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SINCERITY: Hold yourself accountable. Treat others with respect. Then, by default, you will stand out among your peers. — Maria C Dawson
We got given 3 solar powered garden lights for Christmas. They have been outside ever since. Still not powered up yet. Looking forward to when they do.
Hemerocallis 'Optimism', Red Violet Daylily, hem-ur -oh-KAL-iss, 23" E-M D Re Fr Perennial (Wild-G., 1998),Z3, 5.4" red violet self , V2.z07
Yes, the Tacoma Invaders have invaded Bonita's life! But Martha consoles her with good cheer, humor and optimism through the playing season. One can still hike and camp in August when football practice is over...albeit, in 95 degree weather in eastern Washington. Oh, what fun.
Lighting candles and full of hopeful optimism, hundreds of South Sudanese led by deputy Vice President Wani Igga, commemorated the International Day of Peace in the capital Juba, under the theme, ‘Peace is a Human Right’.
Allowing their candles to continue burning as a sign of a new beginning, students, members of the civil society, the diplomatic community and officials from the United Nations listened to speakers who all highlighted the need to build on a recently signed peace agreement.
South Sudan Vice President Wani Igga shouts: International Peace Day Oyee! South Sudan Oyee! Revitalized Peace agreement Oyee! Mr. Wani Igga later said, “Less than 10 days ago, we the people signed the revitalized peace agreement. This is a great joy…..”
Every year, the International Day of Peace is commemorated globally, and this year, the United Nations is encouraging people to “promote and defend human rights for all, in the name of lasting peace for all”.
Eugene Nindorera, United Nations Mission in South Sudan Human Rights chief said, “Peace will not be attained until there is trust between the parties and a renewed trust between the people of this young nation and their leaders.” adding that, “One step to achieving this will be clear evidence that the warring factions have the political will to stop fighting and to lay down their guns as they have undertaken to do. This can no longer be a hope or a dream for the people of South Sudan who have suffered for far too long, rather, all South Sudanese have the right to peace, a right live safely with dignity in their own homes, [and] a right to see their children reach their full potential.”
UN Photo: Isaac Billy
This comes from my new baby (100mm macro) and my first session with it last night. Luckily, my old 75-300mm Tamron had a nice little macro (1:2) so I've had some experience with macro before, but full life-size is really blowing my mind.
Anyway, I actually shot this late last night with no idea Ian was working on a similarly themed shot. Check his earth out here.
This is not photo shopped/layered in anyway. Those reflections come from a mirror sitting underneath the floating earth I created from water drops and food colouring.
The water just seemed to pool this way, no matter how much I tried to shape it and I feel like the almost "yin yang" shaped earth is sadly an ironic and over-optimistic view of the state of the world and environment today.
For a more realistic view, check out this shot.
via Recent Uploads tagged quotes ift.tt/1qubMPk Visit our site for inspiring quotes, tips and life lessons: thetopshape.com
We were lucky enough to be here at Wanggoolba Creek on Fraser Island right after a shower of rain and before the morning tourists. So we had the place to ourselves...perfect!
SUBJECT: #11 What's your new year resolution?
What's the point of being negative if you know the world's going to end anyway?
Writing a difficult test takes a lot of focus. It’s always good to see that some students are very optimistic!
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Ein Optimist ist ein Mensch, der alles halb so schlimm oder doppelt so gut findet. (Heinz Rühmann)
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"365: the 2015 edition","365:2015","Day 134/365","Day 134","14-May-15"
A tomato plant getting its start on life on our kitchen window sill. We'll probably plant it in about two weeks. This was taken about 5 p.m. this evening.
This fellow studied our feeders and their customers from a nearby tree, and decided it would be a great place to acquire breakfast if he moved right onto the scene. He sat patiently for a whole hour but not a single small diner appeared!
The Tree -- 1992,
Herbert Gentry,
Interlocking faces, masks, and bird-like creatures populate this fiery red background. Images like these recur throughout Herbert Gentry's work. They suggest a powerful connection between nature and the spiritual realm.
Stationed in Paris during World War II, Gentry saw the French city as a gateway for his creative expression. He was closely aligned with CoBrA, an artist group that prioritized spontaneity over rigid forms of abstraction. Gentry's expressive use of color, active brushwork, and distortion of forms marked a fresh approach to abstract painting.
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With Passion and Purpose
Gifts from the Collection of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson
June 7 - October 5, 2025
Locations East Building, Mezzanine — Gallery 214
See standout works by Black artists from the past century, newly gifted to the Nation.
For over four decades, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson have championed the work of Black artists. They have supported exhibitions and scholarship as they built a remarkable collection that spans 100 years of Black creativity in America.
This exhibition celebrates the recent and promised gifts of 175 works from the Thompsons to the National Gallery—the largest group of objects by Black artists to enter our collection at one time. Explore more than 60 paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints organized in sections around themes of music and abstraction, figuration and portraiture, civil rights and social politics, as well as landscape and transcultural connections and influences.
