From the Fort Wayne Museum of Art
Looking at, Talking about, and Appreciating Art
This week’s treasure is a peculiar curiosity. Instead of a painting or print, this week I present a Concert Roller Organ! What is a Concert Roller Organ you ask? Well, it was only the most fashionable form of entertainment for working class Victorian Era Americans. See and listen to FWMoA's Concert Organ play you a tune in the video at the end of this post!
Our first official installment of Treasures from the Vault features one of FWMoA’s original treasures: Snails on Rhubarb. Painted in 1919 by German painter Richard Müller, Snails on Rhubarb is a whimsical study of foliage and the critters inhabiting this small ecosystem. Scattered over several large rhubarb leaves are snails, and a frog who seems to be mid-jump. A glimpse of a pond is seen in the background, which we can imagine as the home of our amphibious friend, his gastropod companions, and other creatures out of sight.
The history of American art is filled with little-known human stories that I find generally more fascinating than much of the art. Today, I’m thinking about a young artists’ model, Audrey Munson, whose mercurial rise to fame was as unlikely as her despairing descent into the black void of the rest of her life. At the golden dawn of the 20th Century, Audrey Munson, an impoverished pre-teenager, caught the eye of photographer Felix Benedict Herzog as she pressed her face against a department store window and soon thereafter became the most famous artists’ model in American history.
Today’s featured work is General Anthony Wayne, a painting by Edward Percy Moran. Moran completed the work in 1923, and he’s depicted General Wayne at the side of a wounded Revolutionary soldier who is holding the new American Flag. The two are overlooking an unknown battlefield, but, since they’re holding the flag high, we can assume that it was a victory for our fledgling nation!
Our Exhibitions Content Manager, Elizabeth Goings, sat down with Outlaw Printmaker Dennis McNett to discuss printmaking, Norse mythology, and the meaning of Outlaw art. Read the full transcription below or listen here: Goings: What do you think of your work or your style being described as “irreverent” or “outlaw?” Do you view it as a …
Continue reading "Artist Interview: Outlaw of Print Dennis McNett"
This Picture I Gift, Michelle Andonian’s series featured in The National: Best Contemporary Photography 2018, is a documentary series that illustrates the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide. The effects of the genocide are especially meaningful for Michelle because her grandmother, Sarah, somehow escaped the chaos before it was too late. Only 9 years old at the beginning of the genocide in 1915, Sarah survived the massacre of 1.5 million Christian Armenians and displacement of hundreds of thousands at the persecution of the failing Ottoman Empire.
If asked, out of the blue, to name a short list of famous artists, what would our response be? We all could probably name a handful: Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dale Chihuly, Andy Warhol, maybe that guy who wrapped Central Park – Christo, right? – and Norman Rockwell, for sure. But what about DeKooning’s abstractionist friend, Milt Resnick? Or Pop Art guru Don Nice? Or member of the first “class” of Americans to graduate from the Royal Academy, Johnathan Trumbull? Each of these last three artists were successful on all levels, even though their names rarely leap to anyone’s tongue these days.
Welcome back! We're sharing the construction process of a new installation on display at FWMoA through October 23.
This first interview with Cary Shafer while creating his work "Tilted Arch". Tilted Arch was commissioned by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art's and will be displayed in the Sculpture Court starting Fall of 2012. Cary Talks about his training, his career as we get a behind the scenes look at studio and his process.
Interviewed and Written by: Fred McKissack As a painter, Kadir Nelson has illuminated subjects ranging from Negro League baseball in “We Are the Ship” and Joe Louis in “A Nation’s Hope” to Michael Jackson and the lives of African Americans in the sweeping epic “Heart and Soul.” At Pratt Institute—one of the country’s premier art …