More on: Visual Art

As a curator, I have a nearly mystical sense of the power of objects to open a portal between history and today, lives long ended and lives currently unfolding.

It’s interesting to me how quick we are to trust a museum’s account of history simply because it’s presented in a way that feels organized and professional. We gloss over whatever seems unappealing or doesn’t fit into the story we are trying to tell. In many ways, I think fiction can tell a more honest story than what we consider to be the truth.

It was always Vermeer’s instinct to return us to our truest selves, but to do so he had to learn how to make his figures vulnerable.

She seeks out materials rife with metaphor—Jewish ritual objects, found objects, repurposed garments—then transforms them with paint, cement, fire, and text, with the goal of sparking dialogue, increasing empathy, and engaging in difficult conversations.

My art practice also ebbs and flows like the liturgical seasons.

I thought about how, as a society, we haven’t understood this lesson of humility and service: we don’t know what it means to wash one another’s feet, just like we haven’t comprehended the meaning of “love thy neighbor.”

Once you explore the revelations of science—from the multiverse to black holes, dark matter, and quantum physics—there is a realization that in our era humankind is experiencing the birth of a profound new consciousness. All births are painful and contain elements of danger and risk, but births are the necessary threshold for evolving potential.

What is it about the familiar visual vocabulary of Renaissance—the haloes, the gold leaf, the careful arrangements of figures, that makes it so ripe for borrowing?

The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire.

Simcoe instinctively recognized tar paper’s potential as the medium he was seeking. It had a texture receptive to crayon and brush; its lusterless, inky finish conveyed an aura of mystery; and you could simply tack it onto a gallery wall for display.