Spotlight: International Museum Day: There's a Whole World of Museums Out There

Photomontage: Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.; Musée du Louvre, Paris, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Turner Contemporary, Margate (not a collecting museum), Crystal bridges, Bentonville, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, and the De Young Museum, San Francisco.

Officially “International Museum Day” was Wednesday this week, but museums all around the world have planned continuous events and programming through the weekend which are meant to welcome new and returning visitors alike and show people the museums are “back.” Much of Boulevard’s work over the last several years has involved collaborating with museums on art and culture-based XR projects, and many of our team are originally from museums, so this realm remains near and dear to our hearts. COVID has been so challenging on all of these institutions. It has also, however, been a time for self-reflection and creative reinvention, a time to assess how they can participate more actively in the digital space as well as in the social fabric of their local communities and the broader world. Evan before the pandemic, so many museums have come to serve as important social spaces for discovery, engagement, conversation, in addition to being places to connect with objects, collections, didactics and/or digital interactives. And, things are really opening up again now, so, if you didn’t get a chance to celebrate an amazing art, history, culture, or science museum on May 18, now’s the time - or really anytime is. Do you have a favorite museum? We would love to know which one and why.

Spotlight: An Audience with Queen Elizabeth I in Augmented Reality

English artist, Queen Elizabeth I (Coronation Portrait), circa 1600. Oil on panel, 50 1/8 in. x 39 1/4 in. (1273 mm x 997 mm). © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Boulevard Arts is pleased to announce our latest BLVRD Features episode “Elizabeth I” exploring an important and intriguing late 16th-century painting from London’s National Portrait Gallery. Boulevard AR, our very first augmented reality app released in 2018, was a collaboration with NPG, highlighting three iconic paintings from their stellar collection, so it has been especially wonderful to work again with their brilliant, tech-forward team to produce this new augmented reality experience available in our BLVRD Features app.

“Elizabeth I” offers a fascinating window on to the life and times of this important and long-reigning English monarch (from 1559-1603), who ushered in the so-called Elizabethan Age and shaped the course of world history. Users can not only bring this highly symbolic oil painting known as the “Coronation Portrait” into their space and examine it closely, but also open it up to reveal details and other related images, including an x-ray, which shed light on how the savvy Tudor Queen used portraiture to strategically craft her image, assert power, and maintain the loyalty of her subjects.

Don’t be late for your audience with the Queen, Elizabeth I, that is. Download our free BLVRD Features app today!

Spotlight: In Honor of Women Everywhere

Details from Boulevard Art's’ augmented reality experiences in the BLVRD AR and BLVRD Features apps (Images top left to right and bottom left to right: Dorothy Hodgkin; Artemisia Gentileschi; Loïe Fuller; and Howardena Pindell).

Today is International Women’s Day, a global holiday celebrated on March 8th to commemorate the cultural, political, and socio-economic of achievements of women. And, of course, the entire month of March is dedicated to Women’s History.

Who are some of the women you admire most? Whom would you like to recognize and honor? Are they family members or individuals in a particular field – a scientist, basketball-player, veterinarian, security guard, social worker teacher, artist, homemaker, therapist, performer, dog-walker, doctor or nurse, policewoman, seamstress, cook, marathoner, post-office worker, babysitter, vice-president, sign-language interpreter, store clerk, soft-ware developer, soldier, accountant, entrepreneur, or something else? Maybe you would rather acknowledge women in general, for all they do, big and small, everyday.  

Boulevard Arts, our immersive technology company, was co-founded in 2013 by Elizabeth L. Reede, who also serves as our CEO. (Before this Elizabeth was a museum curator with passion for technology and an advanced degree in business.) In fact, the majority of our team is made up of women. So, this special day has a lot of significance for all of us personally.

Coming from the fields of curation, education, creative direction, public art, and product design, we pride ourselves on delivering exceptional immersive arts and culture content for a variety of digital platforms.  Our mission is to develop engaging and inclusive stories that can excite people, broaden their perspectives, generate empathy, and empower them.

