Fine Arts News

Photographer JeongMee Yoon felt her daughter's life was being overtaken by pink. She illustrated that in her 2006 portrait Seo Woo and Her Pink Things.

JeongMee Yoon/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Jenkins Johnson Gallery



Susan Stamberg/NPR
Men's suits weren't always so sober. This embroidered, pink silk coat was worn by a Frenchman in the court of Louis XVI in the 18th century.

With sleet, snow and freezing temperatures extending through March, the National Cherry Blossom Festival — which recently kicked off in Washington, D.C. — is decidedly less pink this year. In a few weeks the Tidal Basin will be ringed by rosy, pink blossoms, but until then, we traveled north to Boston, where a show at the Museum of Fine Arts called "Think Pink" explores the history and social impact of the color.

Pink has always been with us, though it was not always as gender-entrenched as it is today. Back in the 1700s, men and women wore pink. Curator Michelle Finamore says a painting in the exhibit gives early evidence.

"It's a late 18th-century portrait of two children, who are both wearing dresses," she explains. "One is a pink brocade satin dress, one is a yellow dress, and they have these pinafores over them, and you can't tell if they're boys or girls."



Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
A copy of the Ralph Lauren suit made for Robert Redford in the 1974 film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Finamore can tell by their accessories — they're wearing shoes and hats only boys wore then. But to most of us today, the kids look like girls.

Nearby at the exhibit is a pale pinkish-purple silk coat worn by a Frenchman in Louis XVI's court. Any woman would be tempted to swap her pink Nikes for this gorgeous long coat, embroidered with intricate flowers.

In A Journey Around My Room, published in 1794, French writer Xavier de Maistre puts pink into the male dream-space. He recommends that men have pink and white bedrooms to brighten their moods.

Fast-forward to 1925. Characters in The Great Gatsby speculate about Gatsby's past: "An Oxford man! ... Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit." A version of that pink suit is in the Boston show — Ralph Lauren designed it for Robert Redford in the 1974 movie.

Before Gatsby, a 1918 trade catalog for children's clothing recommended blue for girls. The reasoning at the time was that it's a "much more delicate and dainty tone," Finamore says. Pink was recommended for boys "because it's a stronger and more passionate color, and because it's actually derived from red."

To our 21st century ears, all this men in pink stuff may sound a bit blushy. "It's so deeply entrenched in us and our culture," says Finamore. "We think of pink as such a girlish color, but it's really a post-World War II phenomenon."

When the war ended and the men came home, Rosie the Riveter traded in her factory blues for June Cleaver's pink apron. In the postwar ideal, men reclaimed the workplace, and women stayed home with babies and shiny appliances. Femininity got wrapped in pink, and so did products — from shampoos to fancy fashion.



Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Big, pink flowers bloom on ivory silk in this 1956 dress by Christian Dior.

In 1947, after the shortages and rationing, and straight skirts of war, Christian Dior introduced the New Look. "It is this overtly feminine silhouette," Finamore explains. "You have soft shoulders, a bust line, a wasp waist and voluminous skirts."

The Boston "Think Pink" show has a strapless Dior gown from 1956 — the ivory silk is blooming with large, pink flowers.

Half a century later, photographer JeongMee Yoon was feeling overwhelmed by pink. She posed her young daughter in the middle of all the pink things that she owned and called the photograph Seo Woo and Her Pink Things (which you can see at the top of this page.)

"You barely see the little girl," says Finamore. "She's way back in the far right corner. And in front of her is this vast array of pink Hello Kitties, of pink dresses, of pink dolls, pink notebooks, pink anything you can imagine."

Thanks to marketing, Disney princesses and profits, the color pink has spread like measles. But at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where the "Think Pink" show is on through May 26, Finamore says these days of metrosexuals and shifting gender roles are loosening the color divide. Males are thinking pink again ... but will it ever be the new black?


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A portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin is on display at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas.

Former President George W. Bush worked with many world leaders while in office. Now, he's unveiling 24 portraits he painted of some of them. As Lauren Sullivan of KERA reports, the exhibit will be at his new presidential library.


