Hui | July 29, 2008
It is actually fascinating to watch visitors in exhibitions. A museum experience can differ greatly depending on an individual’s preference. Some enjoy walking alone and reading the labels or books; some like renting audio equipment and almost ubiquitously Chinese and Japanese like posing for snapshots in front of the artwork. For others there are guided [...]
Hui | July 27, 2008
Most Chinese of my generation have an inexplicable profound love of Monet and his impressionism fellows. When Internet was not available in most of China in the late early 1990’s, Western Art seldom reached the public outside the major art institutes. Among the few magazines for English language education, quite a few chose famous artworks [...]
Hui | July 24, 2008
Ironically, the American Period Rooms now displayed and treasured in the major art museums were born with little anticipation of being appreciated in themselves as art. Yet, even the notion that the period room was introduced as backdrop for displaying antique objects is not totally correct. In most cases, the silent rooms, dimly lit, cannot [...]
Hui | July 22, 2008
Recently there are more times than I can realize that I speak of Brooklyn, the borough where I live, not only because it is huge in terms of both land and population, but also because I feel strong sense that Brooklyn should be differentiated from Manhattan, which people associate with fast-pace life-style of rude and [...]
Hui | July 21, 2008
Most of the early 18th century period rooms in Brooklyn Museum of Art, to my surprise, are displayed without evidence of human presence. This casts a striking contrast with the rooms of later period such as Milligan’s library with Nora’s Ark. In the 18th Century American period rooms, furniture, mostly chairs and tables, are placed [...]
Hui | July 10, 2008
In reading the book “American Art In the Barbizon Mood,” I am surprised to find out American Barbizon school is yet to be defined even though the exhibition was held in Washington DC more than 30 years ago. Tonalism is in general used to define the same school, although tonalism itself is such a very [...]
Hui | July 7, 2008
I have known the name of the painter John Francis Murphy since I began to study American paintings. He was associated with the American Barbizon and Tonalism schools without geographically joining the Old Lyme Colony. Thus when a painting of Murphy offered by John Moran Auction’s showed up, it immediately caught my eye. The painting [...]
Geo | July 5, 2008
The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our [...]
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