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ArtSpace
The place for budding Picassos is our ArtSpace - Make and take home your child's masterpiece in this hands-on craft area. Self-expression and creativity come alive while working with a variety of art materials. Creating their own piece of art helps children develop decision-making skills and teaches them how to plan ahead and follow directions. We invite you to join us in the ArtSpace on the third floor. Each week a different project is available Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Please ask a museum staff person for assistance. Thank you!
January 30-February 3: Painting with Watercolors
February 6-10: Valentine’s Day Card
February 13-17: Mardi Gras Color Pages
February 20-24: Mardi Gras/Patriotic Lanterns
February 27-March 2: Sponge Painting
Sculpture of the Month
January 2012
The Winged Victory of Samothrace
The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace, is a 2nd century BC marble sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike (Victory). Since 1884, it has been prominently displayed at the Louvre and is one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world.
The product of an unknown sculptor, the Victory is believed to be dated to approximately 190 BC. It was discovered by the French consul and amateur archaeologist Charles Champoiseau. When first discovered on the island of Samothrace, Greece in 1863, it was suggested that the Victory was erected by the Macedonian general Demetrius I Poliorcetes after his naval victory at Cyprus between 295 and 289 BC.
The Victory soon became a cultural icon to which artists responded in many different ways. The 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space by the Futuristic sculptor Umberto Boccioni, currently located at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was highly influenced by the statue. It bears an underlying resemblance to Nike of Samothrace.
Numerous copies exist in museums and galleries around the world; one of the best-known copies stands outside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The first FIFA World Cup trophy, commissioned in 1930 and designed by Abel Lafleur, was based on the model.
This statue was a favorite of Frank Lloyd Wright and he used reproductions of it in a number of his buildings, including Ward Willits House, Darwin D. Martin House and Storer House.
The second-largest replica of this statue in the United States stands at Calvary Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is 8'1" high.
The Nike "swoosh” design was inspired by the Victory sculpture in 1971 by Carolyn Davidson while she was a graphic design student at Portland State University.
On February 3, 1999, according to the Macedonian Press Agency: News in English, "residents of the Aegean island of Samothrace, the birthplace of the renowned Greek sculpture Nike of Samothrace, aka the Winged Victory, embarked on a letter-writing campaign to have this finest extant of Hellenistic sculpture returned to their homeland.
Artist of the Month
December 2011
Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud (pronounced TEE-bo) is a contemporary American artist who creates very delicious looking paintings!
Thiebaud was born in Arizona in 1920 and grew up in southern California. His paintings are visual memories of the food served at family gatherings when he was a kid or at diners where he worked as an adult.
His frosting-like textures show influence from the Abstract Expressionists and the repetition and portrayal of everyday items are reminiscent of the Pop Art movement.
Thiebaud worked as a commercial artist and created illustrations and advertising art. He used heavy outlines or halos to make his objects pop up, dramatic shadows (influence of theater and lighting), and stark blank backgrounds.
November 2011
Edward Hopper (1882-1967)
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. In both his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated renderings reflected his personal vision of modern American life.
Hopper was born in upper Nyack, New York and was one of two children. He showed talent in drawing at an early age. He studied at the New York Institute of Art and Design and was influenced by his teacher Robert Henri. In the beginning, he worked as an illustrator because of necessity. He traveled to Europe, where he was highly impressed by Rembrandt, particularly, his Night Watch.
After years of struggle, he married his fellow artist Josephine Nivison and with her help, six of Hopper’s Gloucester watercolors were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in 1923. At forty-one, Hopper finally received the recognition he deserved.
Hopper paid particular attention to geometrical design and the careful placement of human figures in proper balance with their environment. The effective use of light and shadow to create mood is central to Hopper’s methods. Bright sunlight and the shadows it casts, also play symbolically powerful roles in Hopper paintings such as Early Sunday Morning (1930), Summertime (1943), Seven A.M. (1948), and Sun in an Empty Room (1963). His use of light and shadow effects have been compared to the cinematography of film noir.
Hopper derived his subject matter from two primary sources: one, the common features of American life (gas stations, motels, restaurants, theaters, railroads and street scenes) and its inhabitants; and two, seascapes and rural landscapes.
October 2011
Aaron Douglas (1989-1979)
Aaron Douglas was an African American painter and a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Topeka, Kansas and developed and interest in art during childhood. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and moved to New York, settling in Harlem. In 1928-29, Douglas studied African and Modern European art at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania on a grant from the foundation. In 1931, he traveled to Paris where he spent a year studying more traditional French painting and drawing techniques at the Academie Scandinave.
