feel as if you’re really there.
Cartoon seagull looks for a meal atop the timbers lining the Manhattan dock for the Staten Island Ferry; 1975 installation from Ruckus Manhattan.
View of the lifeboat and underwater life beneath the cartoon Staten Island Ferry Dame of the Narrows, 1975 installation from Ruckus Manhattan.
Like the rest of the larger Ruckus Manhattan, this harbor installation was created from Red’s sketches of the ferry people, architecture, and technology by a crew of around 40 other members of his team – the Ruckus Construction Company. It was a joyous mix of painters, sculptors, puppet makers, performance artists, and kids, all on view through the plate glass windows of 88 Pine Street in the Financial District, bringing the buildings and neighborhoods of Manhattan to life.
Centerfold of The Daily Ruckus comic newspaper created in lieu of an exhibition catalog; November 1975 issue includes pictures and bios of the installation artists.
Surrounding it all are two long painted murals from 1992, featuring landmarks across the waters – the skyscrapers of Jersey City above Journal Square, the looming cranes of the container shipping port, and the Verazzano Narrows Bridge is shoved in there, too, right at the edge.
Video of Design for Staren Island Ferry – enlargement of a 1992 watercolor and drawing by Red Grooms.
After Ruckus Manhattan closed downtown in 1975, the entire kit and kaboodle moved uptown to Marlborough Gallery on 57th Street in 1976. Nearly 100,000 people came to see it in Midtown, as did Jackie O. In 1977, Dame of the Narrows was presented to the Brooklyn Museum by the newly formed Citizens Committee for New York City, which began community initiatives to help the City rise up after its devastating fiscal crisis.
Brooklyn has a nice collection of ephemera that it’s put on display in an adjacent gallery that runs Red and Mimi’s Ruckus Manhattan documentary. Here’s a clip with Red and Mimi:
Visitors can take a minute and see photos of the full-scale installation, a brochure for a 1993 installation at Grand Central Terminal, and The Daily Ruckus newspaper handed out at the 88 Pine Street opening.
Video showing the exterior of the 42nd Street Porno Bookstore and a leather-clad passerby, a 1976 installation for Ruckus Manhattan.
For visitors who want to see what Times Square was like before it was renovated into a more family-friendly environment, the museum has installed another Ruckus component (not as family friendly…be warned!). Around the corner (hidden from the ferry installation), you’re greeted by a seedy façade and live-sized leather-clad lurker. Welcome to the 42nd Street Porno Bookstore! Inside, you can peruse goofy magazine covers that spoof Times Square’s dicey past alongside a satirical peep show and another sketchy lurker.
Thanks to the Ruckus team for its creation, to Alex Katz for donating the Bookstore, and to Brooklyn Museum for this walk down Memory Lane and its preservation of one of New York’s best-loved art extravaganzas!
Film still from Ruckus Manhattan documentary by Red Grooms and Mimi Gross, showing Red Grooms at work the 1975 installation at 88 Pine.
The quiet adobe museum entrance displaying a retro WWII-era poster prepares no one for the ultra-modern abstraction extravaganza inside the Harwood.
Pursuit of Happiness: GI Bill in Taos, on view through May 31, 2026, shows and explains how an influx of rule-breaking painters from both coasts returned from the War, enrolled in contemporary art classes, and created the mid-century phenomenon that art historians classify as Taos Modern. Take a virtual visit in our Flickr album.
Harwood Museum of Art entrance in Taos
The exhibition tells the story of young people who first applied their talents to defend America in Europe, the Pacific, and the home front, and then chose to channel their energies and experiences through color and paint on large canvases to give life to postwar Abstract Expressionism, big-field flat color painting, and innovative materials.
The exhibition captures both the energy and optimism of the moment and shines a light on the mentors, teachers, and educational institutions that gave these vets a platform to experiment as social realism’s dominance in the art scene was giving way to new expressions – inner spiritualism, bold strokes, and white canvases with wide open spaces.
South Pacific Army airman Wolcott Ely’s undated oil From the Seas that are South – trained in Paris and was a private student of Andrew Dasburg in New Mexico. Courtesy: Taos Municipal Schools Historical Art Collection.
Mid-century modern dominates the exhibition, but there are a few references to artists’ wartime experiences – dramatic ink drawings from Oli Shivonen’s European war journals and Janet Lippencott’s expressive canvas that puts the viewer amid the carnage in London from one of Germany’s final bombing raids – something she experienced as a WAC serving on Eisenhower’s staff.
Janet Lippencott’s 1940s painting Raid – reflecting her experience as a WAC in London during one of Germany’s final 1944 bombing raids; in 1949, she used the GI Bill to study at the Bisttram School of Fine Art.
An award-winning 1942 poster by Taos Pueblo artist, cartoonist, and Army veteran Eve Mirabal, who studied at the Taos Valley Art School. Courtesy: private collection.
The exhibition frames the work by highlighting the seasonal and year-round schools that welcomed students under the GI Bill of 1944, which provided WWII vets with benefits for education, mortages, and employment. A remarkably high percentage of veterans took advantage of this transformative legislation that built America’s middle class. To learn more, download the gallery guide here.
Gestural abstraction by a former student of the UNM Taos Field School on the GI Bill – Malcolm Brown’s 1960 oil painting Olaf’s Dream.
The earliest modern art program in Taos was the University of New Mexico Summer Field School, which began in 1929. Students worked and slept on the grounds of today’s Harwood itself. By the time that GI Bill students attended, property owner and philanthropist Elizabeth Lucy Harwood gifted her former residence – now the Harwood Museum – to UNM. The exhibition showcases work by former UNM summer students R.C. Ellis and Malcolm Brown.
Although she wasn’t on the GI Bill, the Harwood has an entire room full of the UNM program’s most acclaimed attendee, Ms. Agnes Martin, who shared studio space alongside returning war vets in 1947.
Transcendentalist artist Emil Bisttram also accepted GI Bill students into his seasonal fine arts program, which emphasized the principles of Kandinsky and European spiritual abstractionists. Although Taos was his home, Bisttram offered summer and winter fine arts sessions were in Los Angeles and Phoenix, where he taught. Janet Lippincott, who became a lifelong Taos resident, and Cliff Harmon, who also trained with Albers at Black Mountain College, are featured.
Founder of Bisttram School of Fine Art –transcendentalist Emil Bisttram’s 1954 geometric abstraction Out of Space.
