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Making Kantha, Making Home

Women at Work in Colonial Bengal

By Pika Ghosh

In Bengal, mothers swaddle their infants and cover their beds in colorful textiles that are passed down through generations. They create these kantha from layers of soft, recycled fabric strengthened with running stitches and use...

René Lalique

Art Deco Gems from the Steven and Roslyn Shulman Collection

By Katie Buckingham and Rachel Belle

René Lalique: Selections from the Steven and Roslyn Shulman Collection introduces the artistic innovations and legacy of renowned French Art Deco artist René Lalique. Born outside of Paris in 1860, Lalique was recognized as one...

Form and Relation

Contemporary Native Ceramics

By Jami C. Powell, Anya Montiel, Sequoia Miller, Courtney Leonard, and Morgan E. Freeman

Form and Relation showcases the versatility of ceramics and its many forms through the work of seven contemporary Indigenous artists from across what is now the United States. Bringing together recent acquisitions, commissioned works, and...

Great Qing

Painting in China, 1644-1911

By Claudia Brown

Addressing the previous lack of a comprehensive English-language study of Qing painting, art historian Claudia Brown’s account ranges from the tumultuous Ming–Qing transition to the end of imperial rule. In response to omissions in previous...

"Something Over Something Else"

Romare Bearden's Profile Series

By Stephanie Mayer Heydt, Robert G. O'Meally, Rachael Z. Delue, Paul Devlin, and Ruth Fine

In November 1977, The New Yorker published a feature-length biography of artist Romare Bearden by Calvin Tomkins as part of its “Profiles” series. The essay, titled Profile: Putting Something Over Something Else (using Bearden’s words...

Empire of Style

Silk and Fashion in Tang China

By BuYun Chen

Tang dynasty (618–907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends. Its capital at Chang’an was the most populous city in the world and was connected via the Silk Road with the critical markets and thriving cultures of...

Shifting Grounds

Landscape in Contemporary Native American Art

By Kate Morris

A distinctly Indigenous form of landscape representation is emerging in the creations of contemporary Indigenous artists from North America. For centuries, landscape painting in European art typically used representational strategies such as single-point perspective to...

New Deal Art in the Northwest

The WPA and Beyond

By Margaret E. Bullock

From December 1933 to February 1943, as part of a sprawling economic stimulus package, four federal programs hired artists to create public artworks and provide art-making opportunities to millions of Americans. When this initiative abruptly...

Dressed with Distinction

Garments from Ottoman Syria

By Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood. Introduction by Joanna Barrkman

For hundreds of years, skilled craftspeople in the Syrian centers of Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs produced intricately woven textiles for the royal courts, worldly merchants, and elite Bedouin families of the Ottoman Empire. City dwellers...

Meleko Mokgosi

Bread, Butter, and Power

By Erica P. Jones

Botswana-born Meleko Mokgosi is an emerging contemporary artist whose large-scale figurative paintings are garnering growing accolades and attention worldwide. In all his work, Mokgosi emphasizes narrative storytelling. This approach inspires the viewer to think deeply...

Art AIDS America / Art AIDS America Chicago Boxed Set

By Jonathan David Katz, Rock Hushka, and Staci Boris

This slipcased boxed set contains the two volumes: Art AIDS America, published in 2015 to coincide with the original exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum, and the new book Art AIDS America Chicago. Art AIDS...

Concrete Mama

Prison Profiles from Walla Walla

By Ethan Hoffman, Dan Berger

Journalists John McCoy and Ethan Hoffman spent four months inside the walls of the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla in 1978, just as Washington, once a leader in prison reform, abandoned its focus on...

Art in Seattle’s Public Spaces

From SoDo to South Lake Union

By James Rupp and Miguel Edwards

From cedar totem poles to high-tech video installations, downtown Seattle sparkles with hundreds of artworks adorning plazas, lobbies, parks, and waterfront piers and paths. This impressive collection, comprising works by artists with regional or international...

La Raza

By Colin Gunckel, Luis C. Garza, Amy Scott

La Raza, launched in 1967 in the basement of an Eastside LA church, was conceived as a tool for community-based organizing during the early days of the Chicano movement. The all-volunteer staff of the newspaper—and...

The Cycle of Life in the Paintings of Thai Artist Pichai Nirand

By Philip Constable

The paintings of contemporary Thai artist Pichai Nirand (b. 1936) are a vivid exploration of the interplay between Thailand’s Buddhist roots and its modern aspirations and struggles. Pichai engages fully with the world and belief...

Aboriginal Screen-Printed Textiles from Australia’s Top End

By Joanna Barrkman

Aboriginal Screen-Printed Textiles from Australia’s Top End presents the work of contemporary Australian textile artists working at five Aboriginal-owned art centers in the Northern Territory: Tiwi Design, Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association, Injalak Arts and...

Wanted: Ed Bereal

For Disturbing the Peace

By Amy Chaloupka

Born in Riverside, California in 1937 and profoundly affected by World War II, Ed Bereal made significant contributions to assemblage and performance arts in Los Angeles during the early 1960s through 1980s. A consummate draftsman...

Three Caribbean Artists

Jose Maria Capricorne, Nelson Carrilho, Philippe Zanolino

By Susan Wilczak and Marianne De Tolentino. Monique van Herksen

Caribbean art is strong, passionate and filled with contradictions, as are the lives of the three men profiled inThree Caribbean Artists. A rare glimpse is offered into the lives of three different artists, their upbringing,...

Order of Imagination

The Photographs of Olivia Parker

By Sarah Kennel

For more than forty years, Olivia Parker’s poetic and alluring photographs have transformed the everyday and made the familiar strange. In deceptively simple still lives and complex, dreamlike constructions that incorporate a rich variety of...

The Art of Collecting

East Indies Paintings

By Bea Brommer

Painters were fascinated by the tropical landscapes, picturesque villages and markets, and especially the diverse inhabitants of the Dutch East Indies. In the first half of the 20th century a large group of European artists...