To this end, Boulevard Arts has produced four AR experiences about trailblazing women: Dorothy Hodgkin (a 20th-century British chemist), Artemisia Gentileschi (a 17th century Italian painter), Loïe Fuller (a fin-de-siècle performer and entrepreneur), and Howardena Pindell (a contemporary American multi-media artist). Today, I can announce that our next two AR experiences, which are coming out within the next month, are likewise focused on the lives, context, and accomplishments of remarkable women from the past. Can’t wait to share these with you!!!!

Spotlight: Horace Pippin: Painter of History and the Everyday

Horace Pippin (American, 1888-1946) , Sunday Morning Breakfast, 1943. Oil on fabric, 16” x 20” Saint Louis Art Museum Collection.

Self-taught artist Horace Pippin (1888 -1946) occupies a unique space in art history, resonating with both American folk art traditions and the early-mid century modernism of artists like Charles Sheeler and Jacob Lawrence. Whether reimagining historical events, as in “John Brown Going to his Hanging” or picturing less dramatic domestic scenes of African-American life, Pippin’s work reflects a sophisticated balance between abstract design and simplified but evocative storytelling.

African-American, Pippin was born in West Chester Pennsylvania, but grew up in Goshen, New York. During WWI, he served in a predominantly black battalion, nicknamed the “Harlem Hellfighters” for its bravery. The longest serving U.S. regiment on the war's frontlines, the “Hellfighters” held their ground against enemy fire almost continuously from mid-July until the end of the war. Pippin began painting in the early 1920s, as a way of rehabilitating his badly injured arm which had been shot by a German sniper. Over the next decade, Pippin would devote himself more and more to his art, and by the late 1930s was gaining increased recognition for his work. His made his public debut with a painting in a traveling exhibition put on by New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This honor was followed by solo shows in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. From 1940 on, his work was being acquired for the Barnes Collection, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1947, the year after his death, Pippin became the first African American artist to have a monograph written about his work, and the New York Times eulogized him as the ”most important negro painter in history.”

This intimate painting, done in oil on fabric, depicts a scene drawn from the artist’s warm childhood memories. Two children, dressed in their Sunday whites, sit at a central table, looking up and eagerly awaiting their breakfast. Their seated father looks on from the left, while their mother in a patterned kerchief and lively checkered apron brings a hot plate to the table. Behind her the stove glows hot orange, and a kettle whistles steam into the air. Pared down as the picture may be, we can nevertheless imagine what it would be like to be there in that kitchen on that Sunday morning: the sound of the kettle, the heat of the stove, the hard wood of the chairs, and the smell of breakfast.

Spotlight: Going to Great Heights: The World of the Skywalkers

Lewis Hine, Old-timer, -- keeping up with the boys. (Empire State Building), 1930. Silver gelatin print. National Archives and Records Administration.

Whoah…. that’s pretty high up… yep. When you look up at New York’s skyline at all the tall buildings and bridges connecting its five boroughs, have you ever thought about how they were made? And who constructed them?

Were you aware that for decades Native Americans significantly shaped the high-steel industry and helped build this “New America”? As it turns out, most of these towering 20th-century structures were raised by Mohawk ironworkers, from two native communities, Akwasasne and Kahnawake. Keenly adept at performing specialized tasks like rigging and riveting, these men came to be known as “Skywalkers” because they appeared unafraid of “walking iron” and working hundreds of feet in the air.

 Many came to Manhattan around 1901, when a number of the first skyscrapers were being erected around the city. The 1920s again saw a building boom, which continued through the 1950s, fueled by Depression-era public works and then by post-WW II prosperity. For over six generations, Mohawks have worked on virtually every major construction project in New York City, including The Empire State Building, the RCA Building, and The Chrysler Building, as well as the Daily News Building, the Bank of Manhattan, the United Nations, and Madison Square Garden––not to mention the George Washington Bridge, the Triboro Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Hell’s Gate Bridge, and the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge.

Over this time, Kahnawake and Akwesasne men have remained firmly embedded in the industry, proving their bravery and commitment to family tradition time and again. We share their important story and enormous contribution to the fabric and history of New York through #AR in our Blvrd Features app experience “Skywalkers.”

