Fans have had a special opportunity to get up close to that iconic black dress and gaucho hat, OK Calder pin, denim apron, and Marimekko dress in Georgia O’Keeffe: Making a Life, on view in Santa Fe through October 19 2025 at the O’Keeffe Museum.
After you’ve walked through a somewhat chronological presentation of Ms. O’Keeffe’s paintings in the museum, the final two galleries allow you to take a close-up look at tools, cookbooks, and other stuff that she used to make things – sculpture, recipes, pastels, and clay pots.
Photomural of Todd Webb’s 1962 photograph Georgia Making Stew, Ghost Ranch.
Due to the overwhelming popular response to Living Modern, the traveling exhibition that featured O’Keeffe’s wardrobe and chronicled how she portrayed herself for the greatest photographers of the 20th century, the museum curators decided to give visitors a little taste of the woman behind the art.
See some of our favorite things in our Flickr album here, and listen to the museum’s audio guide here.
It’s the first time that the O’Keeffee Museum has itself presented her clothing. To emphasize the “making” part of her life in New Mexico, they’ve included a case showing how Santa Fe artist Carol Sarkasian moonlighted as Georgia’s seamstress. There’s a case with sewing notions and cut pattern pieces for another version of Georgia’s always in-style black wrap dress. She totally believed in multiples!
Georgia’s iconic 1960-1970 wrap dress sewn by Carol Sarkasian with 1950 belt by Hector Aguilar; Tony Vacarro’s 1960 Portrait of O’Keeffe with one of her dogs.
Sewing notions, cut fabric, and tissue-paper pattern – Carol Sarkasian’s preparation to make a wrap dress for Ms. O’Keeffe.
She also believed in wearing her clothes for a long time, and so they showed they had years of life.
The most popular feature of her Abiquiu home tour is the kitchen and pantry, and learn about Georgia’s farm-to-table approach with her garden, recipies, and day-to-day lifestyle. Here, you get a glimpse of the modern and traditional appliances used for her daily coffee ritual (yes, she loved Bustelo!) and get to peruse a sampling of her cookbooks and hand-written recipies.
Shelves with Georgia’s pantry items
One of her unrealized dreams was to write a cookbook, and it shows. She was all about healthy eating and living, and in her later years she relied upon her trusted Abiquiu team to assist with gardening, cooking, and putting out a spread for the constant stream of visitors. (No recluse, she!)
From the pantry: Georgia’s cookbooks with her hand-written breakfast, rice, and drink recipe cards.
The final room shows the process and tools she used to create her paintings, pastels, and sculptures.
There’s a dramatic photomural of Georgia standing in front of her largest sculpture – temporarily housed nearby at the New Mexico Museum of Art until the new GOK museum is built. Beneath, you see several prototypes – a wax spiral made in 1916 and bronze maquettes from the Forties.
Cast when she was in her nineties, the case demonstrates that she kept making versions of this her whole life and finding inspiration from stuff found on her New Mexico wanderings.
Bruce Webber’s photo of Georgia and her 1979-1980 spiral sculpture; the case below with its inspiration – a ram’s horn and earlier maquettes.
There are things from her travels to Japan, an unfinished work on an easel, and a case showing the pot she made when her assistant, Juan Hamilton, convinced her to keep making shapes, even when her macular degeneration made it impossible for her to paint.
The round, smooth shape echoes the rocks that she liked to collect, so it’s fitting that the museum paired her tools and pot with a beautiful oil painting done of one of her favorites.
1963-1971 Black Rock with White Background; below, Georgia’s 1980 stoneware pot and tools– a pottery wheel bat and Sears rolling pin.
Georgia’s denim studio apron and an unfinished work – a pencil sketch on primed canvas.
For more on Georgia and her life, listen to Pita Lopez, who worked as a companion and secretary for Miss O’Keeffee from 1974 to 1986 and later oversaw maintenance and preservation of her Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch homes.
The joyful retrospective Eugenie Shonnard: Breaking the Mold, on view at Santa Fe’s New Mexico Museum of Art through September 1, 2025, tells the story of a determined young artist in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn who seized opportunities to follow her dream, learn from the best, forge lifelong friendships, and transform inspirations of the nature and culture around her into fine art.
In 1927, Shonnard took up full-time residence as Santa Fe’s first academically trained sculptor. For years, the community considered her the “dean of sculpture”, but after she passed away in 1978 at the age of 91, gradually her legacy and accomplishments faded into obscurity.
1930 portrait of Eugenie Shonnard in her sculpture studio by Wilford S. Conrow.
This year, the Museum chose to showcase Shonnard’s range of accomplishments – sculpture, painting, furniture, and architectural design. The strategy has worked, since most visitors remark, “What a beautiful body of work! Why haven’t we heard about her before?
Looking at the strong, robust sculptures of Breton peasants and Native American celebrity Dr. Charles Eastman featured in the introductory gallery, you would never guess that Shonnard started life as a sickly child whose wealthy parents kept her close to home. She spent lots of time outdoors with pets, nature, and the serenity of the Hudson Valley.
Shonnard’s 1923 granite portrait of a Basque woman, La Grandmére.
Shonnard’s 1926 direct-carved mahogany portrait of Dr. Charles Eastman, Chief Ohiyesa Communing with the Great Spirit.