Works range from a captivating portrait by Beauford Delaney and lyrical abstractions by Mildred Thompson to a towering allegorical woodcut by Alison Saar and an intricate sculpture of found objects by vanessa german. Enjoy works by renowned artists—Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, and Kara Walker—and discover artists you may not yet know, such as Camille Billops, Vivian Browne, Moe Brooker, and Alonzo Davis.
www.nga.gov/exhibitions/passion-and-purpose
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"In April of this year, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC announced that it received a substantial gift of more than one hundred seventy artworks by Black American artists from art collectors Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson. “The breadth of artistic achievement across media and styles in this transformative gift enriches the story of American art that we can share with our visitors,” Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, stated in the press release. The National Gallery of Art collection includes one hundred sixty thousand artworks that span the history of Western art from the Middle Ages to the contemporary moment, but although the collection covers a huge period of time, its holdings are not as diverse as the people who live and work in the Western world. The Thompsons’ gift is the largest gift of Black art the museum has ever received, and because Western art is so heavily Eurocentric, the Thompsons’ gift is, indeed, “transformative”—and vital.
The exhibition With Passion and Purpose: Gifts from the Collection of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson, on view at the museum until October 5, features sixty paintings and sculptures from the collection. The donation spans one hundred years and features works by well-known artists, including Jacob Lawrence and Kara Walker, and more obscure artists like Moe Booker and Alonzo Davis. The collection is diverse in style, subject matter, and genre, featuring representational portraits to abstract paintings.
The four galleries that make up With Passion and Purpose are curated by Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic Art; Shelley Langdale, curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings; Claudia Watts, research assistant; and Emily Wehby, curatorial assistant, all of the National Gallery of Art. Vibrant abstract works greet the viewer upon arrival, setting up for a dynamic exhibition of varied artistic styles and subjects. While many artworks express narratives about Black America, not all of them take on such an arduous task; others celebrate beauty and joy. Artworks like Mento, 1968 by Mavis Pusey and Untitled, 1971 by Daniel LaRue Johnson exude the transformative nature of the post-civil rights moment they were created in. Other artworks like Sweeping Beauty, 1997 by Alison Saar and New York Rail, 1993 by Radcliffe Bailey illustrate Black life by expressing narratives that speak to harsh historical realities.
Sweeping Beauty, a woodcut on Okawara Natural Paper, depicts the figure of a pregnant nude woman positioned upside down, rendered in yellow pigment against a red and black background. The play on the classic children’s story Sleeping Beauty is evident, but Saar subverts the stereotypical female figure who is required to be chaste and dainty. The bold colors defy misogynist desires for women to be demure. For Black women, being modest was not always a choice, as from the time African women stepped onto American soil in the 1600s, they were relegated to chattel, and poked, prodded, and examined as such. Saar’s artwork of the nude figure might be also reckoning with the reality that Black women for so long were domestics made to clean and sweep. In these roles, Black women were not respected for their full humanity, and they were often forced to succumb to unwanted advances from their enslavers and bosses. Saar’s artwork is layered: her depiction of a fertility goddess highlights the notion that Black women birthed a workforce, and the figure’s hair sweeping the floor alludes to domestic servitude.
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With Passion and Purpose: Black Collectors Complicate Western Art Culture
on artessay
Shantay Robinson
Alison Saar
Sweeping Beauty,1997
3-color woodcut on Okawara Natural Paper
overall: 193.04 × 83.82 cm (76 × 33 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Promised Gift of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson
© Alison Saar. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA
In April of this year, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC announced that it received a substantial gift of more than one hundred seventy artworks by Black American artists from art collectors Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson. “The breadth of artistic achievement across media and styles in this transformative gift enriches the story of American art that we can share with our visitors,” Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, stated in the press release. The National Gallery of Art collection includes one hundred sixty thousand artworks that span the history of Western art from the Middle Ages to the contemporary moment, but although the collection covers a huge period of time, its holdings are not as diverse as the people who live and work in the Western world. The Thompsons’ gift is the largest gift of Black art the museum has ever received, and because Western art is so heavily Eurocentric, the Thompsons’ gift is, indeed, “transformative”—and vital.
The exhibition With Passion and Purpose: Gifts from the Collection of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson, on view at the museum until October 5, features sixty paintings and sculptures from the collection. The donation spans one hundred years and features works by well-known artists, including Jacob Lawrence and Kara Walker, and more obscure artists like Moe Booker and Alonzo Davis. The collection is diverse in style, subject matter, and genre, featuring representational portraits to abstract paintings.
