art & context
I’m that person in the museum who always gets told to step back away from art, so I decided to take action and crafted a place where we can put our noses right up to those masterpieces of the past and present—without actually touching them, of course.
Art & Context provides a place for close looking, focusing on what artists were actually doing, who they were learning from, and what was happening in their world when they picked up their brush (or chisel, camera, clay… you get the idea). From Renaissance masters to modern revolutionaries, from European museums to LA exhibitions — putting art back in its messy, fascinating, and all-too-human context. Born from ideas sparked in class discussions, gallery visits, and afternoons at local museums, expect blog posts that fall down the rabbit hole and take you with them, YouTube videos that feel like conversations not lectures, and (coming soon) podcasts that dig into the real stories behind the masterpieces. Let’s sneak under the velvet ropes and leave the gatekeepers behind.
No pretense. No jargon. Just great art.
about the author
Molly Enholm Velazco is a practicing artist and art historian who writes about art the way she looks at it — up close. Her insider’s perspective keeps the focus on what artists were actually doing, and what they’re still doing today. The Los Angeles-based writer and educator teaches Modern, Contemporary, and Global art history at CSU Northridge, Moorpark College, and Laguna College of Art + Design. Her critical writing has appeared in Fabrik, ArtScene, Hi-Fructose, The Art Story, Art + Cake, and Visual Art Source. She spent nearly a decade as managing editor at art ltd. magazine and continues to bridge her curatorial, artistic, and scholarly practices, most recently with ‘Solace/Sublime’ at Angels Gate Cultural Center. Member: International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
See more: mollyenholm.com