Gold Icon Can American art escape the culture wars?

Recent rehangs at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum suggest that the answer lies in respecting the viewer’s own capacity for interpretation

3 Feb 2025
Plate by Thomas Bentley from Designs by Mr. R. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray (1753)

Tombstone views – picturing Gray’s ‘Elegy’

Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ was the best-loved poem of the 18th century – and has proved a lure to illustrators ever since

2 Mar 2022