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SAAM's Re:Frame explores American art’s many meanings and connections with experts across the Smithsonian.
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ELEANOR HARVEY: They thought the world was ending.
MELISSA: Investigate diverse perspectives.
CARMEN RAMOS: And she sort of imagined this as like a living landscape.
MELISSA: And reveal that art is for everyone. Amazing! Join me as I crisscross the Smithsonian to “Re:Frame” American art.
Re:Frame brings together SAAM art historians and researchers from across the Smithsonian–think zoologists, geologists, musicologists, and astronomers–to explore art’s many meanings. Join host Melissa as she crisscrosses the Smithsonian making connections, exploring diverse perspectives, and proving that American art is for everyone.
Re:Frame was named a 2020 Webby Awards Honoree by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, celebrating excellence on the Internet. The series also was a finalist for the Museums and the Web 2020 GLAMi Awards and received an honorable mention at the 2020 DC Web Fest.
Buffalo ≠ Bison
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What do bovids, bridges, and the West have to do with American art?
SAAM's Re:Frame explores American art’s many meanings and connections with experts across the Smithsonian.
Have you ever thought about the connection between art and... well then, buckle up. Join me and your personal team of Smithsonian experts as we “Re:Frame” American art.
This sculpture, “Buffalo (model for Q Street Bridge),” was created in 1912 by artist Alexander Phimister Proctor. I wonder where the Q Street Bridge is? Oh, right here. The Q Street Bridge or, as it’s more properly known, the Dumbarton Bridge, connects the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC to Dupont Circle. It was completed in 1915. The statues on the bridge were sculpted by the same artist, A. Phimister Proctor. All these sculptures are making me want to see a real live buffalo. Tony Barthel is a curator at the National Zoo. So, does the National Zoo have buffalo?
TONY BARTHEL: No, the National Zoo has American bison, and a lot of people call them buffalo; that’s incorrect. They’re actually very different species. American bison and the buffalo are both in the same family of animals. They include cattle, bison, buffalo, antelope, but within that family, bison and buffalo really aren’t that closely related.
MELISSA: Then tell me, who are these lovely ladies?
TB: This is Wilma and Zora, two female bison. They’re now adults at about five years old. In the winter, they’re real furry and have a thick, thick coat. In the summer, they shed out a lot of that coat until it comes off in carpets of fur, and that’s what you see now.
MELISSA: They’re putting on their summer clothes now.
TB: Yeah, they’re taking off their sweaters.
MELISSA: How long has the zoo had bison?
TB: Back in the late 1800s, the first animals that were part of this entity that became the National Zoo were bison living on the Mall at the time.
MELISSA: On the National Mall?
TB: Yeah, on the National Mall. They were down there, a little herd of bison. William Temple Hornaday is really the reason we have bison here. He was a taxidermist for the Smithsonian at the time and went on an expedition out West to collect some bison for exhibition in the museum, and on that trip was shocked to discover how few there were. He had in his mind vast herds of bison, and what he found was very few, and so that got him thinking about how important it was to conserve this species, and he came back and started lobbying Congress to establish a National Zoo to help protect the animals and engage the public in their stories, and that ultimately did lead to the founding of the National Zoo in 1889.
MELISSA: That’s amazing! So bison were kind of the start of the zoo.
TB: They were, absolutely.
MELISSA: I wonder why Proctor chose to sculpt a buffalo, I mean bison, for the bridge? Why this particular animal? I bet Karen Lemmey, SAAM’s curator of sculpture, will have some insight. So Karen, tell me about Alexander Phimister Proctor.
KAREN LEMMEY: Proctor was a man of the West. When he was about 10, 11 years old, his family moved to Denver, so he spends the rest of his childhood growing up there, hunting big game, and just loving the West and all its nature. His big break comes after studying in New York. He gets hired or commissioned to sculpt 35 animals that are emblematic of what the country sees.
MELISSA: Like a bison?
KL: Like a bison. Okay. So these big North American mammals, many of which he grew up hunting, he’s now depicting in plaster materials for the World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
MELISSA: Why a bison?
