Artistic communities play a significant role in the vibrancy and health of cities, nations, and ultimately our world - where cultural...

View of the specimen garden of Carl Linnaeus, Uppsala University, Photo by J. Franks 2023 Since ancient times, Gardens have been represented by artists throughout mediums. Gardens were consciously designed as spaces of health and recovery, as well as beacons of philosophy. Artists' and collectors' gardens are a study unto themselves, and as an art specialist, I have had the great fortune of being able to visit some of these contemporary jewels, including once living within th

Photo from a series on an artist's garden. 'Irises After the Rain', J. Franks, for Saint George's Society, Presented in an album of Canadian gardens for His Majesty, King George III, on the occasion of His Majesty's birthday, 2022. 'What in your life is calling you? When all the noise is silenced, the meetings adjourned, the lists laid aside, and the wild iris blooms by itself in the dark forest, what still pulls on your soul? In the silence between your heartbeats hides a

18th-century curiosity cabinet of Joseph Bonnier de La Mosson (1702 -1744), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris. For the 2021 national symposium 'Preservation Meets Innovation', hosted by the CCAD: 'Fashioning Old into New: A 'Natural' History of Artist-Collectors'. Examining the natural specimens artists collect(ed) in the past and present, my lecture argued that 'dead' specimens constitute 'the old' / a memory reinvented into 'the new' by artists on canvas. This is

Wall Clock , Jean-Jacques Fieffé from the exhibition: 'Taking Shape: Finding Sculpture in the Decorative Arts', J. Paul Getty Museum,...

“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” - Shakespeare, Hamlet Momento Mori, Photo by J. Franks, 2020. 'Collectors at...

British porcelain cup and saucer with yellow ground and puce decoration, circa 1790, acquired by the late American, Southern poet,...

Lecture for International Women’s Day Decorative Arts: Definition and Evolution For International Women's Day, I presented an hour...

'Anemone Canadensis in a Silver Jug', Series: Redford Gardens / Jardins de Metis, T.M. Glass 'T.M. Glass: The Audible Language of ...

We could watch this all day. “Restauration de la verseuse offerte par l'ambassade de Siam à Louis XIV”, (Source: youtube.com)...

Still life with shells, porcelain, and glass vessels. Photo by J. Franks, 2016. This photos arrives from years of arranging objects into painted-like compositions (specifically in the style of 17th-century Dutch still lifes). Here, flowers here are placed loosely in a large, round contemporary glass vase exhibiting a maker's seal (of the kind found on wine bottles centuries ago). A piece of vintage green Venetian glass (Roemer) hides behind an English stoneware oval plate wi

Laurent Craste The work of Laurent Craste is a reminder of the human tendency towards the avant-garde: the desire to a break free from...

Design for a Cassone, Italian, 16th Century, Anonymous, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Decorative Art, Definition Sadly most people do not know the definition of decorative art, albeit decorative arts are well represented at every major museum across the globe (where the term is employed).  Decorative art differs from fine art not in quality (in the vernacular sense of 'fine'), but in medium and perhaps usage. Dictionary.com defines the term: 'art that is meant to

Today is the birth date of Lady Agnew, painted here in John Singer Sargent’s 'Lady Agnew of Lochnaw' (1865 - 1932), 1892. Picture Frames...

image below: the classic connoisseur of 18th-century collecting in America, Jayne Wrightsman. the collector's Palm Beach home, depicted here, has now been demolished. A Revised Post-Pandemic Perspective In recent years there has been much debate over the merit of the connoisseur / connoisseurship in art, which has been deemed an elitist tradition among some academics. There are several critics of this sentiment , one of which is particularly compelling: connoisseurship, or th

Thoughts on the Exhibition now at The Frick Collection: Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis 'Portrait of a Lady' by Rogier Van der Weyden, circa 1460 Detail of Vermeer’s 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', the star of the traveling exhibition of Dutch paintings now at the The Frick Collection in New York. The collecting philosophy of quality over quantity in the museum world always brings to my mind The Frick Collection.  Henry Clay Fri