I first visited the Phillips in the mid-1990’s as a tourist from Kansas City, which is where I was living at the time. However, it was after I moved to Washington and began working at the Phillips that I really started to learn about the museum. As a Museum Assistant I enjoyed the fact that being in the galleries for long periods of time encouraged me to reconsider my first impressions of the works. Often I would leave at the end of my workday with greatly revised opinions about works I had spent so much time with.

Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix’s Horses Coming Out of the Sea is coloristic and luminous. It is classical and wants to be taken seriously on the basis of its poetics. Paul Cézanne’s Garden at Les Lauves features at least three distinctive horizons, giving it a temporal quality which is heightened by its ‘unfinished’ appearance. By contrast Oscar Bluemner’s Oranges is utterly groundless (and would be at home in any number of contemporary art spaces). Here I should mention that I once had the privilege (with Preparator Bill Koberg presiding) of resting this small painting on the five fingertips of my left hand. Continue reading →