Speed of Life

Must See Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum I will be discussing the important artwork of Kehinde Wiley at TRAC 2015 (The Representational Art Conference) in Ventura, California in November 2015 From the museum's website: The works presented in Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic raise questions about race, gender, and the politics of representation by portraying contemporary African American men and women using the conventions of traditional European portraiture. The exhibition includes an overview of the artist’s prolific fourteen-year career and features sixty paintings and sculptures. Wiley's signature portraits of everyday men and women riff on specific paintings by Old Masters, replacing the European aristocrats depicted in those paintings with contemporary black subjects, drawing attention to the absence of African Americans from historical and cultural narratives. The subjects in Wiley's paintings often wear sneakers, hoodies, and baseball caps, gear associated with...

Fascinating Trove - Yale’s Beinecke Library Buys Vast Collection of Lincoln Photos http:// nyti.ms/1G6d786  

  Happy Birthday to Vincent Van Gogh! - born on this day in 1853. " Self-Portrait ," 1889 http:// 1.usa.gov/1jdIrEA   @ ngadc Self–Portrait with a Straw Hat (obverse: The Potato Peeler) , 1887 Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890) Oil on canvas; 16 x 12 1/2 in. (40.6 x 31.8 cm) Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967 (67.187.70a) Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Screening: REBEL Thursday, April 2 at 5:00pm UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center  in Los Angeles, California Shrouded in mystery and long the subject of debate, the amazing story of Loreta Velazquez, Confederate soldier turned Union spy, is one of the Civil War’s most gripping forgotten narratives. A Cuban immigrant from New Orleans, Velazquez was one of the estimated 1000 women who secretly served as soldiers during the American Civil War. Who was she? Why did she fight? And what made her so dangerous that she has been virtually erased from history? Please join us at the CSRC for the UCLA premiere screening of this award-winning documentary about a woman, a myth, and the politics of national memory. Followed by Q&A with writer-director-producer María Agui Carter and Maylei Blackwell, associate professor of Chicana/ o Studies and Gender Studies at UCLA. This event starts at 5 p.m. A reception will follow the screening and Q&A. “REBEL explores... how hi...

For me, exhibitions devoted to the paintings of the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez always evoke a sense of wonder and possibility. Velázquez' paintings hold me spellbound. I will be in Verona, Italy in May and will find my way to Paris for sure. Perhaps a rendezvous with the esteemed restorer from the Van Gogh Museum - René Boitelle ? An exhibition produced jointly by the RMN-Grand Palais and the Musée du Louvre, in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Curator  : Guillaume Kientz, curator in the Department of paintings, Musée du Louvre Exhibition design  : Maciej Fiszer Diego Velázquez Portrait of Pope Innocent X 56"x47" oil on canvas c1650 Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome 25 March 2015 to 13 July 2015 Open : Sundays and Mondays from 10 am to 8 pm, Wednesdays to Saturdays from 9 am to 10 pm Closed on Tuesdays Closed 1st May Closed at 6pm on 25th and 26th March Access : metro line 1 and 13 « Champs-Elysées-C...

"We are storytellers, writers, poets, and artists who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told." President Obama's Speech in Selma (full transcript) March 7, 2015 It is a rare honor in this life to follow one of your heroes. And John Lewis is one of my heroes. Now, I have to imagine that when a younger John Lewis woke up that morning fifty years ago and made his way to Brown Chapel, heroics were not on his mind. A day like this was not on his mind. Young folks with bedrolls and backpacks were milling about. Veterans of the movement trained newcomers in the tactics of non-violence; the right way to protect yourself when attacked. A doctor described what tear gas does to the body, while marchers scribbled down instructions for contacting their loved ones. The air was thick with doubt, anticipation, and fear. They comforted themselves with the final verse of the final hymn they sung: No ...