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.
When New York Historical invited Kay WalkingStick to view its Hudson River School collection, she stood in awe of the evocative landscapes by Bierstadt, Durand, Kensett, and Cole – shimmering brooks, majestic mountains, and romantic skies. Their mastery of paint invites you to get lost in the inviting beauty. But Kay noticed that native people – who had inhabited these settings for millennia – were almost always missing. The supposed “wilderness” was likely still someone’s home.
Kay and the team at New York Historial correct this omission in the gorgeous, thought-provoking exhibition Kay WalkingStick/Hudson River School, now on view at the Heard Museum in Phoenix through May 25, 2026 – one of three stops for its US tour. (The exhibition debuted at NYH in New York in 2023.)
Louisa Davis Minot’s 1818 painting Niagara Falls with tiny Indigenous figures – a rare landscape by a female landscape painter in early America. Courtesy: New York Historical
The exhibit juxtaposes early 19th century Hudson River School landscapes with a retrospective of Kay’s own landscapes – large paintings of swirling ocean currents, dramatic Western mountains, and East Coast rivers with bands of Indigenous geometric patterns stenciled across them. It’s a signal that we are all still living on Indian land.
Take a look at our favorite works in our Flickr album.
Kay WalkingStick’s 2020 two-panel landscape New Hampshire Coast – overlaid with a stenciled Native American band. Courtesy: the artist and Hales New York and London.
By hanging 19th-century landscapes side-by-side with Kay’s paintings, the curators suggest we contemplate different questions: Did the popularity of the Hudson River School’s view of “unhabited wilderness” contribute to Americans’ drive West? Does anyone remember that the East Coast was also Native land? Does anyone realize that Native Amerians still live there?
Asher Durand’s 1837-1878 painting View of the Ausable River – a view of supposed wilderness that was home to the Haudenosaunee. Courtesy: private collector and New Britain Museum of American Art.
Bierstadt’s sketches of actual Shoshone tribal members is one of the few examples to depict specific Native Americans. And at the time, critics and buyers objected to his insertion of native people into his large-scale romantic landscapes.
Albert Bierstadt’s 1859 sketch Four Portraits of North American Indians, drawn during the Lander Expedition to record people he believed would soon vanish. Courtesy: New York Historical
The anchor painting of the exhibit is her epic Niagara, showing us the view from the Canadian side of the Falls. As she viewed the Niagara paintings in the NYS collection, WalkingStick wondered if she was up to the challenge of painting the Niagara falls herself. But when she saw a dramatic 1818 painting of Niagara by a relatively unknown female painter, Louisa Davis Minot, she decided to go for it! And what a triumph!
Kay WalkingStick’s 2022 two-panel Niagara with a Haudenosaunee pattern stenciled across remind viewers of its original inhabitants – the first painting by a Native American acquired by NYH. Courtesy: New York Historical
To drive home the connection between these landscapes with the original native inhabitants, WalkingStick looks for geometric patterns associated with specific groups of people. For Niagara, she used a Haudenosaunee pattern from a ceramic piece by David Smith, which is on view nearby in the gallery, along with patterned baskets from her own collection.
Steve Smith’s wheelthrown 1973-1974 jar, incised with a Haudenosaunee pattern that Walkingstick stenciled across Niagara. Courtesy: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian.
1960s Cherokee woven basket. Courtesy: Kay WalkingStick and Hales New York and London.
For her paintings of the Wampanoag Coast, she used a patterned band associated with the Pequot/Narraganset tribes who originally inhabited Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Kay WalkingStick’s 2018 two-panel oil painting Wampanoag Coast, Variation II – a view of the New England coast overlaid with a Pequot/Narraganset patterned band. Courtesy: private collection
Listen to Kay talk about her painting and see images of its original installation at New York Historical:
Other highlights of the exhibition are WalkingStick’s Our Land works, each emblazoned with a design from a Plains Indian woman’s parfleche bag – creations that WalkingStick contends are the first geometric abstract paintings done in America.
Kay WalkingStick’s 2007 two-canvas painting Our Land featuring a Parfleche design and a view of the Bitterroot Mountains, original land of the Nez Perce. Courtesy: private collection
For a more in-depth discussion between Kay and the exhibition curator, Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, about Kay’s approach to painting and the beauty she admires in Hudson River School paintings, click here.