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The Corcoran Gallery of Art and its college in Washington, D.C., will be taken over by a university and another gallery. The Corcoran is cherished by many but has had years of financial trouble.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:
It's spring, tourism season here in the nation's capital and we're seeing plenty of visitors stream in. The tour books might steer them to the White House, the Capitol, the Smithsonian museums. Unless you're an art enthusiast, you might not even know about the Corcoran Gallery of Art just a couple blocks from the White House. It's actually one of the oldest art museums in the country and soon it will cease to exist, sort of.
It's being taken over by a nearby university and another gallery. NPR's Elizabeth Blair looks at how a cherished institution lost control of its future.

ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: The Corcoran has always had a lot going for it, except for a clear identity. Is it a place to see historic artworks or adventurous new work, a national treasure or a hub for local artists, a school, a museum? Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott says all of the above.

PHILIP KENNICOTT: It's a very quirky institution and it's very much tied to the local arts community.

BLAIR: Quirky and local. Sounds good, says Peggy Loar, the Corcoran's interim director.

PEGGY LOAR: But that hasn't paid the bills.

BLAIR: And the bills are steep, and fundraising, she says, has not kept pace, partly because they're in
Washington, D.C. When the Corcoran goes looking for money, it's up against major federally funded institutions like The Smithsonian and The National Gallery of Art. The Corcoran charges a $10 admission fee. Its neighbors on The Mall are free.

LOAR: Living in the shadow, albeit the beautiful shadow, of all these amazing museums in Washington have meant that it's difficult, because when the public visits during the summer, when people come from all over the country, they're going to go to the free museums first. And so that has always been a problem for the Corcoran, and from the earliest days.

BLAIR: And the Corcoran was early. It was established in 1869, just before the Metropolitan in New York and well before The National Gallery in D.C. Art lover William Wilson Corcoran was born in Washington. He was a banker and a philanthropist who wanted to share his growing collection with the public. Today, one of the Corcoran's most valuable assets is its building, a marble Beaux Arts-style structure with a stunning skylit atrium with 40-foot-high ceilings.

DAVID LEVY: It has one of the greatest museum buildings in the world.

BLAIR: David Levy was the Corcoran's director for 14 years, beginning in the 1990s. He says he's worried about the fate of the building because it needs major renovations.

LEVY: The minute you start touching that building, which is to get the infrastructure of that building straightened out, there will be major ADA problems, Americans with Disabilities Act problems, because that building was built at a time when nobody thought about those things.

BLAIR: The cost of the repairs has been estimated at over $100 million. But that is not the only problem the Corcoran has faced.

LOAR: The model of the Corcoran was no longer sustainable. One of the issues is the fact that it is both a museum and a college.

BLAIR: Now, you would think just the opposite, that museum curators would want the next generation of artists under the same roof. But many art schools around the U.S. have split off from the museums to which they were originally linked. David Levy says that's because as the two organizations grow, there's a turf war that goes on.

LEVY: One of the things about a museum is, if it's doing its job, it will be acquiring more and more and more art. It will require more and more and more space. Meantime, it's got this school with these scruffy kids wandering around downstairs or somewhere in part of the building and the trustees are much more enamored with the black tie openings and all the glitz around the art than the art school, for the most part, and so the art school tends to lose out in the real estate war.

BLAIR: So after years of trying to tackle mounting debt and keep the museum and school together, the Corcoran finally made an agreement that will break them up. Nearby George Washington University will take over the art school. GW will own the building and pay for its renovations. The collection will become the property of The National Gallery of Art. Their curators will decide what to present in the Corcoran building.
The NGA says no art will be sold, admission will be free. The Corcoran name will remain, but Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott says it won't be the same.

KENNICOTT: I think things will be a little more professional, a little more institutional, probably a little more polished and maybe a lot less exciting in the ways that the Corcoran used to manage to whip up.

BLAIR: Others are relieved that this new deal means the building will remain a museum and that The National Gallery's curators are stepping in.

LOU STOVALL: Hooray. Hooray. I was so excited.

BLAIR: Washington-based artist Lou Stovall has had shows at the Corcoran.

STOVALL: Here's an opportunity with The National Gallery hopefully taking the major paintings of the Corcoran, paintings that America has really not seen very much of.

BLAIR: Meantime, students at the Corcoran College of Art and Design are waiting to hear more details on what this means for them.

LAURA THOMAS: It's an interesting time right now to be at the Corcoran.

BLAIR: Laura Thomas came to D.C. from California to study at the Corcoran. In that stunning atrium she and other students are using colored pencils to create a huge new installation mounted on the wall.

THOMAS: I like drawing on the walls. I feel like if it's the last thing I can do at the Corcoran, I will draw on the walls.

