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Alvin Ailey

How to Forget Alvin Ailey

Even as “Edges of Ailey” gathers such intimate documents, it does not make them legible to its visitors.
by Juliana Devaan via Public Books on March 12, 2025
Cartoon of well-dressed arm holding a lit match

The Gilded Age Never Ended

Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on February 24, 2025
Mottled photographs of immigrants set against the Statue of Liberty.

The American Dream 100 Years After the National Origins Act

How a clerk on Ellis Island at the dawn of the 20th century documented discrimination through photography, and what that tells us about today’s malaise.
by Yousef O. Bounab via New Lines on February 17, 2025
A drawing of a slave revolt on a ship.

Rare Portraits Reveal the Humanity of the Slaves Who Revolted on the Amistad

William H. Townsend drew the rebels as they stood trial, leaving behind an invaluable record.
by Kate McMahon via The Conversation on February 3, 2025
Belle da Costa Greene.

The Hidden Story of J. P. Morgan’s Librarian

Belle da Costa Greene, a brilliant archivist, buried her own history.
by Hilton Als via The New Yorker on December 16, 2024
A painting of a large camera on a film set, surrounded by green screens.

Casual Viewing

Why Netflix looks like that.
by Will Tavlin via n+1 on December 16, 2024
he obverse (right) and reverse (left) of the James H. Hyde Medallion, designed by Paul H. Manship, on the Janvier reduction machine.

Tokens of Culture

On the medallic art of the Gilded Age.
by James Panero via The New Criterion on December 12, 2024
Still from the documentary "Obsessed with Light", depicting Loie Fuller on stage in a gown.

A Dazzling Light in Dance History

When dancer Loïe Fuller’s spinning garment reflected the stage lights, it took on a life of its own, beguiling those in New York, Berlin, and Paris.
by Eileen G’Sell via Hyperallergic on December 3, 2024
Virginia Tracy.

Is Virginia Tracy the First Great American Film Critic?

The actress, screenwriter, and novelist’s reviews and essays from 1918-19 display a comprehensive grasp of movie art and a visionary sense of its future.
by Richard Brody via The New Yorker on November 25, 2024
Fire (the Magazine) cover with bold words fire in red and other visual illustrations.

A Radical Black Magazine From the Harlem Renaissance Was Ahead of Its Time

Fire!! was a pathbreaking showcase for Black artists and writers “ready to emotionally serve a new day and a new generation.”
by Jon Key via Hammer & Hope on November 19, 2024
Portrait of Ena and Betty Wertheimer by John Singer Sargent, 1901.

Friend of the Family

Jean Strouse explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.
by Ruth Bernard Yeazell via New York Review of Books on October 31, 2024
Paintings by John Singer Sargent: Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (left) and Hylda, Almina and Conway, Children of Asher Wertheimer, 1905 (center), London. Portrait of Mrs. Asher B. Wertheimer, 1898 (right).

A Sudden, Revealing Searchlight

On Jean Strouse and the art of biography.
by Ruth Franklin via Harper’s on October 23, 2024
Photo by Ralph Ellison of men standing by a street in New York City.

Ralph Ellison’s Alchemical Camera

The novelist's aestheticizing impulse contrasts with the relentless seriousness of his observations and critiques of American society.
by Jed Perl via New York Review of Books on October 17, 2024
Autumn, an 1856 sunset landscape painting by Frederic Church.

The Sound of the Picturesque

Charles Ives and the visual.
by Tim Barringer via The American Scholar on September 13, 2024
The original cover sketch of "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," by Richard Scarry, with cartoon animals in vehicles.

On Richard Scarry and the Art of Children's Literature

Scarry’s guides to life both reflected and bolstered kids’ lived experience, and in some cases even provided the template for it.
by Chris Ware via The Yale Review on September 9, 2024
Tourists on a ferry sailing along the coast of Maine.

