History

art + history = biography + identity.

This blog focuses on portraiture

How we see ourselves and how we look at others.

Remembering Women Who Fought for Integration in the Nation’s Capital.

This Fourth of July, let's remember these women, and others, who practiced forgiveness but never gave up the fight to live up to the ideals

Collective Mourning, Powerfully Shown

I've written before about secular pilgrimage and in particular the idea of "communitas," whereby people gather together to remember past...

No Kidding: Dutch Boys & Their Pet Goats!

I read with interest the New York Times article about the van Campen family portrait by Frans Hals that had been cut up and the pieces...

Art & Justice at The Atlantic Festival.

On October 4, 2018 I had the honor of opening the Atlantic Festival Race + Justice Summit held at the National Portrait Gallery. Below is...

Martin Luther King Jr., black civil rights, and the subversion of Confederate portraiture.

A photograph of Dr. King and Andrew Young leading a night rally in Grenada, Mississippi on June 14, 1966, shows how closely civil rights...

A Most Extraordinary Week: Unveiling the Obama Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

By any measure, it has been a remarkable week, starting with the unveiling of former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle...

Mad-dogs and Eagles-men, what Craziness is THIS?!

Swoop, the Philadelphia Eagles mascot, & Chris Long's "Underdog" have a long tradition in visual art. Fly, Eagles Fly!! I lived seventeen...

She was much younger & did it in heels. Rosie the Riveter versus Uncle Sam.

This week the World heard that Naomi Parker Fraley one of the contenders for the original model of Rosie the Riveter died at the age of...

Is this the Ugliest Sculpture in London?

How a sculpture from 18th-century Britain led to a history of American Political Satire The story of the infant Hercules derived from...

Why is there so little diversity on the Google portrait-matching app?

Even while having fun with the Google portraiture-matching app, some people are noting a lack of diversity in their paired doppelgängers....

Eleanor Roosevelt and I: A match made by Google

How the Google Arts & Culture portrait app made me appreciate actions not appearances. According to a new app by #GoogleArtsandCulture, I...