I. Once Upon a Time in the East
When I was a kid, like most boys (and many girls) my age, I liked cowboys. But I was never as big a fan as my father. His cowboy was the rodeo rider. My dad was in his mid teens during the Depression, when he ran away from… »
Where I once had two choices when buying something like ink-jet photo paper—glossy or matte?—now I’m faced with so many fine differences within categories it’s nearly impossible to decide, especially when the products are almost indistinguishable one from the other…. »
Is that really Michael Jackson staring at a painting by Mary Cassatt? Yes, believe it or not. This odd image was part of a recent marketing campaign mounted by the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia. It was designed to… »
I. Travels of an Outlander
On a recent road trip through Sicily I had occasion to drive along the amazing super highways that crisscross the country seemingly irrespective of obstacles. These… »
I. Still Crazy After All These Years
In a recent New York Times article Michael Kimmelman bemoaned the situation in art museum collections these days, where it seems “almost nobody …. »
In 1971 Steven Spielberg made a film for TV that was so much better than the execs predicted, it wound up being recognized in Europe where it was released theatrically…. »
I. Moonlight Becomes You
“In this short treatise I propose great things for inspection and contemplation by every explorer of Nature. Great, I say, because of the excellence of the things… »
This past Tuesday the New York Times reported that “Italy’s biggest prize in the war against looting antiquities went on view recently at the Villa Giulia in Rome.” The prize… »
I ended Part 1 of this article with a question: “Why don’t we (Americans) make historically sensitive design decisions in the urban landscape?” I then asked, “Have any ideas? Please… »
Numbers are particularly difficult for most of us to remember (how about all those passwords?). Yet, have you noticed when you write down a phone number or an address, you… »
I’ve encountered some pretty amazing billboard/construction fences in Italy in the past couple of years, particularly in Venice and Milan. When I saw this one in Rome recently, it so… »
One benefit art museums think they will derive from their newly-fashioned web sites in the so-called era of Web 2.0 is to aggregate “communities” of “taggers”—users who log on to… »