Always considered a talented watercolorist, her teenage life took quite a turn when her mother allowed her to enroll in the New York School of Applied Design for Women – a school that taught proficiency in the “lesser arts” like lacemaking, wallpaper design, and book illustration, and cover design so that young women could have “appropriate” careers.
Shonnard’s 1907 pencil and watercolor design in the pastel “Mucha style” – organic designs framing ethereal woman with flowing tresses.
The most sought-after course was a figure drawing class taught by a visiting European professor – the famous Art Nouveau superstar Alphonse Mucha. A master draughtsman and designer, he taught students how to convey human expression in quick, sure, animated line and to use expressive, organic designs from nature to give their work a modern something extra.
Mucha immediately recognized Shonnard’s skill in blending human empathy and line, and advised her to think beyond what was offered at her school. He suggested that she go to Paris, train with top European sculptors (he’d provide letters of introduction), and seriously purse a “fine arts” path.
Although her doctors advised her against making the long transatlantic passage, she and her mother set off for Paris in 1911. She loved it! She followed up with Mucha’s suggestions (and contacts), began her fine-arts sculptural training, and met other young American female sculpture students (like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Malvina Hoffman) who were soaking up all of the influences that the Parisian modern art scene offered.
Although he had retired from teaching students, Rodin made an exception for Shonnard and told her he’d be happy to review her work periodically. She worked across a variety of sculptural media (stone, clay, wood) in the atelier of Antoine Bourdelle (an early adoptor of Art Deco who also taught Matisse), showed with the American Woman’s Art Association, and exhibited at the Paris Salon.
When World War I forced Shonnard’s return to New York, she enrolled at the Art Students League for classes with superstar American sculptor James Earle Fraser.
Two of Shonnard’s popular garden commissions – a crane and pelican.
Combining everything she learned from Rodin, Mucha, Bourdelle, and Fraser, she began to excel in stripping her depictions of her subjects down to the essentials that captured each person (or animal’s) inner spirit.
Inspired by Brittany: Shonnard’s 1926 oak Figure of a Woman. Courtesy: Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas
Her career began to take off – commissions for sculptures, shows in New York, and acclaim for her portraits of people and gentle animals. Shonnard made the most of it, showing at New York galleries and the Booklyn Museum, working with her mentor Mucha, and criss-crossing America and Europe in the 1920s.
Like decades of artists before her, she was often drawn to Brittany to capture the spirituality, nature, and culture of the people in her art.
In 1925, she made a fortuitous stop in New Mexico at the invitation of museum director Edger Lee Hewitt, who introduced her to the thriving art community and innovative Native American artists.
As with Brittany, much about the Southwest resonated with her – dramatic landscapes, spirituality of ancient New Mexican cultures, and the unique architecture and religious art of old churches. She also drove out into the country to create plein air watercolors of the same Abiquiu landscapes that later inspired O’Keeffe.
Shonnard’s 1925 watercolor of Abiquiu’s unique landscape, Red and White Cliffs with Mesa.
Her sculptures inspired by her New Mexico experience created a sensation in Paris in 1926 – beautiful, direct-carved portraits from the faraway Southwest on display next to her work from Brittany.
Shonnard’s untitled 1925 mahogany Indian bust, shown in her solo show in Paris.
By 1927, Shonnard moved permanently to Santa Fe and began her own full-time studio from which she produced commissions, designed Southwest-inspired furniture, and explored Spanish and Pueblo cultures more deeply.
The exhibition includes designs for private chapel commissions with John Gaw Meem, examples of her furniture, and keenstone panels – her lightweight material invention that liberated her from manipulating heavy granite and wood in her studio, so she could keep carving and sculpting with a lighter material well into her seventies.
People who knew Shonnard said that she exuded a positive spirit throughout her life, seeking harmony with nature, animals, and people. It’s fitting that this retrospective includes a large room populated with her beloved birds, woodland, and backyard animals, and concludes with works by local artists she admired and whose works she collected – Maria and Juan Martinez and Awa Tsireh.
Detail of Shonnard’s Madonna sculpture.
Shonnard’s 1950 portrait Maria, a tribute to the acclaimed San Ildefonso artist.
Get to know this Santa Fe legend by looking through all her beautiful work (and work by her mentors) in our Flickr album.
It’s been just over 100 years ago that Juan Pino of Tesuque Pueblo popped into the Santa Fe studio of Charles Kassler, and experienced his enthusiasm about linoleum printmaking – a new-ish way to make multiple images without using an expensive press or chemicals.
Charles offered Juan some materials to take home so he could try it, and Juan got to work. See the results in Printing the Pueblo World: Juan Pino of Tay Tsu’geh Oweenge, on display at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture through August 17, 2025.
Unlike his friend Kassler, who trained formally at Princeton and the Art Institute of Chicago, Juan received his artistic training in the Pueblo world, learning observation, craftsmanship, and patience from the ceramic and textile artists around him. By 1924, booming tourism in Northern New Mexico had created a big market for modern and traditional pueblo ceramics (think Maria Martinez and Margaret Tafoya) and for pueblo painters, like Julian Martinez and Awa Tsireh (Alfonso Roybal).