BLAIR: The Corcoran, The National Gallery of Art and George Washington University were hoping to make the details of the takeover public this week, but it turns out breaking up an institution as old and diverse as the Corcoran is taking more time than they expected. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.


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In the restored San Gennaro catacombs, mosaics like this are lit with high-tech lighting paid for by grants from big corporations.

Courtesy of the San Gennaro Catacombs

For decades, the streets of Naples have been menaced by the Camorra mafia — stroll the streets of Sanità, an inner-city neighborhood, and you'll overhear pop songs like O Panar e Drog, featuring a singer boasting about buying and using "a breadbasket full" of drugs off Sanità's streets.

But underneath those cobblestones lies a gem of early Christian art: The Catacombs of San Gennaro. Now, a local priest is trying to bring the mafia and the art together.

When Don Antonio Loffredo arrived here about a decade ago, he found three levels of frescoes, chapels and cubicles beneath the neighborhood's trash-strewn streets. It's a burial ground that dates to the 2nd century, the largest of its kind in southern Italy. But back then, tourists only wound up in this part of town by mistake.

Up to 40,000 visitors a year come through the catacombs, up from 5,000 before the restoration.
Courtesy of the San Gennaro Catacombs

Loffredo saw an opportunity. "We took kids with one foot in the streets and one foot in the church, so to speak," he says. Some of them even came from mafia families. "I can say this because your audience is far away," he adds. "It could easily be the case that the sons of a boss are here, and one of them has nothing to do with the mafia".

Loffredo says crime families often feel trapped by a life they were born into, and are eager to find alternatives for their kids. So he put them to work fixing up the seriously neglected catacombs. Mud and dirt covered much of the floor; an old lighting system left much of the artwork in shadows; and a store room had been stuffed with waste and old equipment from a nearby hospital. All of it had to go.

"When we started they were 16-year-olds. Now they're in their 20s, and they're paid because they are entrepreneurs. It's not hard to offer alternatives to crime if you're creative and available," he says. And after fixing up the Catacombs, they went to work in management, the ticket office, and as guides.

In the restored Catacombs, mosaics of jaw-dropping beauty glisten under high-tech lighting, paid for through donations and grants from such corporations as IBM and Vodafone, as well as local foundations. Tombs that once housed the remains of Christian saints and martyrs are carved right into hardened volcanic ash, and look like the inside of a surrealist beehive.

The effect is breathtaking, and ticket sales have increased to the point that the Catacombs help employ roughly 40 people, mostly young. That's 40 jobs in one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the poorest regions of Italy, where youth unemployment is well over 50%.

Like many, tour guide Vincenzo Porzio initially fled Naples in search of work. "I was working in London for one year," he says. "And when this opportunity was open, I rushed here to Naples, just because if you have to use your personal energy, I think it's better you use it for your hometown than for foreign town."

The transformation surrounding the catacombs is remarkable, says Vincenzo Galgano, a former chief prosecutor of Naples. Especially considering the neighborhood's rough reputation. "It was heroin! Heroin has destroyed the poor. Like syphilis in the 1500s. Like the plague. I think Don Antonio has come up with a cure for the social illnesses that afflict the Sanità neighborhood," he says.

The prosecutor was so impressed by the turnaround, he told his staff to nix the gold watch for his retirement a few years ago, and put the money instead towards restoring a San Gennaro fresco. Today, the catacombs have their own restoration studio.

Before the the full-scale makeover, roughly 5,000 visitors came per year. Now it's up to 40,000. Tour guide Porzio says that's had a huge impact on the neighborhood. "Okay, they pay the ticket for the Catacombs, but then they go and get a coffee," he says. "They go and get a pizza. And yesterday I went into a small shop that sells ham and cheese and they said 'Oh Enzo, Can we invent something with the tourists?' So you see how the mentality is changing. They are going out from the ghetto, with the mind. Because they are having a new guest. So just having a new guest is changing the district ... and even the way to do business."

Or, as priest Don Loffredo says about the mafia: don't fight it, cure it, by offering something beautiful in its place.


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John Sloan's Fourteenth Street at Sixth Avenue hung in the office of Sen. Royal Copeland until his death in 1938. After that, the painting was lost until 2003.

Courtesy of the U.S. GSA Fine Arts Program

At the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted a raft of New Deal programs aimed at giving jobs to millions of unemployed Americans; programs for construction workers and farmers — and programs for writers and artists.

