ENTERTAINMENT
By Mary Carole McCauley, The Baltimore Sun | September 9, 2010
When the Chu San Chinese Opera Institute bows at the Many Moons Festival on Sunday, audience members will be able to tell the personalities of the characters on stage simply by looking into their faces. According to traditions developed more than 3,000 years ago, characters wearing red makeup will invariably be intelligent, courageous, loyal and full of integrity. Black greasepaint represents firmness of purpose and honesty, while those with blue visages will prove stubborn and intractable.
TRAVEL
By LORI SEARS | October 1, 2006
Freer at 100 It was the first of the Smithsonian Institution's art galleries. And this year it's celebrating its centennial. The Freer Gallery of Art presents a daylong celebration Saturday. The museum was founded in 1906 by Detroit railroad-car manufacturer Charles Lang Freer, who donated his Asian art collection to the Smithsonian Institution's regents and donated money for the building in which to house the art. Today, the museum still houses an extensive collection of east Asian art. All day Saturday, visitors to the museum can take part in an Asian-themed 100th birthday celebration.
NEWS
By Frederick N. Rasmussen and Frederick N. Rasmussen,SUN STAFF | June 11, 2004
Mary Ellen Reno, a well-known Walters Art Museum docent and world traveler who relished sharing her enthusiasm and appreciation for Asian art with gallery visitors, died of lung cancer Saturday at her Towson home. She was 69. She was born Mary Ellen Klock in Rochester, N.Y., and raised in Verona, N.J., and Chambersburg, Pa., where she graduated from high school in 1952. After earning a degree in French from Bryn Mawr College in 1956, she taught school for a year in Devon, Pa. In 1957, she married Russell R. Reno Jr., a lawyer and partner in the Baltimore law firm of Venable LLP. While raising her four children, Mrs. Reno worked during the 1980s as a part-time tour guide for the now-defunct Baltimore Rent-A-Tour, which provided tours of the area for visiting conventions and guests attending meetings.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Glenn McNatt and Glenn McNatt,Sun Art Critic | August 24, 2003
To the historian of Asian art, it's a three-color glazed earthenware tomb sculpture from the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.) that reflects the fabulous wealth of the emperors who grew rich from caravans plying the ancient Silk Road. But to a kid seeing it for the first time, it's just a cool toy animal with funny humps on its back. It's certainly a long way from the child's point of view to that of the serious scholar, museum curator or collector. Yet art educators know there's a direct line that runs between the knowledgeable adult museumgoer and the youth whose first response to the camel was, "Gee whiz!"
ENTERTAINMENT
By Glenn McNatt and Glenn McNatt,SUN ART CRITIC | April 17, 2003
William Morris, a leader of the 19th-century arts & crafts movement in England, was a polymath who created designs for textiles, wrote poetry and published magnificently crafted, illustrated books. During his lifetime, he was something of a contradiction: a well-born aristocrat who championed socialism, a Renaissance man of the industrial era and an unapologetic romantic who drew much of his inspiration from the Gothic art of the Middle Ages. Now Morris' wide-ranging interests are highlighted in a small but delightful show of his designs for fabrics, wallpaper and tapestries at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The show includes many beautiful examples of Morris' elegant woven woolens, block-printed cotton fabrics and floral designs inspired by Near Eastern and Asian art. As an interior designer, Morris aimed to create total environments that would surround a home's inhabitants with beauty.
NEWS
By Glenn McNatt and Glenn McNatt,SUN ART CRITIC | December 13, 2002
Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, already a significant repository of Asian artworks, announced a gift yesterday of more than 150 works that moves it to the forefront of American museums with such collections. The gift, which includes such items as an accordion-pleated manuscript depicting elephants real and divine, a 6-foot-high Burmese lacquer image of the Buddha and a 19th-century carved wooden pulpit from Thailand, came from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which holds the many works collected by the late heiress and philanthropist.