Coordinates: 40°46′3″N 73°58′55″W / 40.7675°N 73.98194°W / 40.7675; -73.98194

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan in New York, New York, is a center for the collection, preservation, study, and display of contemporary hand-made objects in a variety of media, including: clay, glass, metal, fiber, and wood. It accommodates 300,000 visitors per year, however, touring exhibitions, outreach efforts, and off-site programs effectively double that audience.

The museum was founded in 1956 by the American Craft Council together with philanthropist Aileen Osborn Webb, as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. In 1986, it relocated to 40 West 53rd Street and was renamed the American Craft Museum. In 2002 it changed its name again to the Museum of Arts and Design. In 2008, the museum moved to 2 Columbus Circle.

2 Columbus Circle[link]

The new location, with more than 54,000 square feet (5,000 m²), more than tripled the size of the Museum’s former space. It includes: four floors of exhibition galleries for works by established and emerging artists; a 150-seat auditorium in which the museum plans to feature lectures, films, and performances; and a restaurant. It also includes a Center for the Study of Jewelry, and an Education Center that offers multi-media access to primary source material, hands-on classrooms for students, and three artists-in-residence studios.

However, the museum's plans to radically alter the building's original design by Edward Durell Stone touched off a preservation battle joined by Tom Wolfe, Chuck Close, Frank Stella, Robert A. M. Stern, Columbia art history department chairman Barry Bergdoll, New York Times' architecture critics Herbert Muschamp and Nicolai Ouroussoff, urbanist scholar Witold Rybczynski, among others. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Ada Louise Huxtable, and others, however, supported the redevelopment of a long neglected site.

The original design of the Edward Durell Stone building at 2 Columbus Circle

The Museum of Arts and Design in 2008

The museum's new location was developed by Brad Cloepfil and his Portland, Oregon-based firm Allied Works Architecture. The redesigned building replaced the original white Vermont Marble with a glazed terra-cotta and glass facade. Its nacreous ceramic exterior is said to change color at different viewing angles.

The architecture critic for the LA Times, Christopher Hawthorne, wrote:

It's as if Stone, his architecture muffled and disregarded by Cloepfil, MAD and the city of New York, managed to have the last word on the preservation controversy, popping up from beyond the grave to say hello. The fact that the word in question is unpretentious and loosely informal makes it deliciously Stone-like, and allows it to undermine the severity and cold perfectionism of Cloepfil's exterior all the more.^[1]

An article in the New York Times acknowledged that when Holly Hotchner first became the director of the institution ten years ago "few people seemed to have heard of it." That is hardly the case today. As Ada Louise Huxtable, the Wall Street Journal architecture critic, remarked in a December 22, 2011 review of MAD's exhibition Crafting Modernism: Midcentury American Art and Design: "This small building is an oasis of enchantment, a kind of Camelot on Columbus Circle. Its collections are instant eye candy (if the serious and erudite staff will forgive me), with magic in every imaginable material, leavened by irony and wit."

See also[link]

• American craft

References[link]

Notes

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Museum of Arts and Design

• Museum website
• Untold Stories: The American Crafts Council and Aileen Osborn Webb
• A New Face on Columbus Circle
• Renovation Adds Light to Lollipop Building
• Interactive Video of Transformation
• Missing the Marble at 2 Columbus Circle
• Images
• Essay: Modernism Endangered
• Article by Tom Wolfe
• Force Behing 2 Columbus Circle: Interview with the Director
• Report by NY1 of a rally
• Men's Vogue on Brad Cloepfil
• Recent Past Preservation Network
• The Architect's Newspaper
• Eyesore or Icon?
• 'Second Lives' Exhibit Fall 2008
• The Rape of 2 Columbus Circle

Wangechi Mutu (June 25, 1972 Nairobi, Kenya) is an artist and sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Early life[link]

Originally from the Kenyan Kikuyu tribe, she was educated in Nairobi at Loreto Convent Msongari (1978-1989) and later studied at the United World College of the Atlantic, Wales (I.B., 1991). Mutu moved to New York in the 1990s, focusing on Fine Arts and Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and Parsons School of Art and Design. She earned a BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Arts and Science in 1996, and then received an MFA from Yale University (2000).