Douglas was heavily influenced by African culture. His natural talent plus his newly acquired inspiration allowed Douglas to be considered the "Father of African American Arts." That title led him to say," Do not call me the Father of African American Arts, for I am just a son of Africa, and paint for what inspires me."
Douglas illustrated books, painted canvases and murals, and tried to start a new magazine highlighting the work of younger artists and writers. It was during the early 1930’s that Douglas completed the most important works of his career, his murals at Fisk University and at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture).
The style Douglas developed in the 1920’s synthesized aspects of modern European, ancient Egyptian and West African art. His best-known paintings are semi-abstract and feature flat forms, hard edges and repetitive geometric shapes. Henry Ossawa Tanner also influenced him.
September 2011
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000)
Jacob Lawrence was an African American painter, married to fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight. He referred to his style as “dynamic cubism.” His primary influence were the shapes and colors of Harlem. Lawrence was only in his twenties when his “Migration series” made him nationally famous. The series depicted the epic Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North.
He was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey and moved with his sister and brother to Harlem, when he was thirteen. After dropping out of school at sixteen, he worked in a laundry and a printing plant. He also attended classes at the Harlem Art Workshop, where he earned a scholarship to attend the American Artists School and a paid position with the Works Progress Administration. He worked with notable Harlem Renaissance artists.
In October 1943, he enlisted in the US Coast Guard and served with the first racially integrated crew. In 1970, Lawrence settled in Seattle and became an art professor at the University of Washington.
Lawrence was twenty-one years old when his series of paintings of the Haitian general Toussaint L’Ouverture was exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art. It was followed by a series of paintings of the lives of Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman, as well as series of pieces about abolitionist John Brown.
August 2011
Romare Bearden (1911-1988)
Romare Bearden was an African American artist and writer. He worked in several media including cartoons, oils, and collage. He was born in North Carolina, and grew up in New York City and Pennsylvania. He received a degree in science and education from NYU.
He turned his focus to his art after being influenced by a cartoonist from the Eucleian Society at NYU. Bearden grew as an artist by his life experiences and events that reshaped his vision of art. He studied under German artist George Grosz and the Art Student League in 1936 and 1937, painting often scenes in the American South. His style was influenced by Mexican muralists, Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco.
Returning from WWII he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. His style completely changed to abstract representations, specifically scenes from the Passion of the Christ.
When he was kicked out of Sam Kootz’s gallery because his work was a little too realistic for the time, he turned to music, co-writing a hit jazz classic. In the late 1950s, his work became more abstract. In 1956 he began studying with a Chinese calligrapher, whom he credits with introducing him to new ideas about space and composition in painting. During the 1960s civil rights movement, Bearden started to experiment with forms of collage. His work became more representational and socially conscious.
July 2011
Grant Wood (1891-1942)
Grant DeVolson Wood was an American painter born in Anamosa, Iowa. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting “American Gothic,” an iconic image of the 20th century.
He studied at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. He went to Europe and studied many styles, especially impressionism and post-impressionism. But it was the work of 15th century Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck that influenced him. He became a great proponent of regionalism in the arts, lecturing throughout the country.
He worked in a large number of media, including lithography, ink, charcoal, ceramics, metal, wood and found objects.
“American Gothic” was first exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930, winning a $300 prize, bringing Wood immediate recognition. The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter, figures modeled by the Artist’s dentist and sister, Nan. It came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit. Some critics assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of repression and narrow-mindedness of rural small-town life.
June 2011
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an
American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in
She was born in
Degas had considerable influence
on Cassatt. She became extremely proficient in the use of pastels eventually
creating many of her most important works in this medium. Degas also introduced
her to etching, of which he was a recognized master.
As the new century arrived,
Cassatt served as an advisor to several major art collectors and stipulated that
they eventually donate their purchases to American art museums. In recognition
of her contributions to the arts,
May 2011
Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)
With Fred Archer,
April 2011
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Norman Percival Rockwell was a 20th century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States, where Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for “The Saturday Evening Post” magazine for more than four decades. Among the best known works are the “Willie Gillis” series, “Rosie the Riveter”, “Saying Grace” (1951), and the “Four Freedoms” series. He is also noted for his work for the “Boy Scouts of America”; producing covers for their publication “Boys’ Life”, calendars, and other illustrations.
He was born in New York City and transferred from high school to the Chase Art School at the age of 14. He then went on to the National Academy of Design and finally to the Art Students League.
During the First World War, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and given the role of a military artist. He lived most of his life in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where he died of emphysema at the age of 84.
March 2011
Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art.
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in rural Cambridge.
Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator. He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterized by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and substantial body of work throughout his life, primarily chronicling his working vacations.
