American Art

The Walters Art Museum has been granted $111,615 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support a nearly two-year project called "American Visions: Engaging the Community with American Art. " "In the minds of the public, the Walters is a place known more for ancient, medieval, Renaissance and baroque work," said Joy Heyrman, development director at the Walters, "but the founder, William Walters, cut his teeth as a collector on...

The painterly colors are as bright as a tropical sun in some of the artwork in the "Contemporary Latin American Art Exhibition" at the Columbia Art Center. Although the subject matter of all four artists tends to be puzzling, it's easy to enjoy their otherwise baffling imagery. The two most colorful artists in this exhibit curated by Marcel Wah are Jose Acosta and Jacqueline Matute. Acosta's acrylic and mixed media paintings are densely conceived compositions in which humanoid figures, natural references and pure bursts of color hold your attention.

"Stability" was the term of art last year for North American art museums, as they maintained or built on advances made over the prior two years, according to a new survey. The New York-based Association of Art Museum Directors said Wednesday that 73 percent of the 129 museums responding to its survey reported steady or increased attendance in 2005. That compared with 70 percent seeing such results in 2004. The survey also found that 84 percent of respondents said their total revenue had increased or was the same as in the prior previous year, up from 79 percent in 2004.

The Walters Art Museum has been granted $111,615 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support a nearly two-year project called "American Visions: Engaging the Community with American Art. " "In the minds of the public, the Walters is a place known more for ancient, medieval, Renaissance and baroque work," said Joy Heyrman, development director at the Walters, "but the founder, William Walters, cut his teeth as a collector on...

David Winfield Scott, a noted American artist and author and former Eastern Shore resident who was the founding director of the National Museum of American Art, died of multiple organ failure Monday at an Austin, Texas, hospice. He was 92. Dr. Scott was born in Fall River, Mass., and raised in Claremont, Calif., where his father was a professor at Pomona College. After graduating from the Webb School in Claremont, he studied painting with Millard Sheets, a prominent California watercolorist, who became a formative influence on the young artist.

IN THE CURRENT CLIMATE, an artist who painted a 6-year-old girl nude, sitting playfully on a chair, might be accused of exploiting young children, despite the innocence portrayed. But William Sergeant Kendall painted his daughter Beatrice as "Mischief" in 1908. It was the first work acquired by the embryonic Baltimore Museum of Art, given by a founder, A. R. L. Dohme, in 1914. Dr. Dohme's own daughter, Adelyn (Breeskin), grew up to be the BMA's director from 1947 to 1962, attracting its greatest collections and making the BMA a force in modern art.Kendall's "Mischief" is just one of many surprises and delights in the reopened 19 galleries of pre-1925 American painting and decorative art at the BMA. They fill the original building designed by John Russell Pope, which was opened in 1929 and closed the past two years for renovation.

Nothing is less real than realism," Georgia O'Keeffe once said. "Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things."

David Driskell remembers, "My parents would look at me and look at Jimmy, my white playmate, and they'd say to me . . . 'You can't be as good as Jimmy. You've got to be better than Jimmy, or else you won't make it.' "He made it. Today, at 60, David Driskell has written half a dozen books and organized 27 exhibitions on African-American art. He has become so widely known an expert that he has lectured on the subject from New York to Amsterdam to Cape Town, and two years ago the Arts Council of Great Britain funded a documentary film on his contributions to African-American art history.

Between 1910 and 1950, America underwent profound and irreversible changes. We fought in two world wars and went through the worst depression in our history. We experienced an immense growth in industry. We saw the coming of the automobile, movies, radio and television. And we witnessed a huge migration from rural to urban America in response to industrialization, the Depression and World War II.Not surprisingly, art in this country underwent similar upheaval. In 1910, America was an outpost of the art world; its center was Paris, where Matisse and Picasso caught the eye of forward-looking collectors such as Gertrude Stein and Baltimore's Cone sisters.

To look at Georgia O'Keeffe 81 times through the lens of Alfred Stieglitz is to watch someone you thought you knew slowly become an enigma.Gone is the flinty-looking, aged icon of the Southwest, our image of O'Keeffe for decades before her death in 1986. In its place, Stieglitz gives us a much younger O'Keeffe, in photographs taken between 1917 and 1937. More important, the O'Keeffe he presents is not a single entity, but a prismatic, multifaceted presence.The 81 photographs are presented as a single work of art. Called "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz," it is on view at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.It stands as one of the most unusual portraits in all of art history, and more besides: It is also a drama of human emotion as revealed by the human body, a record of one of the century's great love affairs, a set of variations on early 20th-century modernism, and a successful collaboration by two of the era's most famous artists.