Career[link]

Mutu’s work has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Miami Art Museum, Tate Modern in London, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Her first solo exhibition at a major North American museum opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in March 2010.^[1]

She participated in the 2008 Prospect 1 Biennial in New Orleans and the 2004 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Her work has been featured in major exhibitions including Greater New York at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Barbican Centre in London, and USA Today at the Royal Academy in London.

On February 23, 2010, Wangechi Mutu was honored by Deutsche Bank as their first "Artist of the Year". The prize included a solo exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. Titled My Dirty Little Heaven, the show traveled in June 2010 to Wiels Center for Contemporary Art in Brussels.

She is represented by Barbara Gladstone in New York, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in Los Angeles and Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

Works[link]

Mutu's works often make the female body central, and confront the viewer with "plant-like or animal-like elements and intertwined abstract patterns" ^[2] that merge the organic and the surreal with human forms. She has predominantly used watercolour and collage on paper. Her collage A'Gave You (2008) is a collage over 2 metres in height, representing a female figure beside a large tentacled monster, and surrounded by serpentine creatures.

More recently, Mutu has exhibited sculptural installations. Suspended Playtime (2008) is a series of bundles of garbage bags, wrapped in gold twine as if suspended in spiders' webs, all suspended from the ceiling over the viewer. The installation makes reference to the common use of garbage bags as improvised balls and other playthings by African children.

Literature, reviews and criticism[link]

• Resonant Surgeries: The Collaged World of Wangechi Mutu, Interview by Robert Enright, Border Crossings Magazine, February 2008
• Interview with Wangechi Mutu by Aimée Reed, Daily Serving, April 12, 2010
• Cut & Paste by Okwui Enwezor, Arise Magazine, February 2011
• We categorize what we’re afraid of: An encounter with Wangechi Mutu by Matthew Evans, Deutsche Bank Artworks ArtMag, #59, 2010
• Wangechi Mutu by Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Artforum, November 17, 2010
• Wangechi Mutu: Hunt Bury Flee by Karen Rosenberg, The New York Times, November 12, 2010

External links[link]

• Wangechi Mutu Studio, New York
• Wangechi Mutu at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
• Wangechi Mutu This You Call Civilization? at Art Gallery of Ontario. Online resources include video and and audio.
• CNN African Voices special on Wangechi Mutu

Marie
Queen consort of Romania
Tenure	10 October 1914 – 20 July 1927
Spouse	Ferdinand of Romania
Issue
Carol II of Romania Elisabeth, Queen of Greece Maria of Yugoslavia Prince Nicholas Princess Ileana, Archduchess of Austria Prince Mircea
Full name
Marie Alexandra Victoria
House	House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Father	Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Mother	Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia
Born	(1875-10-29)29 October 1875 Eastwell Park, Kent
Died	18 July 1938(1938-07-18) (aged 62) Sinaia
Burial	Curtea de Argeş Cathedral, Romania

Marie of Romania (Marie Alexandra Victoria, previously Princess Marie of Edinburgh; 29 October 1875 – 18 July 1938) was Queen consort of Romania from 1914 to 1927, as the wife of Ferdinand of Romania.

Early life[link]

She was born on 29 October 1875 at Eastwell Park in Kent, the eldest daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. Her father was the second-eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Her mother was the only surviving daughter of Alexander II of Russia and Maria Alexandrovna of Hesse. She was baptised in the Private Chapel of Windsor Castle on 15 December 1875 and her godparents were the Empress and Tsarevitch of Russia (her maternal grandmother and uncle), the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (her paternal grandaunt), the Princess of Wales (her paternal aunt) and the Duke of Connaught (her paternal uncle). As her father was in the Royal Navy, she spent much of her early childhood abroad, particularly in Malta.^[1]

Marriage[link]

In her youth, Princess Marie was considered a suitable match for marriage to the Royalty of Europe. Her first cousin, Prince George of Wales, later King George V of the United Kingdom, fell in love with her and proposed marriage. Marie's father and George's father approved of the marriage, but their mothers did not. Marie's mother did not like the British Royal family and George's mother did not like Germans so the idea of a marriage was nixed. Before Marie could find someone else suitable to marry, her mother found Ferdinand of Romania. He was the German-raised nephew of the King of Romania (and a distant cousin of the rulers of Prussia).

