viz.

Image Credit: Kim Leeson / George W. Bush Presidential Center

Last year, an adventurous hacker found and leaked pictures of paintings made by former President George W. Bush, including two revealing self-portraits from the shower. Now, the private hobby has been made public by President Bush himself. The George W. Bush Presidential Library, up the road in Dallas, has just opened an exhibit, The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy, which features portraits Bush painted of the world leaders he once encountered as President, paired alongside mementos from his travels and his musings about statecraft. However, what makes these paintings remarkable for viewers?

Image Credit: Photo from Arnold Newman Exhibit, Harry Ransom Center, taken by author; protected under Fair Use.

On February 12th, the traveling exhibition Arnold Newman: Masterclass began a four-month stop at UT’s esteemed Harry Ransom Center.  As Newman was a prolific photographer with a strong belief in the instructional potential of photographs, the chance to see his life’s work first-hand was nothing short of spine-tingling to those of us with an unusually strong interest in visual culture and artifacts, especially when they have pedagogical implications!  (Pretty dorky, I know.)

Image Credit: Posters 555

All those who wander are not lost—in fact, wandering is sometimes the point. I did a little of this while touring the Harry Ransom Center’s new exhibit on The King James Bible: Its History and Influences. I particularly enjoyed examining the numerous visuals on display: exquisite Jacob Lawrence and William Blake illustrations, colorful posters for The Ten Commandments and David and Bathsheba, and patterns for Robert DeNiro’s Biblical tattoos in Cape Fear. 

"Bug and the Machine" Poster, Stephanie Rosen

If you are interested in science, art, video installations, interdisciplinary work, or maybe if you just like bugs, we'd recommend you stop by the following event at the University of Texas at Austin tomorrow evening.  Read more about the super-computers at the Texas Advanced Computer Center from a past viz. blog post.  Following is the summary description of "Bug in the Machine" by the Vital Arts and Theories Group: "Sixty years ago a small moth flew into a large room on the campus of Harvard University. It fluttered around, disoriented by the artificial light, until it slipped in and got stuck between two of the 700,000 moving parts of the automatic calculating machine MARK II, one of the world's first computers. The moth was