Work by a former student of Josef Albers at Black Mountain College and the Bisttram School of Fine Art on the GI Bill – Navy sonarman Cliff Harmon’s 1951 oil painting, Construction.
The cross-pollination of styles, personalities, spiritual influences, and teaching philosophies in Taos was intense and rewarding in those post-war years. Two upstart abstractionists – Bea Mandelman and Louis Ribak – arrived and began the Taos Valley Art School in 1947, which welcomed 20 students per semester.
A significant number of works are by Leger-trained Mandelman and social-realist-turned abstractionist Ribak, and their former GI Bill students – Louis Catusco, Ted Egri, Leo Garel, Herman Rednick, and Eve Mirabal (the Taos Pueblo artist credited as the first female Native cartoonist in America).
Co-founder of the Taos Valley Art School – Beatrice Mandelman’s 1950 Mouintain (formally Dark Cloud)Co-founder of the Taos Valley Art School – Louis Ribak’s 1950 abstract Movement No. 2.
Clyfford Still-trained painters also made their way to Taos from the California School of Fine Arts, the legendary modern-art training ground in San Francisco. The Harwood’s all-white back gallery features spectacular works by Clay Spohn, Lawrence Calcagno, and Ed Corbett. When the pay was too low at CSFA, even Richard Diebenkorn enrolled in UNM to use his more generous GI Bill benefits.
Edward Corbett’s 1951 chalk on paper Number 9 – former student at California School of Fine Arts who moved to Taos. Courtesy: Tia Collection.
Former teacher and student at California School of Fine Arts who moved to University of New Mexico – Richard Diebenkorn’s 1951 untitled abstraction inspired by New Mexico’s Southwestern landscape.
The back corner features work by two former Black Mountain College. Several are by Oli Shivonen, who served in the corps of artists and sound engineers in the “Ghost Army” that created battlefield deceptions to deceive Axis troops. Note the flat shapes and bold colors, reminiscent of another Ghost Army vet, Ellsworth Kelly.
A small multiple by John Chamberlain also stands here – a tribute to the inspiration that Chamberlain drew from the new methods, material, and iridescent magic reflected in work by another SoCal-to-Taos transplant, Larry Bell.
Former Black Mountain College student on the GI Bill who moved to Taos – Oli Shivonen’s 1965 color abstraction Column Three.
John Chamberlain’s 1971 El Molé based on crumpled paper bags – one of a cast poly resin edition by Gemini G.E.L.; coated with silicon oxide. Courtesy: private collection
For more stories, background, and innovations by GI Bill beneficiaries across the US art world, listen to this lecture by the curator of this amazing show, MaLin Wilson-Powell:
And in a living tribute to all of the Taos veterans, the Harwood created a community space for temporary exhibition of photos, memories, and tributes right inside this remarkable exhibition that honors the men and women of art and service.
Photos and other items donated by the community for the Harwood’s veteran memorabilia space.
How do artists forge a path forward in contemporary art by adapting to and then shaking off the constraints of colonialism? The Tate Modern explains how one country’s artists did it through its expansive exhibition Nigerian Modernism: Art and Independence, on view in the Nathalie Bell Building Level 4 through May 10, 2026.
The exhibition unfolds across nine galleries that provide some history, honor 20th century art legends, and introduce groups of artists that converged in universities and other towns to chart their unique paths. It’s a sensational visual ride through an art culture that had to contend with civil wars, upheavals, ethnic conflict, and the decision either to stay put and build artistic infrastructure or to build another life abroad.
Ben Enwonwu’s masterful 1986 painting Ogolo with an Igbo masquerade figure showing how to transition from this world to the next. Courtesy: Osahon Okunbo Foundation.
Early moderns: Olowe of Ise’s 1910-1914 carved and painted double doors showing Ogaga the king of Ikere and his wife receiving the British ambassador in Ondo province in 1895; exhibited at the Nigerian Pavilion in 1924 British Empire Exhibition. Courtesy: British Museum.
See some of our favorite works in our Flickr album.
The modernist tour begins with an introduction to artists who paved the way before Nigeria became an official colony of Great Britain in 1914 – such as late 18th-early 19th century photographer Jonathan Adagogo Green – and Aina Onabolu, a self-taught artist who went to Europe in the 1920s for academic art training. He then returned to Nigeria to create and implement a secondary-school art curriculum that taught young artists how to use European art techniques (perspective, color theory, easel painting) to depict Nigerian subjects.
Onabolu’s work was significant, since colonial schools had none. They were trying to create turn students into perfect “British” civil servants and missionary schools were out to destroy ethic Nigerian practices and symbols.
In this first gallery, you see work by the next generation of figurative artists who came of age during British rule, traveled to Europe, and blended what they learned with African subjects – traditionally inspired sculptures by globe-trotting Yoruba carving advocate, Lamidi Olonade Fakeye; portraits and scenes by modernist pioneer Akinola Lasekan; modern sculptural influencerJustice D. Akeredolu; and works by sculptor Felix Udabor, who opened the first contemporary gallery in Lagos.
Abayomi Barber’s undated Ola EduI, a terracotta bust of a Yoruba woman that blends European and Yoruba artistic traditions. Courtesy: private collection.
Acclaimed Benin carver Felix Udabor’s regal 1930s Head of A Girl. Courtesy: University of Birmingham collections.
This room leads to a spectacular display of dramatic modernist ebony figures by Africa’s first internationally recognized modern painter, Ben Enwonwu. The room is a mini-retrospective of his work, from early student sculpture that has a Henry Moore influence to a self-portrait and larger, more emotive gestural work.
Ben Enwonwu’s 1961 ebony series Seven Wooden Sculptures Commissioned by The Daily Mirror surrounded by a retrospective of his modern paintings. Courtesy: Access Holdings Plc
Ben Enwonwu’s 1967-1968 Crucified Gods Galore – an invocation of ancestral dancing, masked, frenzied spirits evoking the chaos of the Nigerian Civil War. Courtesy: private collection
Born into an esteemed Nigerian family, Enwonwu was championed as a young artist by the top British art educator in the colony, and a received scholarship to train in London. He soaked up post-War artistic trends, exhibited extensively, toured and lectured across the United States, and sculpted the Queen when she visited Nigeria. Yet, through it all, he was blunt about repression under the colonial regime and advocated for the African Nationalist movement. Nigeria won its independence in 1960.
Ben Enwonwu’s 1965 oil River Niger Landscape. Courtesy: private collection.
The next gallery shows the work and legacy of Nigerian art ambassadorLadi Kwali, who transformed traditional forms of earthenware into high-fired glazed modern art admired and collected worldwide.