Princess Marie married Prince Ferdinand of Romania, nephew of King Carol I of Romania in Sigmaringen, Germany, on 10 January 1893. The bride was 17 years old and the groom was 10 years her senior. (Marie's father did not become Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha until a few months later.) The marriage, which produced three daughters and three sons, was not a happy one.^[2] Her correspondence with her longtime secret confidante, the American dancer Loie Fuller, revealed "the distaste, which grew to revulsion" that Marie felt for her husband.^[3]

The couple's two youngest children, Ileana and Mircea, were born after Marie met her long-time lover, Barbu Ştirbey. Historians generally agree that Ştirbey was the father of Prince Mircea, who had brown eyes like Ştirbey, unlike Marie and Ferdinand.^[4] The paternity of Ileana is uncertain, as is the paternity of Marie's second daughter, Maria (known as Mignon), the future Queen of Yugoslavia.^[2] Ferdinand's paternity of the three other children, Carol, Nicholas and Elisabeth, has not been disputed.^{[citation needed]}

Affair with Cantacuzene[link]

Queen Marie of Romania, portrait by Philip de László.

In 1897, while still Crown Princess, Marie began a romantic liaison with Lieutenant Zizi Cantacuzene.^[2] The affair and subsequent scandal became widely known and was quickly terminated by King Carol I. However by autumn 1897, during the height of the scandal, Marie became pregnant. After fleeing to her mother in Coburg, Marie apparently gave birth to a child who has disappeared from history.^[2] It has been suggested that the child was either stillborn or quickly placed in an orphanage. Whatever the truth, 'the story of this mysterious child of Marie of Romania was one secret "she took to the grave."'^{[clarification needed]}

Birth of Maria, future Queen of Yugoslavia[link]

In 1899 Marie, pregnant with Mignon, pleaded with King Carol I to allow her to give birth in Coburg, where her father was Duke. Upon the king's refusal of this request, Marie declared 'right to his face' that the child she was carrying was in fact Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia's.^[2] The horrified King relented and Marie gave birth to her daughter, also called Marie but always known as Mignon, in the peaceful surroundings of Coburg. Following this, whether in earnest or merely to deflect criticism from the dynasty, Crown Prince Ferdinand officially recognised the child as his.

Birth of Prince Nicolas[link]

Marie's fourth child and second son, Prince Nicolas, was born in August 1903. The appearance of Pauline Astor, the sister of Marie's close friend and confidant Waldorf Astor, along with an Astor family doctor during the birth fanned speculation that the father of Prince Nicolas was in fact Astor and not Crown Prince Ferdinand. As with Mignon, Ferdinand accepted the child as his own and as he grew up Nicolas came to resemble his Hohenzollern relatives rather than the Astors.^[2]

Queen and Queen Mother[link]

Flag of the Queen of Romania (1922–1927)

Royal Monogram as Queen

Medal with image of Marie.

In 1914, Carol I died and Ferdinand ascended the throne of Romania. Crown Princess Marie then became styled Her Majesty The Queen of Romania. Due to World War I, they were not crowned as King and Queen until 1922.

Marie had become a Romanian patriot, and her influence in the country was large. A.L. Easterman writes that King Ferdinand was "a quiet, easy-going man, of no significant character… It was not he, but Marie who ruled in Romania." He credits Marie's sympathies for the Allies as being "the major influence in bringing her country to their side" in the war.^[5]

During the war, she volunteered as a Red Cross nurse to help the sick and wounded and wrote a book titled My Country to raise funds for the Red Cross, but these were by no means her most notable contributions to the war effort. With the country half-overrun by the German Army, she and a group of military advisers devised the plan by which the Romanian Army, rather than retreating into Russia, would choose a triangle of the country in which to stand and fight; and through a letter to Loïe Fuller she set in motion the series of events that brought a timely American loan to Romania, providing the necessary funds to carry out the plan. (Fortuitously, the young woman from the US embassy who delivered the letter to Fuller was the former ward of Newton D. Baker, by this time serving as U.S. Secretary of War. Fuller and the young woman travelled from Paris to Washington, DC and secured an audience with Baker who, along with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Carter Glass, arranged the loan).

