Bob Duggan
Contributing Writer
Bob Duggan has Master’s Degrees in English Literature and Education and is not afraid to use them. Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, he has always been fascinated by art and brings an informed amateur’s eye to the conversation.
There may be no American artist so linked with specific places and the history of those places as Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth spent his summers in Cushing, Maine, but the other […]
The idea of owning one of Andy Warhol’s landmark Pop Art paintings from the Campbell’s Soup Cans series of the early 1960s seems a dream, unless you have some spare […]
When painter Andrew Wyeth passed away in 2009, the reclusive painter took many of the secrets behind his art to the grave. When I heard that the Brandywine River Museum […]
“It’s the economy, stupid!” James Carville crowed throughout the 1992 presidential election, and has pretty much continued crowing since. What do you do when you know it’s the economy that […]
When I struggle to wrap my head around a problem, I often turn to art to help me literally picture the big issue and, I hope, guide me to an […]
Every election comes with questions, ranging from the serious (How will we fix the economy?) to the ludicrous (Was he born in this country?). But this election season, artist Barbara […]
If there’s any artist who ever lived and knew color in his soul, it was Vincent Van Gogh. Almost mad with color, Van Gogh owned a box of different-colored yarn […]
Now that Hurricane Isaac is off to wreck havoc on New Orleans, the 2012 Republican National Convention can get down to business. The list of people scheduled to parade across […]
While flipping through Modern Furniture: 150 Years of Design, I couldn’t help but stop and smile at seeing the same monobloc chair sitting on my backyard deck sitting there on […]
Fresh off his potential “Colbert Bump,” conceptual artist Jeff Koons took a potential PR black eye this weekend in a New York Times Magazine piece titled “I Was Jeff Koons’s […]
“What does it look like to you?” asked the Boston Fox News affiliate on its Facebook page in regards to a mural (shown above) by the Brazilian street artists Os […]
Have you ever walked past a monument, stopped to see what or whom it was for, and either still had no idea what or whom it was memorializing or had […]
Upon hearing of the passing last week of journalist and art critic Robert Hughes (shown above), I felt like had lost a beloved teacher. For people who read Hughes’ books […]
Love him or hate him, Jeff Koons clings to the center of the contemporary art world like few artists today. And love him or hate him, Stephen Colbert and his show […]
If the Olympics are all about bringing the world together in one place to play, then William Shakespeare could be credited with holding the first London Olympics all the way […]
All apologies to Michael Jackson, but in the art world, Andy Warhol will always be the King of Pop. The bewigged eccentric didn’t start Pop Art, but his works largely […]
If “LA MoCA” sounds to you like something you’d order from Starbucks, then you probably don’t know anything about the recent kerfuffle surrounding what is being called the murder of […]
With less than a week before the opening of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, anticipation and some dread both fill the air. Ever since the Munich games in […]
Performance art and film art have always been the afterthoughts of museums—the new kids on the block with no room of their own in the big culture houses. Institutions designed […]
You know you’ve made the big time when you rate a Google Doodle, as Gustav Klimt did this past weekend in recognition of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Anyone […]
“Danger: Art Inside,” read the labels on the crated sculptures as I toured last month the almost-ready-for-public-viewing, but now restored, reinstalled, and reinterpreted Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The signs […]
“Follow the Money,” the informant known only as “Deep Throat” told Woodward and Bernstein during their investigation into the Watergate Scandal that they titled All the President’s Men. Follow the […]
Americans for the past decade seem more caught up than ever in the idea of what it is to be an American, especially in an election year and perhaps never […]
Art theft is a terrible problem worldwide. Aside from robbing the public of enjoying the great works of the past, art theft often leads to damage to the art and […]
The idea of artists running museums sounds to many like allowing the inmates to run the asylum. A profile in the current issue of The New Yorker of Tate Gallery […]
You’d think that a giant retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC would, at least momentarily, make George Bellows the king of the art ring. But once […]
“We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion year old carbon. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” sang Joni Mitchell in her song “Woodstock.” Every […]
In this Age of the Austerians, anything considered non-essential is being denied the financial means to survive. Despite mountains of research findings, arts programs in schools fall under the austerity […]
Last month I asked if Whistler’s Mother is the greatest Mother’s Day painting ever, so it only seems fair to pose a similar question on Father’s Day. Although Mother’s Day […]
Say “nationalism,” and most minds immediately think “war.” Word association games aside, nationalism comes in all shapes and sizes, but the most dangerous form historically has led to armed conflict […]