Jaws dropped in February, 2018 when the official portraits of former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama were unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The Obamas’ selection of the artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald represented a number of firsts: the painters were the first African- Americans commissioned to create official presidential portraits, and the first to take a non-traditional aesthetic approach to the task.
Read MoreIn her 1963 manifesto of emergent feminism, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan identifies the middle class housewife as the “chief customer” of American business, and theorized that it was women’s unmet need for intellectual stimulation, not avarice or keeping-up-with-the- Joneses, that was driving their eager consumerism. She dismisses domestic labor as a non-occupation, a routine of make-work that diverts women from meaningful engagement with the world. Friedan’s point of view assumes that the care of home and family exists in a kind of bizarro world of non-professional work, in which women’s intellect was all but wasted.
Read MoreMuseum visitors all seem to be dedicated photographers these days, navigating galleries as they capture vivid design details and immersive art installations with their smartphones, then sharing their images instantly. To view art and to experience a museum through a smartphone camera’s viewfinder is so commonplace now as to be unremarkable.
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