After the war ended, the Great Powers decided to settle affairs at the Paris Peace Conference. The Romanian objective was to secure the Romanian-inhabited territories from the now-defunct Austria-Hungary and Russian Empire, thereby uniting all Romanian-speakers in a single state. Romanian diplomats at the peace conference sought to achieve recognition by the Allies of the Unions of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania with Romania, proclaimed during 1918. With the Romanian delegation losing ground in the negotiations, Prime Minister Ionel Bratianu called upon the Queen to travel to France. Marie famously declared that "Romania needs a face, and I will be that face," astutely calculating that the international press was growing tired of the endless negotiations and would be unable to resist the glamour of a Royal visit. The arrival of the so-called Soldier Queen was an international media sensation and she argued passionately that the Western powers should honour their debt to Romania (which had suffered a casualty rate proportionately far greater than Britain, France or the USA). Behind the scenes, she alternately charmed and bullied the Allied leaders into backing the Romanian cause.^[2] As a direct result of her charismatic intervention, Romania won back the initiative and successfully achieved all its pre-conference aims, eventually expanding its territory by 60%, gaining Bessarabia, Bukovina, Transylvania, as well as parts of the Banat, Crişana and Maramureş.

Marie's son, the Crown Prince Carol (later King Carol II of Romania), was never close to his father, Ferdinand—by the time Carol was an adult, their antagonism became an "open breach"^[5]—but there continued to be a "deep bond of affection and sympathy" between Carol and Marie.^[5] Their relationship, however, deteriorated. The initial conflict came over Carol's objections to Marie's relationship with Prince Ştirbey; the breach was exacerbated as Marie attempted to steer Carol toward a dynastic marriage rather than allow him to choose his own bride.^[5] During Carol's exile in Paris, Loïe Fuller had befriended Carol and his mistress Magda Lupescu; they were unaware of Fuller's connection to Marie. Fuller initially advocated to Marie on their behalf, but later schemed unsuccessfully with Marie to separate Carol from Lupescu.^[3] Eventually, when Carol became King and did not seek her counsel, the breach between mother and son became complete.^[6]

After the death of her husband in 1927, Queen Marie remained in Romania, writing books and her memoirs, The Story of My Life. She died in Peleş Castle on 18 July 1938, and was buried next to her husband in the Monastery of Curtea de Argeş. In accordance with her will, her heart was kept in a cloister at the Balchik Palace which she had built. In 1940, when Balchik and the rest of Southern Dobrudja were returned to Bulgaria in accordance with the Treaty of Craiova, Queen Marie's heart was transferred to Bran Castle.

In 1968 Communist partisans defiled the marble sarcophagus in which the heart was preserved. Both silver coffers containing Queen’s heart were transferred to Bucharest and nowadays are in the custody of National Museum of Romanian History as well as Queen’s heart. The coffers are part of Romanian National Thesaurus and can be seen at National Museum of Romanian History. The decision of preserving Queen’s heart in a museum, even though not open to the public, continues to be a controversial subject.^[7]

Bran Castle had been her principal home for much of the early 20th century, and the artefacts with which she chose to surround herself (traditional furniture and tapestries, for example) can be seen by visitors today. Many of her other personal effects can be seen at the Maryhill Museum, formerly the home of Samuel Hill, an American railroad businessman with whom Queen Marie corresponded much of her life. The famous museum, which lies in Washington State (U.S.A.) on the north side of the Columbia River, displays much of Queen Marie's regalia, furniture, and other possessions, including her crown.

She was the 1,007th Dame of the Royal Order of Queen Maria Luisa.