Juan Pino’s 1925 linocut print of people by the church in the Tesuque Pueblo plaza
Juan was an expert in wood carving, ceramics, textiles, and crafting dance regalia, but like most artists of his day, he juggled his artistic output with other income-generating pursuits – farming, gathering and selling home-heating wood, and posing as a model for Anglo artists flocking to the vibrant Santa Fe art colony.
Juan Pino’s 1925 linocut print of three corn dancers – depicting himself, Vecillio Herrera, and Candido Herrera.
For linocut printmaking, you just cut your design into linoleum – a relatively accessible material since it was manufactured for use in kitchen floors or wall coverings for new homes. Once the block was carved and inked, you could either apply manual pressure to make the multiple images or ask a fellow artist to borrow their press.
Carving images into linoleum came naturally, and Juan started depicting the world around him in Tesuque – not just romanticized images of Indian life. Juan carved and printed the daily comings and goings of his fellow villagers in the pueblo plaza and images of traditional dances.
For all the car traffic and hubub on the streets of Santa Fe during the 1920s, Tesuque pueblo life still had elements of traditional Tewa ways. Archaeologists have found remnants of village buildings dating back to 1200 CE, so Tesuque is one of the longest inhabited communities in the United States.
Juan Pino’s 1925 linocut print of two men harvesting wheat
Taking in the twenty prints in the exhibition allows us to see day-to-day life as it was 100 years ago in the historic pueblo – making ceramics at home, harvesting, using oxen on the farm at a time just before horses replaced them as the work animal of choice. We can even see detailed black-and-white depictions of the regalia men were wearing for the Corn Dance – including one print that likely includes a self-portrait!
After only a few months of making linoprints in 1925, Juan’s work was displayed at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Santa Fe and Pueblo artists celebrated his accomplishment as the first Pueblo artist to try his hand at printmaking. In Santa Fe’s commercial gallery market, however, tourists were more inclined to purchase prints and paintings that showed more romanticized visions of Indian life.
Juan kept creating, and seeing so much of his work 100 years later is truly a revelation – a set of quiet, enjoyable glimpses of everyday life at the foot of the Sangre de Christo Mountains.
Juan Pino’s 1925 linocut print of a voyaging man. Courtesy: Indian Arts Research Center, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe.
The show also has a beautiful touch that emphasizies Juan’s continuing artistic output: two large ceramic pieces from the Thirties and Forties created by his wife, Lorencita Pino. It’s likely Juan used his steady hand to apply strong, black lines – skills so evident in his masterful design for his slice-of-life print series.
Lorencita Pino ceramics likely painted by her husband, Juan Pino – a 1940 dough bowl with cloud and scroll designs and 1930 jar with bird and scroll design.
1925 linocut print of woman making pottery near fireplace…is it Lorencita?
Since its founding in 1937 as an institution documenting Navajo ceremonial art, Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian has shifted toward collecting contemporary Native American art and serving as a platform to boost careers of emerging artists.
Virgil Ortiz’s (Cochiti) 2005 ceramic sculpture Monos Figure with Diego Romero’s (Chochiti) 2005 bowl Tenga Cuidado Con Griegos Salvo Obseqios.
For example, on a wall honoring T.C. Cannon, the curators showcase a crazy, irreverent David Bradley work painted in T.C.’s bold, satirical style, but display a rather conservative (and rarely seen) woodcut by T.C. himself.
David Bradley’s (Minnesota Chippewa) 1979 acrylic Remembering T.C. Cannon in the style of his hero.
T.C. Cannon’s (Kiowa/Caddo) 1977 woodblock print Hopi with Manta.
Contemporary textile artist Ramona Sakiestewa’s comment that her work represents “visual echoes of what came before” inspired the title of the exhibition. Sakiestewa’s tapestry incorporates colors and motifs of traditional Hopi wicker plaques. This theme is carried throughout the show.
Ramona Sakiestewa’s 1992 Basket Dance/9-B echoes a traditional woven Hopi ceremonial plaque.
A grouping of intricately painted Acoma ceramics pays tribute to the Wheelwright’s 1981 exhibition Sky City Salute that honored two matiarchs of that art form – Lucy Lewis, who lived at Acoma before and after tourists began beating a path to the ancient mesa-top city, and Marie Z. Chino. The curators match it with work by Marie’s grandson, Robert Patricio, who channels traditional themes into a modern ceramic context.
Acoma legacies: a 1965-85 seed pot and 1958 bowl by Lucy Lewis, and large 1980 storage jar by Marie Z. Chino.
Another grouping references the Wheelwright’s 2011 show Radical Recycled Jewelry Makeover with a bold piece by Kenneth Johnson and the Wheelwright’s stellar collection of Zuni bolo-tie inlays.
Kenneth Johnson’s (Muscogee/Seminole) 2011 necklace from recycled pearls, jade, gold, and silver..
1970s-1980s thunderbird bolo by Owen Bobelu (Zuni); inlaid silver, jet, turquoise, and mother-of-pearl.
The “salon wall” is peppered with paintings that tell the interconnected histories and styles of nine Native artists – the trajectory from flat-style styles of the 1920s and 1930s to more open innovation of Ben Harjo and Linda Lomahaftewa, some of earliest graduates at the Institute of American Insitute Arts (IAIA).
The exhibition also presents another group of work to acknowledge the artists who began working together in Scottsdale in the 1950s and who began IAIA in 1962 – clothing designed by co-founder/president Lloyd Kiva New and jewelry by instructor Charles Loloma..