The four galleries that make up With Passion and Purpose are curated by Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic Art; Shelley Langdale, curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings; Claudia Watts, research assistant; and Emily Wehby, curatorial assistant, all of the National Gallery of Art. Vibrant abstract works greet the viewer upon arrival, setting up for a dynamic exhibition of varied artistic styles and subjects. While many artworks express narratives about Black America, not all of them take on such an arduous task; others celebrate beauty and joy. Artworks like Mento, 1968 by Mavis Pusey and Untitled, 1971 by Daniel LaRue Johnson exude the transformative nature of the post-civil rights moment they were created in. Other artworks like Sweeping Beauty, 1997 by Alison Saar and New York Rail, 1993 by Radcliffe Bailey illustrate Black life by expressing narratives that speak to harsh historical realities.
Sweeping Beauty, a woodcut on Okawara Natural Paper, depicts the figure of a pregnant nude woman positioned upside down, rendered in yellow pigment against a red and black background. The play on the classic children’s story Sleeping Beauty is evident, but Saar subverts the stereotypical female figure who is required to be chaste and dainty. The bold colors defy misogynist desires for women to be demure. For Black women, being modest was not always a choice, as from the time African women stepped onto American soil in the 1600s, they were relegated to chattel, and poked, prodded, and examined as such. Saar’s artwork of the nude figure might be also reckoning with the reality that Black women for so long were domestics made to clean and sweep. In these roles, Black women were not respected for their full humanity, and they were often forced to succumb to unwanted advances from their enslavers and bosses. Saar’s artwork is layered: her depiction of a fertility goddess highlights the notion that Black women birthed a workforce, and the figure’s hair sweeping the floor alludes to domestic servitude.
Radcliffe Bailey
NY Rail (Transportation), 1993
cut-and-pasted offset printed paper and painted paper, acrylic paint, and blue crayon on wove paper
sheet: 45.8 x 58.9 cm (18 1/16 x 23 3/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Gift of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson
2023.145.14
Radcliffe Bailey, who passed away in 2023 and is known for telling Black American narratives through his artwork, is represented here by the six separate paintings that make up his NY Rail. Like Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, this artwork depicts the migration of Black people from the south and the Caribbean to parts of the United States. For NY Rail (Transportation), Bailey uses an archival photograph of Black people boarding a train, overlayed with a grid of colorful acrylic paint and a depiction of tree limbs with leaves. In NY Rail (Boats Arriving), he paints three and a half row boats, with the word “Mississippi,” “Jamaica,” and “Cuba” written on the sides of them, telling where and how Black people migrated. The background is in coordination with the other paintings in the series, as they incorporate the orange, blue, yellow, and green painted horizontal stripes depicting water and the landscape. In other artworks, NY Rail (Bird of Death) and NY Rail (Death of Infant), the artist illustrates the unfortunate trials faced during the migration. Though optimism drove the migrants, they still faced challenges that led to death in Northern cities, from mob violence to unhealthy environments in ghettos.
Without the stewardship of Black art collectors from the beginning of the early twentieth century when Black art burgeoned due to the New Negro Movement, commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance, the preservation of Black art would not have happened, and the art would be lost. During the early twentieth century, instead of exhibiting in downtown New York museums and galleries, Black artists exhibited their work in libraries, churches, and private homes. In 1921, the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem held its first exhibition by African American artists. The library became a focal point for the Harlem Renaissance. Today, the library is known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, after Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, who was fundamental to the movement and in 1926 contributed his collection of more than four thousand books to the library for $10,000 furnished by the Carnegie Corporation. Black American artists were excluded from the art establishment largely until the mid to late twentieth century when postmodern conceptual art started to become popular. Because of this exclusion, museum collections around the country lack art that represents historical Black narratives. But today, museums are beginning to acquire art that fills the historical gaps in their collections through the generosity of collectors like the Thompsons, University of Georgia emeritus trustees, who have been collecting art since 1980. In 2011, they donated one hundred artworks to the Georgia Museum of Art, and in 2008, they gifted thirty nine artworks to the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Collectors Walter O. and Linda Evans, who hold one of the largest collections of Black art, gifted the Telfair Museums thirty artworks; Seteria and Najee Dorsey, founders of Black Art in America, gifted the Columbus Museum fifteen artworks; and Constance E. Clayton, an educator and civic leader who collected Black art over fifty years, gifted the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art more than seventy artworks.
Without Black art collectors, so much of the artwork by Black artists would be forgotten. With the loss of the physical art, the impalpable sensibilities of Black life throughout varied stages of history would not be preserved. Black collectors have cared for their collections and also contributed to the dissemination of the art and ideas through gifts to institutions that benefit from the inclusion of Black history. These Black collectors who steward Black art are making judgments on what should be preserved in a field that is dominated by western culture’s Eurocentric gaze. And though Black collectors have gifted historically Black institutions, including Clark Atlanta University, Hampton Unviersity, and Howard University, with artworks throughout African American art’s history, it is notable that the Thompsons are Black collectors making a profound contribution to one of the most highly regarded collections in the United States—the National Gallery of Art.
Shantay Robinson, educator and art writer, lives in Northern Virginia. Her work has appeared regularly in ARTnews, Smithsonian Magazine, Black Art in America, and other notable publications where she primarily writes about Black Art. She holds a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric from George Mason University."
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