Spotlight: Loïe Fuller, a Fin-de-Siècle Boss-Lady

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Miss Loïe Fuller, 1893. Color Lithograph with gold dust. 14 15/16” x 10 1/8” (37.9 x 25.7cm). Cleveland Museum of Art Collection.

Today - January 15 - is Loïe Fuller’s birthday, so we want to celebrate her by lauding her accomplishments. Loïe, or “La Loië,” as she was affectionately called by the French, was truly a superstar and fin-de-siècle Boss-Lady.

Born in Fullersburg, Illinois in 1862, Marie Louise Fuller showed a knack for performance at an early age and tackled the vaudeville stage as an actress in late her teens and twenties, but was pretty much a washed actress by the time she made her way across the Atlantic to Paris in the early 1890s. There, in the City of Lights and against the odds, she became a huge celebrity and the toast of the town.

Though neither very young nor lithe, she strategically showcased what she had to offer: imagination, ambition, hutzpah, and core strength. She concocted a sensational, physically-demanding new type of dance incorporating undulating movements, the latest stage lighting technologies, and hundreds of yards of white silk which she twirled around her body with long hidden bamboo sticks in order to evoke colorful serpentine lines and shapes in space. Audiences flocked to see her perform for more than a decade, and dozens of artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, whose gold-dusted lithograph we see above, tried to capture her unique art nouveau-esque expression. With each new dance , Loïe seemed to embody the synesthetetic aesthetic of the fin-de-siècle, magically transforming herself into a flower, a butterfly, a fairy, or a flame - using clever choreography, music, colorful uplighting, and projections called magic lanterns, even borrowing ideas from the lighting of spectacular fountains. That’s thinking outside the box and being totally #techforward.

Ahead of her time, Loïe was a multi-media artist before there was such as thing, and she was an entrepreneur from the get-go, hiring a crew of technicians who were sworn to secrecy about her techniques, trying to patent her dances, opening her own pavilion at the 1900 World’s Fair, licensing her image for jewelry and decorative art objects, and establishing her own dance troupe, which toured the world more than once. She never truly perfected her French, but she did become one of the most adored performers in Europe, and certainly shaped her own destiny. Way to go, Loïe. Joyeux Anniversaire.

Spotlight:What Does a City Feel Like in 1913?

Aleksandra Ekster, City, 1913. Oil on canvas, 34 5/6" x 27 3/4". Regional Picture Gallery, Vologda.

Ukrainian-born Aleksandra Ekster (1882-1949) was a part of the cultural avant-garde of Kiev, as well as that of Paris, where she visited often and eventually made a permanent home in 1924. As a young woman, Ekster absorbed a multitude of influences and refused to be confined to a particular movement; her work has been associated with everything from traditional peasant crafts and Cubo-Futurism, to Suprematism, Constructivism and Art Deco. Reflecting a similar eclectic mix of sensibilities from nationalism to bold modernism, her Parisian apartments was noted for having Picasso and Braque’s paintings on the walls, and Ukrainian carpets on the floor. Throughout her career, Ekster experimented across media and genres. In addition to painting, drawing, and sculpture, she became heavily involved in designing fashion, costumes, and theatrical sets - typically characterized by their multi-colored, dimensional elements, innovative transparency, and expression of movement.

All of those qualities are evident as well in this 1913 painting by Ekster entitled City, which offers a dynamic Cubist collision of forceful color and geometric shapes: faceted, rectilinear buildings and curved green domes (tree tops)are interspersed with abstracted tri-color flag-like slabs. All parts and spaces merging and pushing upward, outward, rhyming, repeating, contrasting, pulsating. Ekster has succeeded in picturing the vital, modern rhythm of the city.

Spotlight: Paris: Mapping History and Experience

Engraved by L. Poulmarie and printed by Gaston Maillet. Plan Monumental Paris Versailles, c. 1925. Paper, 20 “ x 26” Published by A. Leconte and L. Guilmin, Paris. (Public Domain: France and the U.S.)

