American art

Moreby Hall

Originally published in the Freer | Sackler Galleries’ Whistler in Watercolor digital exhibition catalogue. â—Šâ—Š In the early 1880s, James McNeill Whistler was a house guest at Moreby Hall, located south of York in Yorkshire, where he encountered the scene that fills this watercolor. The manor house, built between 1818 […]

Norman Lewis at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Originally published in Art in America’s July 2016 issue. â—Šâ—Š Norman Lewis (1909–1979) was an energetic participant in the Harlem Renaissance and one of the only African-American painters who associated himself with the Abstract Expressionists. While he founded the Spiral Group (active from 1963 to 1965) with Romare Bearden, Charles […]

William Emlen Cresson’s Caricatures

I contributed an essay on William Emlen Cresson’s exhibition caricatures for the catalogue of Expanding the Audience for Art in the 19th Century at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The show was co-curated with colleagues and friends under the guidance of Michael Leja, and mounted at the Arthur Ross Gallery […]