In a quiet section of Paris, in the 13th Arrondissement, a large building with recessed columns, Romanesque windows, and caryatids preserves an ancient art. For four centuries the Gobelins Manufactory has made tapestries here, and today the government still pays dozens of weavers to carry on by hand. A selection of these woven artworks—some with starry names attached, such as Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, and Alexander Calder—has just landed at the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in an exhibition titled “Wall Power! Modern French Tapestry from the Mobilier National, Paris.” READ ON

My father enjoyed venturing an opinion in tones of mock-Victorian high purpose, and I remember him once going off, during a show at the Society of Illustrators, about the difference between working in oil and working in watercolor. An oil painting could be created over a long period of time; could be treated like a stage set; could accommodate second opinions and be revised. In some ways, it was like a movie. A watercolor was a performance, created in the moment: paper wet, vision fresh. “You can’t lie with watercolor,” my father explained. He was himself an artist and illustrator, and watercolor was the medium he liked best. READ ON