Confession: When we came across this beautiful 1920s vintage map of Paris (with a plan of Versailles on its verso) today for one of our projects, it inspired more than a little bit of wanderlust, and even the desire to step back in time to the Jazz Age.

Collecting maps is an art unto itself. Maps of Paris extend back hundreds and hundreds of years to when the area was known as Lutèce (under the Romans). But, of course the ancient city, its walls and layout, were organized very differently, as they have been throughout history. We certainly wouldn’t see the clockwise spiral of 20 arrondissements extant today, at least not before the late 1850s, when Baron Haussmann, Napoleon III’s Prefect of the Seine, began transforming Paris, re-designing the urban center and wiping out parts of the old Medieval city (and dislocating many of its 19th-century inhabitants) in order to erect modern apartment buildings, create public parks, and establish the safer, more spectacular Grand Boulevards celebrated in paintings by artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Gustave Caillebotte. Even embedded in the statement, we are reminded of how maps are never neutral, but rather bear layers of political and social history.

During the 1920s, the so-called “années folles,” when this deco-style map was made, the city was experiencing an efflorescence. The City of Light was particularly attractive to Americans, who flocked to it for the culture, the novel experiences, the alcohol (during prohibition), and the liberation from some of the social mores back home. Some were soldiers who stayed in Europe after serving in WWI, others sailed over from the U.S. in the early ‘20s, profiting from the favorable exchange rate and able to live out a dream. Famous expats who arrived during the decade included Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, Sara and Gerald Murphy, Langston Hughes, Stuart Davis, Aaron Copeland, Cole Porter, Alexander Calder, and Josephine Baker, among so many others. They were greeted by an open-minded atmosphere that lauded creativity and innovation, and found themselves considered exotic by the French. The cafes and nightclubs were rife with cultural exchange - animated with discussion and debate among artists and writers - and hot jazz inspired everyone.

Hemingway described Paris as “a moveable feast,” in reference not only to delicious Parisian food, but the total banquet of experience a stay in Paris represented - a unique stimulation for all the senses including one’s brain.

Aaaahhh, it would be so nice to be in Paris right now, strolling along the Seine, visiting the Musée d’Orsay, getting glâce (icecream) at Chez Berthillon in the Marais, and then sitting at a cafe, maybe Les Deux Magots, with a strong espresso in hand, people watching. But that’s our travel wish. Maybe there is a different place in the world that you would like to visit. Today is a day for imaginative wanderlust, especially with all the recent COVID restrictions. Let your mind wander. If money, time, and other restrictions were no longer factors, where would you you go? Would it be Paris or somewhere else?

Spotlight: A Unique View Offered by a 19th-Century Still Life Study

William Michael Harnett (American, 1848-1892), Study of a Pipe and Other Objects, 1874. Oil on canvas 11 7/8” x 8 5/8” (30.2 x 21.9 cm). De Young Museum, San Francisco.

William Michael Harnett’s striking oil study is a variation within the more polished still life tradition, and one of hundreds made by 19th-century painters. These were often sought after by collectors during this time. Its unfinished appearance has its own charm and freshness, and offers a unique look into the artist’s working process. 

This same composition could have been brought to completion in the more familiar illusionistic manner. In this instance, however, the humble objects, including a pipe and an apple, exist in a provisional, contingent space–not yet unified by perspective or surface finish. The incongruity of perspectives would give reason to the more common practice of arranging objects in a shallow, almost two-dimensional space for a “true” trompe l’oeil composition. Harnett instead surrounds the bowl and turnip with a brown tone that sharpens their shapes and separates them from the pale ground, something he chose not to do with the pipe. Each object has a slightly flat quality that allows it to occupy its own iconic space. Because of these visual contradictions, Harnett’s picture may unintentionally look rather free and modern to contemporary eyes.

Spotlight: Incorporating Poetry into AR: Sensing the Late 19th-Century

In App Screenshot: Boulevard AR app experience. Dante Gabriel Rossetti reading poetry to Theodore Watts-Dunton, painting by Henry Treffry Dunn.

