MOA Blog

This painting’s enigmatic title is a perfect fit for its intriguing subject, where an unknown woman dressed in black sits with her hands in her lap, her eyes seemingly focused on nothing. What is she waiting for? Perhaps she waits for a family member or friend to pay her a visit. Given the woman’s attire and the painting’s somber tone, whether knowingly or not, she also seems to be waiting for death. We will likely never know what Rose Hartwell intended this painting to mean, so we too are left waiting to know this woman’s story.

Painted while Moser was studying art in Paris, this painting lacks the bold color and loose brushwork that came to dominate the artist’s style when he returned to Utah. In Paris, he was surrounded not only by academic tradition, but by modern art’s many new aesthetic possibilities. Judging from his mature style, he was observing much during this time, even though his own output remained relatively conservative. This painting, and others of the time, show the influence of the Barbizon School of landscape painting, an influential nineteenth-century movement that emphasized painting outdoors.

'Mimi Chen Ting' Retrospective Debuts at BYU Museum of Art

Thalmann evokes the notion of communion in a series of prints of worshippers within dramatic cathedral interiors. His strong lines and contrast of deep pools of shadow with bold spaces of radiant light conveys the reverence and anticipatory sublime of a worship experience. The cathedral, with its Gothic-style archways, and hooded bowed forms moving silently, exude a timeless quality of devotion, where man—insignificant compared to the vast reaches of the cathedral space—is brought to feel the immensity of the divine.

A special Easter message and readings from Exodus

Rose Hartwell’s painting of a pawn shop might bring to mind thrifting, vintage objects, and searching for that special something. Yet pawn shops also attest to acts of financial desperation. This depiction of a pawn shop corner window includes valuables like a traditional Chinese cash coin, cowrie and spiral seashells, a Grecian-style vase, and gold and silver jewelry intermingled with open pocket watches.

Deadline: April 10

In 'Clouds, Mountains and a Lake', shifting hues of greens, purples, and blues evoke the iridescence of mother of pearl. Rolling hills in the foreground give way to steep, towering mountains that dominate the sky, sharp peaks cutting through the wispy clouds. Below, a lake reflects the mountains across the dark mirror of its placid surface. In the heart of the painting, a black void looms, creating an ominous, enigmatic presence. Such elements create a landscape that appears both familiar and strange—an inscrutable, eerie terrain that invites yet challenges viewers.

During his time in Nevada in the 1930s, Maynard Dixon turned his attention to the geological formations of the American Southwest. Overlooking the desert, a steep, rocky cone dominates the scene. Shadows span the foreground, creating stark contrasts throughout that draw attention to the white channels and harder red stones tumbling down from the peak. Across a flat expanse and along the distant horizon, a range of mountains stretches against a blue sky, white clouds resting just behind them. This painting captures a specific time of day in 1934 yet reveals millions of years of geological history and change.

According to Marie Watt (Seneca Nation), “I’m interested in how blankets are objects that we take for granted, but that can have extraordinary histories.” By stacking something as familiar as blankets into a towering column, Watt’s work contains many rich layers of meaning: