Art and Museums
Artistic Interiors at the Met Museum: Satinwood and Purpleheart with Mother-of-Pearl Inlays, Depictions of Hand Mirrors, Scissors, Hair Combs, Brooches, Necklaces, and Earrings
The centerpiece of the three-part exhibition is the opulent Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room from the New York City house commissioned by art collector and philanthropist Arabella Worsham (later Huntington; ca. 1850–1924). A complete work of art, with its elaborate woodwork and decorations, it is a rare surviving commission by the New York-based cabinetmaker and interior decorator George A. Schastey. The room comes from the 4 West 54th Street home of Arabella Worsham, mistress (and later, wife) of railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington. more »
Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity
The Late Antique textile owners, in choosing from a vast repertory of motifs, represented the prosperity and well-being of their households. The owners represented themselves through the distinctively gendered imagery of manly and womanly virtues in mythological and Christian subjects so that in these textiles, we see distinctly personal manifestations of the religious transformation of the Roman Empire into a Christian Empire. more »
A Medieval Alchemical Book at the British Museum Reveals New Secrets
The Book of the Seven Climes is the earliest known study focused wholly on alchemical illustrations. The 'climes' (from which our word 'climate' is derived) are the seven latitudinal zones into which the astronomer and geographer Claudius Ptolemy divided the inhabited world in the 2nd century AD. more »
The Cantor Arts Center: Myth, Allegory and Faith and a Preview of a Hopper
More than 180 works, selected from one of the most extensive private collections of Mannerist prints in the world, epitomize the 16th-century’s extravagant and sophisticated style featuring engravings, etchings, woodcuts and chiaroscuro woodcuts by renowned artists and famous printmakers of the era. One of Hopper's early paintings, the oil on canvas was created when Hopper was just 31 and still struggling to establish himself, but it heralds the artist's influential career and prominence as one of America's great realist painters. more »