Religious beliefs[link]

She is held in high esteem by members of the Bahá'í Faith. Her religious background was of the Church of England, although she is known to have embraced the Orthodox Christian beliefs of Romanian nationals. In her later years, she was approached by Martha Root, a well-recognized travelling teacher, on the topic of the Bahá'í Faith. Bahá'ís recognise Queen Marie of Romania as the first member of royalty to have declared her belief in Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith.^[4][8][9]

In regard to the Bahá'í Faith, Queen Marie stated:

"The Bahá'í teaching brings peace and understanding. It is like a wide embrace gathering together all those who have long searched for words of hope. It accepts all great Prophets gone before, it destroys no other creeds and leaves all doors open. Saddened by the continual strife amongst believers of many confessions and wearied of their intolerance towards each other, I discovered in the Bahá'í teaching the real spirit of Christ so often denied and misunderstood: Unity instead of strife, Hope instead of condemnation, Love instead of hate, and a great reassurance for all men."^[10]

Titles, styles, honours and arms[link]

Marie's coat of arms.

Titles and styles[link]

• 29 October 1875 – 10 January 1893: Her Royal Highness Princess Marie of Edinburgh, Princess of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Princess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Duchess of Saxony
• 10 January 1893 – 10 October 1914: Her Royal Highness Crown Princess of Romania
• 10 October 1914 – 20 July 1927: Her Majesty The Queen of Romania
• 20 July 1927 – 18 July 1938: Her Majesty Queen Marie of Romania

British arms[link]

As a male-line grandchild of a British Sovereign, Marie bore the arms of the kingdom, with an inescutcheon for Saxony, differenced by a five-point label argent, the outer pair of which bore anchors azure, the inner roses gules, and the central a cross gules. In 1917, the inescutcheon was dropped by Royal Warrant from George V.^[11]

Issue[link]

Queen Marie and Nicolae c. 1900

Quote[link]

She once encountered a proselytiser from a religious group. She said "I have met.....I did not like him. He seemed to me to be a snob. He spoke of God as if He were the oldest title in the Almanach de Gotha. And all that business about telling one's sins in public – He wanted me...me ...to get up before my children and confess everything I had ever done! It is spiritual nudism! Ça ne se fait pas."^[12]

Legacy[link]

Literature[link]

She was also referred to in a number of contemporaneous literary sources, including Dorothy Parker's poem "Comment":

• Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

  A medley of extemporanea;

  And love is a thing that can never go wrong,

  And I am Marie of Roumania.

Marie's interaction with the Bahá'í faith's is discussed in Her Eternal Crown: Queen Marie of Romania and the Bahá'í Faith, by author Della L. Marcus.

Science fiction author Joanna Russ mentions her in her 1975 novel, The Female Man.

Bruce Benderson, in The Romanian: Story of an Obsession, soliloquizes on the relationship between Marie, her son King Carol II and his mistress Magda Lupescu.

Sylvia the dog, in the play Sylvia by A. R. Gurney, says near the end of Act 2, "Oh sure. And I'm Marie of Rumania".

Other[link]

In 2005, a Type 22 frigate Regina Maria (formerly HMS London in the Royal Navy) was named after Marie by the Romanian Navy.

Ancestry[link]

House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen

Carol I Queen Consort:     Elisabeth Children:    Princess Maria Ferdinand I Queen Consort:     Marie Children:     Prince Carol     Elisabeth, Queen of Greece     Maria, Queen of Yugoslavia     Prince Nicholas     Ileana, Archduchess of Austria     Prince Mircea Carol II Children:     Prince Michael Michael I Queen Consort:     Anne Children     Princess Margarita     Princess Elena     Princess Irina     Princess Sophie     Princess Maria

British Royalty
House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Descendants of Victoria & Albert
Grandchildren Alfred of Edinburgh Marie of Edinburgh Victoria of Edinburgh Alexandra of Edinburgh Beatrice of Edinburgh Margaret of Connaught Arthur of Connaught Patricia of Connaught Alice of Albany Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha
v t e

References[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Marie of Romania

See also[link]

• List of British princesses
• Samuel Hill
• Maryhill Museum of Art

Sources[link]

• Fotescu, Diana (1998). Americans and Queen Marie of Romania. Portland, Oxford: Iasi. 
• Mandache (Fotescu), Diana (2004). Later Chapters of My Life. The Lost Memoir of Queen Marie of Romania. Sutton. ISBN 978-0-7509-3691-0. 
• Mandache (Fotescu), Diana (2007). Marie of Romania. Images of a Queen. Rosvall Royal Books. ISBN 91-975671-2-4. http://www.tkinter.org/QueenMarie/RecentBooks/MarieImagesOfQueen/index.htm. 