KL: There are a lot of reasons why a bison. It’s a quintessential American icon at this point. Think of the Buffalo nickel. The animal itself was iconic as a symbol of the West, as a symbol of the fading of the myth of the West, the demise of the West, and Proctor sort of resurrects this animal in his work. They were a representation of the West, but they were also just seen as a national symbol.
MELISSA: Okay, so for 19th century artists like A.P. Proctor, the bison was more than an animal. It was a symbol of an idealized American West, and who knew that these captivating creatures were also integral to the founding of the National Zoo? Today, thanks to conservation efforts around the country and here at the Smithsonian, the bison are still alive and well in all their fuzzy majesty.
Bye, art nerds.
What do bovids, bridges, and the West have to do with American art?
A Whole Lotta Beer
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What do prohibition, ladies, and day drinking have to do with American art?
SAAM's Re:Frame explores American art’s many meanings and connections with experts across the Smithsonian.
What a hunk!
I don’t always drink beer...
More of a dark, biscuity flavor...
MELISSA: But what’s the connection between these frosty beverages and art? Let’s find out. Have you ever thought about the connection between art and... well then, buckle up. Join me and your personal team of Smithsonian experts as we “Re:Frame” American art.
Artist Doris Lee painted “Harvest Time” in 1945. This outdoor picnic features a little bit of everything. Chickens, ducks, apples, gravy, and you guessed it, a whole lot of beer. I wonder what these folks what have been drinking back in 1945 and what American beer culture was like back then. Amazingly, wonderfully, the Smithsonian has an expert for that. Theresa McCulla is a beer historian at the National Museum of American History, where she studies beer and its impact on American culture. So, what was beer culture like in the United States in 1945?
THERESA MCCULLA: Well, to understand beer culture in the United States in 1945, you really have to first understand the history of prohibition. From 1920 to 1933, America banned the manufacture, transportation, and sale of intoxicating beverages. What this meant for the brewing industry was that when prohibition was repealed in 1933, it was primarily the very big breweries that were best equipped to look to the future to expand and modernize and serve American consumers.
MELISSA: Who was doing the drinking in 1945?
TM: Really from the mid-19th century into the 20th century, beer came to be associated with the working man, who was drinking outside of the home at a saloon or a tavern, and that was a problematic factor of the identity of beer that helped lead to prohibition. But even in the mid-20th century, it was still men who had become beer drinkers.
MELISSA: If women weren’t doing the drinking, how did they feel about it? How did they feel about men drinking beer?
TM: Well, interestingly, women were present in beer culture even if they weren’t the primary consumers, and you see this primarily in beer advertising at the time. Women were present as shoppers and also very clearly as the figures in the household who served beer to men.
MELISSA: I see.
TM: Following the repeal of prohibition, brewers felt like they really needed to reintroduce themselves, rehabilitate their image in the American mind.
MELISSA: I wonder if “Harvest Time” was part of the push in the 1940s to normalize beer. Beer, scenes of rural life... I think I need to chat with SAAM’s Chief Curator, Virginia Mecklenburg. So, tell me about “Harvest Time.” What’s happening in this painting?
VIRGINA MECKLENBURG: “Harvest Time” is an idyllic painting of noon day on a Kansas farm, so the workers have come in from the field; they’re all sitting around a table. It’s a very congenial, very friendly group of people who all work together.
MELISSA: It looks like they’re having a good time.
VM: They do! I mean it’s harvest time, so it becomes a celebration.
MELISSA: I can’t help but notice there’s a whole lot of beer going on here.
VM: This particular painting was commissioned by an advertising agency that was working for the beer industry. Let me show you something here. This is a picture of the painting in the context of the ad, and it makes a perfect ad because each one of the farm workers is sitting around holding a stein of beer, you know, with a frothy head on top. So, I mean, we’re talking good beer that seems to be coming out of a keg that’s over on the right side of the painting. I mean, so you can pour yourself a pitcher, and make sure everybody has plenty.
MELISSA: Why do you think Doris Lee was commissioned to make this work?
