What is a Permanent Collection? A way to study History. And Art. Certainly a permanent collection can be used to study art history. The study of form and stylistic change. To study how new technologies inform and change the style and content of art. This blog compares Tradition and Innovation as themes in the Cedarhurst […]
What is a Permanent Collection? Read More »
Formalism is a fundamental theory of aesthetics (the study of art and its values) emphasizing the overall appearance of a work of art. The appearance is judged for how well the formal arrangement of elements within a painting, sculpture, etc., manages to convey a successful “internal logic.” All formal elements must work together to convey
Formalism and Symbolic Content Read More »
In my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee there lived a man who became one of the most well known artists in the art world, if not the world-at-large, his name is William Edmondson. Born in 1874 to parents who were once slaves in the American South. Edmondson grew up in the Southern historical context of the racist
Museums, and perhaps most particularly art museums, have roles to play in connecting the lives of their visitors with the history of their communities and their country. History becomes illuminating when it’s tied to the present. Museums can, for their audiences, facilitate this connecting work of history to the world today. Art museums themselves have
Museums Study History Through Art Read More »
We explore in this post, the family, friends, education, and art of Thomas Eakins in relationship to his social contexts and highlight key events and paintings. As many readers know, Cedarhurst cares for four paintings by Eakins — Samuel Murray, 1889; Professor Barker, 1886 (and the excised canvas fragment of Barker’s hand turned into a separate painting);
The Life of Thomas Eakins Read More »
We celebrate the return of John Kearney’s Bull from conservation restoration with an esoteric collage from the History of the Bull. Picasso is well known for his adoption of the Bull as his alter-ego or avatar. As a young boy, his first drawings were of bulls and bullfights. Bullfighting in Spain is over 2,000 years old and may have
Mythology of The Bull Read More »
Teju Cole is recognized for his interwoven skills of using just the right words to articulate his acute and nuanced observations of today’s visual world. Cole teaches at Harvard University where he is the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing. I admire the recent NYT essay by Cole where he put words to the
Teju Cole’s Caravaggio Read More »
In the 1980s, Howard Finster may have been the most well-known evangelical preacher in America. If you’re not familiar with Howard Finster, you may be surprised to learn that he was considered the second most popular American artist after Andy Warhol. The most important thing to know about Finster’s art is that he considered every one
R.E.M. & Talking Heads Read More »
This blog introduces the exhibition Rural Avant Garde: The Mountain Lake Experience showing at Cedarhurst October 18 through January 3, 2021. The exhibition was organized by the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts in Farmville, Virginia. In 2018, the companion book was published as The Mountain Lake Symposium and Workshop: Art in Locale. Edited by Ray Kass and Howard Risatti. The
The Mountain Lake Experience Read More »
John Cage is not a household name, though his music influenced Frank Zappa, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Stereolab, the Kronos Quartet and reached well into the visual arts. The occasion for my blog post is the traveling exhibition Rural Avant Garde: The Mountain Lake Experience now showing at Cedarhurst until January 4. If you
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Cedarhurst Center for the Arts
2600 Richview Road
P.O. Box 923
Mount Vernon, IL 62864
(618) 242-1236
mitchellmuseum@cedarhurst.org
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