When we collaborated with the National Portrait Gallery of London to make an AR experience of its famous double portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Theodore Watt-Dunton by Henry Treffry-Dunn, we wanted to highlight aspects of the painted scene, but also to evoke the larger sense of creative community that flourished within Rossetti’s special, idiosyncratically-decorated home, Tudor House, at Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. One way to achieve this was to pop out a convex mirror in augmented reality, as these mirrors were so important to 19th-century artists, as well as to Rossetti’s overall sensibility and decorating scheme, particularly for his sitting room where he frequently entertained. Another concept was to bring in period music, to infiltrate the space and evoke a Victorian-era mood. And finally, most important to our theme was to integrate the aural sense of poetry, using Rossetti’s words.

As was common in his circle, Rossetti worked across a range of mediums. Known primarily as a painter, designer and illustrator, he was also a translator of courtly love poems and considered poetry his true calling. In Henry Treffry-Dunn’s posthumous painting, we see Rossetti sharing some of his own poetry with his companion Theodore Watts-Dunton. As a writer, poet, and critic, Theodore Watts-Dunton not only proved a faithful friend, but frequent sounding board and foil for Rossetti’s creative ideas. Watts-Dunton’s editorial opinions often became Rossetti’s own, and he modified his work accordingly, suggesting a deep, collaborative bond.

The ballad “Rose Mary,” was a part of Rossetti’s 1881 collection of poems, Ballads and Sonnets. Rossetti is shown reading a draft of the collection to Watts-Dunton, to whom the book is dedicated. We wanted to elevate this vignette from the picture, not only by giving it extra dimensionality in AR, but by capturing the essence of enthralled listening. It seemed only appropriate then to incorporate some of Rose Mary within our experience, which we did. (excerpt below):

The altar stood from its curved recess

In a coiling serpent’s life-likeness:

Even such a serpent evermore

Lies deep asleep at the world’s dark core

Till the last Voice shake the sea and shore

From the altar-cloth a book rose spread

And tapers burned at the altar-head;

And there in the altar-midst alone,

‘Twixt wings of a sculptured beast unknown,

Rose Mary saw the Beryl-stone.

Firm it sat ‘twixt the hollow wings,

As an orb sits in the hand of kings:

And lo! For that Foe whose curse far-flown

Had bound her life with a burning zone

Rose Mary knew the Beryl-stone.

Spotlight: Looking Closely at Life in 15th-Century Flanders through the Lens of Petrus Christus

Petrus Christus (Netherlandish, active 1444 - 1475/76), A Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449. Oil on oak panel, 39 3/8” x 33 3/4” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

15th-century Netherlandish painting is nothing if not meticulously detailed, and Petrus Christus, the leading painter in Bruges (Flanders) after the death of Jan van Eyck, was an absolute master of this craft. Works like Christus’ Goldsmith in his Shop (1449) offer an opportunity for close looking as well as a feast for the eyes. With its jeweled colors and dazzling application of oil paint, this fascinating panel painting tantalizes us as much with its illusionistic appearance as it does the possibility of unlocking the mystery of its many symbols.

In it, a seated goldsmith in red is depicted in his stall fashioning a ring for a richly-dressed betrothed couple who stand closely behind him (By the way, the woman’s sumptuous brocade gown is not actually painted with gold, but seems as if it were). Behind them is a paned window, a green velvet curtain, and to one side is a shelf of silver vessels atop another displaying precious items, including jeweled and metallic objects as well as exotic branches of coral. On the ledge in front of the goldsmith is a girdle or belt (that extends out into the viewer’s space), an allusion to matrimony, and a scale upon which he weighs the wedding ring, to which the woman seems to be gesturing. The painting was likely created as a portrait of the vocation of goldsmithing or even a specific goldsmith, intended to highlight his virtuosity, ability to cater to wealthy clients, and produce both secular and ecclesiastical wares. Another major element in the picture is the convex mirror in the lower right corner, parallel to the wall of the stall. Itself a brilliant pictorial conceit, the mirror ostensibly reveals the streetscape outside, connecting the interior and exterior spaces. Reflected, in miniature, are two slightly shady young men with a falcon (a symbol of pride or greed) with townhouses behind them. Though their relation to the overall narrative is not entirely clear, the outdoor pair seem to provide a strong moral contrast to the “virtuous” couple indoors, who seem to embody rectitude, fidelity, and piety.

Spotlight: Raphaelle Peale, One of the First American Painters to Specialize in the Still Life Genre.

Raphaelle Peale, Blackberries, ca. 1813. Oil on wood panel , 7 1/4” x 10 1/4”. (18.4 x 26 cm). De Young Museum, San Francisco.

What’s so important about a bowl of glistening berries? Most people would consider it an insignificant subject matter. But Raphaelle Peale made the meticulous study and beautiful presentation of still life arrangements, like this, his forté and life’s passion.

Born to America’s premier artistic family of the time, Raphaelle Peale (whose siblings, Rembrandt, Titian, and Rubens, were also named for famous painters) is acknowledged by many to be the first painter in the Unites States to specialize in the genre of still life. Peale is most known for painting small, intimate pictures of fruit, dessert, and other comestible offerings on tables placed invitingly close to the viewer’s space, and meant to inspire contemplation rather than unlimited appetite.

Isolated and intensely illuminated against an austere, darkened background, Peale’s blackberries appear very real, at once both modest and glisteningly vital. Their compact, beaded forms in different degrees of ripeness seem to float in bunches over the linearity of the verdant, striated leaves. American still-life painting would have been understood by its 19th-century public to convey a host of moral, if not religious, associations. Some viewers might have interpreted the juicy red berries as evoking explicit Christian symbolism, such as the blood of Christ, and the visible thorniness of the wooden stem as Christ’s crown of thorns. Others might respond to the still life’s apparent suggestion of moderation and temperance as exemplary virtues.

Spotlight: Kleine Dada Soirée (Small Dada Evening): Having a little Dada Fun with the Rules of Design & Decorum

Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters, Kleine Dada Soirée, 1922. Lithographic Poster, 11 7/8” x 11 7/8” National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Collection.

A collaboration between Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg and German artist Kurt Schwitters, this graphic red and black work employs a multitude of striking fonts and varied text sizes- capital letters and lower case - in different languages interspersed with pictograms, in an overlapping, multi-directional arrangement.

Is your eye is having trouble focusing? That’s not surprising since this extremely crowded poster for a Dada Soirée seems to go against every design convention used for legibility, clarity, hierarchy and emphasis . But then again, that’s exactly the point (no pun intended, well maybe a little punning on the pointing fingers)! The poster was produced to advertise a program of radical performances, including the music of composer Erik Satie, abstract poetry by Schwitters, and a humorous lecture on “Dadasophie” (or the so-called philosophy of Dada) by Van Doesburg. Incorporated into it are a number of explicitly contradictory slogans - such as: “Dada is dead,” “Dada is against the future,”" and “Long Live Dada.”

The short-lived Dada movement (often seen as the precursor to the Fluxus of the 1960s and the Punk ethos of the 1970s) emerged shortly after the outbreak of WWI as a set of artistic strategies intended to disrupt nationalism, rationalism, and tradition, and was frequently characterized by interdisciplinary collaboration, absurd gestures, and cheeky, even outlandish stunts - in other words the unexpected. Given all of this, Van Doesburg’s and Schwitters’ cacophonous typographic collage seems the perfect expression of what Dutch audiences (for whom it was intended) might expect from an evening of Dada!

Spotlight: A Photographic Portrait of Legendary Apsaroke Chief “Shows As He Goes”

Edward Curtis, Shows As He Goes, half-length portrait, circa 1905. Photographic print. 43 cm x 30.5 cm. Library of Congress Collection.

The end of the Civil War ushered in a renewed national interest in westward expansion — spurred by the discovery of oil, gold, and the construction of a transcontinental railroad. Tensions quickly grew between the U.S. government, anxious to bring the north and south together through infrastructure programs, and Native American federations still adjusting after their traumatic forced removal to western reservations. Many native leaders became legendary for their bravery, eloquence, and diplomacy during this period.

Years after the frontier battles that made the Apsaroke (Crow) Nation famous, the Chief “Shows As He Goes” sat for this photographic portrait by Edward S. Curtis now housed in the Library of Congress. The image displays Curtis' remarkable ability to fashion portraits incorporating traditional elements of dress and distinctive aspects of his sitters' personalities. Moved “to form a comprehensive and permanent record of the important tribes of the United States and Alaska that retain to a considerable degree their . . . customs and traditions,” before they vanished, Curtis labored for 30 years to produce his 20-volume work “The North American Indian.”

Spotlight: When One Appearance Is Not Enough: The Unusual Narrative Portrait of Sir Henry Unton

Unknown artist, The Portrait of Sir Henry Unton. Oil on panel, circa 1596. 29 1/8” x 64 1/4” (740 mm x 1632 mm). National Portrait Gallery of London Collection.

To call this painting The Portrait of Sir Henry Unton is a bit of a misnomer because it is actually contains several depictions of the same figure. Painted in oil on a wooden panel around 1596, the unusual narrative portrait chronicles the achievements of Sir Henry Unton, who lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor monarchs.

While many Elizabethan portraits celebrated a single significant moment in a sitter’s life, this landscape-format painting spans Sir Henry’s entire life entire life. Indeed, much of the painting’s unique character lies in the multiple appearances of its subject. The Englishman appears no less than 10 times throughout, in a series of highly-detailed scenes unfolding around a large, central portrait.

Flanking Unton at his desk, two complementary allegorical figures overlook the events of the Englishman’s life. At his left shoulder, a skeletal figure of Death holds an hourglass. This commonly-used symbol serves as a memento mori, an inescapable reminder of fleeting time, which was intended to spur meditation on mortality. At Unton’s right shoulder, a triumphant, winged figure of Fame offers him her crown and trumpets his everlasting memory, underscoring the purpose of the portrait itself.

 Anchoring the painting from opposing corners of the panel, a smiling sun and a crescent moon look down upon Unton’s life and death, serving as a reminder of the passage of time. Affirming the sitter’s place in history, the sun’s rays pinpoint his figure in each of the scenes from his life.

In the center of the painting, Unton looks out at us from his desk, writing dispatches and wearing a jeweled cameo on a chain. Unton was a soldier and diplomat who twice served as England’s ambassador to France, and it is the French king, Henry IV, whose profile appears on the cameo. This seemingly minor feature reflects a major achievement in the Englishman’s life. Such an unassuming inclusion could easily slip past 21st century- eyes, but tells us much about the politics of the time, Unton’s own interpersonal relationships and Tudor conventions.

How many more elusive details are woven into this intricate, sprawling portrait? To find out - download the Boulevard AR app, place the hundreds-of-years-old painting in your space, walk around it, and break out each the painting’s vignettes using augmented reality.

Spotlight: Explore Salvador Dalí's Famous "Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach" (1938) in AR

BLVRD Features App: Salvador Dalí Experience Loading Screen. Detail: Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach. 1938. Wadsworth Atheneum. @2021 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society.

BLVRD Features has partnered with the Wadsworth Atheneum to create another augmented reality experience. Based upon one of the most iconic paintings from the museum’s collection, a 1938 Surrealist work by the provocative Catalan artist Salvador Dalí, this Feature will definitely have you second-guessing what you are seeing.

Is Apparition with Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach of 1938 a still-life or genre scene? Is that a face or the back of a seated woman? A giant hunting dog or a bridge and mountain range? You get the picture! Discover more about the inspirations for this image and what was happening in Europe at the time, and locate the transformed visages of Dalí’s wife Gala and deceased best friend the poet Federico García Lorca hidden with in it.

After placing the painting in your space with AR, break it open, take a deeper look, and put your skills of perception to the test. Download the BLVRD Features App today and get your Surrealism on with Salvador Dalí.

Spotlight: "Au Bal" Reveals A Subtler Side of French Modernist Painter Èdouard Manet

Édouard Manet, Au Bal (At the Ball), 1870-1880. Oil on canvas. 22 x 14 in. (55.7 x 35.5 cm). The Courtauld Gallery.

Édouard Manet’s Au Bal represents a fashionable young society figure and family friend of the artist, Marguerite de Conflans, at a soirée. Manet depicted the sitter at least five times. Here, she appears in profile, caught in a moment of reverie while admiring herself in a mirror. The idealized, intensely detailed and hyper-polished style typical of mid-19th-century Academic portraiture is not in evidence here, nor is Mane't’s typical employment of bold colors and strong contrasts. Instead, his rendering of the Parisienne, which is closely cropped and seemingly quickly and loosely executed in delicate pastel tones, exudes a charmingly modern informality and immediacy.

Spotlight: Artist Grayson Perry Sheds Light on the Meaning of His 2008 “Head of a Fallen Giant”

Grayson Perry, Head of a Fallen Giant, 2008. Bronze, 15 ¾ x 19 x 13 ¾ in. (40 x 50 x 35 cm), © Grayson Perry Collection of the Artist. Courtesy of the Artist and Victoria Miro, London.

“There has been much talk in the media about national identity. It’s very hard to pin down: there isn’t an instant, easy answer to what Englishness is. We no longer have a clear folk identity, so when we talk about ethnicity it’s always about non-Englishness, about the ‘other’. So I made this piece about England’s past and the giant of maritime power that was the British Empire. It looks like something that’s been dragged out of the sea. I had it cast in bronze to give it the air of an archaeological treasure or an ethnographic artefact, like something you’d find at the British Museum.”

*Grayson Perry’s quote about this artwork (which was used in Boulevard Arts’ VR experience created for Turner Contemporary) is taken from Grayson Perry by Jacky Klein. © 2009 Jacky Klein. Reprinted by kind permission of Thames & Hudson Ltd., London.

Spotlight: Winslow Homer and the Power of Song to Unite People

Winslow Homer, Home Sweet Home, c. 1863. Oil on canvas. 21 1/2 x 16 1/2 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

This Civil War scene depicts two Union infantrymen pausing at their campsite in a moment of quiet reflection to listen to the nearby military band play the song “Home, Sweet Home.” Numerous contemporary accounts describe the musical exchanges between neighboring Union and Confederate camps, which often ended with a rendition of this anthem played in unison, prompting a unifying enthusiasm in both camps. The song was a universal reminder of each soldier’s deeply personal cause of fighting to establish American democratic ideals and to protect his home and family. Both the ballad and the painting emphasize the ordinary struggles of the soldier, who longed for the comforts of home amid the temporary space of a sparse campsite and meager provisions. Far from a heroic or idealized vision of battle, Homer’s painting provides an authentic and unsentimental portrayal of soldiers’ downtime during the bloodiest war in the history of the United States. 

*Select facts derived from the www.NGA.gov collection object page: Home Sweet Home; Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. and Franklin Kelly, Winslow Homer. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1995).

Spotlight: Gauguin's "Te Rerioa (The Dream)," 1897

Paul Gauguin, Te Rerioa (The Dream), 1897. Oil on canvas, 37 ⅜ x 51 ⅛ in. (95.1 x 130.2 cm), The Courtauld Gallery, London

Paul Gauguin’s 1897 painting Te Rerioa (The Dream) offers an interior scene of two Tahitian women, a small spotted dog, and a sleeping child; outside is a path with a horse and rider in the distance—or perhaps this image is merely a painting on the back wall. The ambiguous scene is dominated by slightly unsettling shades of yellow, a color frequently used by the artist throughout the 1880s and ‘90s, long before he left France. As the picture’s title indicates, the narrative–including any relation between the reclining figures–remains elusive and dream-like. Typical of Gauguin’s Tahitian works which were intended to communicate a Western worldview of “otherness,” a synthesized “exoticism” pervades the representation of the figures, the decorative wall elements and furniture, as well as the painting’s composition itself, which appears simplified, flattened, and stylized.