KNOW/NOW: CONTEMPORARY INTERROGATIONS

For the purpose of these interrogations, the Museum has developed a series of questions for exhibiting contemporary artists in an attempt to enliven and explore the discourse between the artist and the institution – with specific focus on site, interpretation, relevance, process, and sources. Marc Swanson, whose NEW/NOW exhibition (on view until this Sunday, May [...]

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Layered on the Past: The Art of Martin Kline

This post comes to us from Victoria Villano, Curatorial Intern. Thought-provoking, mysterious, whimsical, abstract: there are many words one can use to describe the artwork found in Romantic Nature, the mid-career retrospective of artist Martin Kline (on view in the McKernan Gallery until June 17). What about waves, currents of air, microscopic organisms, and mosaics? [...]

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Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Appropriation & Inspiration at the NBMAA

This post comes to us from Alexandra Torbick, Curatorial Intern. Appropriation, the act of direct duplication, copying or incorporation of an image (painting, photograph, etc) by another artist[1], has been endogenous within the art world since antiquity, especially in the times of the Roman Empire. Using Greek bronze sculptures as their guide, the Romans took [...]

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Martin Kline and the Experience of Seeing

This post comes to us from Eliza Heussler, Curatorial Intern.  Only a few inches away from every one of the encaustic paintings and sculptures in the exhibition Martin Kline: Romantic Nature is a small, albeit prominent cautionary note: “Please do not touch the artwork.” Why the extra precaution? After all, it is one of those [...]

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From Living Room Wall to Exhibition Hall: Private Art Collections in the Public Eye

This post comes to us from Jan Czepiel, Curatorial Volunteer. The motivations and beginnings of private art collections are as unique as the collectors themselves. Collectors may work from a shoestring budget or from seemingly infinite resources. Some collections grow in value while others, as fine as they are, do not. Some collectors may build [...]

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Media History Through the Eyes of a Blue Boar

The New Britain Museum of American Art is pleased to feature the newest addition to the New Media series, Blue Boar, 2010 by Victoria Bradbury. This interactive, mixed-media installation brings the viewer into the midst of a witch trial – the so-called “blue boar incident.” In 1692, 75-year-old Mary Bradbury, the artist’s 10th great-grandmother and [...]

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Seeing and Thinking Outside the Box

The New Britain Museum of American Art is pleased to host the exhibition of sculptural paintings by the artist Arthur L. Carter on view from September 30th to November 27th in the Davis Gallery. The title of the show, Orthogonals, refers to the property in mathematics – orthogonality – in which two vectors are perpendicular. A wonderful [...]

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American Impressionism: Beyond Boats and Parasols

The understanding of sensation, perception, and what it meant to portray reality changed dramatically throughout the late 19th century, beginning with the Impressionist movement in France. Impressionism prioritized the individual eye over the disembodied subject of the anonymous viewing body. The theory behind the movement was all about offering a unique experience, a temporary moment, [...]

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Art and Identity in a Creative Environment

One week from today, the NBMAA will open its newest exhibition The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America’s Oldest Continuous Art Colony (1899-2011). With the installation well under way, we have stopped to consider one seemingly elemental, though crucial  question that quietly lurks behind the very title of the show. That question of course [...]

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Frieseke: Under the French Influence

One of the main artists featured in the upcoming exhibition An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of American Art is Frederick Carl Frieseke. Born in Michigan, he studied at The Art Institute of Chicago beginning in 1893. Afterwards he went to the Art Students League in New York City in 1897, until he finally traveled to [...]

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