Pop Goes the Artist!

I actually got this link from the professor of my Renaissance history class, since we’re currently looking at Renaissance art.  It’s a fairly in-depth analysis of one of my favorite Vermeer paintings, Woman Holding a Balance, which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.  Check it out!

There are also some pretty exciting-looking exhibits coming up in DC.  The National Museum of Women in the Arts is doing an exhibit called “The Book As Art: Twenty Years’ of Artists’ Books from the NMWA,” which looks really interesting.  Their homepage features a nifty “interactive page turner” that allows you to flip through some of the books from the exhibition (particularly check out Miriam Shenitzer’s “How to Talk About Art”).  Part of the kick-off for the exhibit, which runs from October 27 to February 4, is a lecture by the author of one of my favorite books (Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife), who is also a printmaker and book artist.  Exciting!

Opening tomorrow at the Phillips Collection is an exhibit called “The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America,” featuring some of my favorite modern artists, including Paul Klee and Alexander Calder, as well as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and others.  It should be a diverse and colorful show.  It runs tomorrow (October 14) through January 21.

But the show I’m probably most excited about is “In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000″ at the Sackler Gallery.  I mean, wow.  Old Bibles tend to be really interesting, because of their (often) dual status as religious objects and status symbols for the wealthy patrons who commissioned them (particularly in the Middle Ages, when the art of illumination was at its height).  Most of the Bibles at this show probably won’t be that ornate, especially the very earliest ones, but it still looks like a fascinating exhibit.

Apparently there’s also an exhibit, continuing indefinitely, of ancient and medieval metalwork at the Sackler Gallery, on loan from Dumbarton Oaks, which I just found out is DC’s source for medieval art and history.  (Too bad it’s closed for renovations until autumn of next year.)  Either way, I’ll have to make sure to check that exhibit out as well, when I go see the ancient Bibles.

Looking like it’s going to be a very nice winter.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Museums. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.