Podcast Goya: A Portrait of the Artist January 15, 2021 The life of Francisco Goya (1746–1828) coincided with an age of transformation in Spanish history that brought upheavals in the country’s politics and at the court which Goya served, changes in society, the devastation of the Iberian Peninsula in the war against Napoleon, and an ensuing period of political instability. Read More
Essay Material unfurling, digital scrolling, urban strolling, c. 1830–now January 14, 2021 The companion website, developed with support from Princeton University Press’s Global Equity Grant, supplements The Place of Many Moods: Udaipur’s Painted Lands and India’s Eighteenth Century. While taking the book to broader audiences, the website features objects published and studied for the first time in-depth. Read More
Podcast Sexuality, gender, and race in the Middle Ages December 18, 2020 While the term “intersectionality” was coined in 1989, the existence of marginalized identities extends back over millennia. Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around matters of sexual and reproductive consent, bullying and slut-shaming, homosocial and homoerotic relationships, trans and nonbinary gender identities, and the depiction of racialized minorities. Read More
Interview Katherine Zubovich on Moscow Monumental December 17, 2020 In 1947, Stalin decreed that eight monumental buildings be built in the Soviet capital. Seven of these neoclassical structures were completed in the 1950s and these buildings continue to stand today as originally intended: as elite apartment complexes, luxury hotels, and the headquarters of key institutions including Moscow State University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Read More
Video Human Flow book trailer December 03, 2020 Complete with photographs taken by Ai Weiwei while filming the epic feature documentary Human Flow, this book provides a powerful, personal, and moving account of the most urgent humanitarian crisis of our time. Read More
Essay In the mood for art in India’s eighteenth century October 29, 2020 In the long eighteenth century, artists from Udaipur, a city of lakes in northwestern India, specialized in depicting the vivid sensory ambience of its historic palaces, reservoirs, temples, bazaars, and durbars. Read More
Essay Piranesi, maker of books October 27, 2020 One of the central ideas that we explore in Piranesi Unbound is how a book comes together as the product of collaboration. As an artist, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) worked in many forms and materials. Read More
Interview Leslie Geddes on Watermarks September 02, 2020 Formless, mutable, transparent: the element of water posed major challenges for the visual artists of the Renaissance. To the engineers of the era, water represented a force that could be harnessed for human industry but was equally possessed of formidable destructive power. Read More
Interview By Design | Karen Siatras on designing for Humboldt July 20, 2020 Karen Siatras is a graphic designer in SAAM’s Publications office. For her most recent project, the massive exhibition catalogue that accompanies Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, she created special decorative letters at the start of each chapter in the book. Read More
Essay The Black man at Lincoln’s feet: Archer Alexander and the problem of emancipation July 13, 2020 The Emancipation Memorial sits imprisoned in a cage in Washington’s Lincoln Park, waiting to hear whether it will be exiled or set free. The fate of its replica in Boston is also hanging in the balance, as a petition for its removal has been signed by thousands. Read More
Interview Hips don’t lie: The American incognitum July 07, 2020 While the Smithsonian American Art Museum rarely houses fossil remains, an amazing specimen, the original “Peale Mastodon” skeleton, is part of the upcoming exhibition Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture. Read More
Video A brush with nature: Alexander von Humboldt and Frederic Church June 30, 2020 What made Alexander von Humboldt a superstar in the 1800s was Cosmos, his global best-selling, multi-volume series on his scientific observations and international travels. Read More
Essay The Marquis de Sade and solitude June 01, 2020 As many of us look out at the world from behind the walls and windows of our homes or reach out to others through screens and online chats, we increasingly find the boundaries between time and space blurring before our eyes. Read More
Essay Mysteries of the first mastodon May 29, 2020 Bones from the last ice age might be standard for a natural history conservator, but it’s not the norm at an art museum. Read More
Essay The Humboldt connection between nature and American art May 21, 2020 An exhibition titled Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture will be shown at the Smithsonian American Art Museum located at 8th & F Streets NW in Washington, DC, opening in 2020. Read More
