Folk Art in the South: Selections from the Permanent Collection
Folk art—often characterized as outsider, visionary, or self-taught—varies widely in medium and subject matter. The range of descriptive terms applied to it does little to describe the imaginative ways in which folk artists express deeply personal ideas in visual language. They employ readily accessible materials, including found objects, to produce their work, putting mundane materials to fresh and ingenious uses.…
The Eugene Fleischer Collection of Studio Art Glass
The history of the studio art glass movement in America is relatively brief. Its origins can be pinpointed precisely to two workshops conducted by ceramist Harvey Littleton, who was interested in the potential of glass as an artistic medium, and chemist and engineer Dominick Labino held at the Toldeo Museum of Art in 1962. Littleton had envisioned a more or…
David Driskell: Artist and Scholar of the African American Experience
David Driskell, born in Eatonton, Georgia, in 1931, earned an undergraduate degree in art from Howard University in 1955. He earned a master of fine arts degree from the Catholic University of America in 1962 before undertaking further postgraduate study in art history. Trained as a painter, he works primarily in collage, mixed media, and printmaking. He began his teaching career at…
Vietnam Transformed: The Art of Richard J. Olsen
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1935, Richard J. Olsen began his journey in art in his youth. He attended the University of Wisconsin, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in 1958 and a master of fine arts degree (with a concentration in painting and printmaking) in 1966. He was a child during World War II and a teenager…