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The conservation of Joan Mitchell’s “Blue Tree”
This year marks the centennial of American artist Joan Mitchell’s (1925–1992) birth. To celebrate, the Joan Mitchell Foundation is supporting numerous exhibitions, lectures, and events in her honor. The Worcester […]
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Delicate and detailed: preparing tapestries “from the vault”
The Worcester Art Museum has been collecting tapestries for over one hundred years, but due to their fragile nature, sensitivity to light, vulnerability to shifts in temperature and humidity, and large size, they have rarely been on view in recent decades.
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Japanese printmakers’ unique connection with the Worcester Art Museum
Shin hanga (新版画, “new prints”) emerged in early 20th-century Japan as a revival of traditional woodblock printmaking. This movement blended time-honored techniques with Western influences drawn from impressionism and art nouveau.
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A quilt with a story
Faith Ringgold’s Picasso’s Studio (1991) is a cornerstone of the Worcester Art Museum’s collection. Acquired directly from the artist via her gallery in 1998, the work is one of the […]
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Nyeema Morgan on exploring identity through text in art
The 2022 exhibition Us Them We | Race Ethnicity Identity featured 45 contemporary artists exploring diverse perspectives and experiences around identity. Organized around four formal artistic devices used since the […]
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Homer, Sargent, and Europe: an overview of the Worcester Art Museum’s watercolors
The Worcester Art Museum’s collection of American watercolors is among its most treasured, yet we rarely get to appreciate these paintings in person. Due to their fragility and sensitivity to […]
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John Singleton Copley’s copycat portraits
John Singleton Copley’s Portrait of Lucretia Chandler, Mrs. John Murray, (1763), originally hung in the main room of one of the most fashionable homes in Rutland, Massachusetts. The subject of […]
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From Andy Warhol to Cindy Sherman: How did 1960s photography revolutionize art?
The 1960s are often described as a tumultuous decade. Documentaries rerun television footage emphasizing polarized political voices for and against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, the triumph of […]
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Preserving arms and armor: a Maximilian makeover
Five hundred years ago a six-foot-tall man galloped headlong into battle, confident and fierce, his Maximilian field armor glinting in the morning sun. “The knight is the tank of the […]
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Painting London: Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge” at the Worcester Art Museum
Claude Monet’s serial approach to landscape painting is well known. Less so are the subjects he explored in London from 1899 to 1901, even though they resulted in over 100 canvases. One of these subjects, London’s Waterloo Bridge, spurred a series of its own.
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New life for La Farge’s “Peacock Window”
Behind the scenes in the Conservation Lab, Amanda Chau was embroiled in a mystery. The Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation at WAM was tasked with caring for pieces […]
