Virtual Biggs

Toni Frissell: In Italy with the Tuskegee Airmen:

The imminent fashion and society photographer, Toni Frissell (1907-88), held several official positions with the American Red Cross, the Women’s Army Corp and the US Air Force to document World War II. This exhibition highlights her images of the Tuskegee Airmen, the 332d Fighter Group, from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Stairway to Heaven: Life and Death in the Visions of Salvador Dalí:
Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) is among the most recognized and eccentric artists of the 20^th century. His artwork created for The Divine Comedy and Les Chants de Maldoror, signal two distinct periods in Dalí’s career and track his transition from Surrealism to Mysticism. With nearly 150 individual artworks on view, this exhibition provides an expansive selection to interpret Dalí‘s dream-like subjects.

Art of Today:
Among the fastest growing portion of the museum’s collection is work made in the 21st century. In addition, the Biggs regularly hosts juried competitions, group exhibitions, and one-person shows of living artists of national and regional importance.

Later 20th Century American Art:
Abstract painters of this period created works that emphasized color and line and other visual elements of the expense of recognizable subjects. Artists even composed paintings based entirely on the physical properties of the newly invented acrylic paints. Other artists blurred the old borders between fine art and mundane subjects of modern life.

Late 19th Century American Art:
In the years after the Civil War, fast-growing industries created vast amounts of wealth in the United States. Families of industrialists modeled themselves on the European aristocracy and surrounded themselves with art created primarily in academies.

Early 20th Century American Art:
Many American artists creating work in the first half of the 20th century continued exploring novel ways to represent the natural world using expressive techniques. Abstraction and the detailed storytelling of Realism emerging form urban art centers became highly influential on regional artists.

American Impressionism:
In the late 1800s artists experimented with recording specific effects of light and atmosphere. The fresh and immediate appearance of unblended brush strokes and quick applications of paint featured in this form of plein air painting was quickly taken up by American students studying abroad.

Hudson River School: American landscape paintings, featuring the natural wonders encountered during the U.S. Westward Expansion, such as Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, were popular during the mid-1800s.

American Folk Art:
Delaware folk artists created a wide variety of artistic options that were not always tied to internationally fashionable notions of beauty. Folk art often emphasizes bright colors, bold patterns, exaggerated proportions, and the preservation of ethnic traditions.

Greek Revival:
Early American artists routinely borrowed motifs from the ancient past, such as columns, lyres, marble sculptures, mythological representations. the democratic ideals of ancient Greece influenced American laws while Greek archeology decorated American art forms.

American Empire:
During the War of 1812, Britain was also at war with France. America’s political sympathies with Napoleon fueled an interest in French fashion. Americans purchased the highly decorative Napoleonic, or Empire, fashions from craftspeople in American cities such as Philadelphia and New York.

Stephen Althouse’s Relics: Featuring enormous images captured by Stephen Althouse between 2003 and 2017, this exhibition elevates and transforms antique tools and decorative arts into universal symbols. The monumental scale and spiritualizing compositions of these artworks reference artifacts of the past to illuminate a collective human experience that transcends time.