With independence, formally trained artists, writers, poets, and dramatists formed associations to usher in new, more expressive works across all media – work that reflected a Nigerian sensibility, not just Europe’s. Pop music and new art flourished and Lagos nightclubs ruled. Successive exhibition galleries hone in on trends in different cities and geographic regions throughout Nigeria.
There’s a room dedicated to work by artists who wrote the manifesto for and created the legendary Zaria Art Society –Emmanual Okechukwu Odita, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Yusuf Grillo, Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko, and Oseluka Osadebe. They wanted art to reflect Nigeria’s cultures – all of them, including Islam and Christian religions as well as traditional ethnic practices.
Zaria Art Society: Jimo Akolo’s 1962 oil painting Fulani Horsemen, who brought Islamic religion into northern Nigeria. Courtesy: Bristol Museum.
And the world was eager to see it, as exhibitions were organized and showcased overseas.
Art of new nation: 1961 publication Art from Africa of Our Time promoting an exhibition of modern African art in New York. Courtesy: New Culture Foundation
The New Sacred Art Movement was happening deep in the 400-year-old Osun-Osagbo Sacred Groves of southwest Nigeria, where artist Susanne Wenger gathered committed individuals (bricklayers, concrete workers) and other artists to transform (and save) the forest by building ritual clearings and shrines. In 2005, UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site.
New art for the Sacred Forest: Against a background depicting the forests Osun-Osogbo Sacred Groves, sculptures from the shrine – Adebisi Akanji’s 1990s cement sculptures of river goddess Osun and war god Ogun Timeyin; and Buraimoh Gbadamosi’s 1980s stone sculptures of benevolent nature spirits, Sango and Osun. Courtesy: private collection.
The artists associated with The Oshogbo School lived in a community where Christian, Muslim, and Yoruba festivals and ceremonies were held side by side. The cultural center in Osogbo was active, inviting international artists to run workshops and sending out theatrical troupes to perform traditional stories in honor of the the region’s river goddess, Osun.
When theater leaders wanted more community involvement, they trained theater performers and technicians to run painting, printmaking, and textile workshops. Many workshop participants and teachers went on to create and innovate, as shown on the walls.
The Oshaogbo School: Jimoh Buraimoh’s 1973 beadwork panel Figural Abstract referencing traditional Yoruba beaded staffs, stools, and crowns. Courtesy: private collection.
The Oshaogbo School: Rufus Ogundele’s 1965 oil painting Sacrifice to Ogun, God of Thunder. Courtesy: private collection.
The Nsukka School developed at University of Nigeria, whose students were from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. Uche Okeke was invited to lead the art department, and asked students to use art to “reclaim” indigenous culture toward the end of the 1960s after Nigeria’s tumultuous civil war. Artists mixed symbols from different ethnic traditions and produced powerful work.
Nsukka School: Obiora Udechukwu’s 1993 four-panel ink and acrylic painting Our Journey – referencing the political unrest in Nigeria following the 1993 election when the military government refused to release election returns to maintain power. Courtesy: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth.Nsukka School: El Anatsui’s 1965 tempera and house paint on tropical hardwood Solemn Crowds at Dawn.
The final gallery showcases the work of Uzo Egonu, a Nigerian artist who left his homeland for a successful career abroad as an innovator in the British Black Art Movement. He’s a keen observer of the events, changes, and tumult that have rocked his home country, and through his work cheers on those whose work continues there.
Uzo Egonu’s 1985 oil painting Will Knowledge Safeguard Freedom 2 – a reflection on the potential of the creative arts and technical advancements to improve a free society. Courtesy: private collection
For a glimpse of life inside a Lagos gallery today, meet chief Nike davies-Okundaye, one of Nigher’s best-known textile artists and painters. It’s a recent video produced by the Tate in honor of living artists carrying on modern legacies of this extraordinary exhibition:
To read the Tate guidebook for this show, click here.
You’ll have to go downstairs and get past the doorman to get into the club where art, design, trend, creative dress, techno-pop, synth, retro, and gender-bending fashions rule. The Design Museum in Kensington, London has created a time machine that takes visitors back to the edgy days of Covent Garden through the exhibition Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s, on view through March 29, 2026.
As soon as you enter the museum lobby, you can tell who’s there for the exhibition. Many are dressed for the occasion in bold designs, sparkly accessories, band T-shirts, and 80s hair accessories. Everyone’s having fun, going back to their youthful club days in London, remembering the “private party” at the Blitz wine bar every Tuesday night.
Exhibition entrance with photo of Steve Strange, who decided who got into the Blitz club.
See some of our favorite memorabilia and fashion in our Flickr album.
The exhibition recreates the convergence of everything cool in London culture circa 1979-1980. Visitors stand before posters, walls of photos, and fashion recollecting their own experiences at the Tuesday-night wine-bar “private party” where Steve Strange and DJ Rusty Eagan presided over bare-bones space that came alive with color, outrageous fashion, and ginormous personalities. Steve worked the door and (for a nano-second) Boy George ran the coat room. No one repeated outfits.
Photo wall of Blitz party goers 1979-1980 – (top) David Bowie and Toni Basil by Robert Rosen; double portrait by Robyn Beeche; (bottom) designer/club kid Stephen Linard by Robyn Beeche; Marilyn at Club for Heroes by Robert Rosen; and Stephen Linard by Ted Polhemus.
The journey opens with a look at the counter-culture that was percolating in Britain in the mid-1970s – the subversive punk scene, young people’s passion for European retro avant-garde cinema and art (thought to be more exciting that UK’s drab day-to-day), the magic of public persona reinvention (look no further than the music and image of the morphing Mr. Bowie), and and subversive, transmuting morals exemplified by drag and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Keeping track of a style and music influencer – late 1970s scrapbooks with pictures of David Bowie. Courtesy: Iain R. Webb.
Clubbing before Blitz: Nicola Tyson’s 1978 photos of “Bowie Night” hosted by DJ Rusty Egan and Steve Strange at Billy’s Club in Soho, London. Courtesy: Sadie Coles HQ, London.
DJ Rusty Egan began by hosting parties at other venues (“Bowie Night” and so forth) before asking the Blitz to agree to his recurring weekly event. Young art and fashion students of St. Martin’s and Central flocked to these party nights, turning themselves (and friends) into unique cultural creations. You were safe at the Blitz.
Student designer David Hola’s 1979 robe and dress; 1979 photo by Derek Ridgers of makeup artist Lesley Chilkes wearing it. Courtesy: Lesley Chilkes
1980 man’s hand-painted leather coat by Melissa Caplan for Pallium Products. Courtesy: the artist.
Fashion and innovation at the club were key, and after the Blitz club opened in 1979, it didn’t take long for the press to catch on. Spandau Ballet did their first live performance at the Blitz, costumed by up-and-coming student designers. Manolo Blahnik and (future milliner to Dior and Diana) Stephen Jones were just part of the crowd, collaborating with designer friends, musicians, and make-up and hair artists to create look after look. They never imagined from those funky club days that their business would become the stuff of Met Galas, big-time runways, and museum archives.
Peter Ashworth’s 1980 photograph of Blitz style icon Kim Bowen wearing the Archbishop hat by Stephen Jones. Courtesy: Iain R. Webb.
Press about milliner Stephen Jones from a 1982 article in the Daily Express and 1983 story in Tatler. Courtesy: Stephen Jones; Central St. Martin’s Museum.
The exhibition shows off many of the designers who defined the ever-evolving look of (what the press called) “The New Romantics.” Backless leather dresses by Fiona Dealey, retro zoot suits by Chris Sullivan, ecclesiastical-inspired unisex garb by Darla-Jane Gilroy, and socio-political tank-top commentary by Sue Clowes. After their graduation collections, many of them sold clothes at Camden Market or specialty boutiques near the club. Their careers were off and running.
Darla-Jane Gilroy’s 1980 fashion illustration for her final-year student collection.
1980 magazine story about the Blitz designers inspired by ecclesiastical garb.
Celebrity sightings were common at the club in those days. But just as many of the “Blitz Kids” promoted their own celebrity. Eventually Steve Strange was starring in music videos for his group Visage and Boy George was fronting Culture Club, all with revolutionary clothes, makeup, hats, and hair. With the advent of the wildly successful MTV, the whole thing went TV-viral.
Blitz Kids hit the charts – album and record-sleeve art for Spandau Ballet by Graham Smith and Culture Club.
1984 book by Wayne and Gerardine Winder and Christina Saunders, Boy George Fashion & Makeup Book. Courtesy: Michael Bean.
The central gallery of the exhibition is a physical recreation of the club with a period soundtrack. Although there aren’t any drinks being served, a virtual DJ Rusty Egan and virtual images of club goers thoroughly entertained museum visitors, all remembering those days when they were young and the the scene felt so alive.
Video of the Blitz recreation inside the exhibit with virtual club-goers and museum visitors enjoying the scene at the bar.
Several visitors shepherded their now-adult kids through the exhibit, reliving those days and explaining how it felt to be witnessing pop-culture history-in-the making. You see walls of record albums from the era, a series of MTV video clips, and first editions of i-D magazine that quickly morphed from a punk-music publication to a chronicle of Blitz Kid fashion and street style.
Sue Cowles’ 1981 “Destruction of Purity” vest with images of warplanes, English roses, and St. George’s cross. Courtesy: Mikey Bean.
Graham Smith’s 1980 photo of BodyMap creators Stevie Stewart and David Holah with 1986 BodyMap tunic with print by Hilde Smith. Courtesy: University of Westminster Menswear Archive.
Watch this short video with curator Danielle Thom, Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet, and Blitz creator Rusty Egan, who talk about the creative sparks that flew in a pre-Internet society.
Bravo to The Design Museum for making so many Londoners so happy, and to let everyone see, feel, and experience a time when transformation people and ideas seemed limitless and an army of misfit creatives changed pop-culture, design, and fashion for the better.
How do you take a domestic beer pot and lid and turn it into art? Take a look at the dazzling designs on display in the first museum exhibition dedicated to one of the most unique art forms to blossom in post-Apartheid South Africa – iNgqikithi yokuPhica/Weaving Meanings: Telephone Wire Art from South Africa, on view at Santa Fe’s International Museum of Folk Art through March 29, 2026.
It’s easy to be overwhelmed at the the intricacy of the colorful, whirling designs that first meet your eye. But when you slow down to look more closely, all sorts of meanings appear – ancient tribal writing, village scenes, Zululand wildlife, patriotic emblems, and even celebrated achievements in the sports world
Dudu Cele’s 1990s The New South Africa telephone-wire weaving celebrating the end of apartheid featuring the colors of the nation’s new flag.
Take a look at some of our favorite works in our Flickr album.
The journey begins with Bheki Diamini’s 1990s telephone-wire basket, whose text asks the question “Why the Wire Plates?” T
The exhibition answers by explaining the long history of African wire weaving, the stories of innovators who started using colorful telephone wire in the 1990s, and how it became an economic game-changer for practitioners.
As far back as the 16th century, wire and metal rods were popular trade items in South Africa, and by the 19th century, everyday people were embellishing snuff containers and traditional sparring and walking sticks with intricate wire weaves. Although traditional beer and grain pots were made of woven fiber, and sometimes people wove in beads to personalize (and identify) their own.
An array of sparring sticks embellished with telephone wire and other materials –dancing sticks, 2005 walking stick, and Peter Lekotjo’s 2005 knobbed fighting stick.
Rare late 20th-century works made of telephone wire and natural materials – a palm and grass basket embellished with telephone wire, an earthenware grain-storage pot, and Laurentia Diamini’s grain storage basket woven with palm and grass.
In the 20th century, when a few weavers began incorporating colorful telephone wire into their work, it didn’t take long until highly decorated sticks, colorful hats, amped-up drinking cups, and beer pot lids were transformed. Under the repressive apartheid system, Black South Africans lived under highly restrictive work-life conditions, just scraping by and hardly able to afford most art making materials.
As telephone technology was deployed across Black communities in South Africa, the spools of colorful, coated wire surged in popularity as a tool more creative expression because workers often cast it off when industrial projects were done. Cheap (or free!), plentiful, and in a dozen colors! Perfect!.
Two hats embellished with telephone wire – a top hat (pre-2007) and Shadercke Ntuli’s 2000 hard hat – similar to those used for mine-worker dance performances.
Michael Mfeke’s late 20th-century telephone-wire basket in the shape of a beer pot (ukhamba).
Rather than making an historical exhibition, the curators have chosen to focus on grouping work by and presenting biographies of the innovators – like master weavers Bheki Diamini, Jerita Mmola, Elliot Mkhize, Vincent Sithole, and othes – who popularized this art form with makers in their own country and collectors internationally. It’s captivating to see all the ways Sithole, for example, incorporated wildlife into his designs to satisfy demand from tourists who began flocking to South Africa as a safari destination.
Colorful 1990 telephone-wire food basket (xirutu) by Jerita Mmola of Limpopo, South Africa.
Elliot Mkhize’s 1997 telephone-wire basket with abstract symbols inspired by ancient Zulu hierographic writing.
A compelling video in the center of the exhibition takes visitors into the Maphumolo family home to show how increased revenue from art sales – in South Africa and abroad at art festivals – have boosted living standards and opportunities for artists on an intergenerational basis.
Two by master soft-wire innovator Jaheni Mkhize – 2004 cone-shaped basket and colorful 2000 telephone-sire basket.
In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, as tourism to South Africa increased, weavers began to incorporate South African wildlife, create whimsical wire animals, and depict rural villages to boost a new pride in the homeland. Sports triumphs are celebrated by weavers, too.
Figurative master Vincent Sithole’s 2008 telephone wire basket depicting numerous species of South African birds. Courtesy: Arment-Rimelspach collection.
Octavia Gwala’s 2005 telephone-wire and wire weaving showing a rondavel – a circle of thatched-roof Zulu homes that form a homestead.
The exhibition walk-through concludes with work exemplifying new trends – baskets that incorporate pop culture references. three-dimensional wall pieces, and shimmering works in gleaming woven copper wire.
Simon Mavundla’s 2013 telephone-wire and wire basket Grey’s Anatomy Series: Norma Frontalis from a design by Marisa Fick-Jordaan. Courtesy: Arment-Rimelspach collection.
Details of 2009 Nature Series, Wall Platter, Rousseau, a three-dimensional telephone-wire sculpture designed by Marisa Fick-Jordaan
In the exhibition promo, indigenous knowledge-keepers explain more about what these artworks mean and see some of the masters at work.
Enjoy this look at the riches on display in this beautiful show.
Thanks to collectors David Arment and Jim Rimelspach, whose passion, patronage, and vision have introduced us to beautiful work by the most innovative artists and families creating in South Africa today, and donated so many exquisite works to IFAM’s permanent collection.
Two metal baskets from Threads of Africa project: Bandile Mtshali’s 2010 brass and copper-wire basket and Jobe Sithole’s 2016 copper wire and brass bead basket.
In her day, she was considered a style icon, spendthrift, deviant, monster, and hapless victim. And why are we still talking about her and dissecting her lifestyle, look, and acquisitions over 200 years later?
You’ll find the answer in the South Kensington V&A galleries with portraits, clothes, artifacts, and haute couture fashion in Marie Antoinette Style, on view in London through March 22, 2026.
The Victoria & Albert Museum has pulled incredibly well-preserved fashions from its own 18th-century collection, and has also borrowed from Versailles and European collections that scooped up Marie’s stuff when it was ransacked and put on the open market after her death during the French Revolution – jewels, furniture, Sèvres table settings, and remnants of her dress fabric.
1783 Marie Antoinette in a muslin dress by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun; seeing the queen in a dress resembling underwear shocked everyone who saw it at the Paris Salon, but it soon became the style. Courtesy: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
As befitting a Versailles icon, the introductory gallery is a dazzling room of mirrors. With the dramatic illumination of opulent court dresses, wedding attire, royal portraits nof Marie, fans, and swaths of over-the-top embroidered silk, the effect is magnified by the points of light dancing across multiple reflections of sumptuously draped fabric.
Take a look through some of our favorites on display in our Flickr album.
1775 French robe à la française à la Polonaise silk taffeta, silk chenille, and linen lace; less formal style with skirts looped up to create volume. Courtesy: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
1775-1780 French embroidered cotton and linen muslin robe à la française – a fresh, light style innovated by the French court; silk lining creates a blush effect. Courtesy: V&A
You experience how Marie’s fashion sense changed from the big-time Rococo style she sported as a teen to the more minimal muslin style she popularized as she and her friends gallivanted around the Tríanon grounds in jaunty Italian straw bonnets.
Style icon: later painting based on 1778 oil Queen Marie-Antoinette in Court Dress by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun; the queen at 22. Courtesy: Versailles, musée national des chateaux de Versailles.
Informal dress that Marie popularized: 1760-1780 “shepherdess” hat (bergères) of Italian straw and a rare 1785-1790 embroidered muslin dress (robe en chemise) owned by Madame Oberkampf of Jouy-en-Josas. Courtesy: V&A; Musée de la Toile de Jouy
Plates from 18th-century fashion publications show off the latest extravagant details of hair poufs that Marie popularized. Incredibly, there’s also an actual shoe owned by the style icon herself. As queen, she received four new pairs of shoes per week! Watch this short video to get a close-up view of her 230-year-old silk and kid shoe that survived!
During her reign, Marie had an outsized influence on interior design, landscape architecture, the decorative arts, and music. Her fashion selections and hairstyles were noted, discussed, and copied.
When the winds of democratic change came to France, Marie’s attire changed again to a more pared-down republican look that every patriotic woman in Paris also sported, right down to the patriotic silk cockades pinned to hats and lapels.
Years of the Republic: 1789 oil Marie Antoinette wearing a fashionable jacket (pierrot) and gauze-draped white silk fez; portrait by Adolf-Ulrich Wertmüller. Courtesy: Versailles, musée national des chateaux de Versailles et de Tríanon.
Years of the Republic: Height of French 1780s-1790s fashion – a 1790 striped silk pierrot (jacket) work atop a muslin petticoat, decorated with tambour embroidery. Courtesy: V&A
But by then public opinion had turned against Marie, largely due to the unfortunate incident that completely tarnished the public’s view of her – The Diamond Necklace Affair. In an exhibition section titled “The Queen of Sparkle,” the curators display a modern copy of the necklace that created the ruckus alongside lavish jewelry created from the diamonds removed (and resold) by an 18th-century con artist.
Here, the V&A’s Senior Curator Sarah Grant provides a close-up look at those infamous diamonds and tells the story:
Decried, denounced, and executed, it’s remarkable that 75 years later, Marie-Antoinette style and influence had a come-back, thanks to an obsessive 19th century fan, Empress Eugénie of France. Eugénie loved Marie’s fashion sense began sporting her look at various fancy-dress balls. She even commissioned haute courtier designer Charles Frederick Worth to design some looks, and he was happy to oblige.
Over the years, the Marie Antoinette’s Tríanon retreat had fallen into extreme disrepair and its contents scattered. Eugénie set about to find much of the furniture Marie had commissioned, did a major rehab job on the property, and had a big, public exhibition about Marie at the Tríanon’s reopening in 1867.
Style revival: Marie Antoinette’s 1784 carved monogrammed chair, part of a four-piece set; 1911 Fémina magazine article about Empress Eugénie’s love of big court costumes; and Eugénie’s 1867 exhibition catalogue about Marie Antoinette at the Petit Trianon. Courtesy: Versailles, musée national des chateaux de Versailles et de Tríanon; private collection; V&A
Spurred by Eugénie’s very public fandom into the 20th century, pop culture did not lose sight of Marie Antoinette as a style on display at upscale costume parties or as the evergreen image of fairy-tale princesses. The V&A shows illustrations using the queen’s pouf-do, tiny waist, princess-heel shoes, and voluminous 18th-century gowns to convey royal ingenues right into the 1910s and 1920s.
20th c. fairy tale princess: George Barbier’s 1928 illustration “L’Allée (The Pathway)” for Fete Galantes (Gallant Festivities) featuring an Art Deco image of Marie Antoinette based on Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s portrait. Courtesy: private collection
20th c. fairy tale queen: Edmund Dulac’s 1911 watercolor illustration of Marie Antoinette as Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen; aloof, seated on an icicle throne. Courtesy: private collection.
And 1920s fashion designers took note, mixing gauzy references to Marie’s muslin dresses with full skirts and panniers.
Referencing Marie Antoinette’s lingerie style: Jeanne Lanvin’s 1922-1923 silk organiza robe d’style (evening dress); a chemise with panniers. Courtesy: V&A
Boué Soers’ “lingerie frock” – a 1923 appliqued silk chiffon robed’style (evening dress) with panniers and ribbon roses; advertised showing models as Trianon shepardesses. Courtesy: Designmuseum Danmark
The spectacular finale to the exhibition pays tribute to the costume designers and haute couturiers who have translated Marie’s style into modern times. Even Manolo Blahnik jumped at the invitation to make shoes for Coppola’s Marie Antoinette film actresses, making each pair himself and basking in the glamor of using truly opulent silks and embellishments. It’s fun to see an entire wall of them.
Neon pink costumes by Milena Canonero worn by Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette. Courtesy: private collection.
Adrian’s silk gown worn by Norma Shearer in Willard Van Dyke’s 1938 Marie Antoinette film. Courtesy: private collection
The show closes with a bigger-than-big wide gown by Galliano for Dior, surrounded by two tiers of Moschino silicone cake dresses, Moschino toile de jouy pannier spoofs, Marmalade’s drag ensemble, Vivienne Westwood’s bridal take, and even Lagerfeld’s take on those scandalous diamonds for Chanel.
Gallery of restyled Marie Antoinette fashions by contemporary designers; at center, John Galliano’s 1998 iridescent silk taffeta Marquise Masquée gown for Dior. Courtesy: Dior
It’s an unmistakable style that’s recognizable hundreds of years later, and one everyone who’s seen this unforgettable show is still talking about!
Be forewarned: Schiaparelli opens at the V&A South Kensington on March 28, 2026.
Jeremy Scott’s 2020-2021 silicone cake dresses from a runway show mixing contemporary and 18th century style and fun. Courtesy: Moschino archives.
Jeremy Scott’s 2020-2021 cotton anime Toile de Jouy mini-pannier dress with matching boots and Franco Moschino’s 1990 silk and lace robe á la polonaise. Courtesy: Moschino archives.
Fans of Mr. Mucha, the grand master of sinuous line, have been lining up across North America to admire some of his greatest works – epic posters of Sarah Bernhardt, beautiful women hawking products surrounded by swirling halos or smoke, and exotic details on small-scale, affordable decorative panels representing the seasons, flowers, or arts.
Created by the Mucha Foundation in Prague, Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line presents Mucha’s own collection of art and books that inspired his creativity, his early works as an in-demand illustrator, and his most famous posters and viral images. It’s all on display at the Boca Raton Museum of Art through March 1, 2026 after successful stops at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and Santa Fe’s Vladem Museum of Contemporary Art.
Mucha’s 1897 lithograph Monaco – Monte Carlo, an ad for the Paris- Côte d’Azur railway featuring a young woman dreaming about her beach trip. Courtesy: Mucha Foundation.
See some of our favorite works from the Vladem installation in our Flickr album.
So how did a designer who was all the rage for Art Nouveau at the 1900 Paris Expo inspire Sixties psychedelic rock illustrators, Marvel Comics creators, and Japanese manga artists? You’ll see that in the exhibition, too. Check out this promo from Boca:
A portion of the exhibit features drawings, sketches, and acquisitions that suggest the building blocks that formed his mature style – Moravian folk style, the mix and match of multicultural design elements seeping into European designers’ consciousness, and the super-flat design in Japanese prints, and fantastical embellishments on Japanese collectibles in late 19th century Paris.
Just take a look at how many of these design influences Mucha packed into his viral street posters advertising actress Sarah Bernhardt’s new plays – mosaics like those in Eastern European churches, exotic decorative elements, and arcs functioning as halos.
Close-up of Mucha’s life-size 1899 poster of Sarah Bernhardt starring in Hamlet, with Celtic motifs. Courtesy: Mucha Foundation.
Close-up of Mucha’s life-size 1894 poster of Sarah Bernhardt starring in Gismonda featuring a Byzantine mosaic, Orothodox cross, and Slavic designs. Courtesy: Mucha Foundation.
Listen to the Foundation’s curator Tomoko Sato (shown in Phillips Collection galleries) explain how Mucha’s 1894 poster commission – his first – immortalized superstar actress Sarah Bernhardt:
When Mucha’s Gismonda poster appeared on the streets of Paris in 1894, it was a sensation and cemented Mucha’s status as the hottest designer of the day. Bernhardt signed him to a six-year contract (including designing her jewelry), and other offers started rolling in.
Everyone considered Mucha the leading practitioner of Art Nouveau, although Mucha never cared for this label. As the exhibition shows, Mucha’s style was a flat application with bold outlines around ethereal depictions of independent women, swirling vines and/or hair, and a sinuous spiral curving through his layout.
Detail of Mucha’s 1897 lithograph La Trappestine, a liqueur ad featuring a halo, Celtic designs, and a floral wreath. Courtesy: Mucha Foundation.
Plate from Mucha’s 1902 Documents dècoratifs, his designer handbook on how to combine human figures with decorative elements. Courtesy: Mucha Foundation.