Footnotes[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Queen Marie of Romania

• Queen Marie of Romania
• Ars Reginae. Romania's Writer-Queens
• Find A Grave
• The British Pathé has made available various archives of films taken including Marie of Edinburgh:1914, 1917, 1924, 1930, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1938

George Rodrigue (born March 13, 1944) is a Cajun artist who grew up in New Iberia, Louisiana. Rodrigue began painting outdoor family gatherings framed by moss-clad oak trees in an area of French Louisiana known as Acadiana.

Biography[link]

Rodrigue attended the Brothers of the Christian Schools all-male high school called St. Peter's College, (now Catholic High School) which was located near St. Peter's Church, and on the banks of the Bayou Teche as it runs through New Iberia. He studied art formally at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (then named the University of Southwestern Louisiana) and the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He later trained in New York, and became well known for his abstract expressionism of Cajun subjects, inspired by his roots.

Rodrigue’s early notable works include The Aioli Dinner and Three Oaks. His most famous works include the Acadian heroine, Evangeline, portrayed in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)^[1] and the Cajun modern-day Evangeline, Jolie Blonde.^[2] He also designed three posters for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which feature portraits of Louis Armstrong, Pete Fountain and Al Hirt. Between 1985 and 1989, Rodrigue painted the Saga of the Acadians, a series of fifteen paintings chronicling the Acadian journey from France to Nova Scotia to Louisiana and ending with the official return visit to Grand Pré.^[3]

More recently and worldwide he is known for his creation of the Blue Dog series of paintings, featuring a blue-hued dog, attributed to his deceased dog named Tiffany and influenced by the Loup Garou legend—the first painting in the series bears the title Loup Garou. The Blue Dog was made popular by Absolut Vodka in 1992, when Rodrigue was honored as an Absolut Vodka artist, joining famous artists such as Andy Warhol and glass artist Hans Godo Frabel. The Blue Dog was used by both Absolut Vodka and the Xerox Corporation through national ad campaigns. The blue-hued, ghostly spaniel/terrier is often featured with a white nose and yellow eyes. His symbol helped coin the term Blue Dog Democrat, which refers to a conservative member of the Democratic Party.

Rodrigue has galleries in Aspen, Colorado; Carmel, California; Lafayette, Louisiana; and New Orleans, Louisiana. He was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette on May 17th 2009.

Response to Hurricane Katrina[link]

Forced to relocate, Rodrigue temporarily moved his base of operations to Lafayette, Louisiana. Days after the disaster, he created We Will Rise Again, depicting the American flag covered with water, to benefit the Red Cross in response to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. "The Blue Dog is partly submerged, and its eyes, normally yellow, are red with a broken heart," Rodrigue wrote in September 2005. "Like a ship's S.O.S., the red cross on the dog's chest calls out for help."

"We Will Rise Again" was the first of five works that the acclaimed artist created for his new initiative, Blue Dog Relief: George Rodrigue Art Campaign for Recovery. To directly benefit the New Orleans Museum of Art, which was closed for six months due to flood damage, he also painted Throw Me Something FEMA and You Can't Drown the Blues.

Following those releases, Rodrigue launched a campaign for New Orleans levee protection. He sent prints of To Stay Alive We Need Levee 5 to every member of the U.S. Congress. Sales proceeds from silkscreen prints and related campaign materials — including T-shirts, lapel pins, bumper stickers and buttons — are donated to NOMA.

Rodrigue donated his Cut Through the Red Tape image to the United Way for use in promoting the Louisiana 2-1-1 phone system. Louisiana 2-1-1 (an easy to remember Information & Referral phone number) seeks to eliminate the red tape of reaching human-service agencies — particularly in the wake of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

As of September 2006, the donation tally to Blue Dog Relief beneficiaries was $700,000 — including a check for $100,000 that Rodrigue presented to NOMA on March 3, 2006, to help kick off its grand re-opening: "The HeART of New Orleans," a three-day weekend celebration of the arts.

