Posted May 01, 2024in Art News
Andrea Saltini’s controversial painting of Christ’s corpse being sexually violated was vandalized on the eve of Good Friday by a masked intruder in a now deconsecrated church outside Modena. The artist was attacked and hospitalized when he intervened. The exhibition of the painting sparked a petition for its closure signed
Read More →
Posted April 03, 2024in Art News
Chris Vance’s annual show at Moberg Gallery cements his stature as Des Moines’ most popular painter. Some 32 of the paintings were sold before the exhibition even began. Vance consciously comments each year on what he finds most interesting about the contemporary world outside his studio. This year it’s AI
Read More →
Posted March 06, 2024in Art News
Cecily Brown, whose one-person show at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) in 2016 was a major coup for the museum, is flying high after her “Death and the Maid” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York Times art critic Roberta Smith wrote a review titled “I Was
Read More →
Posted December 06, 2023in Art News
Moberg Gallery’s 20th anniversary show is up through Jan. 6. The gallery is a grand expression of Des Moines’ elevated role in the arts scene. When TJ and Jackie Moberg opened two decades ago, the gallery represented five guys from greater Des Moines. The new show’s artists come from Barcelona,
Read More →
Posted November 01, 2023in Art News
Des Moines Art Center’s new show “Transform Any Room” is a call to everyone’s inner artist. A mish mash of crafts, weavings, assemblages and mixed media, “TAR” is designed to show its audience that decorating, collecting and shopping can be artistic self-revelations. Glittering beads, vibrant Azerbaijani carpets and cologne bottle
Read More →
Posted October 04, 2023in Art News
Des Moines Art Center Print Gallery’s exhibition “Double Take” attempts to make a photographer’s involvement as much a part of the medium as his subject. Curator Laura Burkhalter and guest curator Ben Easter (a superb photographer himself) selected pairs of images — “one of which is a staged or posed
Read More →
Posted September 06, 2023in Art News
One person’s new year is another’s equinox. The calendar new year comes with January, the fiscal new year in July, the farmer’s in March or April. In the art world, the new year begins in September, like the football season and the school year. Some, including Picasso, say that’s because
Read More →
Posted August 02, 2023in Art News
The great Kickapoo artist Pahponee (Snow Woman) taught this writer about the religious qualities of clay. After seeing a sacred white buffalo and a white buffalo calf, she started dreaming about white buffalo pottery. She knew nothing about ceramics but was so moved by her dreams and visions that she
Read More →
Posted July 05, 2023in Art News
Robert Moore is an enthralling artist, a great story, and a humbling writer. His hand-touched archival prints recount his personal struggles within the context of the historic ordeals of black manchildren desperately trying to grow up in America. His story is how art can become therapy for drug addiction and
Read More →
Posted May 31, 2023in Art News
The Des Moines Art Center’s Print Gallery is an underappreciated gem. Almost every show provides great lessons in history, culture and “there is nothing new under the sun” humility. “Rembrandt and His World” doubles down on all that. Born too late to be a true Renaissance man, the melancholy Dutchman
Read More →