As his fame grew, publishers licensed his images and published them at affordable prices worldwide. Mucha himself traveled abroad, teaching sold-out classes in drawing, line, and figures. He was in such demand that he eventually created books showing up-and-coming designers how to create universally appealing designs in his style.
When Mucha produced these design look-books in the early 1900s, could he have envisioned that illustrators and designers of the late 20th and early 21st century would take note? The exhibition showcases Fillmore West posters and Sixties’ rock album covers that repurposed Mucha’s style, such as this transformation of Mucha’s cigarette paper ad into a nearly identical promo for the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.
Mucha’s first product advertising poster – 1896 promo for JOB rolling papers featuring a sensuous smoker and a Byzantine border. Courtesy: Mucha Foundation.
1966 poster by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley for a San Francisco concert headlining the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Flowers in your hair? Swirling hair, flowers, and stars were part of Mucha’s “universal language” that took design in a new direction in the 1900s. Museum visitors love pouring over the Sixties album covers and posters detail in the exhibition, remembering which albums they owned and acts they saw, delightedly pointing out the Mucha design influences to their friends.
1966 tour poster for Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore Auditorium by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley.
1971 Skull and Roses tour poster for Grateful Dead by Alton Kelley.
But subsequent generations of media makers also adapted Mucha style – comic book and manga artists.
Joe Quesada’s 1994 Spread, Ninjak cover for Valient Comics.
John Tyler Christopher’s 2007 cover for Marvel’s Nova, no. 36B.
Listen to curator Sato about how Japanes artists adapted Muca’s design breakthroughs for 21st manga fans:
Next on the tour for this beautiful exhibition – the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri (April 11-August 30, 2026) and Museo Kaluz in Mexico City (October 8, 2026 – February 7, 2027).
The riches on display in this exhibition are also a reminder that much more is on view at the Mucha Museum – a spectacular new venue in Prague opened by the Mucha Foundation at the Savarin Palace in 2025, right on the western edge of Old Town.
A star framed by a halo: years of Mucha’s poster ads for Sarah Bernhardt’s 1894-1899 plays – Hamlet, Lorenzaccio, and Gismonda. Courtesy: Mucha Foundation.
Demand for Gus’s intricate block-printed sun-dappled Western landscapes from the 1920s through the 1950s still runs high. So, it’s a treat to learn how Gus achieved such a high degree of technical proficiency early in his career, lived Arts and Crafts philosophy, relished immersion in art colonies, and found his family in Santa Fe.
Gus Baumann’s 1903 oil Self-portrait (Silhouette) painted in his Chicago studio; reworked in Santa Fe after 1920 with a border inspired by Mimbres pottery.
Although Gus was born in Germany in 1881, his family emigrated to Chicago when he was around ten. His father was a craftsman and woodcarver, and it left an impression. The first themed section of the exhibit – “Finding His Way”– gives a glimpse into his family background, early commercial art work, wood carving expertise, and furniture he designed later in the 1930s.
Gus Baumann’s 1919 color woodblock print Church Ranchos de Taos – one of the first modern artists to depict this iconic church; printed in 1948.
Gus Baumann’s 1921 color woodblock print Piñon Grand Canyon – one of four landscapes created after his first visit.
When he was 17 and his dad left the family, Gus had to find work to help his mom make ends meet. He worked full time at a Chicago wood-engraving shop that cut illustrations for books, magazines, and newspapers. When he was 20, Gus opened his own wood-engraving studio.
To fine tune his skill, he attended Munich’s Royal Arts and Crafts School for a year to learn from the best German color wood-block print masters – a move that chose traditional skills over academy fine-arts training. When he returned to Chicago, he opened Baumann Graphic Art Service.
Gus Baumann’s 1913 Illustration for a Calendar: The Packard Car Motor Company, August 1914 – one of four he created for Packard.
Gus Baumann’s 1908 color woodcut From My Studio Window in downtown Chicago –the high-rise McCormack Building going up on South Michigan Avenue.
Although Gus found success, his love of craft and traditional printmaking methods drew him to an art colony in Nashville, Indiana that revered traditional crafts and a slower pace of life. The second section of the exhibition – “A Rolling Stone” – highlights work he did in Munich, his acclaimed print series featuring Indiana craftsmen, coastal life in Provincetown, and the electricity he felt in New York.
Gus Baumann’s 1912 book All the Year Round – woodcut illustrations and poetry James Whitcomb Riley, featuring scenes of daily rural life for each month of the year.
But his life would change forever when he traveled West and landed in New Mexico in 1918. Due to his reputation as an award-winning printmaker, Santa Fe welcomed him with open arms. Gus was struck by the unique Hispanic and Pueblo ways of life, the beauty of the Southwest, and the growing art colony in Santa Fe.
Gus Baumann’s 1925 oil painting Frijoles Canyon – a panorama of ancient tuff dwellings of Tuyoni Pueblo at Bandelier.
Before long, Gus was making and selling gorgeous prints, traveling to archeological sites, attending dances at the pueblos, soaking up the ambience of ancient Spanish churches, and putting brush to canvas, and partying with his new artist friends. And he met Jane, the love of his life, and started a family – creating a life full of fun, art, play, and community service.
Gus Baumann’s 1924 color woodblock print Sanctuario Chimayo – learning of the historic church’s imminent sale on a sketching trip, he lobbied successfully for its preservation.
Gus Baumann’s 1921 color woodblock print Strangers from Hopiland, featuring kachinas from his collection; printed in the 1930s.
Since Jane and Ann Baumann donated so much of Gus’s work to the New Mexico Museum of Art, the curators were able to display finished prints alongside drawings and wood blocks that give visitors insight to his process. One long wall dissects his multi-color printing process for his famed Old Santa Fe – the initial drawing, the separately carved color blocks, single-color proofs, multi-color runs, and the finished six-color print.
Reproductions of Baumann’s blue, yellow, and orange woodblocks for his 1925 print Old Santa Fe.
Nearly a half-dozen example of Gus’s watercolor paintings and finished prints are displayed side by side. Visitors are delighted to stand, look, compare, and wonder how he conceptualized steps to carve blocks for each color and achieve images of such depth and vibrancy.
Gus Baumann’s 1930 watercolor Processional (Study), featuring girls walking to their First Holy Communion under a blooming tree and silver sky.
Gus Baumann’s 1930 color woodcut print Processional (printed 1951), based upon his watercolor.
