2021 Baker/Rowland Galleries Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820–1920 is the first major exhibition to focus on the influence of Spanish art and culture on American painting. During the nineteenth century, artists increasingly added Spain to their European tours to study the masterworks in the Prado Museum and to capture the country’s scenic charms and customs.
Director Linda Harrison’s office at the Newark Museum. Photo courtesy of the Newark Museum.
I choose art for my office exactly as I choose art for my home. I must want to live with it. Both at home and my office, I prefer the interest of hanging pieces salon style. I love getting lost in a wall crowded with juxtaposed objects. A way to have refreshing mini-breaks throughout a day packed with back-to-back meetings. It’s also a great icebreaker when visitors step into my office. They’re often drawn to a particular piece and thus our conversation begins.
IN A SMALL GALLERY on the second floor of Virginia’s Hampton University Museum hangs Henry Ossawa Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson. A young boy sits in the lap of his grandfather, learning to play the titular instrument, the pair surrounded by the evidence of life lived: clothes hung in the background, a loaf of bread and a white pitcher on a table, cooking pots at their feet. Color and shadow blend exquisitely to create a subtle glow that is cast onto the pair together at the fireside.Tanner is widely regarded as the most important Black American artist of the nineteenth century, and this 1893 oil