Update On The Humanities And Economic Sciences In America: "Warfare Is Inevitably Tragic, Inefficient” -- U.S. Secretary Of Defense Robert Gates

Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Glass (Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.)

October 3, 2008 through January 11, 2009

*

Better Angels of Our Nature: Art During the Civil War and Reconstruction

May 15 through September 5, 2011 (Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.)

"Better Angels of Our Nature will explore the impact of the Civil War and its aftermath on the visual arts in America using some of the finest artworks made during this period by leading figures such as Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Hiram Powers, and John Rogers. Although the exhibition will include photographs by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan, the focus will be on how artists addressed the metaphorical war, dealing allegorically or elliptically with the issues of internal warfare, the future of the union, abolition and race relations, and the post-war search for a new American identity. These artists' solutions resulted in some of the most compelling landscapes and genre paintings of the mid-nineteenth century, often containing layers of meaning beyond their war-related allusions."

Text and Header photo credits:

Mandara, 2006, designed and made by Lino Tagliapietra, blown glass with multiple incalmi, crisscrossed canes, Pilchuck ’96 technique; cut. Courtesy of Lino Tagliapietra, Inc. Photo by Russell Johnson.

Eastman Johnson, The Girl I Left Behind Me, 1870-1875, oil on canvas, 42 x 34 7/8 in. (106.7 x 88.7 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible in part by Mrs. Alexander Hamilton Rice in memory of her husband and by Ralph Cross Johnson.