Art and Museums
Mrs. Delany and her Circle, at the Yale Center for British Art
At the age of seventy-two, Mary Delany, née Mary Granville (1700–1788), a botanical artist, woman of fashion, and commentator on life and society in eighteenth-century England and Ireland, embarked on a series of one thousand botanical collages, or “paper mosaics.” These were the crowning achievement of a life defined by creative accomplishment. more »
Shopping by Culture, Ancient Egypt
"The Ancient Egyptians were highly skilled in the use of herbs and spices for medicines, cooking, cosmetics, perfumes and many other purposes. Drawing on texts written by the Egyptians and their neighbours, and on works by classical authors and the Copts, Lise Manniche has reconstructed an herbal of 94 species of plants and trees used from before the pharaohs to the Coptic period. more »
The O’Keeffe show at the Whitney is the first to study, and celebrate, her abstract works
Nearly a dozen of these sexually charged photo-portraits are on display in a separate room at the Whitney. The walls are brown and echo the sepia tones of the prints, which are soft, and in the case of the nudes, hazy. Much to O’Keeffe’s chagrin, the nudes confirmed the nature of her relationship with Stieglitz (she was 34-years-old, and he was, shockingly, married and 57-years-old) and prompted the critics to respond to her paintings as “emblems of female sexuality,” the catalogue states. more »
The Famed and Controversial Sargent Murals at the Boston Public Library
"The painting that sparked the outrage was Sargent's 1919 work 'Synagogue,' in which the subject is depicted as a blindfolded old woman fallen to the floor, her crown toppled, the structure around her in ruins." more »