Lloyd Kiva New’s (Cherokee) 1950s man’s shirt with Andrew van Tsinajinnie (Diné) printed fabric and Charles Laloma (Hopi) silver buttons.
Charles Laloma’s 1970 silver, coral, turquoise pin.
An exhibition of dramatic, action-filled prints by legendary Abstract Expressionists shows how experts at the new printmaking workshops during the Sixties and Seventies gave art-world mavericks the tools to take their ideas to new dimensions.
Hans Namuth’s 1964 photo of Frankenthaler working at ULAE in West Islip, NY. Courtesy: artist’s estate and University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography
The main gallery shows them alongside prints by Elaine de Kooning, telling the story of how these remarkable abstractionists collaborated with different workshops, used their distinctive styles to create portfolios, and formed decades-long bonds with master printers.
Helen Frankenthaler grew up and studied in the ever-evolving New York City art world. Her studies with Hans Hoffman – known for teaching abstractionists how to capitalize upon the “push pull” of color – and her technique of physically soaking and staining colors across canvases laid on her studio floor put her squarely at the intersection of the Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painting movements.
Frankenthaler had her first big solo painting exhibition in 1960, and began her printmaking experiments the following year. Some of her earliest works in the exhibition are silkscreens – some in the color-field direction, and some more gestural.
Frankenthaler’s 1967 untitled silkscreen (1/100); published by Chiron Press in New York; collaborating printer Patricia Yamashiro.
Frankenthaler’s 1970 silkscreen (artist’s proof) (19/24) from her What Red Lines Can Do portfolio, published by Multiples, Inc., NY; collaborating printers Sheila Marbain and Patricia Yamashiro.
Frankenthaler’s prints are grouped according to her work with various presses, such as Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), Tyler Graphics Ltd., and Tamarind Institute. Often with the guidance of print masters, she experimented to see how her “soak stain” could be layered and pressed multiple times across the lithography stone.
The exhibition curators display a series of proofs and experiments at Tyler Graphics to demonstrate the artist’s creative process with the expert printmaking team.
Frankenthaler’s 1978 lithograph Bronze Smoke (36/38) published by ULAE in Bayshore, NY; collaborating printers Thomas Cox and Bill Gordon.
Frankenthaler’s 1987 Sudden Snow lithograph proof (4/12); published by Tyler Graphics Ltd. (Mount Kisco, NY); collaborating printers Roger Campbell, Lee Funderburt, Michael Herstand, and Kenneth Tyler.
Later experiments show off Frankenthaler’s experimentation with woodcuts and monoprints. Here, she inked a woodblock and ran it multiple times to produce a “ghost print” of the wood, then applied bright red over the wood knots and added bright blobs of floating colors atop the natural backdrop.
Helen Frankenthaler’s 1991 Monotype XVII, published by Garner Tullis, NY; collaborating printers Emanuele Cacciatore, Benjamin Gervis, and Garner Tullis.
The exhibition also showcases two dramatic print series by action painter Elaine de Kooning made at the Tamarind Institute. Check out Elaine’s wild lithographs of bulls.
Elaine de Kooning’s 1973 lithograph Taurus XI published by Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque; collaboraring printers John Sommers and Ben Q. Adams. Courtesy: Tamarind Archive.
The curators also showcase Elaine’s multiverse interpretation of a famous Parisian sculpture in the Jardin de Luxembourg. The series mounted across the long wall gives gallery goers a close-up look at the intricate collaboration between Tamarind’s workshop masters and a midcentury mark maker.
The exhibition also includes prints from plenty of other mid-century abstractionists from the UNM collection – Motherwell, Diebenkorn, and Lewitt – as well as prints by current UNM students who were asked to create art inspired by Frankenthaler and company.
Take a look at all of these action-packed prints in our Flickr album.
Elaine de Kooning’s 1977 lithograph Jardin de Luxembourg II; published by Tamarind Institute; collaborating printers John Sommers and Marlys Dietrick. Courtesy: Tamarind Archive Collection.
Photo of Frankenthaler’s 2000 woodcut Madame Butterfly made from 46 woodblocks; published by Tyler Graphics Ltd. Courtesy: Canberra’s National Gallery of Art.
Edward Olecksak’s 1972 photo of Helen Frankenthaler and Bill Goldston working on Venice II at ULAE in West Islip, New York. Courtesy: Frankenthaler Foundation Archives
How did a stylish, ambitious, saavy librarian toiling in the stacks of Princeton’s library at age 22 transform herself into the trusted confidante of the richest man in the world, helping him to build a celebrated collection of manuscripts, books, and art?
Find out in Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy, the blockbuster exhibition at The Morgan Library and Museum on display through May 4, 2025. To celebrate its 100th birthday, the Morgan Library & Museum wanted to honor its first director, Belle da Costa Greene.
Belle Greene’s 1915 portrait at home; Paul Thompson photo for a news story on NYC high-salaried women. Courtesy: Getty/Bettmann.
Belle decended from an illustrious line of African-American intellectuals, lawyers, cultural leaders, and social-justice advocates, but lived her entire life passing for white in the early 20th century.
Tebbs & Knell’s 1923-1935 photograph of Mortan Library’s East Room with most of the 11,000 volumes acquired by Belle Greene.
