Blog

The Indomitable Felice Stampfle, the Morgan's First Curator of Drawings and Prints

Pierpont Morgan’s librarian, Belle da Costa Greene (1883–1950), shepherded the banker’s collections beginning in 1905 and continued doing so for many years after his death in 1913, working alongside his son and eventually serving as the museum’s first director from 1928 until her retirement in 1949. After the Morgan opened its doors as a public institution, the drawings collection—established by Morgan in 1909—continued to grow through gifts from the Morgan family and from a small number of patrons, as well as through select purchases.

Rembrandt’s Interiors

Rembrandt’s portrait prints of secular patrons—city officials, physicians and apothecaries, dealers, collectors, and fellow artists—generally depict individuals he knew well. While in most cases, the focus is chiefly on the sitters, in a handful of highly ambitious works, the artist places them in carefully described interior spaces.

Rick Barton: A Curatorial Serial, Part III

In the early days of 2018, I arrived in Los Angeles with appointments to see Henry Evans’s Peregrine Press papers at the Clark Memorial Library and a cache of over 700 drawings by Rick Barton at UCLA Library Special Collections. Although I had been assured that the drawings would be available, I worried that something might go wrong or that the drawings would not have been worth the trip.

Recent Acquisition: Mercury Standing, by Jacob Jordaens

When I left New York for the Salon du Dessin in Paris in late March 2019, I did not expect to fall in love with a Flemish drawing. But somewhere between the opening reception at the grand Palais Brongniart—the historic stock exchange building in Paris—and the flight back to JFK a few days later, this large, colorful study by Antwerp-born Jacob Jordaens had cast its spell on me.

WFH Diary: Hot White Jesus

As a Canadian artist living in the US, I am both an outsider and a passive participant in our current political climate. I feel an urgency to address issues of class, power, and privilege through my work, while also treading carefully to avoid co-opting the experience of others. Instead, I approach my ideas through a tender provocation, asking myself how I can express a critical perspective that is nevertheless a positive and hopeful contribution.