VM: A couple of reasons. One of them is she was a very prominent artist, and this kind of image worked well with her career. She was originally from Illinois. She grew up in Aledo, Illinois, which is, you know, a smallish town, and what she knew was the American Midwest. The great plain states, the farmlands near where she had grown up – it’s what she was known for, but I think a big part of it may well have been that she was a woman. Because the advertising companies and the beer makers also realized that women are the ones that go to the store, go to the market, and bring in whatever the family is going to eat. They targeted their advertising campaign to women. You get them convinced that beer is a good thing, healthy, nourishing. This is a good thing, and it’s not immoral. Then they would bring the beer home. I mean, it’s irresponsible if you don’t drink beer. You need to go buy beer if you’re going to be a true, responsible, American neighbor. They were very smart at this, and the painting conveys the feeling even more than the words possibly could.
MELISSA: Yeah, it’s an ordinary part of life.
VM: Exactly. What could be more normal than having a glass of beer at lunch?
MELISSA: You know, I couldn’t agree more. Alright, I think I get it. After prohibition, American beer manufacturers needed a new image, one that would change opinions, particularly women’s opinions. But how to make beer appear wholesome and all-American? Enter, Doris Lee. Her painting situates beer squarely at the center of the abundant post-war American table, presenting the brew as a natural part of a life well lived. Cheers to that.
Bye, art nerds.
What do prohibition, ladies, and day drinking have to do with American art?
Graphite!
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What do pencils, shiny rocks, and dead animals have to do with American art?
SAAM's Re:Frame explores American art’s many meanings and connections with experts across the Smithsonian.
Have you ever thought about the connection between art and... well then, buckle up. Join me and your personal team of Smithsonian experts as we “Re:Frame” American art.
It says on the wall label that Teresita Fernández created “Nocturnal (Horizon Line)” in 2010. It also says that the piece is made of graphite. Wait, aren’t pencils made of graphite? I happen to have a pencil right here, because in an art museum, you’re only allowed to have pencils in the gallery. But this doesn’t look anything like that. I wonder how the artist could make graphite look like this. It’s almost as if it was painted on. I think I need to find a graphite expert. Liz Cottrell is a geologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and an expert on all things rocks, minerals, and metals. What is graphite?
LIZ COTTRELL: Well, I have to tell you that graphite is often dead animals, so we – humans, animals, plants – are composed of carbon. We’re carbon-dominated lifeforms, and when we die, our bodies and tissues decompose, and under heat and pressure in the earth, organic carbon turns into graphite. Diamonds and graphite are both simply carbon but formed under different conditions in the earth.
MELISSA: So why is graphite soft when diamonds are so hard?
LC: That’s a great question. Graphite is so soft because of the arrangement of the carbon atoms. The carbon atoms are arranged in planes, in sheets, and those sheets simply slough off when you rub it, so graphite is really commonly employed in pencils. I have a pencil right here, and if I were to scratch a piece of paper, planes of carbon would come off and leave a mark on the paper. This is how it looks right when it comes out of the ground, and you can see that if you were an artist, you might be naturally drawn to graphite. Graphite is famous for having this metallic luster. It’s very shiny and silvery and extremely beautiful straight out of the ground. One of the most famous graphite localities, historically, is in England, where they discovered this useful property where it leaves a trace, and that’s where pencils were first developed.
MELISSA: Woah, wait a minute – graphite, landscape, I think I have an idea, and I’m hoping Carmen Ramos, SAAM’s curator of Latino art, can confirm my theory. I’m trying to wrap my head around this piece, “Nocturnal,” by Teresita Fernández, and I think I have an idea. Is this piece a landscape?
CARMEN RAMOS: Yeah, this is absolutely a landscape on so many levels. If you look at the work, the top part is very smooth. It almost looks like it’s painted on the surface. Then there’s a layer that represents the water that is polished, and it has this very kind of shiny appearance. Then on the bottom, which represents the land, it sort of looks like graphite in the state that you find it in the earth. Teresita Fernández is not interested in depicting a specific place but is really interested in triggering our personal association, the visitor’s personal association, with the place of their own choosing. When you look at this work, it has a kind of generic feel, right?
MELISSA: It’s almost like it’s a different place for every person who looks at it.
CR: Absolutely.
MELISSA: So how did the artist create “Nocturnal”?
CR: For this project, she really had to learn about the material qualities of graphite, so she spoke to many different people, scientists, chemists to learn about the properties of graphite, how to use it in different ways. She was really intrigued with this idea of creating a picture whose material is like completely integrated with the image that she’s creating. An image of the land made from the land.