As a young, culturally oriented woman, Belle dreamed of working in the brand-new field of library science. Her impressive intellectual curiosity and research skills attracted benefactors who helped her with tuition at the best schools. Ultimately in 1901, she landed a job at Princeton’s library (when the campus was still segregated).
She came under the mentorship of library-science champiom Junius Spencer Morgan, J.P.’s nephew who eventually recommended her to his uncle who was building a private library to rival the best in Britain and France. The rest was history.
The exhibition tells Belle’s personal story, documents her acquisition triumphs for Morgan, shows her fame as one of the highest paid professional women in New York, and explains how she spent four decades building Mr. Morgan’s library into a premiere cultural institution.
Belle deftly navigated through society by gaining acclaim as a scholar, curator, and cultural innovator – often as the only woman on the auction bidding floor or at scholarly societies.
When she set her mind to something, she usually found a way to acquire it – even if it took years of waiting and entreaties. It was a quality that J.P. Morgan admired in her. He paid her handsomely, and trusted her completely to acquire works across Europe in his name.
Illustration for The World Magazine (May 21, 1911), showing Belle in action with at the auction of Robert Hoe’s library.
Belle Greene’s prized acquisition – the only surviving 1485 print edition of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.
She even convinced Morgan to embrace classical Islamic art from India and Persia for the collection before other collectors caught on to their beauty and drove up prices.
In 1911, Belle purchased this 1750-75 album of Persian and Mughal paintings owned by British Museum expert Charles Hercules Read.
When Morgan died in 1913, his son, Jack, asked Belle to continue in her position and oversee the construction of the Annex on 36th Street.
In 1916 (without permission), Belle snuck over to Europe during World War I to convince an English collector to part with the much admired “Crusader Bible,” a gorgeous illuminated 13th century manuscript. Mr. Morgan had once made an offer for it. After Morgan died in 1913, Belle met with the collector in person, struck a deal, brought it back, and presented it to Jack Morgan for the collection.
Jeweled cover of 1051-64 Gospels of Judith of Flanders – a 1926 purchase by Belle Greene and Jack Morgan.
1490 Madonna of the Magnificent, a Florentine painting that Belle conserved, still hanging in Morgan’s study.
Her expertise in medieval illumination and manuscripts made her a friend and advisor for life among American and European scholars, collectors, and museum curators. The Metropolitan Museum made her a trustee for life, and often consulted with her on medieval masterpieces, fakes and forgeries, and other acquisitions.
In Belle’s personal art collection – Lavinia Fontana’s 1580 Marriage Portrait of a Bolognese Noblewoman. Courtesy: National Museum of Women in the Arts.
From Belle’s jewelry– Benedetto Pistrucci’s 1840-1850 jasper and gold Head of Medusa. Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum.
The curators tell her story across two galleries using items from the Morgan’s collection (including the many portraits of her!) as well as paintings, prints, photographs and documents from 20 other lenders. Take a peek into the exhibition and hear the Morgan’s curators summarize Belle’s ground-breaking achievements:
Explore the works at your leisure here as you complete a 3D digital walk-through on the Morgan’s website. You can also listen to the audio tour from right inside the virtual gallery.
Get to know this legend, and take a look at our favorite exhibition pieces in our Flickr album.
The ony question is – who will play Belle in the movie?
1950 photo of Bella reviewing her last acquisition, a 10th century Gospel Book from France. Courtesy: Harvard University’s Berenson Library in Florence, Italy.
Take a look at generations of 20th century craft mentorship in Craft Front & Center: ConversationPieces, on view at MAD Museum through April 20, 2025. The exhibition shines a light on how innovators shaped subsequent generations of craft artists at schools and art colonies across the United States. The curators have pulled from the MAD collection to show us the work of student and teacher side by side in several disciplines – fiber arts, ceramics, and glass.
Many of the mentors either taught at or were influenced by the Bauhaus, the legendary early 20th century design incubator.
Who are the generational inspirations for Eve Biddle’s 2019-2023 tiny ceramic sculptures, New Relics?
Bauhaus students could take classes in weaving, ceramics, typography, and metalwork alongside traditional fine arts classes. They were expected to excel in their applied-arts training and mix in aesthetics learned in their fine arts classes.
Bauhaus innovator Margeurite Friedlander Wildenhain’s 1966 Square and Textured Vase
When the Nazis closed the progressive school in 1933, many German-Jewish refugee teachers and students fled, transplanting Bauhaus design and educational philosophies across the world.
MAD highlights several artists – including Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, Margeurite Friedlander Wildenhain, and Maija Grotell – who came to the United States and integrated Bauhaus practice into curriculums at Black Mountain College, the California College of Arts and Crafts, Cranbrook, and new craft workshops they began.
One of the best-known 20th century textile artists, Anni Albers is featured in the show by a fine-art “pictoral textile” made on a small handloom. At the Bauhaus, Albers she trained under master weaver Gunta Stölzl, and eventally took over as head of the textile workshop. Albers moved to Black Mountain College in North Carolina with her husband, painter Josef Albers, and was the first textile artist invited by MoMA to have a one-person exhibition.
Anni Albers’s 1959 textile Sheep May Safely Graze made on a small handloom using gauze weave technique
Anni also designed commercial textiles for Knoll for years. Her influence on the next generation of painters and textile artists was profound.
