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Bob Duggan
Contributing Writer
Bob Duggan has Master’s Degrees in English Literature and Education and is not afraid to use them. Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, he has always been fascinated by art and brings an informed amateur’s eye to the conversation.
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“Danger: Art Inside,” read the labels on the crated sculptures as I toured last month the almost-ready-for-public-viewing, but now restored, reinstalled, and reinterpreted Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The signs […]
“Follow the Money,” the informant known only as “Deep Throat” told Woodward and Bernstein during their investigation into the Watergate Scandal that they titled All the President’s Men. Follow the […]
Americans for the past decade seem more caught up than ever in the idea of what it is to be an American, especially in an election year and perhaps never […]
Art theft is a terrible problem worldwide. Aside from robbing the public of enjoying the great works of the past, art theft often leads to damage to the art and […]
The idea of artists running museums sounds to many like allowing the inmates to run the asylum. A profile in the current issue of The New Yorker of Tate Gallery […]
You’d think that a giant retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC would, at least momentarily, make George Bellows the king of the art ring. But once […]
“We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion year old carbon. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” sang Joni Mitchell in her song “Woodstock.” Every […]
In this Age of the Austerians, anything considered non-essential is being denied the financial means to survive. Despite mountains of research findings, arts programs in schools fall under the austerity […]
Last month I asked if Whistler’s Mother is the greatest Mother’s Day painting ever, so it only seems fair to pose a similar question on Father’s Day. Although Mother’s Day […]
Say “nationalism,” and most minds immediately think “war.” Word association games aside, nationalism comes in all shapes and sizes, but the most dangerous form historically has led to armed conflict […]
Ask a gaggle of economists which country has the world’s fastest growing economy and they’ll most likely say China. At the very least, most Americans see China as the world’s […]
“Philosopher” is one of those job descriptions in America that brings inevitable jokes about unemployability. Carlin Romano’s new book, America the Philosophical, aims at transforming the Rodney Dangerfield of academic […]
It’s no new news that the art world remains a man’s world for the most part, but that the situation’s getting better. Cindy Sherman’s major retrospective exhibition Cindy Sherman, which […]
When I read the news that the Bamiyan Buddhas, the giant 6th century statues in Afghanistan destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001, would not be rebuilt, I had mixed […]
Every May brings with it a new crop of college graduation speeches. This spring, few (maybe none) were as though-provoking as multimedia artist Laurie Anderson’s at the School of Visual […]
Ironically, America as a nation seems to have forgotten exactly what Memorial Day is about. Barbeques, all-day sales, the “official” start of summer—all of these threaten to crowd out the […]
Art isn’t usually a life or death matter, but the controversy over South African artist Brett Murray’s The Spear (detail shown above) might end in bloodshed. When Murray decided to […]
“My earliest memory is of anxiety!” cartoonist Daniel Clowes tells an interviewer in The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, the first serious monograph of the work of this seriously […]
Andy Warhol looked for fame any place he could find it, so news that a crater on the surface of the planet Mercury has been named in his honor comes […]
In 1923, during an exhibition of his art collection that would become the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, two years later, Dr. Albert C. Barnes told an interviewer, “I am […]