Kay WalkingStick/Hudson River School will be on display at the Allentown Art Museum June 20-October 11, 2026 and at the James Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida November 7, 2026 – March 21, 2027.
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.
The 1915 founding of the Taos Society of Artists captulted Taos into one of the most recognized art colonies in the United States due to its traveling exhibitions of romantic, colorful paintings depicting the people, places, and traditions of unique to Northern New Mexico.
But another group of artists and cultural influencers arrived a few years later to inject the art scene there with a new, more contemporary style – one reflecting the approach associated with European modernism and the trends showcased in the 1913 Armory Show.
1943 watercolor by Howard Schleeter, who experimented with many contemporary styles
This less traditional group of innovators – and the next generation of their followers – are celebrated by the Taos Art Museum in its exhibition Taos Reimagined: Modernist Experiments in the High Desert, on view in the beautiful, new Janis and Roy Coffee Gallery at Fechin House through May 10, 2026. Most of the works in the show are selected from the museum’s own collection.
After moving to Taos in 1917, philanthropist and fan-of-the-avant-garde Mabel Dodge soon recruited East Coast modern mavericks to join her. One of her first friends to take the trip West was painter Marsden Hartley, whose early symbolic abstractions electrified European critics and clients of Stieglitz’s gallery in New York. One of his modernist landscapes is featured in this show.
Marsden Hartley’s 1918 drawing New Mexico – a pastel by one of America’s early modernists inspired by New Mexico. Courtesy: The Owings Gallery
It’s thrilling to view the Hartley watercolor next to landscapes by modernist B.J.O. Nordfeldt and Emil Bisttram.
B.J.O. Nordfeld’s watercolor Campo Santo – landscape painted by an artist who was significantly influenced by Cezanne’s modern innovations.
Emil Bisttram’s 1958 watercolor Sun Over Pueblo.
Much of the work on display was painted mid-century – some works by older mondernists (like Nordfeldt or Dasburg) and others by artists arriving in the 1940s and 1950s (often called the Taos Modernists). Louis Ribak and Beatrice Mandelman arrived in the 1940s co-founded the Taos Valley Art School in 1947, and effectively served as the center for postwar modernism in Taos for the next decade.
1964 painting Rift Series #23 by Beatrice Mandelman –a co-founder of the Taos Valley Art School with husband Louis Ribak
Louis Ribak’s Untitled (No. 9) – painting by one of the most influential teachers encouraging experimentation at the Taos Valley Art School. Courtesy: private collector; the Owings Gallery
It’s a beautiful, light-filled space that shows off these magnificent works to great advantage. Take a look at some of our favorites in our Flickr album.
To celebrate the 100th birthday of its most acclaimed Picasso painting – and its own 25th birthday – the Tate Modern decided to commission a team of creative curators and designers to create an innovative experience and new lens through which to view an artist who seems to define 20th-century modernism.
Picasso’s 1925 The Three Dancers – one of the Tate’s best-known works
The Tate Modern recruited two art-world mavericks – MacArthur (“genius”) grant recipient Wu Tsang and curator/author Enrique Fuenteblanca – who came up with a plan to stage the art in the same theatrical way that Picasso lived, created, and shape-shifted his entire life. . Check out our favorite views in our Flickr album.
The exhibition entry is a nearly blank, but vigorously painted wall that only increases the suspense about what you will encounter inside – very much like entering a theatre with pent-up anticipation about the performance you’ll experience. Some of the first images you see are images of Picasso hamming it up in makeshift costumes and headdresses in photos and film stills taken by his avant-garde pals – a reminder of his embrace of big personality, outsize physical statements, and alter egos. He was always performing in public.
Performativity: Visitors scan a “backstage” wall of Picasso’s theatrically staged and posed scenes, some classical and some scandalous but always being showcased
A winding path leads next to a gallery with fittings hung with artwork that creates a slightly backstage feel. It’s a wall of smaller etchings, prints, and paintings from Picasso’s entire career, all selected to show how he loved creating a compositional frame for his sitters, groups, and abstracted still lifes. The curators want us to think about his performativity.