MAD features work by two fiber-arts innovators (and Albers admirers) who pushed boundaries by crafting commanding, large-scale sculptures. Sheila Hicks (who studied with Josef at Yale) and Claire Zeisel (who studied with the former Bauhaus faculty at Chicago’s IIT) are credited as the leaders of America’s textile arts movement. Tufts burst from the wall in Hicks’ piece, and Zeisel’s hovers in the center of the gallery like a shaman.
Sheila Hicks’s 1968 Dark Prayer Rug, inspired by Anni Albers and Mexican and Moroccan textile artists.
Claire Zeisler’s 1967 Red Wednesday with braid and cords twisting the sculpture’s armature
Trude Guermonprez, an unconventional materials artist known for innovations in three-dimensional weaving once worked at Berlin’s textile engineering academy; later, she consulted with industrial textile firms, as did Anni Albers.
Next to Guermonprez’s dynamic 3D hanging woven sculpture, MAD shows us a piece by Kay Sakimachi, a student who met Guermonprez in 1951 at the California College of Arts and Crafts summer craft workshop.
Guermonprez encouraged students to use latest technology, and here we see how Kay used a 1959 invention by DuPont – monofilament that’s better known today as fishing line. Kay’s woven it into an ethereal hanging sculpture.
Innovative fishing-line weaving 1968 Kunoyuki by Kay Sakimachi alongside 1962 Banner by her mentor, Trude Guermonprez.
In ceramics, MAD displays a series of vessels that transform into sculptures, starting with a modest, contained piece by Margeurite Friedlander Wildenhain, one of the first Bauhaus students and the first woman in Germany to be honored as a master potter. After emigrating to the United States in 1940, Wildenhain founded Pond Farm Workshops in Sonoma County, California ad instituted a rigorous Bauhaus instructional approach.
Frances Senska, her ceramics student, applied Wildenhain’s instructional principles to her own classes at Montana State, where student Peter Voulkos learned how to breathe new life into clay. Voulkos shashed, prodded, and poked clay, vigorously transforming the humble medium into wild, dramatic expressions.
Peter Voulkos’s 1992 stoneware Sibley, an example of his revolutionary approach to ceramic form.
Mary Ann Unger 1994 terra cotta Hoist – an approach to ceramic sculpture inspired by teacher Peter Voulkos
In turn, his UC-Berkeley student, Mary Ann Unger injected whimsey and improvisation into her sculptures, which allowed her daughter, Eve Biddle, to push it even further. MAD shows Biddle’s ingenious installation of creative ceramic geodes, trilobites, and spines crawling around the gallery wall.
Ceramics mentors even play a role in the development of America’s Studio Glass movement, which begins with Harvey Littleton, whose dad was a physicist on the first reasarch team at Corning Glass Works (he later developed Pyrex). MAD displays Harvey’s gorgeous glass arcs.
Work by student and teacher: Toshiko Takaezu’s 1995 stoneware Mist #2, part of her Moon series, with Maija Grotell’s 1953 glazed earthenware vase
On weekends, Harvey spent lots of time with his dad in the Corning lab, assuming he would follow in dad’s footsteps as a physicist at the University of Michigan. But after Harvey experienced UM art classes, he switched major. Eventually, he was specializing in ceramics under Maija Grotell at Cranbrook Academy of Art (who also taught ceramic superstar Toshiko Takaezu).
Littleton’s travels to observe the Italian glassmaking masters at Verano inspired him to apply his kiln and physics skills to experimental glassmaking. Back home, e pioneered low-temperature glass-blowing techniques that enabled glass artists to create work in studio setting and not a factory.
Littleton achievement was established the first university-based glass-blowing program at University of Wisconsin-Madison. A lucky undergraduate, Dale Chihuly, learned from the master, and the rest was history for American glass making.
Glass sculptures by teacher and student – 1983 Double Blue Arches by innovator Harvey Littleton and 1968 Wine Bottle by created by Dale Chihuly in Venice under a Fulbright Fellowship.
After receiving his MFA in ceramics at RISD, Chihuly traveled to Venice (like his mentor), and observed how the team worked together to create a finished work of glass art. In 1971, he founded Pilchuk Glass Works in Washington State, where he emphasized the collaborative, collective process. Chihuly’s own sculptural wonders emerged, plus the next generation of indigenous glass artist gained experience in collaborative expression – Tony Jojolla and Preston Singletary.
There are many more stories told in this illuminating exhibition from the MAD collection. Take a look in our Flickr album.
Tony Jojolla’s 1996-1997 Large Glass Olla, a traditional Pueblo pot made of glass at Dale Chihuly’s Pilchuk School; at right, Chihuly’s 1978 Untitled Basket
When you peek into the second-floor MoMA exhibition, you’ll see where Van Gogh’s The Starry Night has been holding court for the last few months.
Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern, on view through March 29, tells the story of how one woman’s passion for modern art over a century ago formed the basis of the MoMA collection and MoMA itself.
Van Gogh’s 1889 The Starry Night, one of MoMA’s most beloved works.
Bliss was an early American patron of Cézanne, Seurat, Picasso, and Redon at a time when New York society looked askance at modern art’s tilted tables, fractured still lifes, and stippled surfaces. She even contributed to getting the 1913 Armory Show off the ground as a sponsor, art lender, daily visitor, and new-work buyer.