MELISSA: Okay, I’m happy to admit there is way more to “Nocturnal (Horizon Line)” than I originally thought. Every time we use a pencil to write or draw, we’re using graphite, a substance which forms in the earth from organic carbon. Graphite has been a popular art material for centuries, but Teresita Fernández is using it in a totally unique way. Instead of drawing a landscape with a graphite pencil, she's constructed a landscape out of graphite itself. “Nocturnal (Horizon Line)” is a sculpture of the land made from the land. Pretty darn cool.
Bye, art nerds.
What do pencils, shiny rocks, and dead animals have to do with American art?
Can Mike Really Sing?
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What do musicians, aliases, and the nation’s capital have to do with American art?
SAAM's Re:Frame explores American art’s many meanings and connections with experts across the Smithsonian.
Have you ever thought about the connection between art and… well then, buckle up. Join me and your personal team of Smithsonian experts as we “Re:Frame” American art.
Though they’re not currently on display, SAAM has a large collection of records from an artist named Mingering Mike, which were all made in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These albums are all the same size and shape as ordinary LP covers, but they look like they were hand painted. This one, in particular, is so intriguing. It’s titled “The Mingering Mike Show Live from the Howard Theater.” I know the Howard Theatre is right here in Washington D.C., but I don’t know much about its history. Dwan Reece, the Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, may be able to shed some light. What can you tell me about the Howard Theatre?
DWAN REECE: The Howard Theatre is a theater in the Shaw district of Washington D.C. and was founded in 1910. First, what’s important to know is that it was a black theater for African-American audiences, so it has really a historic importance in the theater world and in the history of African-American entertainment.
MELISSA: What kind of music is it famous for?
DR: In the 1910s, in that early period, it did vaudeville. They brought speakers like Booker T. Washington, music, comedy, theater, and drama. As time progressed, as we moved into jazz and the big band period, we had Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald. As you move forward into history, and you get into the ‘50s and ‘60s, it started with blues artists like B.B. King, moved into rock and roll, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and then into rhythm and blues. In the great ‘60s, you have Motown artists. You have Gladys Knight and the Pips, you have Wilson Pickett, you have Otis Redding, so it really, really reflected what was going on in popular culture at the time and supported the music of the time.
MELISSA: Why is the theater such an important landmark here in D.C.?
DR: Washington, D.C. was such a foundation for African-American achievement and for artists and entertainers, it was really a way to legitimize their artistry and move them forward in the popular arena.
MELISSA: But I wonder who Mingering Mike is and if he ever really played at the Howard? I bet Leslie Umberger, SAAM’s Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art, will know more. Who is Mingering Mike?
LESLIE UMBERGER: Mingering Mike is a Washington, D.C. artist. He was born in 1950, and I should start by saying that Mingering Mike isn’t his real name. It kind of goes with his identity constructed around this whole idea of a soul superstar singer. For a lot of kids like Mike, music – soul music – watching people like Marvin Gaye hit the big time right here in his local area, this was the dream. He ended up making this body of work that’s all centered around this idea that he is this famous musician, a singer-songwriter.
MELISSA: So, he invented this persona, Mingering Mike?
LU: The musical career that he invented was entirely in his imagination, but the body of work he made was totally real. He’s creating these facsimiles of LP albums, little 45s, cassette tapes, kind of the whole coterie of things that would comprise a real musical career. He comes up with different production companies; he casts all of his friends and relatives in the roles of his backup singers and collaborators, so it’s a very elaborate kind of mingling of fantasy and reality.
MELISSA: So, did Mike ever actually play at the Howard?
LU: No, Mike’s brother worked at the Howard, so he got snuck in to see shows sometimes, but Mike doesn’t ever perform in public. He likes to hang back in the shadows and just fantasize about that real superstardom.
MELISSA: Mingering Mike’s richly-detailed album covers and record labels showcase a lost art form in our present age of streaming songs and digital downloads. While his work was inspired by popular music from the ‘60s and ‘70s, it ultimately reflects the unique vision of the fantasy soul superstar who created it. Though Mike never appeared on stage here at the historic Howard Theatre, his talent is celebrated just a mile down the road at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Bye, art nerds.
