Ellen C. Caldwell is an LA-born and -based art historian, writer, and professor. She writes about visual culture, the arts, and popular media for publications including New American Paintings, KCET’s Artbound, Riot Material, Desert Jewels, and more. Read more of her writing at eclaire.me.
Since his death in 2013, Nelson Mandela has achieved icon status. Why is his image so ubiquitous, reproduced everywhere from tourist kitsch to high art?
The National Museum of Women in the Arts exhibit “Women House” pays tribute to the foundational 1972 project of Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro’s “Womanhouse.”
Much has been written about South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, but his newly found photographs offer a news lens through which to consider his writing.
How do the artistic inspirations that portrait artist Amy Sherald cites for Michelle Obama’s dress impact our visual and cultural understanding of the portrait for the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery?
A new Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts has made people wonder whether empathy can be taught? And, if so, how can the arts help with this process?
With New Year’s Day on the horizon, many people will write their resolutions. Rudyard Kipling's poem explores the trials and tribulations of resolutions.
Tiffany’s glass mosaics can teach us a lot about stereotypes and nineteenth-century ideologies, particularly in the Marquette Buildings mosaic friezes.