"Paintings and sculpture were produced, murals were produced and literally thousands of prints," says Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

The GSA recovered Anne Fletcher's Iris Garden after its then-owner watched an episode of PBS's Antiques Roadshow and realized the painting was actually a WPA piece.

In all, hundreds of thousands of works were produced by as many as 10,000 artists. But in the decades since, many of those works have gone missing — lost or stolen, they're now scattered across the country.

A Transformative Time For American Artists

The biggest New Deal art program was the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. Artists could earn up to $42 a week, as long as they produced something.

Mecklenburg says it was a transformative time for the artists: "The idea for an artist to be able to work through a problem, to work through ideas, you know, that's golden. So it was a very special moment, and one that really has not ever been repeated."

To qualify for the work, however, you had to prove yourself as an artist and you had to show you were poor. Mecklenburg spoke to two brothers-in-law who were in the program.

She says, "One of them was saying, you know, you had to prove you were penniless — he said it hurt your dignity. And the other one was so cavalier and devil-may-care about it. He said: Oh, you know, if you thought the relief worker was coming to check out if you had an iron, or anything else that looked like it was of value, you just ran it over to the neighbor's apartment so it looked like you didn't have any possessions at all. It's about as human a story as we've ever come up with in the art world."

The GSA's Brian Miller holds Andrew Winter's Gulls at Monhegan (click here for a closer look). The painting will be sent to the U.S. Embassy in Croatia as part of the State Department's Art in Embassies program.

Brian Naylor/NPR

Every Recovered Painting Has A Story

Some of the art became famous — such as the murals painted in post offices and other public buildings across the country — but in the 80 years since the New Deal art programs began, many of the works have disappeared.

The General Services Administration, the federal agency in charge of government buildings, has a program to recover the lost art, which remains government property. GSA Inspector General Brian Miller says every recovered painting has a story.

Take, for instance, the seascape Gulls at Monhegan, painted by Maine artist Andrew Winter. "It hung in the [American] embassy in Costa Rica for years," Miller says. "And the ambassador loved it so much that when he left, his staff gave it to him as kind of an unofficial gift. And so it remained in his family and then his granddaughter eventually tried to sell it up in Portland, Maine."

John Sloan's New York City street scene, Fourteenth Street at Sixth Avenue, was also recovered by the GSA. It had hung in a U.S. senator's office and apparently went home with a staffer after that senator's death.

"It's a busy street and there's I guess an [elevated train] that goes over top, and a bustling street with people walking and cars parked and people in all sorts of dress," Miller says. "And this really captures life in New York City"

The painting — appraised at $750,000 — was recovered in 2003 and is now on loan to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Other pieces have been found at yard sales, antique malls and on eBay. Many are identifiable by tags that say "Federal Arts Program" or "Treasury Department Art Project."
Miller, who is stepping down from his post at the GSA at the end of the week, says the government wants to preserve these scenes of America.

"There are just hundreds of portraits of what American life was like in the '30s and '40s," he says, "and it really captures a piece of America and we want to put it up for America to see."
The GSA has recovered more than 200 works of art so far, and it's looking for leads on the rest.


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In 1910, Lithuanian artist Ben Zion Black painted the interior of Burlington's Chai Adam Synagogue. Much of the painting was destroyed when the building underwent renovations.

Courtesy of the Ohavi Zedek Synagogue

There was a time in Eastern Europe when the landscape was dotted with wooden synagogues, some dating to the 1600s. Inside, the walls and ceilings were covered with intricate painted designs. Almost all of these structures were destroyed during the Holocaust, and with them, a folk art. But in Burlington, Vt., a synagogue mural has been uncovered where it lay hidden for a quarter century.

Aaron Goldberg grew up in a section of Burlington known as Little Jerusalem. His family was among the Jewish immigrants who settled there in the late 1800s, mostly from Lithuania. Goldberg first saw the mural in the 1970s when he was in middle school and accompanied his mother to a carpet store.

"I have a distinct memory of going up to the second floor to look at the carpet rolls and the remnants with my mother and seeing a painting on the back wall," he says. "It was surreal."

The store, it turned out, had once been a synagogue. Shoppers could see rays of sunlight, a crown hovering above a tablet with the Ten Commandments and a throne supported by two lions of Judah — all part of a mural stretching 10 feet high and 18 feet wide. It had been painted in 1910 by an immigrant artist named Ben Zion Black.

Years later, Goldberg and another member of his synagogue learned that the carpet store had been sold and the new owner was going to convert the building into apartments.

"She allowed us about a month to see if we could figure out a plan to get the mural out," he says. "So we called museums, hospitals, colleges, commercial warehouse storage spaces all over the East Coast and we could not locate a space. So we asked her if she would consider walling up the mural."

The owner agreed and for 25 years tenants lived in an apartment not knowing what was behind the walls.

An Exuberant Work Of Art

Two years ago, the Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, where Goldberg serves as archivist, started renting the apartment. It tore down the wall that had been erected to protect the mural and hired art conservator Connie Silver to help restore it.
"This is a really exuberant work of art," she says.


Art conservator Connie Silver points to a section of the mural that's been cleaned of its grime.

Jon Kalish/For NPR

Silver is living in the apartment while she removes a century's worth of grime that accumulated on the mural. Chemical analysis revealed that the mural was covered with an oily varnish to preserve it.
Silver sprays the mural with a special adhesive that bonds the paint to the plaster wall, then dabs at it with scraps of Mylar to press the fragile paint back onto the wall. She says the colors of the mural have been dulled substantially.
"It's going from this kind of golden, unpleasant brown to pistachio green next to bright gold color," Silver says. "This is really a startling change and I was even a little confused because I've never seen these sorts of exuberant colors."
The mural is attached to the wall and part of the roof. At some point, a 3,000-pound hunk of the building will be cut out and moved to the Ohavi Zedek Synagogue less than a mile away.

A Document Of A Jewish Civilization

"I've never confronted, never seen a mural of this type that survives and can be saved," says Samuel Gruber, an architectural historian at Syracuse University. He says the Burlington mural is a valuable artifact because it's a form of folk art no longer being created.

"This is a document of a Jewish civilization, a Jewish culture, a Jewish tradition in art that was vibrant and widespread and accomplished, but today has almost entirely vanished," he says. "It was destroyed in the Holocaust. It's a survivor and for that reason I think we have a special obligation. We have to save it and move it. We have to give it a new life."

If the Ohavi Zedek Synagogue can raise $100,000 in the next couple of months, it hopes to move the mural by the end of the summer. It will be tricky, though: A huge forklift — the kind used to move boats — will transport the artwork. Cleaning and restoration work will be completed after the mural is installed in the synagogue's lobby.


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Johann Zoffany's 18th century painting portrays Dido Elizabeth Belle and her cousin Elizabeth Murray.

Wikimedia Commons

Director Amma Asante found the story behind her new movie, Belle, in a painting: artist Johann Zoffany's 18th century portrait of two beautiful, young English ladies, draped in silks and pearls. The twist? One is biracial.

Belle is based on the real-life story of that woman, Dido Elizabeth Belle, who was the daughter of a Royal Navy captain and the slave he met after capturing a Spanish ship.

As a young girl, Dido's father brought her to the grand country home of his uncle and aunt, who were already raising the daughter — white, of course — of another nephew. They agreed that girl was much in need of a companion like Dido. But instead of bringing Dido up as a servant, they chose to bring her up as a member of the family.

Dido's great-uncle was traditional, but with a progressive bent. As Britain's top judge, he eventually decided a key legal battle involving the slave trade, all while raising his mixed-race niece whom he adored.

Asante, who is herself black, tells NPR's Renee Montagne what makes the painting so remarkable:

"Around the time of the 18th century, we really were — people of color were — an accessory in a painting. We were there rather like a pet to express the status of the main person in the painting, who was always white. And for anybody who's lucky enough to see the painting, what you see is something very, very different. You see a biracial girl, a woman of color, who's painted slightly higher in the painting, depicted slightly higher than her white counterpart. She's staring directly out at the painter, you know, with a very direct, confident eye. ... So this painting flipped tradition and everything that the 18th century told us about portraiture."

Asante says the painting, and its backstory, offered a unique storytelling opportunity:

"These two girls were aristocrats. You know, they held very high positions in society; their family held a very high position in society. What I saw from the painting was this opportunity, if I got it right, to tell a story that would combine art history and politics."

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Play the video, a skateboarder rides through Christie's warehouse and galleries. But will the new approach attract the sort of collectors who spend millions on a piece of art?


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