What do musicians, aliases, and the nation’s capital have to do with American art?
Auroras Are Weird
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What do arctic explorers, solar burps, and the Civil War have to do with American art?
SAAM's Re:Frame explores American art’s many meanings and connections with experts across the Smithsonian.
Today, let’s take a look at one of the paintings in the museum’s 19th century landscape collection. Completed in 1865, Frederic Church’s “Aurora Borealis” depicts an 1860 Arctic expedition led by Dr. Isaac Hayes. No, not that Isaac Hayes. According to the exhibition label, Dr. Isaac Isreal Hayes, the explorer, and Frederic Church, the artist, ran in the same circles in New York in the 1850s. The boat in the foreground is the S.S. United States, which was on a mission in search of the Northwest Passage. The title, “Aurora Borealis,” refers to the Northern Lights, the eerie colorful ribbons of light that blanket the top half of the painting.
Obviously, I’ve heard of the Aurora Borealis before, but I wonder what exactly the Northern Lights are and how they’re formed, so I’m heading down the road to Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum to talk with David DeVorkin, the Senior Curator for the History of Astronomy. We’re here in the Einstein Planetarium because I’m curious, David, what is the Aurora Borealis?
DAVID DEVORKIN: They are, in a way, a manifestation of what we now call space weather.
MELISSA: Space weather?
DD: Yeah, have you ever walked down the street and, you know, you look into a restaurant, and there’s this red sign that goes O-P-E-N? Blink, blink.
MELISSA: Sure.
DD: Okay, well what’s causing that glow is the same kind of process that’s causing the atmosphere to glow.
MELISSA: So, the aurora is like a neon sign?
DD: Yeah, yeah, but, it’s not neon, yeah, it’s oxygen, and when the sun burps, you might say, there’s a little solar flare or something, a little explosion, which happens to be 10 times the size of the earth, but on the sun scale it’s, you know, nothing. The atmosphere is reacting to very high energy particles coming from the sun, streaming from the sun, and sometimes the stream is stronger, sometimes it’s weaker, and what you get are these different shapes, shimmering and glowing.
MELISSA: Is that why when we see the aurora, we can sometimes see different colors?
DD: You get those different colors as a function of where did the collision take place, where’d the absorption take place, where’d the emission take place, and what element is involved.
MELISSA: Okay, so now I know what the Aurora Borealis is, but I wonder how much Frederic Church knew about it in the 1860s. If anyone can help me it’s Eleanor Harvey. She’s a SAAM curator extraordinaire who specializes in 19th century landscape painting, and she’s even written about Church in her most recent book.
ELEANOR HARVEY: What’s on your mind?
MELISSA: Well, I’ve heard that Church was friends with Isaac Hayes and other explorers, so I’m wondering was Church a science nerd?
EH: He was a science nerd. For Church, learning about science was part of being an artist, but in 1859 there was an amazing aurora that Church saw from his studio in New York City.
MELISSA: Wow, that far south?
EH: That far south – actually, this was an aurora that was visible as far south as Cuba. It was in all of the papers and the scientific journals.
MELISSA: What did regular, non-scientist people think was going on?
EH: They thought the world was ending. Quite seriously. Although, auroras are weird. The auroras were one of those sort of things that were deeply unsettling. They could be an omen, and particularly during the Civil War years when the Aurora Borealis was painted, so it really did depend on your point of view.
MELISSA: So, what do you think the auroras are? Do they represent something, then?
EH: I think they’re working on a couple of different levels in this painting, and that’s typical of artists. It is first and foremost a picture of an Arctic rescue expedition.
MELISSA: Right, right.
EH: But it’s also playing into that trauma about the Civil War. It’s not 100% clear that the Union is going to win. We don’t really know how this is going to turn out. That’s one of the things that makes American art fun – it makes all art fun but American art in particular – is you can tie it back to the people, the place, the current events. So when you see something interesting going on in a painting, the first thing you should be asking is, wait a second, what was going on at this time period that makes this make sense?