It’s the first time Gus and Jane’s marionette casts have been displayed in decades, complete with hand-painted backdrops – scenes representing just a few of the couple’s scripted shows that they performed at home, in venues around Santa Fe, at world fairs, and on tour.
Gus and Jane Baumann’s stage set for the Santa Fe Puppett Wranglers’ 1932 marionette production of the comic melodrama The Golden Dragon Mine –starring The Tourist Lady, Temperence the Miner, Hardpan, Burro, Old Man of the Mountain, the Green Dragon, Nambé Nell, Coco the Horse, Pecos Bill, and Lord Leffinghoop.
Whimsey, delight, innovation, social commentary, and fun are all there, with surprises unfolding around every corner. And this is all just a fraction of Gus’s creative output from his coming-of-age in the horse-and-buggy era to the Atomic Age.
Gus Baumann’s 1940 marionette comedy stars of Teatro Duende – Long Nose (“Nosey”), the Duendi and Freckles the Duende – mischief-making Iberian elves.
No, he didn’t follow the traditional academic path, but he did leave his creative touch on America’s printmaking traditions, the foundation of many Santa Fe cultural and historical institutions, and the care and feeding of a state full of artists as head of New Mexico’s New Deal artist programs.
Gus Baumann’s 1932 carved family portrait – marionettes Gus, Jane, and Ann – with costumes by Jane.
It’s quite a leap from taking an art appreciation class with your daughter in your mid-thirties to assembling an enormous collection of paintings by radical art-world revolutionaries and anarchists. But that’s what one woman did and and the work is on display in Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists, on view at the National Gallery in London through February 8, 2026.
Crowds have been flocking to see incredible works by Seurat, Signac, and Van Gogh, and meet the Dutch and Belgian painters who adopted their breakthroughs and ran with these innovations for two decades at the end of the 19th century.
Seurat’s 1884-1885 Young Woman: Study for ‘A Sunday on Le Grande Jatte’” – a radical abstracted, dematerialized image. Courtesy: Kröller-Müller Museum
Maginificent, much-loved works were collected in the early 20th century by Helene Kröller-Müller, the daughter of a wealthy German industrialist. Her husband ran businesses for her father (and eventually his entire company) in Rotterdam, where they lived.
Helene was always encouraged to follow her intellectual interests, and new ideas. After taking a class about art in 1905 from Dutch artist/dealer/critic H.P. Bremmer, Helene began to understand why the radical colors, compositions, and subjects in paintings by Van Gogh, Seurat, and others moved her so deeply. Working with Bremmer as an advisor, Helene eventually amassed the largest collection of Van Gogh paintings and drawings in the world (outside of the Van Gogh Museum itself).
Van Gogh’s 1888 oil The Sower with the Sun rising hopefully over a rural worker. Courtesy: Kröller-Müller Museum
Helene sometimes accompanied Bremmer on buying trips with the goal of creating a public collection where people could see and experience the genesis of modern art. In 1912, they even visited Signac in his studio, where Helene purchases two magnificent tranquil harbor views – one by Signac and one by his late friend, Seurat.
One of Helene’s first “new art” purchases on a buying trip to Paris: Signac’s 1887 oil pof the French Riviera capturing the Sun’s reflected light – Collioure, The Bell Tower, Opus 164. Courtesy: Kröller-Müller Museum
Here’s a brief video about Helene Kröller-Müller’s passion for art, how she built her massive collection, and the beautiful museum in the Netherlands countryside that should be on every art lover’s bucket list :
This gorgeous exhibition in central London shines a light on this visionary collector, but the focus is less on Helene’s history and fully on her stellar collection of Neo-impressionist painting and related works from the National Gallery and other collections. See some of our favorites in our Flickr album.
The exhibition begins with paintings by Seurat and Signac, who adopted color theory for their pointillist techniques to create shimmering images of simplified, tranquil harbors and seascapes. This new radical painting approach electrified artists across Europe, such as Belgian painter Theo van Rysselberghe and Dutch artist Jan van Toroop, whose works are also hung in the first gallery.
Van Rysselberghe’s 1889 oil inspired by Seurat ‘Per-Kiridy’ at High Tide. Courtesy: Kröller-Müller Museum
At a time when industrialization was transforming life, Helene did not shy away from acquiring works made by artists proud of their radical, progressive politics. Many of the artists featured in the exhibition were proud to call themselves anarchists – passionate radicals who used art to advocate for workers’ rights, elevate the image of working people, and create a hope of increasing harmony with nature.
Maximilien Luce’s 1899 The Iron Foundry showing strength and integrity of Belgian steel workers amid dangerous conditions – an acquisition that hung in the office of Helene’s industrialist husband. Courtesy: Kröller-Müller Museum
To create the pictoral harmony that they sought, these painters often stripped details out of landscapes. When people are present, they are depicted with highly simplified, streamlined faces – pleasing, but impersonal. These stand in contrast to paintings by Belgian and Dutch painters who applied their new color techniques to beautiful large portraits of their politically progressive friends and patrons.
Seurat’s 1889-1890 grand Chahut – a stylized manifesto of his painting philosophy; features artificial, compressed, stylized figures and space. Courtesy: Kröller-Müller Museum
The centerpiece of the show is Seurat’s enormous painting of the scandalous can-can dance at a raucous late-night Paris venue. It’s the biggest, baddest, Neo-Impressionist work in Helene’s collection. The curators surrounded it with works showing how much other radical painters enjoyed music and nightlife.
But just beyond this gallery, you’re surrounded by still, quiet domestic interiors and sun-dappled garden scenes in a gallery titled “The Silent Picture.” People are introspective, lost in thought, or lost in a book. Helene loved collecting large-scale works that seem to envelope viewers with stillness and calm.
And she truly loved the serene, nearly empty landscapes that this group of painters created. The long horizon of the sea only adds to these works’ peaceful presence. Helene wanted her museum to have clean lines, and unadorned galleries so that visitors could stand, contemplate, and find peace with these works. She truly felt these new, modern paintings had the ability to provide respite and even feel something spiritual.
Johann Aarts’s 1895 oil Landscape with Dunes – a tranquil, simplified view of an urban seaside town, indicated by faint buildings on the horizon. Courtesy: Kröller-Müller Museum
Signac’s 1890 Saint-Briac, The Beacons, Opus 120 – the most radical of his four views of the River Fémur along the Breton coast. Courtesy: private collection
Take a walk through this incredible show with the curators from the National Gallery, and hear how Seurat, Signac, and their contemporaries broke the rules and made history:
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