Valentine’s Day makes me think of Rembrandt’s Storm. Love isn’t calm seas, it’s clinging to each other mid-wave. Light reveals chaos; darkness can be still. We endure by staying in the boat together.
#ValentinesDay #Art #ArtHistory
A 2016 study found that hiking offers quick boosts to mood and stress levels, improves attention, and even supports immune health. Over time, regular hikes were linked to lower depression and better overall well-being.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32063815/
#TakeAHikeDay may sound like a throwaway slogan, but studies show hiking lowers stress and boosts mood. Just like Friedrich’s Wanderer, you get to stand above the fog for a moment and feel like the protagonist. A small hike, a little science, a bit of peace.
On August 24th, 79 CE, Vesuvius buried Pompeii.
Among its survivors: the Alexander Mosaic (c.100 BC), a vivid Roman copy of Hellenistic art. Alexander charges Darius, frozen in stone. It's an ancient drama preserved by ash, still confronting us across millennia.
#art #arthistory
Edmonia Lewis’s Forever Free (1867) breaks chains and conventions.
A self-liberated Black couple rises as triumphant equals. Sculpted in white marble, this radical vision defied racist norms and declared: freedom belongs to us, not gifted by them.
#ArtHistory #art
It's Chess Day! Meet Sofonisba Anguissola: a Renaissance pioneer who painted her sisters mid-match in "The Chess Game" (1555)
More than play, it's legacy: a quiet checkmate against the idea that strategy belongs to men. Art, like chess, is a game of foresight.
#art #chess #arthistory
Today is Rembrandt's birthday (b. 1606); a master of shadow and spectacle.
The Night Watch (1642) wasn’t set at night at all, as restorations reveal that it's a daylight march, frozen in chiaroscuro. Commissioned by the guards themselves, breaking tradition by having natural motion and story. #art
Bastille Day recalls not just revolt, but resistance to rule that crushes the self. Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People shows her barefoot and bold: a symbol that rights are not granted by power, but seized from those who would hoard them.
Young Girl Reading (c.1770) - Jean-Honoré Fragonard
On #MalalaDay, we reflect on how reading itself can be revolutionary. To seek knowledge is to resist a world that thrives on silence. This Rococo portrait whispers a truth: the act of learning is defiance.
#GirlsEducation #ArtHistory #Art
Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge (1857)
First published in 1857, just before Japan’s ports opened to the West, Hiroshige’s print captures Edo in flux.
As summer rains swept the city, so too did change. This fleeting moment of shelter and motion embodies elegant impermanence.
#ArtHistory #Art
On Canada Day, I look to Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore.
Her nindinawemaganidog series transforms past performances into portraits of grief, resistance, and matriarchy. Echoes of care for stolen land and stolen lives.
We are all witnesses. You can witness too rebeccabelmore.com
#CanadaDay
Five brightly coloured, life-sized cutout portraits of queer figures stand on a rainbow base. The expressive figures, dressed in bold yellows, pinks, blues, and blacks, strike relaxed or confident poses. This is Here, Together, Always by Caylen Monroe, celebrating queer identity and style.
🎨 Paint with Pride at #PrideToronto is a living canvas of queer joy.
One standout: Here, Together, Always by Caylen Monroe, bold portraits that demand space for 2SLGBTQ+ life, loud and bright. We are the art. Always have been.
www.pridetoronto.com/art-zone
caylenmonroe.com
#StART #QueerArt
Outsider art - works by self-taught creators once sidelined - is finally getting its due.
Bill Traylor, born into slavery, drew Woman with Umbrella and Man on Crutch in his 80s. No training, just vision. Raw, rhythmic, and real. The canon is cracking open.
#OutsiderArt #Art #ArtHistory
🧵The quilts of #GeesBend bold and deeply rooted in African American tradition, turning scraps into stories. Made by generations of Black women in rural Alabama, these fiber masterpieces now hang in museums.
This is craft as resistance, memory, and art. #Art
www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-qu...
A vivid, colorful painting by Norval Morrisseau titled Shaman and Disciples (1979). Three stylized human figures face left, outlined in thick black lines and filled with bold blocks of red, blue, green, orange, and purple. The central figure, a white-haired shaman in blue and white robes, is flanked by two disciples. Radiating lines and shared shapes connect them, symbolizing spiritual and ancestral links. Birds, plant motifs, and divided circles surround the figures, set against a golden yellow background. The piece uses the Woodland School’s distinct x-ray style to depict inner energy and interconnectedness.
On this Summer Solstice, we celebrate Indigenous wisdom. Morrisseau’s Shaman and Disciples (1979) shows a guide linking spiritual realms: lines radiate between figures and divided circles symbolize cosmic balance. A vivid statement on ancestral knowledge passed down. #NIPD #IndigenousArt
Norman Rockwell’s "The Problem We All Live With" showed Ruby’s courage and the cost of defiance. It’s now 2025, and those shouting “freedom” now march with flags and rifles, silencing dissent. The message remains: obey, or be made to.
#art #NoKing
Thornton Dial’s Top of the Line (Steel).
A tornado of grief and rage. Rope-bodies claw through chaos, red slashes like open wounds. Patriotism flickers, faint and frayed. It’s not just memory, it’s now. We haven't learned. It never ended. #art #RodneyKing #LA
🎨 Montreal's MURAL Festival (June 5–15) turns Saint-Laurent Blvd into a living art gallery. The city’s walls become stories painted in color, history, and heart. Wish I was nearby to go see. This 2022 video is great!
muralfestival.com
www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...
#MURAL2025 #MontrealArt
Isaac Julien’s I Dream a World at SF’s de Young cuts deep. Queer memory, Black futurism, and sensual defiance, all in motion. It’s art that shows and claims identity. During Pride, it reminds us: we don’t just belong, we shape the world.
www.famsf.org/exhibitions/...
#Pride2025 #IsaacJulien
Skawennati’s She Gathers the Rain (2018) reimagines Indigenous futures through a cyberpunk lens. Now on view in Welcome to the Dreamhouse at the National Gallery of Canada, it blends Haudenosaunee storytelling with virtual worlds.
textilesandmateriality.com/2025/05/22/t...
#art
This piece, Across the Pond by Jon Byrer, channels Van Gogh with a modern pulse: stark trees, a glowing sky, and village warmth. But it’s Byrer’s own swirling, sketchy enamel style that makes it sing. It's a storm of light and shadow that I adore.
#Art #Painting
On Memorial Day, we remember the fallen and how we hold them.
Maya Lin carved their names into stone, not to freeze them in time, but to let us see ourselves in their reflection. A black granite scar. A silent chorus. 58,000 stories, still speaking. #MemorialArt #Vietnam #Art
Refik Anadol’s Unsupervised is an AI dreamstate built from 200 years of MoMA’s collection.
Not replacing artists, but rethinking authorship. Is this art to you? Because to me, it’s undeniable presence. It’s here with immensity, whether you admit it or not.
refikanadol.com/works/unsupe...
#art #AI
Stepping into Before Yesterday We Could Fly at The Met during #TeensTakeTheMet must feel like time-traveling through Black history and futures. A powerful blend of art and storytelling that speaks to our roots and dreams. #Afrofuturism #YouthVoices
www.metmuseum.org/perspectives...
Eleven panels speak: Eden, Eve and her son, Satan with stars, Cain and Abel, Cain’s exile, Jacob’s dream, Christ’s baptism, the crucifixion, Judas and silver, the Last Supper, the Holy Family. Powers stitched scripture into memory; each square a sermon in cloth.
A handmade quilt featuring 11 rectangular panels, each with appliquéd figures in muted tones of brown, blue, and tan on a cream background. The panels depict biblical scenes with stylized human and animal figures, suns, moons, and symbolic shapes. Notable images include Adam and Eve, Jonah and the whale, angels, and celestial motifs. The quilt stitches together religious and folkloric narratives using African American visual traditions.
Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt (1886) is survival code stitched by a freed Black woman in Georgia. A cosmic patchwork of faith, folklore, and memory. Quilting here becomes archive, protest, and myth, all wrapped in cotton and truth.
www.si.edu/object/1885-...
#art #arthistory
Saville’s The Anatomy of Painting shows the body in a confrontation.
It’s Bacon’s screaming pope if she were real, raw, and refused to shut up. Her work reminds us that reality is distortion. We’re not marble busts on pedestals. We’re sinew and pulse and breath. And we deserve to be seen that way.
The Parakeet — one of several polychrome woodblock copies made in ca. 1900 from works by Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800), a Japanese painter of the mid-Edo period notable for his striking modern aesthetic. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/polychrome-woodblocks-of-ito-jakuchu-birds
#OnThisDay in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was opened to the public in Paris. Not to be outdone, London decided to get a new tower of their own and held a competition to design it, with some interesting results! publicdomainreview.org/collection/c... #OTD
