Author Archives: Sheila Blake

Verrocchio at the National Gallery of Art

Verrocchio opened his workshop in Florence in the late 1560’s. He was a great master and the teacher of Leonardo da Vinci.  The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC exhibit, with fifty works from the Bargello and other museums, is the first-ever monographic exhibit of Verrocchio in the US.  So if you didn’t get to see the celebration of Verrocchio at the Bargello in Florence earlier this year, you can see his work here in Washington. Sheila and Tom introduce us to his greatness.

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BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON

Tom and Sheila, with guest Peter Blake, discuss the Moon landing of July 1969, artists’ reactions, and the current exhibit at the National Gallery on one hundred years of photographs of the moon, leading up to the Moon landing by NASA. If you listen closely, you may hear a weirdly appropriated recording of Werner Von Braun.

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Manifesto: Art x Agency

An exhibit exploring the theme of artists’ manifestos, entitled, Manifesto:  Art x Agency, is now at the Hirshhorn museum, in Washington DC.

Our show today will take up these passionate art arguments: the series of Manifestos written over the last century: manifestos for each emergent Avante-Garde: the the Futurists, the Dadaists, the Surrealists, the Objectivists, the Abstract Expressionists…and on into the present era:  and what a giddy fountain of words poured forth from these activists!

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Refugees

Sheila, Tom, and Peter visit the current exhibit at the Phillips Collection, near Dupont Circle, in Washington DC.  The exhibit is called, “The Warmth of Other Suns”, and presents seventy-five artists who respond to and represent the experience of migrants and refugees around the world and in history.

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