A Picture-Book Guide to Maine

Children’s stories set on the coast suggest a wilder way of life.
by Anna E. Holmes via The New Yorker on September 8, 2024
Jazz album covers.
partner

How Jazz Albums Visualized a Changing America

In the 1950s, the covers of most jazz records featured abstract designs. By the late 1960s, album aesthetics better reflected the times and the musicians.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Carissa Kowalski Dougherty via JSTOR Daily on August 22, 2024
Painted scene of a busy city, with horses, carts, and hay barrels in the foreground and tall skyscrapers in the background. George Bellows. New York, 1911. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. National Gallery of Art (1986.72.1). CC0, nga.gov. Accessed July 21, 2024.

America’s War on Theater

James Shapiro's book "The Playbook" is a timely reminder both of the power of theater and of the vehement antipathy it can generate.
by Daniel Blank via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 22, 2024
Doodles, flourishes and scribbles drawn by George Washington.

Doodle Nation: Notes on Distracted Drawing

Humans have doodled for as long as they have written and drawn, but psychoanalysis began to imagine the doodle as a key to understanding the unconscious mind.
by Polly Dickson via The Paris Review on July 17, 2024
Painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell, a woman with pale skin and curled hair wearing a blue shirt with pink bow collar.

An Art Mystery is Solved, and a Historic Portrait Goes on Display

The painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell is likely the first known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery.
by James Johnston via Retropolis on June 24, 2024
A photograph of saxophonist Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1964.

Why the Nordic Countries Emerged as a Haven for 20th-Century African American Expatriates

An exhibition in Seattle spotlights the Black artists and performers who called Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden home between the 1930s and the 1980s.
by Tamara J. Walker via Smithsonian on June 20, 2024
Oil painting by Samuel F. B. Morse titled "The Muse: Susan Walker Morse."

Jilted: Samuel F. B. Morse at Art’s End

The rejection that ended Morse's art career eventually led to the invention of the telegraph.
by Paul Staiti via Panorama on June 18, 2024
Aaron Douglas, “Still Life,” n.d.

The Harlem Renaissance Was Bigger Than Harlem

How Black artists made modernism their own.
by Susan Tallman via The Atlantic on June 14, 2024
Nell Irvin Painter.

Nell Irvin Painter’s Chronicles of Freedom

A new career-spanning book offers a portrait of Painter’s career as a historian, essayist, and most recently visual artist.
by Elias Rodriques via The Nation on May 7, 2024
Black women gathered in discussion for an episode of "Black Journal."

“The Black Woman”

Black women activism within documentary films in the 1960s United States.
by Manar Ellethy via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on April 10, 2024
Aaron Douglas, detail from painting Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction, 1934.

The Cosmopolitan Modernism of the Harlem Renaissance

The world-spanning art of the Harlem Renaissance.
by Rachel Himes via The Nation on April 9, 2024
Covers from Lippincott's and Harper's from the 1890s.

Advertising as Art: How Literary Magazines Pioneered a New Kind of Graphic Design

Allison Rudnick on the rise and fall of the 19th century "Literary Poster."
by Allison Rudnick via Literary Hub on April 3, 2024
Sketch of women traveling with the Continental Army.

How a Curator at the Museum of the American Revolution Solved a Nearly 250-Year-Old Art Mystery

An eye-witness depiction of the Continental Army passing through Philadelphia hung in a New York apartment for decades.
by Rosa Cartagena via Philadelphia Inquirer on March 26, 2024
Title page of the "Manual of the Corporation of The City of New York."

The Bittersweet Legacy Of David T. Valentine

Valentine devoted his time to writing the Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York. These were annual compendiums of data about the city.
by Claudia Keenan via The Gotham Center on March 6, 2024
Spielberg and Henry Thomas in a scene on the set of E.T.

The Auteur of Fatherhood: How Steven Spielberg Recast American Masculinity

Steven Spielberg’s early films conjure all of his moviemaking magic to repair a world of lost dads.
by Phillip Maciak via The Yale Review on March 4, 2024
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