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In 2022, I emailed 158 art-related items to my members of my free Sunday Recommendations list. For supporters, I recommended 52 more items. This week: favorite museums, plus architecture. Two of the architecture recommendations were originally shared only with supporters: they’re marked with a pair of asterisks.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/NuoYtlNdpbk.

Museums

For me, there’s an excitement to going to any museum whose holdings include figurative painting and sculpture … I never know what may be around the next corner. This year I posted on 5 museums and exhibitions. My favorite pics are below. (For a couple photos from the Imagine Museum in St. Pete, see Favorite Photos of 2022.)

Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT: American artists of ca. 1900-1920s. Posts: here and here.

Saint Gaudens National Historical Park, Cornish, NH: home and studio of one of America’s greatest sculptors, who lived 1848-1907. Posts here.

James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, St. Petersburg, Florida: just what the title says. Established in 2018 by Tom and Mary James, who are still purchasing works. Posts here; see also favorite photos of 2022.

N.C. Wyeth: one of the great American illustrators (1882-1945). Photos from an exhibition at the Brandywine Museum in Chadds Ford, PA, in 2019. Posts here and here.

J.C. Leyendecker: another great American illustrator (1874-1951). Photos from an exhibition at Reynolda House, Winston-Salem, NC, in 2019. Posts: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th.

Architecture

TIED FOR FIRST:

• Sullivan, Louis. Carson, Pirie, Scott (1899). Located at 1 South State Street, Chicago, this building is notable for its use of steel framing, for the first use of the huge windows we associate with department stores, and for the exuberant decoration, which is based on plant motifs but goes gorgeously beyond them. It was commissioned from Sullivan by Schlesinger & Mayer and went through two other owners before being leased to Carson Pirie Scott, who occupied it until 2006. The building is now known as the Sullivan Center; Target occupies part of it.

• Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Empire State Building (1931). At 102 stories (1,454 feet), this gorgeous Art Deco building was completed in just over 13 months. Like many skyscrapers of the period (the Chrysler Building and 88 Pine come to mind), the Empire State Building has an image of itself at ground level: in this case, an aluminum relief in the lobby. It was the world’s tallest building for 40 years, until the World Trade Center was completed in 1970. After the Towers fell, it was the New York City’s tallest until 2012. The section in Wikipedia on the development and use of the Empire State Building’s lights is a slice of American history.

RUNNERS UP:

• **Hayberger, Gotthard. Library at Admont Abbey, Austria (begun 1742). The largest monastic library in the world was constructed during the Enlightenment in the Baroque / Rococo style. I defy you to think ascetic thoughts beneath its fabulously frescoed domes or beside its curving shelves. Howard Roark wouldn’t have designed a room like this, but … I think of libraries as places where all man’s wondrous knowledge is accumulated, so this over-the-top exuberance works for me.

• **Horta, Victor. Hotel Tassel, Brussels, Belgium (1893). Tassel House was built by Victor Horta for Emile Tassel, scientist and professor. The first complete building in the Art Nouveau style, it has several unique features. First: most Brussels homes of this period were on narrow, deep sites, laid out with a hallway leading to three rooms, the middle of which had no natural lighting. (I’ve been in Brooklyn houses of the same period with exactly that layout.) Horta laid out a floor plan that incorporated 2 buildings of stone, facing the street and facing the garden. They were linked by an wide-open room in the center sheltered with a glass-covered steel roof, so that it functioned as a light shaft. Horta also created every detail of the interior design of Tassel House. Rather than using historical styles – as did most Americans building Gilded Age mansions at this time – Horta designed all the interior elements in the Art Nouveau style, with the characteristic “whiplash” curves. See the stair railings and the floor mosaics, for example. Photos and floor plans here.

• Saarinen, Eero. TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport (1962). After World War 2, TWA became a key player in making airline travel affordable to the masses. In New York City, the Port Authority expanded Idlewild Airport (later renamed JFK) and called for each airline to build and operate its own terminal. Saarinen was commissioned to capture the “spirit of flight” for TWA’s site. The TWA building is a pioneering example of thin-shell construction: its four shell-shaped segments, meeting at the center, use reinforced concrete that ranges from 7 to 40 inches thick to span a huge space. In the interior, swooping curves make ceilings run into walls and floors, while huge windows allow travelers to watch the airport’s activity. (Archival pics here.) This was Saarinen’s last project: he died in 1961, when only the exterior had been completed. The terminal was designed in the age of propeller-driven planes; when jets supplanted them, it became far less useful as a terminal, and was finally shut down in 2001. In 2019 the renovated, retro TWA building reopened as part of the first on-site hotel at JFK, with 500 rooms, multiple restaurants, an observation deck, and conference space: info here. === Addendum: while checking the cruising speed of 1950s airplanes for a timeline installment, I came across this delightful piece of trivia on the Lockheed Constellation, one of the workhorses of airlines in that decade: “Sleek and powerful, Constellations set many records. On April 17, 1944, the second production C-69, piloted by Howard Hughes and TWA president Jack Frye, flew from Burbank, California, to Washington, D.C., in 6 hours and 57 minutes (about 2,300 miles (3,700 km) at an average 331 miles per hour (533 km/h). On the return trip, the aircraft stopped at Wright Field in Ohio to give Orville Wright his last flight, more than 40 years after his historic first flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. He commented that the Constellation’s wingspan was longer than the distance of his first flight.” (Wikipedia – HT Eric K.)

More

• In 2022 I published 3 books: Starry Solitudes: A Collection of Inspiring and Thought-Provoking Poetry (98 poems I’ve recommended over the past five years); Sunny Sundays: Highlights of Five Years of Sunday Recommendations (more here); and Timeline 1900-2021: Events Worldwide, US Politics & Culture, Economics, Science & Technology, Books, Visual Arts, Architecture, Film & TV, Music (more here).

• For more of my writings, see the Books and Essays page. All my books are available in Kindle and/or print format via my Amazon author page. And check out dozens of videos from 2021 on my YouTube channel.
• For favorites from earlier years, see the Favorite Recommendations and Photos link.
• Want wonderful art such as these recommendations delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here.