Charles Baudelaire wrote that each age has its look. Grooms' distinctive cartoon-like style has softened the usually serious attitude of New York art for decades, offering relief from art world pretension. This excellent survey has a fine catalog essay by Joyce Henri Robinson, associate curator. Jan Keene Muhlert ably directs the museum, which is 26 years old this month.
Admission is free.
Museum is on Curtin Road near the University Creamery. On view are 1,500 rare and precious stones, jewelry and lapidary art from one of the finest collections in the country. Fire opals and 50 types of gemstones, including colored diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, jade and pearls are viewable daily. Jane Glaubinger, print curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, said she was open to new methods in choosing the Pittsburgh Print Group's national exhibition at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. But she disqualified a work by distinguished print artist and painter Joan Sonnenberg, who used a new reproductive method, iris giclee, an enhanced digital ink-jet spray sending four million droplets per second onto paper or canvas.