Jean Charlot and the Joy of Discovery

As I have written this blog, I have tended to highlight recent scholarship that sheds new light on artists on the collection, or on interesting connections between and among artists and works. Sometimes, however, I find myself simply stopping to

Blackness and Abstraction, Part 2

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the African American abstract painter Sam Gilliam and his sometimes uneasy relationship with the artistic style of Black activists in the 1960s and 1970s. This week, I ran into some of the same

Sam Gilliam and Blackness

Sam Gilliam has long been one of the foremost American abstract painters, as well as one of the most successful African American artists. He was the first Black artist to represent the United States in the Venice Biennale in 1972.1

Seductress or Rape Victim? Potiphar’s Wife in Art And Literature

One of the paintings in our current exhibition, Dangerous Women: Selections from the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art , depicts an episode from the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, as recounted in the biblical book of Genesis.