George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts[link]

In 2009 Rodrigue formed the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts (GRFA) a non-profit organization which advocates the importance of the visual arts in the development of our youth. GRFA encourages the use of art within all curriculums and supports a variety of art educational programs.^[4]

Publications[link]

• The Cajuns of George Rodrigue (Oxmoor House; 1st edition 1976)
• A Couple of Local Boys: Paintings by George Rodrigue, Poetry by Gus Weill (Claitor's Publishing Division, 1981)
• Le Petit Cajun: Conversations with André Rodrigue, from his son’s perspective
• Blue Dog (Viking / Penguin, 1994; a Book of the Month Club selection)
• George Rodrigue; A Cajun Artist (Penguin Studio, 1997)
• Blue Dog man (foreword by Tom Brokaw, Stewart Tabori & Chang, 1999)
• A Blue Dog Christmas (Stewart Tabori & Chang, 2000)
• The Art of George Rodrigue a 40-year retrospective by Ginger Danto & George Rodrigue, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (November, 2003)
• George Rodrigue Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne (Abrahms, 2008)
• Are You Blue Dog's Friend? (Abrams, 2009)

Sundry Titles[link]

• The Loup-Garou of Côte Gelée by Morris Raphael, Harlo Press (June 1990); illustrator, George Rodrigue^[5]
• Claire by Moonlight by Lynne Kositsky, Tundra Books (April 12, 2005); cover painting: Traiteur by George Rodrigue^[6]

Accolades[link]

• 1986: Commissioned by Republican Party to paint President Ronald Reagan; Reagan later donated painting to Louisiana State University
• 1988: Commissioned by Republican Party to paint Vice President George Bush and his 10 grandchildren; painting now hangs in Bush's private office
• 1989: Painted three Cajun Easter eggs for annual White House Easter Egg Roll
• 1992: Commissioned by Carillon Importers to paint Absolut Louisiana for USA Today
• 1993: Carillon Importers commissioned Absolut Rodrigue
• 1995: Commissioned by New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival to paint Louis Armstrong
• 1996: New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival commissioned portrait of Pete Fountain; and Neiman Marcus commissioned catalogue cover design for the book Butterflies Are Free
• 1997: Commissioned by Democratic Inaugural Committee to paint President-elect Bill Clinton and Vice President-elect Al Gore
• 1998: Commissioned by New Orleans Jazz Club to create 50th anniversary poster; and Neiman Marcus commissioned catalogue cover design for the book Hawaiian Blues
• 2000: Commissioned by Young & Rubicam to create paintings for ads promoting Xerox Color Inkjet Printers; and New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival commissioned painting of Al Hirt
• 2003: Honored as Outstanding Alum of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, along with baseball legend Ron Guidry
• 2003: Raised approximately 1 million dollars for a new habitat for Mike the Tiger, Louisiana State University's live mascot. He did so by painting the Tiger along with Rodrigue's famous oak trees and donated 5,000 silkscreens to the Tiger Athletic Foundation.
• 2004: Painted official portrait for the inauguration of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Rabineaux Blanco; inducted into Louisiana "Order of Living Legends" by the Acadian Museum; delivered guest lecture at the Great Hall of the Nantucket Atheneum, the historical library on the island of Nantucket; and honored as Artist of the Year by the American Liver Foundation in Birmingham, Al.
• 2005: Created official 25th anniversary artwork for the Musical Arts Society of New Orleans
• 2010: Honored as inaugural Forum35 Art Melt Louisiana Art Legend
• 2011: Honored as a Distinguished Eagle Scout by the Southeast Louisiana Boy Scout Council

External links[link]

• Rodrigue Studio
• George Rodrigue Art Campaign for Hurricane Recovery
• Rodrigue's Louisiana
• Audio Interviews with George Rodrigue
• Southern Living web profile
• Rodrigue Receives Honorary Doctorate from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette

1. ^ A History of Evangeline in Rodrigue Paintings
2. ^ From Jolie Blonde to Bodies: Paintings of Women
3. ^ The Saga of the Acadians
4. ^ George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts
5. ^ The Loup-Garou of Côte Gelée
6. ^ Claire by Moonlight