Maybe the constraints of growing up female in the Victorian era gave her an appreciation for the lack of inhibition Picasso’s and Matisse’s colors, Gauguin’s wild Tahitian woodcuts, and Redon’s ethereal woodsy fantasy figures.
Picasso’s 1914 Green Still Life.
Endless modern-art discussions with art-world friends and mentors Arthur Davies and John Quinn gave her a sophisticated view of all the latest artists and trends. She joined a small group of modern-art lovers to lobby the Metropolitan Museum of Art to show the latest breakthroughs from Europe.
In 1921, the Met acquiesced and borrowed enough art to mount an exhibition of French impressionist and post-impressionist work. Bliss anonymously lent twelve pieces. People came to look, but the Met still resisted acquiring work that it considered too far-out.
When Bliss came into her inheritance in 1923, the pursestrings were unleashed. At age 49, she began to assemble the collection of her dreams via annual European buying trips and estate sales. Where could she show it?
1904 portrait of Lillie P. Bliss
In 1928, she bought a lavish uptown triplex with a two-story gallery. She hung her favorite Cezanne over the grand piano and arranged a “who’s who” of avant-garde masters. Check out The Bather front and center, surrounded by Picassos, Seurats, and Gauguins.
1929-1931 photo of Lillie P. Bliss’s modernist collection hung in the music room of her Park Avenue apartment
Cézanne’s 1895-1898 Still Life with Apples hung at home in the place of honor, above the piano
The next year in a brainstorming session with Abby Rockefeller and Elizabeth Parkinson, the trio decided that New York needed a special place that was devoted exclusively to modern art. MoMA was born!
MoMA’s first exhibition – Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh – was mounted in rented space at 730 Fifth Avenue, and crowds came. The exhibition was a huge popular success, even though it coincided with the historic 1929 market crash.
Cézanne’s 1897 oil Pines and Rocks (Fontainebleau?)
Seurat’s 1884 crayon drawing A Woman Fishing.
Lillie’s health crashed, too. On the heels of MoMA’s test run, she was diagnosed with cancer, and started drawing up a will to ensure that her beloved collection would carry on when she could not. She gave a Monet and a few gems to the Met, but bequeathed 150 works to the new Museum of Modern Art – forming the core of the collection we know today.
Matisse’s 1918-1919 Interior with a Violin Case.
When Lillie died in 1931 at age 66, there was only one last thing. She was never able to acquire a Van Gogh. But in her will, she did give the museum permission to sell or exchange most of the paintings she bequeathed.
A few years later, MoMA sold one of Lillie’s Degas to acquire Picasso’s epic Demoiselles d’Avignon.
And in 1941, Alfred Barr made her dream come true. He heard that a dealer possessed a very special Van Gogh, and traded three of Lillie’s paintings for The Starry Night.
See our favorite works in our Flickr album, and enjoy other stories about this visionary MoMA founder by listening to the audio guide for the exhibition here.
Gauguin’s 1894 woodcut print The Creation of the Universe from the 10-print series, Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent)
Decending into the ground-floor gallery of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, visitors find themselves in a transcendental chamber, filled with abstraction, color, and spiritual emanations.
Pelton & Jonson: The Transcendent 1930s, on view in Albuquerque through March 15, features the work, letters, and personal photographs documenting the professional and personal friendship between two artists that wanted people to see realities beyond the visible world. Artists Raymond Jonson, former UNM professor, and Agnes Pelton, the visionary New York artist who relocated to the Western desert, felt they were kindred spirits, and the exhibition shows us why.
Agnes Pelton’s 1930 painting The Voice – suggesting enlightened dialogue within human consciousness.
As a young artist, Jonson was thunderstruck by the modern art he witnessed in the 1913 Armory Show when it came to Chicago (which included a painting by his future friend, Agnes Pelton from her “imaginative” period of work). Jonson read Kandinsky’s influential The Art of Spiritual Harmony when it was published in English in 1914, and increasingly pushed his work toward pure shape and design that could evoke a deeper response from the viewer.
By 1930, he and his wife moved to Santa Fe. He began teaching, curating shows, and continuing to pursue abstraction. When concepts were simply too much for a single canvas, he conceived a triptych.
Raymond Jonson’s 1930 tryptich – Time Cycle: Morning, Noon, and Night
Around 1931, new-age/Jungian composer, author, and painter Dane Rudhyar told Jonson about Pelton’s abstractions, and put them in touch. For the next 30 years, Jonson and Pelton corresponded about art making, materials, abstraction, and spiritual connections.
By this time, Pelton had had 14 solo exhibitions and been in 20 group shows. Her interest in spiritual practices kept growing, and the lure of the new-age communities in southern California beckoned her. During a 1932 yoga-retreat trip to Cathedral City, she decided to stay put and paint in the peaceful desert for the rest of her life
Pelton’s 1930 White Fire – showing light radiating from the inner self – from Jonson’s 1933 exhibition
Pelton’s 1932 Mount of Flame – symbolizing the beauty in the abstract – from Jonson’s 1933 exhibition.
In 1933, Jonson invited Pelton to participate in a Santa Fe exhibition alongside himself and Cady Wells. This current exhibition at UNM commemorates this convergence by reuniting some of the original works by Pelton, Wells, and Jonson. See some of the pieces in our Flickr album.
