Photography is having a moment this fall. Whether it's the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles (featuring photos by Gordon Parks and Dorothea Lange), or the recent reopening of the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, this often-overlooked fine art medium is being honored globally through thoughtful exhibitions that trace the history of fashion, film stills, documentary, and more.
Art Galleries & Museums
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made its second landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, tearing through southeast Louisiana and Mississippi. Whereas New Orleans, situated below sea level, avoided the brunt of the storm winds, the levees containing waters from Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borge were overwhelmed by the rainwater and storm surge. By the afternoon, 20 percent of the city was underwater; by August 31, that number had risen to 80 percent.
When Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote the line, "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold," in his 1919 poem “The Second Coming” shortly after WWI, it reflected a sense of global chaos, societal breakdown, and the end of an era. For many, the present moment feels the same. History demonstrates that artists often forge a path out of the present into a future that could not be imagined otherwise.
After years of deliberation and delay, the National Museum of the American Latino (NMAL) has found a home in the Arts and Industries Building, a 145-year-old redbrick Victorian structure sitting between the iconic Smithsonian castle and the Hirshhorn Museum on the National Mall.
Internationally renowned, award-winning Guyanese-British sculptor and visual artist Hew Locke (b. 1959) has a solo exhibition opening at P·P·O·W in New York City. For over four decades, Locke’s richly detailed, beautifully riveting, densely imagined work has explored colonialism, identity, and history through powerfully evocative imagery.
My first exposure to Dan Flavin’s classic fluorescent works was in 1969 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. As a young student, I was mesmerized by the exuberant colors and equally puzzled by the use of commercial lighting. Art or hardware?
Don Nice (1932–2019) was a relatively unknown, idiosyncratic artist whose roots spread across the American art landscape from 1960s Pop art back to mid-20th-century American modernism.
La Vaughn Belle’s compelling installation, The House that Freedoms Built, debuts at the Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park, Florida on July 24th. The installation premiered publicly at Cooper Hewitt as part of the 2024 design triennial.
Two major additions to American culture opened their doors within days of each other after multi-year projects strategically planned to culminate during the country’s 250th anniversary: the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago and the Tang Wing for American Democracy at the New York Historical in Manhattan.
Willem de Kooning is a name recognized worldwide for his impact on the development and growth of Abstract Expressionism in America. However, back in his early days, he was one of a small group of struggling New York painters attempting to create work expressing new ideas in a world recovering from the calamity that was WWII.
