5 Fast Facts

View of the museum from outside showing the Neoclassical building from one corner. The building is a tan-colored stone with an arched doorway, long vertical windows, and detailed molding around the roof.
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5 Fast Facts: Alice Neel

Posted: October 2, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about Alice Neel (1900–1984), whose work is on view in NMWA’s collection galleries.
A sick man with medium skin tone lies on a bed with purple bedding and stares out with a dignified expression. The left side of his chest is misshapen and covered with a white bandage. Thick outlines define his body and highlights on his arms and face accentuate his frail frame.

5 Fast Facts: Louise Dahl-Wolfe

Posted: September 11, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895–1989), best known today for her innovative fashion photography.

5 Fast Facts: Joan Mitchell

Posted: August 21, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, whose work is on view in NMWA’s collection galleries.
Close-up detail of an abstract painting that features dense and chaotic brushstrokes of pale gray, lavender, and cobalt.

5 Fast Facts: Niki de Saint Phalle

Posted: August 7, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002), whose work Pregnant Nana (1993) is on view in NMWA's galleries.
View of the gallery shows an eye-catching marble sculpture in the foreground and a visitor looking at multiple brightly colored artworks in the background. The abstract scupture is of a voluptuous figure with pregnant belly covered in bright patterns and posed with outstretched arms.

5 Fast Facts: Judy Chicago

Posted: July 17, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Judy Chicago (b. 1939), who will celebrate her 80th birthday on July 20.

5 Fast Facts: Mildred Thompson

Posted: May 15, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Mildred Thompson (1936–2003), whose work is on view in NMWA’s collection galleries.
Abstract painting features a vivid yellow background covered by circles, daubs, and straight and wavy lines in red, orange, cobalt, sky blue, and violet. Arcing red strokes evoke concentric circles. Straight lines in other hues radiate out from the center circle like a starburst.

5 Fast Facts: Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses

Posted: March 13, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about painter Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses (1860–1961), whose work is part of NMWA’s collection.
Bucolic landscape rendered in a naive, folk-style of painting. The horizontal composition features a patchwork of yellow and green fields on rolling hills set against a blue-gray sky. In the foreground study farm buildings surround small figures tending to the land.

5 Fast Facts: Magdalena Abakanowicz

Posted: March 6, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
As part of NMWA’s #5WomenArtists campaign, impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, whose work is part of NMWA’s collection.
Ten larger-than-life bronze sculptures of human bodies are installed in the middle of a city street. The bodies have no heads or arms, and are striding forward in five rows of two. While they are not naked, their wrinkled body-tight clothing makes no distinction between shirt and pants.

5 Fast Facts: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

Posted: February 25, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, whose work is on view in NMWA’s newly reinstalled collection galleries.
A horizontal canvas combines collaged paper, such as a scrap of a U.S. map, comic strip, and pictographs; cloth swatches; scrawled and dripped paint; and phrases like “It takes hard work to keep racism alive” and “Oh! Zone.” The work’s title appears in red paint right of center.

5 Fast Facts: Laure Tixier

Posted: February 18, 2019
Category: 5 Fast Facts
Impress your friends with five fast facts about artist Laure Tixier). Tixier’s Plaid Houses (Maquettes) (2005–11), currently on view in NMWA’s collection galleries, explore a range of architectural styles in...
Close-up detail of a larger artwork features a view of two felt houses. On the viewer's right is an orange house that is out-of-focus while on the left is a blue house that is in-focus and has visible stitches, coarse texture, and rectangular windows.