MELISSA: Okay, so this is all coming together. Thanks to overactive solar burps, the Aurora Borealis would’ve been visible not only in the Arctic north where the Hayes Expedition took place, but so far south that Frederic Church would’ve been able to see them from his New York studio, but Church isn’t just documenting nature in this work, he’s using the aurora as a symbol of the chaos and uncertainty gripping America during the Civil War. The Northern Lights are both a fascinating scientific phenomenon and an expression of the fear and anxiety of Church’s time.
Bye, art nerds.
What do arctic explorers, solar burps, and the Civil War have to do with American art?
You’ve Got Style
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What do rhinestones, moms, and personal style have to do with American art?
SAAM's Re:Frame explores American art’s many meanings and connections with experts across the Smithsonian.
Have you ever thought about the connection between art and… well then, buckle up. Join me and your personal team of Smithsonian experts as we “Re:Frame” American art.
Artist Mickalene Thomas created “Portrait of Mnonja” in 2010. Now, this piece made me stop in my tracks. The clothes, the jewelry, the shoes – it literally sparkles. “Portrait of Mnonja” has me thinking about style, the way we present ourselves, and what it says about us. Diana Baird N’Diaye, a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folk Life and Cultural Heritage, studies just that. So, Diana, I understand that you study personal adornment and style. What’s your area of expertise?
DIANA N’DIAVE: Well actually for the past 10 years, I’ve had a wonderful project called “The Will to Adorn,” and it’s looking at African-American dress and the aesthetics of identity. One of the major things that I think is distinctive about African-American dress is its intentionality. There are many, many aesthetics in the African-American community; there’s not just one, but “the will to adorn,” as Zora Neale Hurston said, was one of the most important parts of African-American expression.
MELISSA: What does the way that we dress, the way that we present ourselves, what does it say about us?
DN: Oh gosh, it says so much. It may be the community that we identify with, it may be the music we identify with, it may be where we come from, and our status or the status that we aspire to. I always say that even if you wear nothing but T-shirts and jeans and you think that “I’m really not dressing for any reason,” you’re always dressing with some idea of your identity and how you project to others in mind.
MELISSA: Even if you don’t think you have style…
DN: You have a style. Yeah, yeah.
MELISSA: I wonder what kind of stylistic choices Mickalene Thomas made in her “Portrait of Mnonja.” I bet Joanna Marsh, Head of Interpretation at SAAM, can help. So, who is Mickalene Thomas? What’s her work all about?
JOANNA MARSH: Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary artist. She’s really best known for making these elaborate paintings of African-American women. As a queer woman of color herself, she’s really interested in presenting positive images of black women that explore issues of identity, of sexuality, beauty, and power. She’s also really interested in ideas of style and kind of self-fashioning. This is really connected to her own personal biography. So, her mom was a model in New York in the early 1970s.
MELISSA: What is Mickalene Thomas’ process for creating an artwork?
JM: It always begins with photography, and it’s interesting that one of the first subjects she ever photographed was her mother. So now, in her work, she invites friends or other models to come to her studio, to sort of dress up or get styled, and then pose in a setting that she’s created in her studio.
MELISSA: I see, so Mickalene and Mnonja, presumably, got together and chose an outfit, chose a style, chose even this background, the pose, everything.
JM: Exactly, and this photo session becomes a kind of performance, not unlike the way we all perform when we get dressed in the morning and walk out in public and are presenting ourselves to the world in a certain way, right?
MELISSA: Why does Mickalene Thomas use materials like rhinestones?
JM: On a very basic level, they’re a kind of decorative element, but they’re also a symbol for the way we adorn ourselves, right? They work like makeup, or jewelry, or hair extensions, or even glasses.
MELISSA: Yeah.
JM: They’re almost an accessory to the painting.
MELISSA: No matter how you dress, your style says something about you. In “Portrait of Mnonja,” Mickalene Thomas presents a striking portrait of an African-American woman dressed to the nines. Her sparkling ensemble and unmistakable sense of style give her an air of power and personal agency, and her portrait is impossible to miss.
Bye, art nerds.
What do rhinestones, moms, and personal style have to do with American art?
Find Out More
Read more about each episode of Re:Frame at Smithsonian.com.
Credit
Re:Frame is made possible by The Lunder Foundation.