February 2011
John James Audubon (1785-1851)
John James Audubon enjoyed wandering through the woods, collecting things from nature, and watching the birds as a young boy. He began drawing pictures of birds and animals at an early age.
Audubon spent his childhood with his father’s wife in France. When he was eighteen years old his father brought him to America and set up some businesses and Mill Grove farm near Philadelphia for him to oversee. There, he married Lucy Bakewell and had two sons, Victor and John, who eventually became his assistants. His two daughters died in infancy. Audubon tried operating different types of businesses to support his family, but they all failed. He then returned to art to try to make a living. His passion was painting wildlife in watercolor, especially birds.
At age 35, he took an eight month trip down the Mississippi River to find and paint birds. Audubon was the first person to start bird-banding studies in America. He tied lightweight strings to their legs, and he could track their travels as they nested, left the area, and then returned to the nest.
At first Audubon did not succeed in America selling his paintings, so he went to England to sell subscriptions. His clients subscribed to his engravings which were delivered in installments, five engravings at a time. The pictures were printed from copper plates then water colored by hand. They sold for $1,000, which was a lot of money in the 1800's.
In 1827, Audubon published the first of the color plates of "Birds of America." The 435 plates were completed in 1839. The first edition was known as the “Double Elephant” portfolio because it was so big (39.37 inches high). The huge leather bound books originally sold for $1,070 in 1826. Few of the books remained intact. In 2003 complete leather bound four-volume set sold for over $8,000,000.
Audubon and his printer, Robert Havell, printed a smaller version called the Octavo Edition. This edition was one-eighth the size of the first edition and Audubon called it “Birds in Miniature.”
Audubon then began the series on mammals, "The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America," which he worked on with his friend, the Reverend John Bachman. The first portfolio of mammals was completed in 1845. Audubon and Bachman completed three volumes of mammals before illness prevented Audubon from working. He died four months before his 66th birthday in 1851.
January 2011
Frederic Remington (1861-1909)
Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century particularly in images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U.S. Cavalry.
Born in Canton, New York, he was an only child. Remington was active, large and strong for his age. He loved to hunt, swim, ride, and go camping. He began to make drawings and sketches of soldiers and cowboys at an early age.
Remington’s father was a colonel in the Civil War. He was also a newspaper editor and postmaster, and the family was active in local politics.
Remington attended art school at Yale University. After traveling through the west camping and hunting in Montana and New Mexico, he went to Kansas to try sheep ranching and wool trade. He continue sketching and selling some of his work. He decided to go back east, where he began studies at the Art Students League of New York. His first full page cover appeared in Harper’s Weekly in January, 1886. He was sent to Arizona by Harper’s Weekly on a commission as an artist-correspondent to cover the war against Geronimo and later the Charleston, S.C. earthquake. Later that year, he received a commission to do 83 illustrations for a book by Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.
In 1890, his first one-man show presented twenty-one paintings at the American Art Galleries and was very well received.
Remington’s fame made him a favorite of the Western Army officers fighting the last Indian battles. He was invited out West to make their portraits in the field and to gain them national publicity through Remington’s articles and illustrations for Harper’s Weekly.
In 1895, Remington made his first sculpture “Bronco Buster”, which sold a Tiffany’s.
In 1898, he became a war correspondent and illustrator in the Spanish-American War, focusing not on heroic generals, but on the troops, depicting the horrors and deprivations faced by soldiers. Two of his paintings were used for reproduction on U.S. Postal stamps.
Frederic Remington died in Ridgefield, Connecticut after an emergency appendectomy on December 26, 1909.
December 2010
Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944)
Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, “The Scream,” is part of a series “The Frieze of Life,” in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, melancholia and anxiety.
In 1881, Munch enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design of Christiania (now Oslo) and experimented with many styles including Naturalism and Impressionism.
He went to Paris in 1889 where he saw works by Gauguin, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. When his father died, leaving his family destitute, he assumed the financial responsibility.
His most famous work, “The Scream,” has been widely interpreted a representing the universal anxiety of modern man.
November 2010
Raoul Dufy (1877-1953)
Raoul Dufy was a French Fauvist painter. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramics and textiles, as well as decorative schemes for public buildings. He is noted for scenes of open-air social events. He was also a draftsman, printmaker, book illustrator, a theatrical set-dresser, a designer of furniture, and a planner of public spaces.
The impressionist landscape painters, such a Monet and Pissarro, influenced Dufy profoundly. After seeing Matisse’s “Luxe, Calme et Volupte” at the Salon des Indépendants in 1906, Dufy directed his interests toward Fauvism. Later, he was influenced by Cezanne and flirted briefly with Cubism. It was not until `1920 that he developed his own distinctive style, which involved skeletal structures, arranged with foreshortened perspective, and the use of thin washes of color applied quickly, in a manner that came to be known as “stenographic.”
