Apr 12 2026
A magnolia blossom fills almost the entire frame, its pale petals curving against a dark background until the flower begins to look less like something growing in a garden and more like an abstract sculpture. In another photograph, modern dancer Martha Graham twists her body into a dramatic composition of light and shadow. Elsewhere, an …
Apr 11 2026
A George Blacklock painting rarely sits quietly on the wall. Curving shapes lean toward one another, brilliant colors overlap, thick passages of paint push forward, and sweeping marks suggest bodies turning, dancers moving, voices answering one another, or forms struggling to occupy the same space. Even when the painting is unmistakably abstract, it often feels …
Dec 19 2025
Phil Ochs believed a song could function almost like a newspaper column. Armed with an acoustic guitar, a sharp eye for hypocrisy, and an instinct for turning current events into memorable lyrics, he became one of the defining topical songwriters of the American folk revival. He sang about war, civil rights, labor, political campaigns, social …
Dec 15 2025
Chihiro Iwasaki: Watercolor, Childhood & a Lifelong Wish for Peace Few artists have captured childhood with the tenderness and immediacy of Chihiro Iwasaki. Her children rarely pose. They splash in baths, stare out windows, clutch flowers, sit alone in thought, or move through pale landscapes that seem to dissolve into watercolor around them. With only …
Nov 17 2025
Walter Peregoy did not seem particularly interested in making animation look safe. His backgrounds could be rough, angular, brilliantly colored, and deliberately incomplete. A building did not need every brick carefully rendered. A tree could become a collision of shapes and lines. Colors did not have to remain neatly contained within outlines, and the painted …
Oct 18 2025
Born on October 18, 1903, in Zurich, Switzerland, Albert Frey became one of the architects most closely associated with Palm Springs and the development of Desert Modernism. He arrived in California with firsthand experience of European modernism, an enthusiasm for industrial materials, and a belief that architecture should respond intelligently to contemporary life. What he …
Oct 12 2025
Born on October 12, 1957, in Roanne, France, Serge Clerc became one of the most distinctive illustrators to emerge from the explosion of French comics culture during the 1970s and 1980s. His world is populated by sharp-suited detectives, glamorous women, musicians, robots, futuristic automobiles, cocktail bars, record shops, modernist furniture, mysterious nightclubs, and characters who …
Sep 26 2025
Born on September 26, 1925, near Glendale, Arizona, Marty Robbins became one of the most versatile stars in country music history, moving with remarkable ease between cowboy ballads, country-pop, rockabilly, Hawaiian music, gospel, romantic ballads, television, movies, and even NASCAR racing. His smooth baritone could sound intimate on a love song, dramatic on a Western …
Aug 04 2025
Born on August 4, 1922, in Frenchton, West Virginia, Charley Harper developed one of the most recognizable visual languages in 20th-century American illustration. Cardinals became triangles and circles. Ladybugs expanded into enormous arrangements of red, black, and white. Owls stared from carefully organized patterns of feathers and foliage. Forests, shorelines, deserts, mountains, insects, mammals, and …
Aug 02 2025
Born on August 2, 1914, in La Tuque, Quebec, Félix Leclerc became one of the defining voices of French-language music in Canada and one of the artists who transformed the modern tradition of the singer-songwriter. With little more than a guitar, a deep expressive voice, and lyrics shaped by poetry, nature, humor, solitude, love, work, …