Picasso’s 1905 Girl in a Chemise – initially painted as a depiction of a young man
Picasso’s 1905-1906 watercolor and gouache Horse with a Youth in Blue.
Walking further, you see a photo from a 1932 exhibition that Picasso famously “staged” himself, followed by a wall of wooden supports that definitely looks like you’re manuevering behind a stage set. There are two carefully placed Picasso etchings that reference Rembrandt that drive home the point about Picasso’s heightened theatricality, including a print with the chaotic mass of humanity hovering about a stage set with unusual players.
Two of Picasso’s etching and aquatints mounted “backstage” – 1970 Ecce Homo after Rembrandt IV State V 03-02-1970 and 1936 Faun Revealing a Sleeping Woman (Jupiter and Antiope, after Rembrandt).
Around the corner into the main exhibition space, you see it all – a large movie screen, a film showing Picasso in action, and a proscenium across the room that functions like an aperture through which to view more Picassos. An audience sits in rapt attention watching the movie, which features drawings that materialize in thin air from Picasso’s hand.
From behind the screen: audience watches Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1956 film The Mystery of Picasso. Courtesy: Gaumont
An inviting exhibition space opens out to the left, featuring works a range of works collected by the Tate (along with a few on loan from Muséée international Picasso-Paris) – cubist portraits, early still life collages, dramatically posed models, action sketches of bullfights, and his post-War lithograph Dove, which became the symbol of the international peace movement. It highlights how the artist staged and experimented with people, events, and symbols in his art.
Contemplating the museum’s collecting choices: Picasso’s 1909 oil Bust of a Woman.
Picasso’s 1938 ink, gouache, and oil Dora Maar Seated.
The journey all leads to a punctuation point – a view into Picasso’s early enthusiasm and aptitude for live theater, dance, artifice, and fantasy of the theater itself. Cases of small photos and sketches that chronicle Picasso’s designs for stage drops, costumes, and sets for the Ballet Russe – a legendary collaboration that boosted Picasso’s fame and fortune.
Copies of Picasso’s set designs for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: 1920 sketch for the ballet Pucinella and 1921 sketch for Cuadro Flamenco.
1917 photo of the Parade set model for the Ballet Russe; Sasha’s 1927 photo of Venus (Vera Petrova) and Apollo (Boris Lissanevitch) in Picasso’s costumes for Mercure for a rival avant-garde company.
And finally, there’s a full view – from a proscenium stage – of The Three Dancers, in which three performers form a tableau near an open window.
The audience takes the stage: view of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1956 film The Mystery of Picasso and Picasso’s 1925 The Three Dancers. Courtesy: Gaumont; the Tate.
Here’s the Tate’s deeper dive into Picasso’s inspiration from popular dance and how he channeled personal trauma and loss into his final painting. No wonder he kept this work particularly close.
The Acrobat, and a dramatic tapestry of one of Picasso’s personae, The Minotaur, that seems like a big, grand theatrical drop curtain. It isn’t, but hits the perfect note to the end of an entertaining, theatrical show about one of the 20th century’s epic performers.
1935 wool and silk tapestry after Picasso’s 1928 Le Minotaur. Courtesy: Musée Picasso, Antibes.
Who better to ask us to pay attention to environmental impacts than people whose ancestors have been stewards of the land for millennia? Earth, air, fire, and water is the thematic structure for this beautiful, throught-provoking contemporary art show Essential Elements: Art, Environment, and Indigenous Futures, on view at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture through May 31, 2026.
The curators have selected 31 artists from 18 tribal communities across the United States to draw our attention to how tribal communities and the rest of us can listen to the Earth and imagine positive outcomes in the future.
The Earth on edge: 2020 fired clay Unstable World by Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo). Courtesy: private collector.
Some jewelry, paintings, drawings, pots, and installations draw attention to traditional symbols of the Earth’s health (traditional symbols, wildlife living in a healthy environment), but many include pointed references to recent wildfires and other devastating alterations affecting tribal agriculture and people’s health.
2025 pen-and-ink drawing Biohazard Beauty II by Rowan Harrison (Diné/Isleta Pueblo). Courtesy: the artist.
Take a look at some of our favorite work in our Flickr album.
