Will Crystal Bridges Become the Walmart of American Art Museums?

When Walmart comes to your town, there are always two different reactions: “No! They’ll kill all the small businesses!” Or “Yes! Big selection at low prices!” A similar phenomenon is taking place in the world of American art museums as all eyes turn toward Bentonville, Arkansas, where the doors of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art will open this November. The brainchild of Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton and the third richest woman in the world (her sister-in-law Christy is number one), Crystal Bridges both beckons art pilgrims to a new experience and inspires dread in those who see it as a sign of the apocalypse of art in America. After reading Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker profile of Alice Walton and her museum, “Alice’s Wonderland,” it’s only natural to ask if Crystal Bridges will become, for good and/or ill, the Walmart of American art museums. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Will Crystal Bridges Become the Walmart of American Art Museums?"

Season’s Bleatings: The War on Christmas Starts at the Smithsonian

The signs of the holiday season are upon us: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, twinkling lights, overdecorated malls, and now, finally, the annual conservative cri de Coeur—The War on Christmas! This year, the battle begins at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, which has played host to the exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture since October 30^th. An intrepid conservative reporter finally stumbled upon (or disingenuously timed coverage of) the exhibition this past week and fired the first shot in 2010’s War on Christmas by taking aim at the late David Wojnarowicz’s 1987 video “A Fire in My Belly.” Somehow a show centered on difference and desire in American portraiture has become a “Christmas show,” as conservatives take umbrage with Wojnarowicz’s imagery of a crucified Jesus Christ covered in ants (a still from the film is shown above). So, let’s all gather under the tree and let the Season’s Bleatings begin. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Season's Bleatings."

War and Peace: The Art of the American Soldier

The modern view of the American soldier at war is invariably shaped by television. Beginning with the Vietnam War, the first war brought literally into the living rooms of private citizens halfway around the world from the actual shooting, even the most remote conflict seems nearby thanks to modern technology. Since the very beginning of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, when news cameras literally rode in the first wave of tanks, those conflicts, too, have been defined by the immediacy of video (and, perhaps, even lost to public consciousness in the sea of images that assault us daily). Art of the American Soldier, an exhibition at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA, restores the human touch and human vision to the daily experience of men and women in combat. Finally brought out of storage, many of these images have never been seen by the public before, and may never have been needed to be seen by the public before as they need to be now. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "War and Peace."

[Image: Peter Hurd. War and Peace. World War II, 1942.]

[Many thanks to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA for providing the image above from the exhibition Art of the American Soldier, which runs through January 10, 2011.]

Paper Tiger: American Moderns on Paper at the Amon Carter Museum

When we think things out, it is usually on paper. Writers scribble random thoughts on scraps near at hand and mine those jotted flashes of insight later for fuller, more realized essays. Artists, however, use paper both for unfinished and finished works—preliminary drawings or paintings pointing forward as well as completely realized art that stands at the end of the process. American Moderns on Paper: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, currently at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, brings together an amazing collection of American art on that most fragile of supports, paper. These works and artists find themselves together thanks mainly to chronology, which leads to strange and strangely fascinating bedfellows. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Paper Tiger."

[Image: Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009). Granddaughter, 1956. Dry brush and opaque watercolor on thick wove paper. © Andrew Wyeth. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Gift of Mrs. Robert Montgomery, 1991.79. wadsworth9.]

[Many thanks to the Amon Carter Museum for providing me with the image above and catalogue from American Moderns on Paper: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, which runs through May 30, 2010.]