Unlike historical images of the Western frontier as a landscape, #FrankABlazquez's photographs focus on humans. In “The Gallegos Twins from Belen, NM,” the central visual tension emerges from the minute differences between the sisters' appearances. One sister dons baby hair edges that are popular within Black and Latine hair culture. Her counterpart sports hoop earrings, thin eyebrows, and winged eyeliner done in the Chola style.

These visual signifiers are important modes of expressing feminine Chicana identity within the United States. In this portrait, the Gallegos sisters claim their individuality amid diverse cultural narratives that inform the new “Wild West.” This work is part of the #ArtBridges lending collection. We’d love to hear from you if you are interested in exhibiting it at your museum. ...

Artist #GlennLigon with paintings from his “Door” series - a series that isolates certain phrases by important black writers (#JamesBaldwin and #ZoraNealeHurston for example) and reproduces them repeatedly with stenciled black oil stick letters on white, wooden, doors.

“Untitled (I Am Somebody)” references the title of a poem from the 1950s written by civil rights activist Reverend William Holmes Borders. It was popularized by Reverend Jesse Jackson in later speeches. Ligon intentionally smeared the repeated phrase in his work to make it harder to read. He does this so that viewers will contemplate the meaning of the words.“I’m interested in what happens when a text is difficult to read or frustrates legibility,” Ligon says, “what that says about our ability to think about each other, know each other, process each other.” View the work and learn more about it on our website, and contact us if you would like to borrow this work from the #ArtBridges collection.

You can also experience this piece in person—it’s currently on loan to our friends at the @YellowstoneArtMuseum. ...

“For me, the hand is very important in terms of how I see painting and the innovations I have made already…I think right now being smart is so easy. To make art without labor—aren’t you missing a part of it? I would be missing a part of the joy and the surprise that you can set up for yourself with your own hands.” - #McArthurBinion speaking to Inside/Within, a web archive dedicated to exploring the creative spaces of Chicago’s emerging and established artists.

Binion’s layered abstraction “DNA: Sepia : V” features a fine, grid-like pattern on the work’s surface that both proclaims the investment of the artist’s hand and prompts inspection of the revelations beneath. It is part of the #ArtBridges lending collection. View the work on our website - link in profile - and drop us a line if you want to borrow it. ...

The dramatic lighting might be the first thing that grabs your attention in this #KarlBodmer aquatint, but if you look closely at the forefront, you will notice a large herd of Bisons.

In “Herd of Bisons on the upper Missouri,” Bodmer illustrates the evening of July 14, 1833, when he traveled from Fort Union on a small keelboat and witnessed a herd of buffalo coming to the river’s edge to drink. The artist deftly combines scientific detail with dramatic composition, recording the grazing habits of the animals against the backdrop of a radiant sunset.

Visit our website to learn more about this work and the other Bodmer prints in the #ArtBridges lending collection. ...

This 1938 #MarsdenHartley painting is one of his most allusive works. Let’s take a moment to study the details and to learn more:
‣ The work’s title “Give Us This Day” is a reference to “The Lord’s prayer,” the most common prayer recited by Christians.
‣ The fish 🐟 are a nod to the common use of fish as symbols of Christ.
‣ The seagulls are a riff on traditional depictions of the Holy Spirit as a dove.

Painted near the end of his life when he returned to his native state of Maine, the work's many references, its methodical symmetry (a departure from most of the artist’s work), and its Regionalist focus seem to indicate a return to home that may be as spiritual as it was literal.

Perhaps Hartley was following his own words from 1921, when he wrote the book “Adventures in the Arts” and mused that, “Art, like life, has had to begin all over again, for the very end of the world had been made visible at last.”

Learn more about this painting and others in the #ArtBridges collection on our website—or see it in person at the @MFAStPete through June.

Image: Marsden Hartley, “Give Us This Day,” 1938, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in (76.2 x 101.6 cm), framed: 38 1/2 x 48 1/2 x 4 in. Art Bridges. Photography by Edward C. Robison III. ...