today at smithsonian: aboriginal art

Australian Aboriginal art, one of the world’s most vibrant continuing traditions, is now achieving global recognition. Contemporary society has taken a great interest in the art of the Yolngu people, once-obscure hunter-gatherers from Arnhem Land. Yolngu’s varied artistic expressions, include body painting, sand sculptures, painted skulls, hollow log coffins, and art forms that anticipated Western art’s expressionism or performance art. Aboriginal art can only be understood when it is integrated with sequences of action and as performance genres.

today at smithsonian: alexander calder

A new exhibit at National Portrait Gallery: Best known for his abstract mobiles and stabiles, Alexander Calder (1898-1976) was also a prolific portraitist. Throughout his career Calder portrayed entertainment, sports, and art-world figures, including Josephine Baker, Jimmy Durante, Babe Ruth, and Charles Lindbergh, as well as colleagu...es Marion Greenwood, Fernand Léger, and Saul Steinberg, to name a few.

Typically, Calder worked in the unorthodox medium of wire, a flexible linear material, which he shaped into three-dimensional portraits of considerable character and nuance. Suspended from the wall or ceiling, the portraits are free to move; because of this mobility, they seem—like their subjects—to have a life of their own.