Mr. Rain's Fun House, the top-floor restaurant at the American Visionary Art Museum is the answer to the question, What is Baltimore's most shamefully overlooked restaurant. The review goes into a few of the reasons why this is so -- the name isn't doing anyone any favors, I think. And the location all but makes walk-in business non-existent. It's worth getting to know. Here's the review of Mr. Rain's Fun House .

Five years ago, Shawn Theron was waiting tables and managing the bar of the Joy America Cafe inside the American Visionary Art Museum . Today, his work is hanging on the gallery walls. He says it's all because his beloved grandmother — who raised the boy and whom he nicknamed "Red" — urged him from her deathbed to "turn on the light. " "She said it many times," says the 38-year-old artist: "'Turn on the light. Turn on the light.' And it had nothing to do with switches.

When Scott Weaver's alcoholic father walked away from his family to live on the streets, the then-9-year-old boy found solace in working on an assignment for his fourth-grade class to a create a sculpture from toothpicks. Forty-two years later, Weaver is still tinkering with the project assigned in 1969 by his teacher, Sue Rathbun. And the result - a 9-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide homage to Weaver's native city of San Francisco incorporating 104,588 of the short pointy sticks, is attracting gawkers at "All Things Round," the new long-term show opening this weekend at the American Visionary Art Museum . (As Weaver puts it: "I wanted to make a bigger sculpture than anyone else in class.

Saturday is the day Fifi looks forward to every year. Fifi is the American Visionary Art Museum 's giant pink poodle-with-wheels, who once a year ventures outside to take part in what is clearly Baltimore's funkiest annual event, the Kinetic Sculpture Race . This year, some 36 land- and seaworthy vehicles, all strictly people-powered, will be taking part in the 15-mile race over land, sea, mud and sand. Like Fifi, some are designed to resemble animals; one of last year's crowd favorites was a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

Numbers and art typically don't mix, but both were on exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum Monday. The Baltimore museum hosted a one-day seminar with PNC Bank on what artists need to know to survive and thrive on the business side of their craft. About 35 painters, musicians, writers and other artists attended the free crash course on budgeting and cash flow. Aspiring writer Carita Ellis-Espola was among them, driving an hour and a half from Harrisburg, Pa., to pick up financial tips.

I t was a star-spangled night at the American Visionary Art Museum, as several hundred folks gathered for the museum's annual gala. Many guests followed the suggested dress code of "broad stripes and bright stars," in honor of the museum's current exhibition, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." "I need a photo with Captain America," said Diana Kim, a Washington-based makeup artist, as she spotted AVAM's communications and marketing manager, Pete Hilsee, in his costume, complete with foam rubber muscles.

What is American art, and what is it about the art produced in this country in the 20th century that makes it unique?That is the fascinating question raised by "The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-1950," a landmark survey of art in the United States undertaken by New York's Whitney Museum of American Art. The first half of the show opened last month and runs through Aug. 22. Part II, which continues the story of American art from the 1950s to the...

Romare Bearden was one of the most original, innovative and important figures in 20th-century American art, so The Art of Romare Bearden, the monumental retrospective exhibition of his work that opens tomorrow at Washington's National Gallery, is an altogether fitting - if, it must be said, overdue - acknowledgement of his achievement. Born in 1911, Bearden is the first African-American artist ever to be the subject of a major show at the National Gallery in the 62 years since it opened its doors to the public.

David Winfield Scott, a noted American artist and author and former Eastern Shore resident who was the founding director of the National Museum of American Art, died of multiple organ failure Monday at an Austin, Texas, hospice. He was 92. Dr. Scott was born in Fall River, Mass., and raised in Claremont, Calif., where his father was a professor at Pomona College. After graduating from the Webb School in Claremont, he studied painting with Millard Sheets, a prominent California watercolorist, who became a formative influence on the young artist.

Andrew Wyeth, who died last week at 91, might be the one contemporary American artist that every American knows. They may not think they know his work, but they do. How about that cute little picture of a yellow lab curled in the middle of a four-poster bed that hangs in your vet's office? Andrew Wyeth. How about that framed poster of an open window - shade half-drawn, lace curtain billowing - that the country-kitchen diner on the corner displays next to a real window, lace curtain billowing in a life-imitates-art tribute?