Ursula—That’s Me. So What? March 18 – July 23, 2023 Museum Ludwig Heinrich-Böll-Platz 50667 Köln Germany Back to the 50s March 27, 2023 – May 8, 2023 Kunsthandel Jörg Maass Rankestrasse 24 Wilmersdorf – Berlin, Germany 10789 Ursula Schultze-Bluhm (1921-1999) was an important connection for Virginia Fontaine. She worked for the Amerika Haus in Frankfurt…
Fontaine Archive holdings acquired by the University of Texas, Harry Ransom Center
AUSTIN, Texas — A collection of artworks, photographs, correspondence, rare publications and other materials related to artists Paul and Virginia Fontaine that offers a unique look at the role of artists in the rebuilding of post-World War II Europe has been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. The…
Trusted Eye featured in podcasts
Claudia Chidester has been interviewed on 15 radio and podcast stations from Dubai to as local as Dallas, with Cedar Rapids, IA, Little Falls, MN, Lexington, KY, Amherst, VA, and Carbondale, IL, in between. Check out these recordings for in-depth discussions by some talented interviewers. Art Curious Interview with Jennifer Dasal in Raleigh, NC, 7…
34th annual IBPA Benjamin Franklin Book award winner.
Trusted Eye is a 2022 Silver Winner for the 34th annual IBPA Benjamin Franklin Book Award in two categories, cover design, and coffee-table format. IBPA is the oldest and largest association of independent book publishers, established in 1983. It was started to level the playing field for small and independent book publishers through educational opportunities,…
Trusted Eye meets That Which Remains: Bookwoman virtual conversation with the authors, August 19,2021 7pm
Please join us for a virtual conversation between Austin authors Claudia Fontaine Chidester (Trusted Eye: Post–World War II Adventures of a Fearless Art Advocate) and C.F Yetmen (That Which Remains: Anna Klein Triology #3 ) about their new releases, and the different structures of their books in telling the story of women in war-torn postwar Germany. Yetmen’s book is an art crime mystery and…
Exhibition Notice! Women Artists in the Kunsthalle Bern: An Archival Investigation
Kunsthalle Bern BERN | SWITZERLANDMAY 29, 2021 – JUL 25, 2021 For all of you in Switzerland, this is the last week!! This exhibition includes the artist Margrit Linck Daepp (1897-1983), who Virginia visited and whose ceramics she collected whenever she traveled through Bern. Bern had, in fact, three friends she saw: Margrit Linck and…
The Milwaukee women adventurers – expatriates: Polly Coan and Virginia Fontaine
In Virginia Fontaine’s effort to work while her husband, Paul, was at war in Italy (building and destroying bridges with the Army Corp of Engineers), she assisted the director of the Milwaukee Art Institute (now Milwaukee Art Museum), Polly Coan (1919-2015) (later Frances Nemtin). Polly, a Bryn Mawr graduate, had the most extraordinary upbringing in…
On the Eve of International Holocaust Memorial Day
In advance of January 27th’s International Holocaust Memorial Day, here is a first account on what Europe was like right after World War II. Virginia wrote, “In 1946-47, the roads were clogged with refugees walking and pulling carts from East Germany to West Germany. It was the coldest winter in about 100 years—even the Rhine…
Trusted Eye:Post-World War II Adventures of a Fearless Art Advocate
Trusted Eye: Post–World War II Adventures of a Fearless Art Advocate is a compelling narrative of an American wife and mother finding her place amid the rubble of war-torn Germany. Virginia Fontaine fought continually for recognition—as a woman, a photographer, an art curator, and, perhaps most importantly, a liaison between beleaguered German artists and the…