This is now part of our permanent collection. Where to begin? First, the provenance, I guess. It was painted by a member of Deaf Connect of the Mid-South, a non-profit organization that serves the deaf, hard-of-hearing, and deaf/blind population of Memphis. Members of this organization donated artwork to the recent production of The Miracle Worker […]
Click on photo to enlarge. Everybody thinks his or her child is a genius, but holy mother, my son’s artwork looks just like Picasso’s Guernica.
Above is St. Francis in the Desert,by Giovanni Bellini. If you can’t see this (and many other works of art) in person, you should check them out at the new googleartproject.com. Last summer, I made a special trip from New Haven to New York to see Bellini’s painting at the Fricke Gallery. Now it’s at googleartproject.com, […]
When a friend offers to let you stay in her Brooklyn apartment for the weekend, you say “Yes.” I had made plans to travel to New York this weekend to see a painting (more on that later), and my friend Audrey, whose generosity is legendary, asked if I would like to stay in her apartment […]
On Saturday, July 10, Renee and I visited the Cloisters Museum and Garden in Manhattan. The Cloisters Museum and Garden is owned by the Metropolitan Museum, and is dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. It was started by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who imported ruined abbeys from Spain brick by brick […]
We are all familiar with the image of St. Francis of Assisi, the benevolent, bearded man who speaks to animals and allows the birds to perch on his shoulders. However, the real Francis was a controversial figure who impelled many people to abandon their worldly lives and roam the country in poverty. Francis, pictured in […]
The pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales are traveling to the shrine of Thomas á Becket, whose tomb was one of the most important destinations for English Christians. But who was Thomas á Becket, and what made his shrine so revered among the people? It’s a pretty interesting story, actually. Thomas á Becket was born in […]
I assigned my students a project in which they had to fill out a questionnaire about themselves, and then choose twenty questions and answer them in a blog. If they had to do it, I have to do it, too. 1. Do you have any hidden talents? Anyone who knows me knows that I am […]