From the 1933 exhibition: Jonson’s 1933 charcoal drawing Ascending Circle
Jonson and his wife took a road trip to visit Pelton in 1935 – their one and only meeting. Although they were at a distance, the letters kept coming, and when Jonson and others in New Mexico organized the Transcendental Painting Group in 1938, she was invited to participate and serve as the grand dame/president.
In recent years, Agnes Pelton’s work has been resurgent due to the traveling exhibition organized in 2019 by the Phoenix Art Museum, which traveled to the Whitney in 2020. Read our review here.
To hear how this Albuquerque exhibition came together, listen in on Christian Waguespack’s interview with curator Mary Statzer:
UNM is lucky to have over 600 works by Raymond Jonson in its collection, and all the letters, sketches, publications, and journals he kept. For more on Raymond Jonson’s life and work, visit his portal on the UNM website.
Jonson touching up work at his solo exhibition in Tulsa in a 1937 photo by F. Von James.
1935-1940 photo of Pelton reading the TPG brochure in her Cathedral City studio with Mount of Flame behind her.
Ascending the ramp inside the Guggenheim Museum to enjoy Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930, European optimism and color abound. The exhibition, on view through March 9, 2025, showcases the exuberance and innovation of artists living in early 20th century Paris, who felt exhilarated by the profusion of modern forms of music, dance, and architecture and used abstraction and prismatic color to translated their enthusiasm.
Avant-garde power couple Robert and Sonia Delaunay broke from analytic cubism’s monochromatic approach and injected pulsing color into the art-scene conversation in Paris.
Robert Delaunay’s 1911-1912 Red Eiffel Tower – modern architecture and cubism with a twist of color.
Inspired by 19th century color theory (wheels demonstrating complimentary and dissonant colors), they painted swirling orbs pulsing with harmonies and contrasts to show optimism about the future.
Modern buildings like the Eiffel Tower, electrification of city streets, and the syncopation in dance-hall music created a pre-war energy in Paris that motivated these “orphists.” Everything seemed to be happening simultaneously. Harmonious and dissonant colors and whirling shapes on large canvases seemed a good way to represent it, as shown in the Guggenheim’s fun musical promo:
The style was named “orphism” by none other than Apollinaire himself. Robert Delaunay’s works in the exhibition include some of his early experimentation with abstract oval “windows,” his abstract riffs on the cosmos, and canvases still showing a hint of the real world. All convey the simultaneous push-pull of Paris, modern life, and larger scientific forces.
Robert Delaunay’s 1913 Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon. Courtesy: MoMA
Robert Delaunay’s 1913 The Cardiff Team, with Eiffel’s tower, aerial achievements, and sports dynamics. Courtesy: Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands.
Many of Sonia’s orphist paintings are featured, including a gigantic horizontal color work inspired by the dynamic movement of tango dancers at a popular Parisian club. No doubt the massive 2024 Bard Graduate Center Gallery show about her forays into fashion and other creative fields (Sonia Delaunay: Living Art) influenced the Guggenheim curators to include her painted toy box and her celebrated super-tall accordion-book painting representing her collaboration with poet Blaise Cendrars.
Sonia Delaunay’s 1913 oil Bal Bullier inspired by dynamism of tango dancers at the popular Parisian club. Courtesy: Centre Pompidou
Innovations by the Delaunays are placed alongside other artists’ works that reflect the artistic breakthroughs of the early Twentieth Century – Kandinsky’s abstraction, the Blue Rider group’s symbolic use of color, and the synergies that artists felt between abstraction and music. In 1912, Leopold Survage intended to create the first fully abstract film, but the project was halted by World War I. Fortunately, we can envision his plan from his series of dynamic color drawings.
Colored Rhythms series of twelve 1912 ink drawings created by Léopold Survage for the first abstract film. Courtesy: La Cinémathèque Française
The music that inspired the Orphism is referenced throughout the exhibition – the improvisation and free structure of jazz, the dissonance of cutting-edge experimental music, and the staccato of the latest Parisian dance-hall craze – Argentine tango. The curators have even provided musical tracks to underscore this influence.
The Italian futurists Balla and Severini are also featured. Speed, modernity, and simultaneous city sensations were their bread and butter, too, even though they argued in the press and art journals that Futurism and Orphism were totallydifferent.
Italian futurist Giacomo Balla’s 1914 Mercury Passing before the Sun, an allusion to recent cosmic events. Milan’s Museo del Novocento.
Gino Severini’s 1915 Dancer–Propeller–Sea. Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum
In pre-war Paris, American modernist painters Marsden Hartley, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and Morgan Russell picked up on Orphism, although the latter two rebranded their work Synchronism when they wrote their manifesto.
Marsden Hartley’s 1914 Abstraction Courtesy: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Even after the War, the Delaunays continued to represent orphism even if they occasionally incorporated real-world elements. Early orphism adopter Albert Gleizes also continued in this style throughout his career, and inspired students like Mairnie Jelett to explore color theory and its potential.
Albert Gleizes’s 1942 Painting for Contemplation, Dominant Rose and Green.
Irish artist Mairnie Jellett’s 1938 Painting. Courtesy: National Museum, NI, Ulster.
Take a look at our favorite works in our Flickr album here, and enjoy a syncpated strut through the colorful side of Modernism in this catalog preview:
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