Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art has this exhibit going on currently of American paintings from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. We are members of the museum so I went and took a look at it. They had tons and tons of art. The following were my favorite works.

This work by Charles Willson Peale “The Artist in His Museum” is a perfect opener for an exhibit.

I loved the exuberance of Maxfield Parrish’s “Princess Parizade Bringing Home the Singing Tree”

I loved Young Woman by Isabel Bishop. It was painted in 1937 but it looks very contemporary to me.

Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos by John Vanderlyn. Such a dreamy scene.

Some still life’s bore me, others like this Still Life with Fruit by Severin Roesen I find very exciting.

And this by Philip Leslie Hale, “The Crimson Rambler” is very beautiful. I also find it intriguing because according to the accompanying card, Hale made a protest against woman’s suffrage.

The scene looks like right out of a film noir movie. “The Soda Fountain” by William J. Glackens.

So we are hearing about how humanity is threatened by AI and that we are going to be inundated by images and videos generated by AI that have no base in reality. You know that has happened before. This is “Penn’s Treaty with the Indians” by Benjamin West showing William Penn and a Native American Chief, Tamanend in a peaceful transaction where the Indians get goods and the white people get land. Cool! right? Wrong! The land was taken from the Native Americans and this painting of an event that never happened was commissioned by Penn’s son to bolster his family’s image. This led to people thinking it is historically accurate. I find it fascinating how art is harnessed to propaganda.

And I loved this, “De Soto Raising the Cross on the Banks of the Mississippi” by Peter Frederick Rothermel. The European explorers were a brave lot I think. Not just in exploring the North American continent but in things like planting a cross and declaring some sovereign in Europe now owns a couple gazillion acres just because.

And how about this hidden Thomas Moran work, “Two Women in the Woods” If you are like me, it was like, what two women? Oh there, and such a beautiful scene, with the two women hidden in the shadows. Not quite as dramatic as some of Moran’s other works but still a great painting.

As part of the exhibition, many of the works were displayed on a “gallery wall” similar to exhibits in the 19th century. It was interesting. To help study it they had a couple of couches and some binoculars available to patrons to inspect the works. They also invited patrons to try and find insights or ideas on why the works were arranged the way they were. It was kind of fun to sit there and just think about the works on the wall and how adjacent works were alike or different.

So after this exhibit I checked out the gardens but that is a subject for another post.

I am linking with My Corner of the World.