The Earth section begins with Roxanne Swentzell’s large ceramic sculpture Unstable World, which sets the tone for the rest of the show – Native art that calls attention to our current environmental balancing act. Nearby, several Diné artists ring the alarm bell about the insidious damage being done to Navajo Nation and nearby pueblos – and their own families – from the long legacy of open-pit uranium mining and contamination from nuclear testing.
Rowan Harrison’s intricate drawings are made to raise awarness of intergenerational health challenges and to honor and support to cancer victims. The curators have given lots of space to Diné artist Shayla Blatchford’s photo-interview Anti-Uranium Mapping Project, including a sobering map of the nearly 500 abandoned uranium mines scattered across her homeland. Biologist-artist-public health advocate Mallery Quetawki (Zuni Pueblo), creates abstracted works. Only when you get close do you see the shapes are radiation symbols of uranium contamination working its way into DNA strands.
2019 We Will Continue to Fight by biologist-artist Mallery Quetawki (Zuni Pueblo), raising awareness of how radiation contamination on native land damages people’s DNA. Courtesy: the artist, University of New Mexico Community Environmental Health Program
Beautiful, intricately woven baskets are displayed nearby. As you admire the creations of Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), a 2025 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant, it’s unsettling to learn that Jeremy and other Eastern art virtuosos are concerned that their baskets could be the last. Black ash and other natural materials are disappearing from their homelands at an alarming rate due to the triumph of invasive plant species.
Closeup of 2010 Lidded Basket with Porcupine Design by Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy) woven from black ash, sweetgrass, and porcupine quills; 2010 SWIA Market award winner. Courtesy: private collection.
2015 Ash Basket by Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy) woven from black ash, which is important to the tribe’s creation story, but highly endangered. Courtesy: private loan.
Other jewelry and ceramics artists incorporate images of animals, insects, and other indicators of what the world looks like when clean water and healthy air abound – dragonflies, tadpoles and frogs, and Avanyu, the all-important Puebloan water spirit. Multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger is seen (via video) in a ritual performance “from the future” to ensure people’s continual gratitude for food, shelter, and tools.
Art featuring creatures of healthy air: 2001 Dragonfly Tall Lidded Jar by Autumn Borts (Santa Clara Pueblo), 2005 Dragonfly Bracelet by Ramon Dalangyawma (Hopi), and 2006 Dragonfly Vase by Dolly Naranjo Neikrug (Santa Clara Pueblo).
Keystone water species: 1958 ceramic Tadpole Figurines by Lucy Lewis (Acoma Pueblo); clay, crushed potshard temper, slip, and carbon paint.
Considering the string of recent devastating wildfires that have plagued New Mexico in recent years, the artwork in the exhibition representing the element of fire is truly resonant. Kevin Naranjo made a tiny ceramic jar into which he carved his recollection of the wildly destructive 2011 Las Conchas Fire. Michael Namingha’s spectacular digital image is not just a pretty view of the sky. It’s the image of a cloud that only appears above an extremely intense heat source – exactly what he photographed during the 2022 Hermit’s Peak Fire or that New Mexicans witnessed in the Trinity blast.
2024 silkscreen Disaster 2 by Michael Namingha (Tewa-Hopi) – a pyrocumulus cloud emerging from the Hermit’s Peak Fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history. Courtesy: the artist, Niman Fine Art.
2011 Las Conchas Fire by Kevin Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo) – a carved (sgraffito) ceramic depcting trees, land, and fire that burned 150,000 acres of Santa Clara’s land on the Pajarito Plateau, including ancestral sites; the Avanyu water spirit hovers above.
Overhead, as you enter or leave this thought-provoking experience, you see paper poppies – the first flowers that bloom after a fire. Artist Leah Mata Fragua (Northern Chumash) is going a step further with her art after this exhibition ends. She’ll take her paper blossoms back home and burn them in a ritual that recycles her beautiful art back into the Earth.
2025 dyed handmade paper installation The Sun is on the Ground by Leah Mata Fragua (Northern Chumash), suggesting the wild poppies that bloom right after a wild fire. Installation intended to be recycled with fire at the exhibition’s conclusion. Courtesy: the artist
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.
itsnewstoyou 