Word: historians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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America's sense of isolation and distance, and the effort needed to overcome it, is the theme of two delightful shows that opened last week at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. One, "Paintings by New England Provincial Artists, 1775-1800," organized by Art Historian Nina Fletcher Little, illustrates the limner tradition with 76 paintings by 34 artists, backed up with domestic objects of the sort that appears in those stiff, poignant effigies-chairs, painted floorcloths, a child's coral-garnished silver whistle. The other show, "Copley, Stuart, West," deals with the first three American-born painters...
...greeted him in the crowd. Thomas ("Tommy the Cork") Corcoran, an F.D.R. wonder boy, was reported by the newspapers to be in New York as the escort of the convention's chairwoman, Lindy Boggs. And somebody looked around the room at a party given by Arthur Schlesinger, Roosevelt historian, Stevenson partisan and Kennedy aide, and remarked, "Ah, we have here all the best minds...
...exquisitely subtle geometrical painting by Agnes Martin, and some sculptures by Joel Shapiro and H.C. Estermann. But the art has been jammed into a Procrustean set of categories - "cultural irony," "narrative art," "objecthood" and so on. It all comes out looking pedagogical and unreal. To read Art Historian Sam Hunter laboring to convince himself and others that Andy Warhol (represented here by one 14-year-old painting) is really a narrative artist, although "nothing actually happens in the sense of conventional storytelling," is to witness one of the finer absurdities of recent writing...
...mistake, when a small English and French peace-keeping fleet aroused the suspicion of a large Turkish fleet at Navarino. The Turks, who had never learned gunnery, opened fire. They were cut to pieces, and the Sultan's domination came to an end. Author Howarth, an English naval historian (Trafalgar: The Nelson Touch), writes of it all wonderingly, although not flippantly. His book is good mean fun for readers who are tired of the posturings of warriors and statesmen - then...
...airborne caravan headed up the Potomac Valley, Ford again asked for a change in plans, to hover over Mount Vernon, George Washington's home. His aide, Jack Marsh, a Virginian and amateur historian, urged the President to swoop across the river and study Fort Washington, a stone redoubt built between 1814 and 1824 to protect the capital. As the chopper went on, Ford viewed the steeple of Christ Church where Washington had worshiped, still tall and proud along the parkway. Nearing the White House, Ford turned to his companions. "Did you get the same feeling as I got this...