Welcome, Members of Parliament
Welcome, Members of Parliament. This blog is designed to act as a student forum for anyone enrolled in my classes at a Dallas-area proprietary college, former students, and/or others who find our conversations interesting. The Parliament will be moderated to ensure civility and relevance. The directions we take, the paths we follow, and the concerns we address are all up to you.
One way to start off a new year and a new quarter is to provide a gift. In this case, it comes from the Smithsonian Institutions, a tax-supported gem of monumental (in more ways than one) cultural significance to this country. More specifically, the gift comes from the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery: 40,000 digitized art works from Asia and the Americas.
For some time now the Smithsonian has been working on making its collections available outside of its buildings in Washington, D.C.--which many of us visit infrequently if at all. But this particular digital collection is of particular interest to art students, and will be available at the Freer/Sackler Website.
The example above is by James McNeill Whistler, and is one of the objects we talk about in Art History II; it's part of a room decorated by Whistler in 1876-77, and called Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room (oil paint and gold leaf on canvas, leather, and wood; the room is a gift of Charles Lang Freer).
I hope everyone had a great holiday and that you're all ready to dig in, work hard, and learn all manner of interesting stuff over the Winter quarter.