October 2010
George Braque (1882-1963)
Braque was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Picasso, developed the art movement known as Cubism. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. His earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing works by the Fauves in 1905, Braque adopted a Fauvist style. Later, he and avant-garde painters in Paris were influenced by Paul Cezanne’s work, leading to the advent of Cubism. Braque wanted to develop Cezanne’s ideas of multiple perspectives.
September 2010
Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)
Henri Matisse was a French artist known for his use of color and his fluid and original drawing talent. He was a draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three seminal artists of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labeled a “Fauve” (wild beast), by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
August 2010
Paul Klee (1879-1940)
Paul Klee was born in Muenchenbuchsee, Switzerland. He was considered both a Swiss and a German painter. Movements in art that included expressionism, cubism and surrealism influenced his highly individual style. He was, as well, a student of orientalism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and mastered color theory and wrote extensively about it. His lectures “Writings on Form and Design Theory” published in English as the “Paul Klee Notebooks” are considered very important for modern art. He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the German “Bauhaus” school of art. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
July 2010
Andre Derain (1880-1954)
He was a French painter and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse. He is famous for his landscapes with vivid, unnatural colors that led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to dub his and Matisse's works as les fauves, or "the wild beasts,” marking the start of the Fauvist movement. In 1906, he went to London and painted 30 paintings (the Thames, and the Tower Bridge), in bold colors and compositions, which remain among his most popular work. Between 1900 and 1920, he worked as a painter, sculptor, graphic artist and theatrical designer. He was also an early enthusiast of Cubism, but later his art was more towards the influence of the Old Masters.
June 2010
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Wassily Wassilyewich Kandinsky was a Russian painter, and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. He was an abstract expressionist.
Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow and chose to study law and economics. Quite successful in his profession, he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat. He started painting studies (life drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.
In 1921, he settled in Germany and taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, and became a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.
May 2010
Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Salvador Dalí was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter influenced by the Renaissance masters. He is famous for his striking and bizarre images. His best-known work is “The Persistence of Memory,” completed in 1931. His artistic repertoire includes film, sculpture and photography.
Dalí was highly imaginative. He had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior, in order to draw attention to himself. He grew a flamboyant moustache, influenced by seventeenth-century Spanish master painter Diego Velázquez. The moustache became his iconic trademark, which he kept for the rest of his life.
April 2010
Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954)
She was a Mexican painter. She painted using vibrant colors in a style that was influenced by indigenous cultures of Mexico and European influences including Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Many of her works are self-portraits that symbolically articulate her own pain. Kahlo was married to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.
When she was 18 years old she was in a serious accident that left her with a broken spinal column, collarbone, ribs and pelvis, among other injuries. Although she recovered, she was plagued by relapses of extreme pain for the rest of her life. She started painting to occupy her time during her temporary state of immobilization.
March 2010
Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987)
He was an American painter, printmaker and filmmaker. He was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author and public figure known for his membership in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats. It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans from the Campbell Soup Company and Coca-Cola bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Troy Donahue, and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "The Factory," his studio during these years, and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians and underground celebrities. He began producing prints using the silkscreen method.
February 2010
Franz Marc (1890-1916)
Franz Marc was one of the principal painters and printmakers of the German Expressionist movement. He was a founding member of “Der Blaue Reiter” (“The Blue Rider”). Among organizing several exhibits, they also published an almanac featuring contemporary, primitive and folk art, along with children’s paintings. He was born in Munich. His father was a professional landscape painter, and his mother a strict Calvinist. In Paris, he frequented artistic circles and became in contact with a number of artists. He discovered a strong affinity for the work of Van Gogh. Marc developed an important friendship with the artist August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and other artists.
Most of his mature work portrays animals, usually in natural settings. His work is characterized by bright primary color, an almost cubist portrayal of animals, stark simplicity and a profound sense of emotion. Marc also gave an emotional meaning or purpose to the colors he used in his work, blue would be used for masculinity and spirituality, yellow represented feminine joy and red encased the sound of violence.
January 2010
Rene Magritte (1898-1967)
René Magritte was a surrealist artist, born in Belgium.
Surrealism: Style using imagery from dreams and the subconscious, often distorting forms of ordinary objects or placing them in new contexts.
His work frequently contains a juxtaposition of ordinary objects or an unusual context giving new meanings to familiar things.
In addition to these fantastic elements, his work is often witty and amusing, and he created a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings.