The colors of Nicolas de Staël’s Le Parc de Sceaux are echoed in a neighboring bench. Photo: Elaine Budzinski

Some of my favorite works to view at the Phillips are those that are strongly influenced by the spaces they occupy. A small, inconspicuous alcove next to an elevator displays works by Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland, while El Greco’s The Repentant St. Peter is framed by wood paneling in a dim corner of the Music Room. The heavy perfume of the Laib Wax Room wafts beyond its small chamber into the bright gallery that houses Pierre Bonnard‘s The Open Window; and the upholstered seats that frame a particular window in another gallery echo the blue gray palette of Nicolas de Staël’s Le Parc de Sceaux. These relationships remind me that although sometimes we see paintings and sculptures as aesthetic objects in the context of a white-walled gallery space, they are also artifacts of individual thought processes and ideas.

Elaine Budzinski, Marketing and Communications Intern