What Do Artists Do All Day?

by Drew Martin
I have recently been enjoying the BBC's artists series titled What Do Artists Do All Day? On the BBC Four program homepage is a description of the 30-minute profiles: Intimate, observational portraits of leading artists, revealing unique insights into their working lives and creative process. I have watched several of them and they have been consistently good. At the bottom of this post is a playlist of 23 artists, and I have noticed additional artists on the show's clips site. For me, this is the next best thing to a studio visit, and in some ways even more satisfying because of the choice edits. Here are screen grabs from some of the artist profiles.

(note: the beginning of this first video is silent - the sound with kick in)

Princeton University Art Museum: An On-Campus Collection That's Out of This World

by Drew Martin

New York and Philadelphia are two powerhouse art museum cities close enough apart for day trips and with respective collections ready to wow each other’s residents. As someone who lives in New Jersey, I feel a strong tug from both places. For the art lovers who shuttle back and forth I would like to point out the intimate but outstandingly Princeton University Art Museum midway between Manhattan and Philly, which should not be overlooked. Princeton University was established in 1746 and started to build up its collection of art in 1755, which is nearly a century before the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1850) and almost 40 years before the Louvre (1793). The Princeton University Art Museum has a lot of firsts, including the first John Singer Sargent portrait done in America and the first Vincent Van Gogh painting to make it to the Western hemisphere. It is a fantastic collection with more than 92,000 works of art from around the world that cover more than five thousand years of history. The admission is free and it is located on one of the prettiest and most prestigious colleges in America with a great downtown at the edge of campus. I did an afternoon trip there yesterday and spent a few hours in the museum. Here are some pictures I took while I tagged along with a tour, and wandered through the galleries on my own. Scroll through them to take a stroll through the collection: